Raça mediterrânea

A raça mediterrânea é uma das sub-raças em que a raça caucasiana era categorizada por grande parte dos antropólogos de finais do século XIX até meados do século XX.[1]

Irlandês de tipo mediterrâneo; excerto da obra Men, Past and Present (1899), de Augustus Henry Keane.

As principais características da raça mediterrânea eram descritas como: Cabelo castanho escuro, olhos castanhos escuros, pele oliva, cabelos lisos ou ondulados, estatura baixa a média e com musculatura braçal e peitoral aparente a partir da adolescência, alta facilidade de bronzeamento em mudanças climáticas e diferentes estações, entre outras características. De acordo com várias definições,[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] é considerada predominante na Europa meridional, Bálcãs, Levante e em certas partes das Ilhas Britânicas (sobretudo no País de Gales), Alemanha, Europa e Ásia Central, Cáucaso, Norte da África, Pérsia e Subcontinente Indiano.

A raça mediterrânea foi dividida em vários subtipos por diferentes autores, como os "atlanto-mediterrâneos", predominantes na costa atlântica da Península Ibérica e que se caracterizam geralmente pelo grande porte e estatura média ou alta, o que é menos comum nos mediterrâneos comuns, provavelmente devido ao contato com a raça nórdica.

Referências

  1. Karim Murji, John Solomos (2005). Racialization: Studies In Theory And Practice. [S.l.]: Oxford University Press. p. 215. ISBN 0199257035 
  2. John Higham (2002). Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925. [S.l.]: Rutgers University Press. p. 273. ISBN 0-8135-3123-3 
  3. Bryan S Turner (1998). The Early Sociology of Class. [S.l.]: Taylor & Francis. p. 241. ISBN 0-415-16723-X 
  4. The Races of Europe by Carelton Stevens Coon (em inglês). From Chapter XI: The Mediterranean World – Introduction: "The next strip to follow, in a geographical sense, would be the whole highland belt of central Europe stretching over to the Balkans, to Asia Minor, and across to the Caucasus and Turkestan. This second zone, however, is one of immense racial complexity. In it various branches of the greater Mediterranean family, of Neolithic date and later, have been modified by combining in various proportions with each other and with the autochthonous Alpine race. The key to the complexity of this zone lies in the genetic action of this last entity, which is apparently a reduced, somewhat foetalized, or more highly evolved branch of the old Paleolithic stock than those which we have been studying in the north. Since, however, it is the action of this element upon the Mediterranean family which is important here, it will be easier to study this zone after having surveyed the population of a third belt, that occupied by the purest living representatives of the Mediterranean race. This third racial zone stretches from Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco, and thence along the southern Mediterranean shores into Arabia, East Africa, Mesopotamia, and the Persian highlands; and across Afghanistan into India. This zone is one of comparative racial simplicity. In it the brunet Mediterranean race lives today in its various regional forms without, in most cases, the complication of the Paleolithic survivals and reemergences which have so confused the racial picture on the ground of Europe itself. Only in the mountains of Morocco and Algeria, and in the Canary Islands, is such a survival of any importance. The Careful study of living populations of the Mediterranean race in its early homelands will do much to simplify the task which lies ahead."
  5. The Races of Europe by Carleton Stevens Coon (em inglês). From Chapter X: The British Isles: "The Neolithic economy was probably first brought to Britain by the bearers of the Windmill Hill culture from the Continent, and they in turn were members of the group which had invaded western Europe from North Africa by way of Gibraltar. The racial type to which these Windmill Hill people presumably belonged was a small Mediterranean, but there is little or no direct skeletal evidence from England to confirm this. By far the most important Neolithic movement into Great Britain, and into Ireland as well, came by sea from the eastern Mediterranean lands, using Spain as a halting point on the way. It was this invasion which passed up the Irish Channel to western and northern Scotland, and around to Denmark and Sweden. The settlers who came by sea were the Megalithic people, and belonged to a clearly differentiated variety of tall, extremely long-headed Mediterranean, which was presumably for the most part brunet. This racial group furnished both Great Britain and Ireland, which consisted, before their arrival, of nearly empty land, with a numerous and civilized population which has left many descendants today."
  6. Patrizia Palumbo. A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present. University of California Press, 2003. P. 66.
  7. Anne Maxwell. Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics, 1870–1940. Paperback edition. Sussex Academic Press, 2010. P. 150.
  8. (Em inglês) "Our area, from Morocco to Afghanistan, is the homeland and cradle of the Mediterranean race. Mediterraneans are found also in Spain, Portugal, most of Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean islands, and in all these places, as in Southwest Asia, they form the major genetic element in the local populations. In a dark-skinned and finer-boned form they are also found as the major population element in Pakistan and northern India... The Mediterranean race, then, is indigenous to, and the principal element in, the Southwest Asia, and the greatest concentration of a highly evolved Mediterranean type falls among two of the most ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, notably the Arabs and the Jews (Although it may please neither party, this is the truth.). The Mediterraneans occupy the center of the stage; their areas of greatest concentration are precisely those where civilization is the oldest. This is to be expected, since it was they who produced it and it, in a sense, that produced them.", Carleton Coon, the Story of the Middle East, 1958, pp. 154–157
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