Major races of the world. Major human races. Here is the Good News

Racial differences have been and continue to be the cause of different studies, as well as conflicts and discrimination. A tolerant society tries to pretend that racial differences do not exist, the constitutions of countries state that all people are equal among themselves ...

However, there are races and people are different. Of course, not at all in the way that supporters of the "higher" and "lower" races would like, but differences do exist.

Some research by geneticists and anthropologists today reveals new facts, which, thanks to the study of the emergence of human races, allow us to take a different look at some stages of our history.

Racial trunks

Since the 17th century, science has put forward a number of classifications of human races. Today their number reaches 15. However, all classifications are based on three racial pillars, or three large races: Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid with many subspecies and branches. Some anthropologists add to them the Australoid and Americanoid races.

According to the data of molecular biology and genetics, the division of mankind into races occurred about 80 thousand years ago.

First, two trunks stood out: Negroid and Caucasoid-Mongoloid, and 40-45 thousand years ago there was a differentiation of proto-Caucasoids and proto-Mongoloids.

Scientists believe that the origins of the origin of races originate in the Paleolithic era, although the process of modification en masse humanity only from the Neolithic: it is in this era that the Caucasoid type crystallizes.

The process of formation of races continued with the migration of primitive people from continent to continent. Thus, anthropological data show that the ancestors of the Indians who moved to the American continent from Asia were not yet established Mongoloids, and the first inhabitants of Australia were "racially neutral" neoanthropes.

What does genetics say?

Today, questions of the origin of races are for the most part the prerogative of two sciences - anthropology and genetics. The first, on the basis of human bone remains, reveals a variety of anthropological forms, and the second tries to understand the relationship between the totality of racial traits and the corresponding set of genes.

However, there is no agreement among geneticists. Some adhere to the theory of uniformity of the entire human gene pool, others argue that each race has a unique combination of genes. However, recent studies more likely indicate the correctness of the latter.

The study of haplotypes confirmed the relationship between racial traits and genetic characteristics.

It has been proven that certain haplogroups are always associated with specific races, and other races cannot obtain them except through the process of racial mixing.

In particular, Luca Cavalli-Sforza, a professor at Stanford University, based on an analysis of the “genetic maps” of European settlement, pointed out significant similarities in the DNA of the Basques and the Cro-Magnon. The Basques managed to preserve their genetic uniqueness largely due to the fact that they lived on the periphery of migration waves and practically did not undergo miscegenation.

Two hypotheses

Modern science relies on two hypotheses of the origin of human races - polycentric and monocentric.

According to the theory of polycentrism, humanity is the result of a long and independent evolution of several phyletic lines.

Thus, the Caucasoid race was formed in Western Eurasia, the Negroid race in Africa, and the Mongoloid race in Central and East Asia.

Polycentrism involves the crossing of representatives of protoras at the borders of their ranges, which led to the emergence of small or intermediate races: for example, such as the South Siberian (mixing of Caucasoid and Mongoloid races) or Ethiopian (mixing of Caucasoid and Negroid races).

From the standpoint of monocentrism, modern races emerged from one region of the globe in the process of settling neoanthropes, who subsequently spread across the planet, displacing more primitive paleoanthropes.

The traditional version of the settlement of primitive people insists that the human ancestor came from Southeast Africa. However, the Soviet scientist Yakov Roginsky expanded the concept of monocentrism, suggesting that the habitat of the ancestors of Homo sapiens went beyond the African continent.

Recent studies by scientists from the Australian National University in Canberra have cast doubt on the theory of a common African human ancestor.

So, DNA tests of an ancient fossilized skeleton, which is about 60 thousand years old, found near Lake Mungo in New South Wales, showed that the Australian aborigine has nothing to do with the African hominid.

The theory of multi-regional origin of races, according to Australian scientists, is much closer to the truth.

An Unexpected Ancestor

If we agree with the version that the common ancestor of at least the population of Eurasia came from Africa, then the question arises about its anthropometric characteristics. Was he similar to the current inhabitants of the African continent, or did he have neutral racial characteristics?

