Mongoloid race

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This article is about the Mongoloid race. For the song by Devo, see Mongoloid (song).

The term "Mongoloid" is a variation of the word "Mongol", meaning "Mongol-like". It has been coined as a racial category to describe the distinctive appearance of East Asian peoples . Today it is most used in discussions of human prehistory, historical definitions of race and in the forensic analysis of human remains. The concept's existence is based on a now disputed typological method of racial classification.[1][2] In forensics, Mongoloid is considered a skull type that is used to determine the probable soft-tissue reconstruction of discovered human remains. The -oid racial terms are now often controversial in both technical and non-technical contexts and may sometimes give offense no matter how they are used.[3] This is especially true of "Mongoloid" because it has also been used as a synonym for persons with Down Syndrome, and in American English as a generic insult meaning "idiot".[4] Contrarily to popular beliefs, Mongoloid refers to diverse ethnical groups, instead of a homogenous group.


Contents

[edit] Populations included

Thomas Huxley's map of racial categories from On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind. The Mongoloid group appears orange at what Huxley believed to be its point of origin, and radiates over Asia and America in variant forms, signified by color changes from pale orange to green to green-brown
Thomas Huxley's map of racial categories from On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind. The Mongoloid group appears orange at what Huxley believed to be its point of origin, and radiates over Asia and America in variant forms, signified by color changes from pale orange to green to green-brown

The term comes from the Mongolian people of East Asia, who had a reputation in Europe for ruthless expansionism and massacre of enemy populations. The first usage of the term "Mongolian race" was by Christoph Meiners in a "binary racial scheme" of "two races" with the Caucasian whose racial purity was exemplified by the "venerated... ancient Germans" with some Europeans being impure "dirty whites" and "Mongolians" who consisted of everyone else.[5] The term "Mongolian" was borrowed from Meiners by Johann Blumenbach to describe "second [race], [which] includes that part of Asia beyond the Ganges and below the river Amoor [Amur], which looks toward the south, together with the islands and the greater part of these countries which is now called Australian." [6] In 1861, Isid Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire added the "Australian" as a "secondary race" (subrace) of the "principal race" of "Mongolian"[7] In the nineteenth century Georges Cuvier used the term "Mongolian" again as a racial classification, but additionally included American Indians under the term.[8] Later, Thomas Huxley used the term "Mongoloid" and included American Indians as well as Arctic Native Americans.[9] Other nomenclatures were proposed, such as "Mesochroi" (middle color),[10] but "Mongoloid" was widely adopted. In 1915, "anthropologist Arthur de Gobineau"[11] defined the extent of the "Mongolian" race, "by the yellow the Altaic, Mongol, Finnish and Tartar branches."[12] In the 20th century, Carleton S. Coon used the term and included Pacific Islanders.[13] In 1983, Futuyma claimed that the inclusion of Native Americans and Pacific Islanders under the Mongoloid race was not recognized by "many anthropologists" who consider them "distinct races".[14] For example, in 1984, Roger J. Lederer Professor of Biological Sciences[15] separately listed the "Mongoloid" race from Pacific islanders and American Indians when he enumerated the "geographical varients of the same species known as races...we recognize several races Eskimos, American Indians, Mongoloid... Polynesian"[16]. Another term was introduced by noted ethnologist Dr.MWSpanakos of New York City, the usage of "Mongolasian", and has gain great popularity.

