Historical Race Concepts - Earliest Views On Ethnic Differences

Earliest Views On Ethnic Differences

In many ancient civilizations, individuals with widely varying physical appearances became full members of a society by growing up within that society or by adopting that society's cultural norms. (Snowden 1983; Lewis 1990).

When the lighter ancient Egyptians were in power, they called the darker group "the evil race of Ish". When the darker ancient Egyptians were in power, they called the lighter group "the pale, degraded race of Arvad". These differences also related to different cultural groups who competed for power. For example, the Ancient Egyptian sacred text called Book of Gates identifies four ethnic categories that are now conventionally labeled "Egyptians", "Asiatics", "Libyans", and "Nubians" (see Ancient Egypt and race), but such distinctions tended to conflate differences as defined by physical features such as skin tone, with tribal and national identity.

Classical civilizations from Rome to China tended to invest the most importance in familial or tribal affiliation than an individual's physical appearance (Dikötter 1992; Goldenberg 2003). Societies still tended to equate physical characteristics, such as hair and eye colour, with psychological and moral qualities, usually assigning the highest qualities to their own people and lower qualities to the "Other", either lower classes or outsiders to their society. For example, an historian of the 3rd century Han Dynasty in the territory of present-day China describes barbarians of blond hair and green eyes as resembling "the monkeys from which they are descended." (Gossett, pp. 4).

Dominant in ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of human diversity was the thesis that physical differences between different populations could be attributed to environmental factors. Though ancient peoples likely had no knowledge of evolutionary theory or genetic variability, their concepts of race could be described as malleable. Chief among environmental causes for physical difference in the ancient period were climate and geography. Though thinkers in ancient civilizations recognized differences in physical characteristics between different populations, the general consensus was that all non-Greeks were barbarians. This barbarian status, however, was not thought to be fixed; rather, one could shed the ‘barbarian’ status simply by adopting Greek culture. (Graves 2001)