Some researchers believe that the African species Homo was closer to the Mongoloids. This is indicated by a number of archaic features inherent in the Mongoloid race, in particular, the structure of the teeth, which are more characteristic of the Neanderthal and Homo erectus.

It is very important that the population of the Mongoloid type has a high adaptability to various habitats: from equatorial forests to the arctic tundra. But representatives of the Negroid race are largely dependent on increased solar activity.

For example, in high latitudes, children of the Negroid race have a lack of vitamin D, which provokes a number of diseases, primarily rickets.

Therefore, a number of researchers doubt that our ancestors, similar to modern Africans, could have successfully migrated around the globe.

northern ancestral home

Recently, more and more researchers claim that the Caucasoid race has little in common with the primitive man of the African plains and argue that these populations developed independently of each other.

Thus, the American anthropologist J. Clark believes that when representatives of the "black race" in the process of migration reached Southern Europe and Western Asia, they encountered a more developed "white race" there.

Researcher Boris Kutsenko hypothesizes that at the origins of modern humanity there were two racial trunks: Euro-American and Negroid-Mongoloid. According to him, the Negroid race comes from the forms of Homo erectus, and the Mongoloid race from Sinanthropus.

Kutsenko considers the regions of the Arctic Ocean to be the birthplace of the Euro-American trunk. Based on the data of oceanology and paleoanthropology, he suggests that the global climate changes that occurred at the border of the Pleistocene and Holocene destroyed the ancient continent - Hyperborea. Part of the population from the territories that had gone under water migrated to Europe, and then to Asia and North America, the researcher concludes.

As evidence of the relationship between Caucasians and North American Indians, Kutsenko refers to the craniological indicators and characteristics of the blood groups of these races, which "almost completely coincide."

fixture

The phenotypes of modern people living in different parts of the planet are the result of a long evolution. Many racial traits have obvious adaptive value. For example, dark pigmentation of the skin protects people living in the equatorial belt from excessive exposure to ultraviolet rays, and the elongated proportions of their bodies increase the ratio of body surface to its volume, thereby facilitating thermoregulation in hot conditions.

In contrast to the inhabitants of low latitudes, the population of the northern regions of the planet, as a result of evolution, acquired a predominantly light skin and hair color, which allowed them to receive more sunlight and satisfy the body's need for vitamin D.

In the same way, the protruding "Caucasian nose" evolved to warm the cold air, and the epicanthus of the Mongoloids was formed as a protection of the eyes from dust storms and steppe winds.

sexual selection

A great contribution to the description of human races was made by the Soviet scientist Valery Pavlovich Alekseev (1929-1991). In principle, we are now guided precisely by his calculations in this interesting anthropological issue. So what is race?

This is a relatively stable biological characteristic of the human species. Combines their general appearance and psychophysical features. At the same time, it is important to understand that this unity does not in any way affect the form of the hostel and the ways of living together. General signs are purely external, anatomical, but they cannot be used to judge the intellect of people, their ability to work, live, engage in science, art and other mental activities. That is, representatives of different races are absolutely identical in their mental development. They also have exactly the same rights, and, consequently, duties.

The ancestors of modern man are the Cro-Magnons. It is assumed that their first representatives appeared on Earth 300 thousand years ago in Southeast Africa. As the millennia passed, our distant ancestors spread throughout the world. They lived in different climatic conditions, and therefore acquired strictly specific biological characteristics. A single habitat gave rise to a common culture. And within this culture ethnic groups were formed. For example, the Roman ethnic group, the Greek ethnic group, the Carthaginian ethnic group and others.

Human races are divided into Caucasians, Negroids, Mongoloids, Australoids, Americanoids. There are also sub-races or minor races. Their representatives have their own specific biological traits that other people do not have.