[edit] Origins

In 1865, Thomas Huxley presented the views of polygenecists of which Huxley was not as "some imagine their assumed species of mankind were created where we find them... the Mongolians from the Orangs."[17]

In 1897, WEB DuBois, sociologist and historian, said, "[t]he final word of science, so far, is that we have at least two perhaps three, great families of human beings -- the whites and Negroes, possibly the yellow race [he calls this "Mongolian" later][18]. The other races have arisen from the intermingling of the blood of these two." [18] Later, there was a "change in his anthropological view", where he postulated "Negroids and Mongoloids are primary, with Caucasoids listed as a type between these, possibly formed by their union, with bleached skin and intermediate hair."[18]

In 1972, Carleton Coon claimed, "[f]rom a hyborean [sic] group there evolved, in northern Asia, the ancestral strain of the entire specialized mongoloid family."[19] In 1962, Coon believed that the Mongoloid "subspecies" existed "during most of the Pleistocene, from 500,000 to 10,000 years ago".[20] According to Coon, the Mongoloid race had not completed its "invasions and expansions" into Southeast Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific Islands until "[t]oward the end of the Pleistocene"[20] By this time Coon hypothesis that the Mongoloid race had become "sapien".[20] Polynesians are seen as part Africoid due to the admixture of Australoid and Mongoloid characteristics.

M.K Bhasin's review article (referencing Mourant 1983) suggests that "The Caucasoids and the Mongoloids almost certainly became differentiated from one another somewhere in Asia" and that "Another differentiation, which probably took place in Asia, is that of the Australoids, perhaps from a common type before the separation of the Mongoloids." [21]

Dr. T. Tirado claims that "many experts" consider American Indians and East Asians to be descended from a "Proto-Mongoloid" population which existed as late as 12,000 years ago.[22] See also: Models of migration to the New World

Futuyma believes the Mongoloid race "diverged 41,000 years ago" from a Mongoloid and Caucasoid group which diverged from Negroids "110,000 years ago".[14]

Peter Brown (1999) evaluates three sites with early East Asian modern human skeletal remains (Liujiang, Liuzhou, Guangxi, China; Zhoukoudian's Upper Cave; and Minatogawa in Okinawa) dated to between 10,175 to 33,200 years ago, and finds lack of support for the conventional designation of skeletons from this period as "Proto-Mongoloid"; this would make Neolithic sites 5500 to 7000 years ago (e.g. Banpo) the oldest known Mongoloid remains in East Asia, younger than some in the Americas. He concludes that the origin of the Mongoloid phenotype remains unknown, and could even lie in the New World.[23]

A 2006 study of linkage disequilibrium finds that northern populations in East Asia started to expand in number between 34 and 22 thousand years ago (KYA), before the last glacial maximum at 21–18 KYA, while southern populations started to expand between 18 and 12 KYA, but then grew faster, and suggests that the northern populations expanded earlier because they could exploit the abundant megafauna of the ‘‘Mammoth Steppe,’’ while the southern populations could increase in number only when a warmer and more stable climate led to more plentiful plant resources such as tubers.[24]

[edit] Subraces

Bhavan identifies Northeast India Mongoloids to be a subrace called the "Paleo-Mongoloid", being the "dominant element in the tribes living in Assam and the Indo-Burmese frontiers... Sikkim and Bhutan... [and] Tibetan mongoloids"[25]

In 1900, Joseph Deniker said, the "Mongol race admits two varieties or subraces: Tunguse or Northern Mongolian... and Southern Mongolian"[7] The people of East Asia are called "Northern Mongoloids".[26] Archaeologist Peter Bellwood claims that the "vast majority" of people in Southeast Asia, the region he calls the "clinal Mongoloid-Australoid zone", are "Southern Mongoloids" but have a "high degree" of Australoid admixture. [27] Ainus are considered Southern Mongoloids even though they live in East Asia.[26] Sinodonty and Sundadonty are dentition patterns that correspond to the Northern Mongoloid vs. Southern Mongoloid distinction.

