Where did the word caucasian come from?

“Because it is very rude to call them white people”

I have no problem with that. I do not really know of any “whitey” that does.

Blemenbach, who coined the term, said ”“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.”[11]”

“Source“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race:

It refers to the people, north-west of the Caucasus mountains. i.e. Europeans.
This includes southern europeans as well, the line is one drawn in the land, defining the limit of the European ethnic area on land.

Anything south or east of caucasus (by land) is something else.

Blumenbach coined this I think… although he was referring to skull dimensions – he probably actually meant people from the Caucasus mountain region – but since those people are white skinned – it sort of morphed into meaning all white skinned people.

@marinelife ah – well there ya go.

@marinelife Good to know we still use a term coined by an ignorant racist who science has proven demonstrably wrong.

Hah I didnt realise he was actually into craniology. yeah, pretty ridiculous, but I wouldnt say racist. Just a pointless field of study, as the shape of people’s skulls has no relation to anything except how they look. (despite a hundred years of attempting to find correlation with intelligence and creativity, all they could find was the same correlations as the races had with IQ anyway)

@The_Idler They were all racist then. Not only did they believe that the shape of the head defined intelligence, but they believed that race defined the shape of the head. The head was just their attempt to provide some mechanism that justified their racism.

@Snarp I winced when I read that myself. I was not supporting what Blumenbach thought, but answering the question.

@marinelife I know.

Being that I’m actually from that region, it is me – I am Caucasian. I was born in Baku, Azerbaijan.

@Snarp
They may well have all had disgusting superiority complexes, and sought to produce ‘science’ which supported them, but I don’t really see how one particular shape of head can be called “superior” in any way.

Also, believing that race shapes the head isn’t really racist… firstly because (without the pseudo-science) head shape is meaningless, and secondly because genetics do produce particular shapes of skull, and they correlate with race.

So races do have different shaped skulls, and bodies, and skin tones, and physiology and even IQs.
Thing is it is all averages, and doesn’t make any race inherently “better”.

East Asians are short and have the highest IQs, while East Africans are tall and have incredible stamina.
They also have differently shaped skulls, though correlation between IQ and skull shape does not suggest causality in any way.

@The_Idler My point is that head shape was just the middleman. We’re talking about people who decided that a particular ethnic group was smarter than others because of their ethnicity, and they were wrong about it.

Oh yeah, I see. The craniology thing was pretty much a sham.

I wonder if they realised, deep down, that they were just trying to justify their racism…?

@The_Idler probably not, sigh.

When the 10 northern tribes of Israel (the so-called lost tribes of Israel) escaped from the Assyrian captivity, they went north over the Caucasus Mountains thus called “Caucasians”. They then traveled into western Europe, eventually crossing the Atlantic Ocean and settling in the Americas. The 2 southern tribes, Judah and Benjamin which were taken in the Babylonian captivity eventually returned to Jerusalem. Judeans are Israelites, but not all Israelites are Jueans (Jews).

http://jdangel2009.angelfire.com/index.html