1 - Negroid, 2 - Caucasoid, 3 - Mongoloid, 4 - Australoid, 5 - Americanoid

Caucasians - white race

The first Caucasians appeared in Southern Europe and North Africa. From there they spread throughout the European continent, came to Central, Central Asia and Northern Tibet. They crossed the Hindu Kush and ended up in India. Here they settled the entire northern part of Hindustan. They also mastered the Arabian Peninsula and the northern regions of Africa. In the 16th century, they crossed the Atlantic and populated almost all of North America and most of South America. Then it was the turn of Australia and South Africa.

Negroids - black race

Negroids or Negroes are considered the indigenous inhabitants of the tropical zone. This explanation is based on melanin, which gives the skin its black color. It protects the skin from the burns of the scorching tropical sun. No doubt, it prevents burns. But what clothes do people wear on a hot sunny day - white or black? Of course white, because it reflects the sun's rays well. Therefore, in extreme heat, having black skin is unprofitable, especially with high insolation. From this we can assume that the Negroes appeared in those climatic conditions where cloudiness prevailed.

Indeed, the oldest finds of Grimaldi (Negroids), belonging to the Upper Paleolithic, were discovered on the territory of Southern France (Nice) in the Grimaldi cave. In the Upper Paleolithic, this whole area was inhabited by people with black skin, woolly hair and large lips. They were tall, slender, long-legged hunters of large herbivores. But how did they end up in Africa? Just like the Europeans came to America, that is, they moved there, pushing the indigenous population.

Interestingly, South Africa was inhabited by Negroids - Bantu Negroes (the classic Negroes we know) in the 1st century BC. e. That is, the pioneers were contemporaries of Julius Caesar. It was at this time that they settled in the forests of the Congo, the savannahs of East Africa, reached the southern regions of the Zambezi River and ended up on the banks of the muddy Limpopo River.

And who did these black-skinned European conquerors supplant? After all, someone lived before them on these lands. This is a special southern race, which is conditionally called " Khoisan".

Khoisan race

It includes Hottentots and Bushmen. They differ from blacks in brown skin and Mongoloid features. They have a different throat. They do not pronounce words on the exhale, like all of us, but on the inhale. They are considered the remnants of some ancient race that inhabited the Southern Hemisphere for a very long time. There are very few of these people left, and in the ethnic sense, they do not represent anything integral.

Bushmen- quiet and calm hunters. They were pushed out by Bichuani Negroes into the Kalahari Desert. That's where they live, forgetting their ancient and rich culture. They have art, but it is in a rudimentary state, since life in the desert is very difficult and you have to think not about art, but about how to get food.

Hottentots(the Dutch name of the tribes), who lived in the Cape Province (South Africa), became famous for being real robbers. They stole cattle. They quickly became friends with the Dutch and became their guides, translators and farm workers. When the British captured the Cape Colony, the Hottentots made friends with them. They live on these lands to this day.

australoids

Australoids are also called Australians. How they got to the lands of Australia is unknown. But they were there a long time ago. It was a huge number of small tribes with different customs, rituals and culture. They did not like each other and practically did not communicate.

Australoids are not similar to Caucasoids, Negroids and Mongoloids. They only look like themselves. Their skin is very dark, almost black. The hair is wavy, the shoulders are wide, and the reaction is extremely fast. Relatives of these people live in South India on the Deccan Plateau. Maybe from there they sailed to Australia, and also settled all the islands nearby.

Mongoloids - yellow race

Mongoloids are the most numerous. They are divided into a large number of sub-races or small races. There are Siberian Mongoloids, North Chinese, South Chinese, Malay, Tibetan. What they have in common is a narrow slit of the eyes. The hair is straight, black and coarse. The eyes are dark. The skin is swarthy, has a slight yellowish tint. The face is broad and flattened, the cheekbones protrude.

americanoids

Americanoids populate America from the tundra to Tierra del Fuego. Eskimos do not belong to this race. They are alien people. The hair of the Americanoids is black and straight, the skin is swarthy. The eyes are black and narrower than those of Caucasians. These people have a huge number of languages. Among them, it is even impossible to make any classification. There are many dead languages ​​now, as their speakers have died out and the languages ​​have been written down.