[edit] Features

Mongoloids are distinguished by their non-projecting noses, flat faces formed by forward projecting cheekbones, round eye orbits, shovel-shaped incisors, and complex cranial sutures, flattened chins, elliptic dental archs and brachycephalic skulls. They also possess wormian bones at a higher frequency than other ethnic groups. Some are also known to maintain oblique palpebral fissures in adulthood, also known as epicanthal folds; although this trait is universally present in all humans during some period of their development, epicanthal folds usually disappear when the bridge of the nose begins to elevate among individuals of other races. The vast majority of Mongoloids have straight black hair, dark brown eyes, and the skin color may vary between very pale white to yellow undertones to brown. Mongoloids also are characterized by an absence or thinly distributed facial and body hair, and lesser sweat glands. The width between the eyes is greater in Mongoloids and they have the least mandible projection. Far East Asians tend to have shorter limbs relative to their torso length than South East Asians, although they tend to have bigger bodies.[28] Traits may vary, because of climatic variance and racial admixture within certain groups.

[edit] Proto Mongoloids

The physical features of the "Proto-Mongoloid" were characterized as, "a straight-haired type, medium in complexion, jaw protrusion, nose-breadth, and incliniing probably to round-headedness".[29] Kanzō Umehara considers the Ainu and Ryukyuans to have "preserved their proto-Mongoloid traits". [30]

[edit] Variation in traits between groups

Variation in traits can be rather considerable between certain groups due to climatic variation, the most apparent of these differences concern the shape of the skull, the constitution of the body and the colour of the skin.

[edit] Usage

[edit] Questionable usefulness

Geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza claims that there is a genetic division between East and Southeast Asians.[31] In a like manner, Zhou Jixu agrees that there is a physical difference between these two populations.[32] Other geneticists have found evidence for three separate populations, carrying distinct sets of non-recombining Y chromosome lineages, within the traditional Mongoloid category: North Asians, Han Chinese/Southeast Asians, and Japanese.[33] The complexity of genetic data have led to doubt about the usefulness of the concept of a Mongoloid race itself, since distinctive East Asian features may represent separate lineages and arise from environmental adaptations or retention of common proto-Eurasian ancestral characteristics.[34]

[edit] Down's Syndrome

Since people with Down syndrome may appear to have epicanthic folds, the condition was formerly called "Mongol" or "Mongoloid Idiocy"[35] Mistakenly, John Langdon Down, for whom the syndrome was named, claimed in his book Observations on the Ethnic Classification of Idiots (1866), that the Mongol-like features represented an alleged evolutionary degeneration when manifested in Caucasoids. Though this view was discounted in the 20th century, the use of the term "Mongoloid" for racial purposes has acquired offensive connotations because of the connection with Down syndrome.

