THE HUMAN SPECIES 515 



The great European or Caucasoid group. The principal differential 

 features of this branch of mankind are: skin color light brown (olive) 

 varying to pale white, pink, or ruddy ; hair color rarely dead black but of 

 all lighter shades; eye color never black but of all lighter shades; hair form 

 never woolly, usually wavy or straight, sometimes loosely curled. Other 

 characteristics include : nose form usually high-bridged and narrow, some- 

 times medium, nasal openings usually anteroposteriorly oval, or narrow, 

 nasal "wings" narrow to moderate, recurved in Armenoids: beard and 

 body hair moderate to abundant; face usually straight; lips medium to 

 thin, little everted; chin prominence pronounced to medium; hair texture 

 medium to fine, rarely very coarse; pelvis broad and shallow in both sexes; 

 breast form usually hemispherical and buttocks usually prominent in 

 female. In terms of blood group genes Boyd defines this group as very 

 high in rh and relatively high in Rhi and A 2 , the other genes in moderate 

 frequencies, M and N in normal ratio. 



Judging from fossil evidence this seems to be the oldest of the great 

 groups of mankind. 1 Perhaps this accounts for the fact that there are 

 more races distinguished in it than in the others; but we should remember 

 that the "Whites" have been more intensively studied than have the 

 Mongoloids and Negroids. The Caucasoids are primitive in hair form 

 and in hairiness of body but are the most advanced of all in degree of 

 facial reduction. 



There are five principal races of the "White" group upon which nearly 

 everyone agrees; some anthropologists would add more. 



The Mediterranean race surrounds the Mediterranean Sea and stretches east 

 toward India. 2 This is the fundamental "White" race — ancient, rather general- 

 ized, and varied. Mediterraneans are prevailingly long-headed, with narrow and 

 usually straight noses, olive skins, dark eyes, and hair that is dark and usually 

 wavy. Two subtypes are often distinguished. One, the classic Mediterranean, is 

 rather short and slender, with delicate features and smaller bones; many Arabs, 

 most Egyptians and coastal peoples of North Africa, and some southern Italians 



Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., New York, 1948; Howells, Mankind So Far, 

 Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York, 1949; Coon, The Races of Europe, The 

 Macmillan Company, New York, 1939; and Boyd, Genetics and the Races of Man, 

 Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 1950. 



1 Swanscombe man and the Cro-Magnons seem to have been members of a still 

 older proto-Enropean stock (Boyd's Hypothetical Early European) ancestral to the 

 modern Caucasoids. This very ancient group almost certainly had light brown skin 

 and dark hair and eyes. Such coloration prevails among modern "Whites" ; only those 

 of northern Europe have the bleached coloration we erroneously think of as typical. 

 Boyd thinks that the Basques may be relatively unchanged survivors of the proto- 

 European stock. 



2 Unless otherwise stated, the distribution of races is here given as it was in 1492, 

 before Europeans had spread all over the world to further complicate matters. 