Pygmies and Caucasians

pygmies

Pygmies belong to the Negroid race. They live in the forests of equatorial Africa. Notable for their small stature. They have it 1.45-1.5 meters. The skin is brown, the lips are relatively thin, and the hair is dark and curly. Living conditions are poor, hence the small growth, which is the result of a small amount of vitamins and proteins necessary for the body for normal development. Currently, short stature has become a genetic heredity. Therefore, even if the pygmy babies are heavily fed, they will not become tall.

Thus, we have considered the main human races that exist on Earth. But it should be noted that race has never been of decisive importance for the formation of culture. It is also noteworthy that over the past 15 thousand years, no new biological types of people have appeared, and the old ones have not disappeared. Everything is still stable. The only thing is that there is a mixing of people of different biological types. There are mestizos, mulattos, sambo. But these are not biological and anthropological, but social factors determined by the achievements of civilization..

Shatova Polina

human races

The modern racial image of humanity was formed as a result of the complex historical development of racial groups that lived apart and mixed, evolved, and disappeared. It is of particular importance for us to study all that we can learn about the human races in order to understand what really defines the human race. Even without outside clues, by observing, one can be sure that people in the world are divided into different groups. The members of each are in some way more closely related to each other than to the members of the other group. For this reason, they are more similar to each other than to others.

The section of anthropology - racial studies - summarizes data on the study of the anthropological composition of the peoples of the globe in the present and past, that is, on the formation and distribution of races on Earth; considers the problems of classification of races, their origin, settlement around the globe, development and interaction in connection with the specific history of human populations, based on data from morphology and physiology, genetics and molecular biology. The main problems of this section are the history of the formation of races, the relationship between them at different stages of historical development, the disclosure of the causes and mechanisms of racial differentiation.

A large place in racial science is occupied by the study of delimiting racial characteristics, their heredity, dependence on the surrounding natural-geographical and socio-cultural environment, gender differences, age dynamics, geographical variations and epoch-making changes. Racial data are used to refute pseudoscientific racist concepts and form a correct idea of ​​the differences in the morphological appearance of people.

The origin of the term "race" is not exactly established. It is possible that it is a modification of the Arabic word "ras" (head, beginning, root). There is also an opinion that this term is associated with the Italian razza, which means "tribe". The word "race" in approximately the sense in which it is now used is already found in the French scientist Francois Bernier, who published in 1684 one of the first classifications of human races.
Races exist predominantly in a social sense and are one of the forms of social classification that is used in a particular society. However, in the biological sense, a clear division into races does not exist. Anthropology does not deny the existence of a distinct morphological and genetic diversity of mankind. Different researchers in different periods under the "race" meant different concepts.

Races are historically formed groupings (population groups) of people of different sizes, characterized by the similarity of morphological and physiological properties, as well as the commonality of the territories they occupy.

Large races of man

Since the 17th century, many different classifications of human races have been proposed. Most often, three main, or large, races are distinguished: Caucasoid (Eurasian, Caucasoid), Mongoloid (Asian-American) and Equatorial (Negro-Australoid). The Caucasoid race is characterized by fair skin (with variations from very light, mainly in Northern Europe, to swarthy and even brown), soft straight or wavy hair, horizontal slit eyes, moderately or strongly developed hair on the face and chest in men, prominently protruding nose, straight or slightly sloping forehead.

In the Mongoloid race, the skin color varies from dark to light (mainly in North Asian groups), the hair is usually dark, often coarse and straight, the protrusion of the nose is usually small, the palpebral fissure has an oblique incision, the fold of the upper eyelid is significantly developed and, in addition to in addition, there is a fold (epicanthus) covering the inner corner of the eye; hairline is weak.