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ O'Neil, Dennis. Palomar College. "Biological Anthropology Terms." 2006. May 13, 2007. [1]
  2. ^ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/first/gill.html Does Race Exist? A proponent's perspective by George W. Gill.
  3. ^ American Heritage Book of English Usage. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1996. <http://www.bartleby.com/64/C006/046.html#MONGOLOID>.
  4. ^ Down Syndrome Was Not Discovered By Dr. Down
  5. ^ Painter, Nell Irvin. Yale University. "Why White People are Called Caucasian?" 2003. September 27, 2007. [2]
  6. ^ Blumenbach, Johann. The Anthropological Treatise of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. London: Longman Green, 1865.
  7. ^ a b Deniker, Joseph. The Races of Man: An Outline of Anthropology and Ethnography C. Scribner's Sons:New York, 1900. ISBN 0836959329
  8. ^ [The End of Racism by Dinesh D'Souza, pg 124]
  9. ^ Huxley, Thomas, On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind. 1870. August 14, 2006.
  10. ^ James Dallas, "On the Primary Divisions and Geographical Distributions of Mankind", 1886 Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, p.204-10. James describes this as "equivalent to Professor Huxley's Mongoloid division" and as encompassing "Mongols and American Indians"
  11. ^ DiPiero, Thomas. White Men Aren't Duke University Press, 2002. ISBN 0822329611
  12. ^ Gobineau, Arthur (1915). The Inequality of Human Races. Putnam. Retrieved on 2007-10-18.
  13. ^ Jim Bindon, University of Alabama, Post WW2 notions about Human Variation
  14. ^ a b Futuyma, Douglas A. Evolutionary Biology. Massachusetts:Sinauer Associates, 1983. p. 520
  15. ^ California State University, Chico. "University Catalog." September 28, 2007. 2003.[3]
  16. ^ Lederer Roger J. Ecology and Field Biology. Cummings Publshing Company: California, 1984. ISBN 0-8053-5718-1 p.129
  17. ^ Huxley, Thomas. Collected Essays of Thomas Huxley: Man's Place in Nature and Other Kessinger Publishing: Montana, 2005. ISBN 1417974621
  18. ^ a b c Bernasconi, Robert. Race Blackwell Publishing: Boston, 2001. ISBN 063120783X
  19. ^ Coon, Carleton S. The Races of Europe. Greenwood:USA, 1972 ISBN 0837163285 p.2
  20. ^ a b c Coon, Carleton S. The Origin of the Races. Knopf:Michigan, 1962. ISBN-10: 0394301420
  21. ^ Bhasin, M.K. (2006). "Genetics of Caste and Tribes of India: Indian Population Milieu". Int J Hum Genet 6 (3): 244. Kamla Raj. 
  22. ^ Tirado, T. Millersville University. "When Worlds Collide." 2007. September 27, 2007. [4]
  23. ^ Peter Brown (1999). "The First Modern East Asians? another Look at Upper Cave 101, Liujiang, and Minatogawa. K. Omoto (ed.) Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Origins of the Japanese, International Research Center for Japanese Studies: Kyoto. pp. 105-130.
  24. ^ Yali Xue,*,†,‡ Tatiana Zerjal,*,‡ Weidong Bao,‡,§ Suling Zhu,‡,§ Qunfang Shu,§ Jiujin Xu,§ Ruofu Du,§ Songbin Fu,† Pu Li,† Matthew E. Hurles,* Huanming Yang** and Chris Tyler-Smith*,‡,1 (2006). Male Demography in East Asia: A North–South Contrast in Human Population Expansion Times. Genetics Society of America. DOI:10.1534/genetics.105.054270.
  25. ^ Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. The Vedic Age, Vol. 1 (S. Roma-Krishnan and Bhavan Bombay, India 1962) p. 151
  26. ^ a b Ainu Museum. "The Ainu People." 2007. September 26, 2007. [5]
  27. ^ Bellwood, Peter. Pre-History of the Indo-malaysian Archipeligo. Australian National University:1985. ISBN 9781921313110
  28. ^ Relethford, John. The Human Species: An introduction to Biological Anthropology, 5th ed McGraw-Hill: New York, 2003.
  29. ^ Worthington, Elsie. North American Indian Life: Customs and Traditions of 23 Tribes University of Nebraska Press: USA, 1967. ISBN 0-48627-377-6 p. 7
  30. ^ Sleeboom, Margaret. Academic Nations in China and Japan. Routledge: UK, 2004. ISBN 0-41531-545-X p.56
  31. ^ The Chinese Human Genome Diversity Project, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza
  32. ^ http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp175_chinese_civilization_agriculture.pdf The Rise of Agricultural Civilization in China, Sino-Platonic Papers 175, Zhou Jixu, citing Ho Ping-ti, ISBN 0226345246
  33. ^ TAJIMA Atsushi, PAN I.-Hung, FUCHAROEN Goonnapa, FUCHAROEN Supan, MATSUO Masafumi, TOKUNAGA Katsushi, JUJI Takeo, HAYAMI Masanori, OMOTO Keiichi, HORAI Satoshi, "Three major lineages of Asian Y chromosomes: implications for the peopling of east and southeast Asia," Human Genetics 2002, vol. 110, no1, pp. 80-88
  34. ^ Encyclopedia Britannica, Mongoloid
  35. ^ http://www.down-syndrome.info/library/periodicals/dsrp/06/1/019/DSRP-06-1-019-EN-GB.htm Ward, Connor O. John Langson Down the man and the message. 2006. August 26, 2006]