Mongoloid

Asian types in a book of 1914.

Mongoloid race is a term formerly used for the peoples of most of Asia (including Southeast Asia, East Asia, Siberia, and parts of South Asia), the Arctic, the Americas, and most of the Pacific islands in the context of a now obsolete model of dividing humanity into different races. These populations share certain phenotypic traits such as the Mongolian bridle and other physical traits.

The word is made up of the base word "mongolian" and the suffix "-oid", which means "resembling", so the term literally means "resembles Mongolians". It was introduced by early ethnology primarily to describe the diverse populations of Central Asia and East Asia. The Mongoloid race is one of the proposed three main races of humanity. Although some forensic anthropologists and other scientists continue to use the term in some contexts (such as retributive justice), the term "Mongoloid" is considered pejorative by most anthropologists, due to its association with typological models of racial classification in dispute.

Today there is a broad scientific consensus that there are no human races in a biological sense.

Races do not exist, biologically or scientifically. Men by their common origin belong to the same genetic repertoire. The variations we can see are not the result of different genes. If "races" were to be treated, there is only one "race": the human.

José Marín Gonzáles

Evolution of the term

The term "Mongoloid" came from the Mongol population who invaded a large part of Eurasia during the 13th century, establishing the Mongol Empire. Christoph Meiners proposed a "binary racial scheme." The "two races" of him were labeled "Caucasian Tatars," which were made up of the Celtic and Slavic groups, and the "Mongols."

In accordance with Meiners' classification, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach used the term "Mongoloid" to describe human groups inhabiting the Far East, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. In 1861, Isid Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire considered that "Australians" would constitute a "sub-race" of the Mongoloids. Later, Georges Cuvier included Native Americans in the Mongoloids.

Later, Thomas Huxley used the term Mongoloid to include not only Native Americans, but also Arctic ethnic groups.

In 1882, the Irish anthropologist Augustus Henry Keane subclassified the Mongoloids into: Tibetans, Bamars, Tai, Koreans, Japanese, Riukiuans, Finn-Tatars, and Malays. Keane also pointed out the existence of mixtures between Mongoloids and Caucasians: Turks, Uzbeks and Tajiks. While the Kazakhs would be "intermediate" between Turks and Mongoloids. According to Keane, the best example of the "Mongolian race" would be the Buryats".

In 1940, the anthropologist Franz Boas included the American "race" as part of the Mongoloid "race", mentioning the "Aztecs of Mexico" and the "Mayas of Yucatán". Boas also claimed that among the races of the "Old World", "Native American" has characteristics more similar to "East Asian".

Subraces

Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (1885–90).

Caucasoid Race:AriosSemitesCabins Black Race:Black AfricansKhoikhoiMelanesNegritosAustraloids uncertain:Dravidians and Cingaleses

Mongoloid Race:Northern MongolsChinese and IndochinosJapanese and KoreanTibetansMalaysPolynesiansMaorísMicronesiansEsquimalesAmerindians

In 1900, Joseph Deniker said that the "Mongolian race admits of two varieties or sub-races: the Tunguse, or Northern Mongolian... and the Southern Mongolian".

In the 1944 edition of Rand McNally's World Atlas, the three subraces of the Mongolian race were represented as the proper Mongolian race, the Malay race, and the American Indian race.

Archaeologist Peter Bellwood claimed that the vast majority of people in Southeast Asia, the region he called the "Mongoloid-Australoid clinal zone", are southern Mongoloids, but have a high degree of Australoid admixture.

Professor of anthropology Akazawa Takeru (Japanese: 赤沢威) at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Kyoto, said that there are Neo-Mongoloids and paleo-Mongoloids. Akazawa said that Neo-Mongoloids have very Mongoloid characteristics who are adapted for the cold and this group includes the Chinese, Buryats, Eskimos and Chukchi. In contrast, Akazawa said that the Paleo-Mongoloids are less adapted to the cold. He also stated that the Burmese, Filipinos, Polynesians, Jōmon and indigenous peoples of the Americas are paleo-mongoloids.

History of the concept

The early systematic use of the term was by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in «De generis humani varietate nativa» (On the Natural Variety of Humanity), of the University of Göttingen, first published in 1775 (republished with altered title page in 1776). Blumenbach included countries from Southeast Asia and East Asia, but not Native Americans or Malays, who were each assigned separate categories.

In 1865, biologist Thomas Henry Huxley presented the views of polygenic believers (Huxley was not one of them) as "some imagine their supposed species of mankind were created where we find them... the Mongols of the orangutans".

In 1972, the physical anthropologist Carleton Stevens Coon said that "From a Hyborian group evolved, in North Asia, the ancestral strain of the entire specialized Mongoloid family." In 1962, Coon believed that the Mongoloid "subspecies" they existed "during much of the Pleistocene from 500,000 to 10,000 years ago". According to Coon, the Mongoloid race had not completed its "invasions and expansions" into Southeast Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific islands until "towards the end of the Pleistocene ».

Paleoanthropologists Milford Wolpoff and Rachel Caspari characterized "his [Carleton Coon's] argument as] that the Mongoloid race crossed the sapiens threshold first and therefore evolved furthest".

Mohinder Kumar Bhasin (Hindi: महेंद्र कुमार भसीन) of the Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi suggested in a commentary to an article referencing Mourant 1983 that Caucasians and Mongoloids differed from each other in Asia and Australoids they could have differentiated from a common type of both before the separation of the Mongoloids.

Douglas J. Futuyma, professor of evolutionary processes at the University of Michigan, said that the Mongoloid race "diverged 41,000 years ago" from a Mongoloid and Caucasoid group that diverged from the Negroids "110,000 years ago".