The equatorial race is distinguished by dark pigmentation of the skin, hair and eyes, curly or broadly wavy (Australian) hair; the nose is usually wide, slightly protruding, the lower part of the face protrudes.

Small races and their geographical distribution

Each major race is subdivided into minor races, or anthropological types. Within the Caucasoid race, the Atlanto-Baltic, White Sea-Baltic, Central European, Balkan-Caucasian and Indo-Mediterranean minor races are distinguished. Now Caucasians inhabit virtually the entire inhabited land, but until the middle of the 15th century - the beginning of the great geographical discoveries - their main range included Europe, North Africa, Western and Central Asia and India. In modern Europe, all small races are represented, but the Central European variant prevails numerically (often found among Austrians, Germans, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians); in general, its population is very mixed, especially in cities, due to migrations, miscegenation and the influx of migrants from other regions of the Earth.

Within the Mongoloid race, the Far Eastern, South Asian, North Asian, Arctic and American small races are usually distinguished, the latter sometimes being considered as a separate large race. The Mongoloids inhabited all climatic and geographical zones (North, Central, East and Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, Madagascar, North and South America). Modern Asia is characterized by a wide variety of anthropological types, but various Mongoloid and Caucasoid groups predominate in number. Among the Mongoloids, the Far Eastern (Chinese, Japanese, Koreans) and South Asian (Malays, Javanese, Probes) small races are most common, among Caucasians - the Indo-Mediterranean. In America, the indigenous population (Indians) is a minority, compared with various Caucasoid anthropological types and population groups of representatives of all three major races.

The equatorial, or Negro-Australoid, race includes three small races of African Negroids (Negro, or Negroid, Bushman and Negrillian) and the same number of Oceanic Australoids (Australian, or Australoid, a race that is distinguished in some classifications as an independent large race, as well as Melanesian and vedoid). The range of the equatorial race is not continuous: it covers most of Africa, Australia, Melanesia, New Guinea, and partly Indonesia. In Africa, the Negro minor race is numerically predominant; in the north and south of the continent, the proportion of the Caucasoid population is significant.
In Australia, the indigenous population is a minority in relation to migrants from Europe and India, and representatives of the Far Eastern race (Japanese, Chinese) are quite numerous. Indonesia is dominated by the South Asian race.

Along with the above, there are races with a less definite position, formed as a result of a long-term mixing of the population of certain regions, for example, the Lapanoid and Ural races, combining the features of Caucasoids and Mongoloids, or the Ethiopian race - intermediate between the Equatorial and Caucasoid races.

Race and psyche

From time immemorial sharp psychic differences have been incorrectly attributed to races. The famous Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) was the first of the scientists to propose a more or less scientific classification of human races according to their physical characteristics, but at the same time he vainly attributed, for example, cruelty, melancholy, stubbornness and stinginess to the “Asiatic man”; "African" - anger, cunning, laziness, indifference; "European" - mobility, wit, ingenuity, that is, high mental abilities. Thus Linnaeus extolled the "white" race over the others.

Darwin, unlike Linnaeus, recognized the existence of a fundamental similarity in the manifestations of higher nervous activity in people of different races.
Darwin was very far from explaining the low cultural level of the Fuegians by their mental racial characteristics. On the contrary, he sought explanations for this in social factors.

Speaking about the expression of emotions, or emotional experiences, with the help of the mimic muscles of the face, Darwin comes to the conclusion that representatives of different races have a striking similarity or identity in this respect.
In another place, Darwin draws attention to the fact of the extraordinary similarity of the forms and methods of producing stone tips for weapons, collected from the most diverse countries of the earth and belonging to the ancient eras of mankind. He explains this by the closeness of the inventive and mental abilities of the most diverse human races in past times.

The opinion about the natural fundamental difference in the psyche of different races is often tried to be substantiated by the fact that the weight of the brain in different racial groups varies within several hundred grams. However, a person's abilities cannot be judged by the weight of his brain.

