Alpine race
The Alpine race is a historical racial classification or sub-race of humans, considered a branch of the Caucasian race. The term is not commonly used today, but was popular in the early 20th century.
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[edit] History
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Western anthropologists classified humans into a variety of races and sub-races. Of these, the name Alpines was given to a physical type of the Caucasian race predominant in central/southern/Eastern Europe and parts of Western/Central Asia, somewhat shorter, narrower shouldered, and darker skinned than those they classified as Nordics and are chestnut-haired. This model was first clearly defined in William Z. Ripley's book The Races of Europe (1899), which proposed three European categories: Teutonic (later termed Nordic), Mediterranean and Alpine.[1] This model was later popularised by Madison Grant. The Alpine type was considered as a branch of the Balkans-Caucasian race in Soviet era anthropology.[2] A distinctive Alpine type had been proposed by earlier writers, notably Vacher de Lapouge, but it was Ripley who promoted it to one of the main divisions.
Ripley argued that the Alpines had originated in Asia, and had spread westwards along with the emergence and expansion of agriculture, which they established in Europe. By migrating into central Europe, they had separated the northern and southern branches of the earlier European stock, creating the conditions for the separate evolution of Nordics and Mediterraneans.
This model was repeated in Madison Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race (1916), in which the Alpines were portrayed as the most populous of European and western Asian races.[1]
In Carleton Coon's rewrite of Ripley's The Races of Europe, he developed the argument that they reduced the Upper Paleolithic survivors indigenous to Europe. Coon argued that they were linked to their unreduced (Brünn, Borreby) counterparts.
Despite the large numbers of this alleged race, the characteristics of the Alpines were not as widely discussed and disputed as those of the Nordics and Mediterraneans. Typically they were portrayed as "sedentary": solid peasant stock, the reliable backbone of the European population, but not outstanding for qualities of leadership or creativity.[1] Madison Grant, insisted on their "essentially peasant character".[3]
[edit] European Racial Types (Ripley)
| Head | Face | Hair | Eyes | Stature | Nose | Synonyms | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine | Round | Broad | Chestnut | Hazel or gray | Medium, stocky | Variable; rather broad; heavy | Occidental (Deniker), Homo Alpinus (Lapouge) | |
| Mediterranean | Long | Long | Dark brown or black | Dark | Medium, slender | Rather broad | ||
| Nordic | Long | Long | Very light | Blue | Tall | Narrow; aquiline | Nordic (Deniker), Homo Europaeus (Lapouge) |
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Bruce Baum, The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: a political history of racial identity, NYU Press, 2006, pp.145, 147,
- ^ The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia (Russian)
- ^ Grant, Madison (1916). "The Passing of the Great Race". p. part 2, ch. 11; part 2, chapter 5.
- ^ Ripley (1899), The Races of Europe, p. 121; Synonyms column shortened
[edit] Further reading
- Spiro, Jonathan P. (2009). Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant. Univ. of Vermont Press. ISBN 978-1-58465-715-6. Lay summary (29 September 2010).
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