Features

a «mongoloid» eye according to anthropologist Joseph Deniker

The latest edition of the German encyclopedia Meyers Konversations-Lexikon (1971-79, 25 volumes) lists the following characteristics of "Mongoloid" from Asia:

Flat face with a low root of the nose, accented cigomatic arches, flat eyelids (which are often tilted), thick hair, tight, dark, dark eyes, brown yellow skin, generally short stature and chaperone.

Neoteny

“Mongoloid skulls are the most graceful of the human family. The Mongoloid skull type is believed to be a very recent evolutionary development." According to Ashley Montagu who taught anthropology at Princeton University, "The Mongoloid skull has proceeded further than any other people", "the Mongoloid skull, whether Chinese or Japanese, it has been considerably more neotenous than the Caucasoid or European" and "the female skull, it will be observed, is more paedomorphic in all human populations than the male skull." In addition, Montagu said that "Chinese peoples" are perhaps the best representatives of neoteny of all Mongoloids. In his list of "Neotenic structural features in which Mongoloids...differ from Caucasians", Montagu listed "brain larger, larger braincase, broad skull, broader face, flat covered nose, inner eye crease, more bulging eyes, lack of forehead ridges, more delicacy of bones, shallow mandibular fossa, small mastoid process, stocky build, persistence of thymus gland into adult life, persistence of juvenile form of zygomatic muscle, persistence of juvenile form of upper lip muscle, later eruption of complete dentition (except teeth). second and third molars), fewer sweat glands, less hairiness, fewer hairs per square inch [and] a long torso."

Ashley Montagu said that “the skeleton of the classical Mongoloid type is very delicately made, including the character of the skull sutures, which, like those of the infant skull, are relatively smooth and not tortuous. In fact, the Mongoloid exhibits so many physical characteristics that are associated with the advanced fetus or young child that it has been called a fetalized, infantilized, or paedomorphic type. Those who have carefully observed young babies may remember that the root of the nose is frequently flat or low as in Mongoloids, and that an internal Mongolian flange in such cases is usually present. The fewer individual hairs on the head and the marked lack of hair on the rest of the body are infantile traits, as are the small mastoid processes, the shallow fossa into which the jaw fits (the mandibular fossa), the robust build, the large cranial cavity and large brain, the lack of brow ridges, and a number of other features".

Richard Grossinger, a professor of anthropology at the University of Maine in Portland, said, "The insight that advanced human development was paedomorphic rather than recapitulated and accelerated was troubling to many 19th-century Eurocentric anthropologists." "If infantilism is the late stage characteristic, then it would be clear that the Mongoloid races are more deeply infantilized in most respects and therefore capable of further development."

Stephen Oppenheimer, from the Institute of Evolutionary and Cognitive Anthropology at the University of Oxford, said that "an interesting hypothesis put forward by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould many years ago was that the set of Mongoloid anatomical changes could be explained by the phenomenon of neoteny, whereby the infantile or infantile body shape is preserved into adulthood. Neoteny in hominids is still one of the simplest explanations for how we developed a disproportionately large brain so rapidly in the last few million years. The relatively large brain and forward rotation of the skull at the vertebral column, and loss of body hair, both characteristic of humans, are found in fetal chimpanzees. Gould suggested a moderate intensification of neoteny in the Mongoloids, in which it has been given the name paedomorphy. Such a mechanism is likely to involve only a few driver genes and could therefore happen in a relatively short period of evolution. He would also explain how the counterintuitive upturned nose and relative loss of facial hair came in the package." "Reduced unnecessary muscle bulk, less tooth mass, thinner bones, and smaller physical size;...this follows the selective adaptation model of Mongoloid evolution."

Cold adaptation

In 1950, Carleton S. Coon, Stanley M. Garn, and Joseph B. Birdsell proposed that the relative flatness of the "Mongoloid" it was due to adaptation to the extreme cold of subarctic and arctic environments. They hypothesized that the "Mongoloid" have been stretched vertically to make room for fatty tissue around the eyeballs, and the "reduced" decrease the size of the air spaces within the brow ridges known as the frontal sinuses that are "vulnerable" to the cold. They also surmised that the "Mongoloid" they reduce the surface area of the nose because their nasal bones are flat in relation to the face and their cheekbones are enlarged and projecting forward, which effectively reduces the outward projection of the nose.

Even so, in 1965 a study by A. T. Steegmann showed that the "Mongoloid" supposedly adapted to cold, it provided no more protection against frostbite than the facial structure of Europeans.

Criticism

Dr. George W. Gill, professor of anthropology at the University of Wyoming and Dennis O'Neil Professor of Anthropology at Palomar College, said that the concept "Mongoloid" originated with a now-disputed typological method of racial classification. All "-oid" racial terms (e.g., Mongoloid, Caucasoid, Negroid, etc.) are now often contentious in technical and non-technical contexts and can sometimes offend, regardless of how they are phrased. are used.

According to Ward O. Conner who wrote a book on John Langdon Haydon Down, because people with Down syndrome can have Mongolian bridle, Down syndrome was widely called "Mongolian" or "Mongoloid idiocy". Using slang the term came to be used as an insult. A shortened version of the word, "mong" or "mongolian", is also used in the United Kingdom. Chong Yah Lim, a professor of economics at Nanyang Technological University, said he did not like the term "mongoloid", because currently means "insane physical and mental developments." Lim said he thought the term "East Asian race" would be a more "properly neutral" and "modern" term.