Outstanding people come from a variety of races. Mao Tse-tung is the greatest statesman of the new China, where the people of 600 million, having overthrown the yoke of foreign imperialist invaders and completely freed themselves from the yoke of feudalism, are engaged in the peaceful construction of a new, happy life. The world-famous singer Paul Robeson is a prominent fighter for peace, laureate of the Stalin Prize "For strengthening peace among peoples." There are many such examples.

Reactionary bourgeois scientists, with the help of special psychotechnical tests, the so-called tests, seek to show the alleged mental superiority of one race over another. Such attempts were made more than once and, moreover, without taking into account the difference in social status, in the education received and upbringing among the groups examined and compared with each other. Genuine scientists, of course, are sharply negative about these toasts, as they are means unsuitable for determining mental abilities.

Some reactionary German anthropologists at the International Congress on Anthropology and Ethnography, held in Copenhagen in August 1938, tried to prove the existence and inheritance of mental racial traits in their reports and speeches. racial psyche" have almost died out, while the Maori from the island of New Zealand successfully perceive European culture, since, according to these anthropologists, they belong to the Caucasoid race.

At the same congress, however, strong objections were raised by a number of its more progressive members. They denied the presence of natural racial traits in the psyche and pointed to differences in the level of culture, which are reflected in the mental makeup of tribes and peoples. The scientific evidence is inconsistent. with statements about the existence of a special "racial instinct", which allegedly causes enmity between the races of mankind. Under favorable social conditions, peoples of any racial composition can create an advanced culture and civilization. The psyche of individual people, their national character, behavior are determined and shaped under the predominant, decisive influence of the social environment: racial characteristics in the development of mental activity do not play any role.

The outstanding Russian ethnographer and anthropologist Nikolai Nikolaevich Miklukho-Maclay set as one of the chains of his study of the uncultured peoples of Oceania the determination of the level of their natural intelligence. Having spent many years in friendly communication with the Papuans, he met with many striking facts confirming that these inhabitants of New Guinea have the same high mental characteristics as the Europeans. For example, when Miklukho-Maclay was drawing a map of the area in which he lived, a Papuan who was watching his work and who had not known the map before immediately discovered the mistake made when drawing the coastline and corrected it very accurately.
Miklukho-Maclay characterizes the Papuans as intelligent people, not devoid of artistic taste, skillfully carving figurines of their ancestors and making various ornaments.

As a result of many years of anthropological and ethnographic research, which made the works of Miklouho-Maclay classic, he irrefutably proved that the Papuans are quite capable of unlimited cultural development. In this respect, they are in no way inferior to Europeans.
The studies of Miklouho-Maclay revealed the unscientific and biased opinion of the racists about the natural inability of the dark-skinned races to creatively master the spiritual wealth accumulated by mankind.

Miklouho-Maclay devoted his entire short life to the struggle for the idea of ​​the biological equivalence of human races. He considered people of all races fully capable of the highest achievements in the field of culture. The principles of progressive scientific and social activity of Miklouho-Maclay developed at the time when the revolutionary-democratic views of the greatest Russian thinker Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, who was especially interested in questions of human races, were taking shape. Chernyshevsky, dwelling on the features of racial difference and similarity, denied the claims of the racists about the physical and mental inequality of human races. He rejected the influence of race on historical development and, using the example of Negro slavery in the USA, revealed the reactionary essence of racism. In his views on race and racism, Chernyshevsky relied on solid scientific data. Among the latter, he especially highly valued the achievements of the physiology of the nervous system, which were clearly marked in Russian science thanks to the brilliant works of Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov.

