Caucasian Race - Origin of The Concept

Origin of The Concept

The term "Caucasian race" was coined by the German philosopher Christoph Meiners in his The Outline of History of Mankind (1785). In Meiners' unique racial classification, there were only two racial divisions (Racen): Caucasians and Mongolians. These terms were used as a collective representation of what he personally regarded as either good looking or less attractive, based solely on facial appearance. For example, he considered Germans and Tatars more attractive, and thus Caucasian, while he found Jews, Slavs and Africans less attractive, and thus Mongolian.

This racial classification did not receive much support. However, in 1795, a colleague of Meiners from the University of Göttingen, Blumenbach, one of the earliest anthropologists, adopted the term Varietas Caucasia ("Caucasian Variety"), for a new major hypothetical racial division. Blumenbach named it after the Caucasian peoples (from the Southern Caucasus region), whom he considered to be the archetype for the grouping. Unlike Meiners, Blumenbach based his classification of the Caucasian race primarily on craniology after deciding that there was more to racial difference than skin pigmentation. "Caucasian variety - I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; and because all physiological reasons converge to this, that in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the autochthones (birth place) of mankind." - Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, The anthropological treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach 1865.