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Slides captions:

RACES OF HUMANS We - people differ from each other in eye color, hair, skin tones, height, body weight, facial features. All of these are individual differences. But there are signs that distinguish entire communities of people - races. A race is a historically established group of people united by: - ​​a common origin; - the territory of residence; - common morphological and physiological - hereditary features; - traditions and customs. Francois Bernier
The question of the origin and classification of races has a long history. The first attempt to describe the human races was made in the 17th century. French Bernier. Carl Linnaeus
Later, K. Linnaeus singled out four races: American, European, Asian, African. At present, most scientists distinguish three large races and several dozen small ones. Large races - equatorial (Australian-Negroid), Eurasian (Caucasian), Asian-American (Mongoloid). Representatives of the equatorial race live mainly in some tropical regions of the Old World. They are characterized by dark skin, wavy or curly hair, a wide flattened nose with large nostrils, and thick lips. The area of ​​distribution of the Eurasian race is Europe, part of Asia, North Africa, America. Its representatives are characterized by light, sometimes swarthy skin, straight, sometimes wavy soft hair, a long nose, thin lips, and usually well-developed facial hair (mustache, beard). The Asian-American race is common in America, Central and East Asia. The representatives of this race have straight, black, coarse hair, and their mustaches and beards grow weakly. The skin is more dark than fair. The nose of the Mongols is of medium width, protrudes little, while the nose of the American Indians is long, strongly protruding. The most characteristic features of this race are a wide face, protruding cheekbones, a narrow palpebral fissure, lips of medium thickness, and an upper eyelid closed with a leathery fold (“third eyelid”). However, even within the same race there are groups of people who differ from each other. For example, a Malay does not outwardly look too much like a Buryat or an Evenk. The Negroid Pygmies of the Congo River are different from the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. Caucasoids of Northern Europe (Norwegians, Swedes) - light-eyed, fair-haired, fair-skinned - bear little resemblance to southerners, mostly brown-eyed and dark-skinned. Therefore, scientists distinguish several dozen smaller races - the second and third order. Currently, people are actively moving around the world, moving from place to place. Representatives of different races intermarry. Races have been around for a very long time. The first division into two large trunks, the Mongoloid and the Caucasian-Negroid races, occurred 90-92 thousand years ago. It is believed that the separation of Caucasians and Negroids occurred 50 thousand years ago. Scientists are still arguing about the mechanism of formation of races. Many characteristics of races are clearly adaptive in nature. So, the dark skin of Negroids protects them better from ultraviolet rays than the light skin of Caucasians. Curly hair is a good heat insulator in the sun. An important factor in the formation of races could be their isolation. In groups of people living in isolation from the rest of the world, some new signs arose - the shape of the nose, lips, etc. e People - carriers of this trait married only within their group. Their offspring also intermarried within this group. Over time, the new sign became the property of all members of this group. Despite the differences between races, all modern humanity is represented by one species - Homo sapiens. Races should not be confused with the concepts of "nation" and "people" Representatives of different races can be members of a single state and speak the same language. The presence of speech centers is a biological feature of the human species. What language a person speaks does not depend on belonging to a particular race or nationality, but on social factors - on who the person lives with and who will teach him. Through speech, the ability to control one's behavior is realized: an adult, mature, intelligent person first sets goals, plans his actions, and only then acts.

Lesson Plan

1. What human races do you know?
2. What factors cause the evolutionary process?
3. What influences the formation of the gene pool of a population?

What are human races?

Human predecessors are Australopithecus;
- the most ancient people - progressive australopithecines, archanthropes (pithecanthropes, synanthropes, Heidelberg man, etc.);
- ancient people - paleoanthropes (Neanderthals);
- fossil people of the modern anatomical type - neoanthropes (Cro-Magnons).

The historical development of man was carried out under the influence of the same factors of biological evolution as the formation of other types of living organisms. However, a person is characterized by such a unique phenomenon for living nature as an increasing influence on the anthropogenesis of social factors (labor activity, social lifestyle, speech and thinking).

For a modern person, social and labor relations have become leading and determining.

As a result of social development Homo sapiens has acquired unconditional advantages among all living beings. But this does not mean that the emergence of the social sphere canceled the action of biological factors. The social sphere only changed their manifestation. Homo sapiens as a species is an integral part of the biosphere and a product of its evolution.

These are historically formed groupings (groups of populations) of people, characterized by the similarity of morphological and physiological features. Racial differences are the result of people's adaptation to certain conditions of existence, as well as the historical and socio-economic development of human society.

There are three large races: Caucasoid (Eurasian), Mongoloid (Asian-American) and Australo-Negroid (Equatorial).

Chapter 8

Fundamentals of ecology

After reading this chapter, you will learn:

What does ecology study and why does every person need to know its basics;
- what is the significance of environmental factors: abiatic, biotic and anthropogenic;
- what role do the environmental conditions and internal properties of the population group play in the processes of change in its size over time;
- about different types of interactions of organisms;
- about the features of competitive relations and factors that determine the outcome of competition;
- on the composition and basic properties of the ecosystem;
- about energy flows and the circulation of substances that ensure the functioning of systems, and about the role in these processes

Even in the middle of the XX century. the word ecology was known only to specialists, but now it has become very popular; most often it is used, speaking about the unfavorable state of the nature around us.

Sometimes this term is used in combination with words such as society, family, culture, health. Is ecology really such a vast science that it can cover most of the problems facing humanity?

Kamensky A. A., Kriksunov E. V., Pasechnik V. V. Biology Grade 10
Submitted by readers from the website

In modern humanity, there are three main races: Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. These are large groups of people who differ in some physical features, such as facial features, skin color, eyes and hair, hair shape.

Each race is characterized by the unity of origin and formation in a certain territory.

The Caucasian race includes the indigenous population of Europe, South Asia and North Africa. Caucasoids are characterized by a narrow face, a strongly protruding nose, and soft hair. The skin color of northern Caucasians is light, while that of southern Caucasians is predominantly swarthy.

The Mongoloid race includes the indigenous population of Central and East Asia, Indonesia, and Siberia. Mongoloids are distinguished by a large, flat, wide face, slit eyes, hard, straight hair, and dark skin color.

In the Negroid race, two branches are distinguished - African and Australian. The Negroid race is characterized by dark skin color, curly hair, dark eyes, a wide and flat nose.

Racial characteristics are hereditary, but at present they are not essential for human life. Apparently, in the distant past, racial traits were useful for their owners: the dark skin of blacks and curly hair, creating an air layer around the head, protected the body from the action of sunlight; heating cold air before it enters the lungs. In terms of mental abilities, i.e., abilities for cognition, creative and labor activity in general, all races are the same. Differences in the level of culture are associated not with the biological characteristics of people of different races, but with the social conditions for the development of society.

The reactionary essence of racism. Initially, some scientists confused the level of social development with biological characteristics and tried to find transitional forms among modern peoples that connect humans with animals. These mistakes were used by the racists, who began to talk about the alleged inferiority of some races and peoples and the superiority of others in order to justify the merciless exploitation and direct destruction of many peoples as a result of colonization, the seizure of foreign lands and the outbreak of wars. When European and American capitalism tried to conquer the African and Asian peoples, the white race was declared the highest. Later, when the Nazi hordes marched across Europe, destroying the captured population in the death camps, the so-called Aryan race was declared the highest, to which the Nazis ranked the German peoples. Racism is a reactionary ideology and politics aimed at justifying the exploitation of man by man.

The failure of racism is proved by the real science of races - racial science. Racial science studies racial characteristics, the origin, formation and history of human races. The data obtained by racial science indicate that the differences between races are not sufficient to consider races as different biological species of people. Mixing of races - miscegenation - occurred constantly, as a result of which intermediate types arose at the boundaries of the ranges of representatives of different races, smoothing out the differences between races.

Will races disappear? One of the important conditions for the formation of races is isolation. In Asia, Africa and Europe, it still exists to some extent today. Meanwhile, newly settled regions, such as North and South America, can be compared to a cauldron in which all three racial groups are melted down. Although public opinion in many countries does not support interracial marriages, there is little doubt that racial interbreeding is inevitable and will sooner or later lead to the formation of a hybrid human population.