About 'caucasoid' facial features.?

Question

Are cranial terminology such as 'caucasoid', 'mongoloid', and 'negroid' anthropologically relevant?

How not or how so?

How are they relevant if negroid crania exist all the way from deep in africa to their genetically most distant relatives {native} americans. Or if 'caucasoid' describes not only people from the caucasus, but also the americas, and even native central africans? Mongoloid goes from Asia, Africa, and America as well.

Answer 1

I've studied human osteology. There are some features that vary in a very general sense between populations that have been isolated from each other for long periods of time. In the past, those different groups of people were called Caucasoid, Negroid, etc. These morphological differences do exist.

However, it's important to note that these variations only give an indication as to the ancestry of an individual. My instructor was very quick to point out that the process doesn't have a much higher chance of being right than just guessing, most of the time. You can see a post-bregmatic depression and say, "Ah ha, an African [because terms like Negroid are not used by professionals with any amount of credibility]," and still be wrong a discouraging percentage of the time.

Recognizing this type of variance in the human population is relevant to anthropology, in a variety of fields. I think that is demonstrable. But the terms you give - caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid - have deeper meaning than simply being a description of skeletal features. They are not useful. They are actually counterproductive to real inquiry, in fact.

EDIT: Hi Science. I'm not sure what I did to p**s you off, but I'll address you directly for the moment.

I would not call what I'm doing "spindoctoring," as I am not trying to persuade anyone to a particular viewpoint. I am merely stating and restating evidence that I have either read about, heard about from professional colleagues, or gathered directly myself.

Let me make myself very clear here, because you are misrepresenting what I am saying. I am NOT saying that a professional loses credibility when he loses words like negroid (he might, but I'm not saying it). I AM saying that people with credibility do not use that word in a professional setting, at least not recently. I have never, ever witnessed it. I have read reams of papers, stacks of professional journals, and listened to hours of lectures, and no one uses words like that anymore. The reason is that it's a scientifically useless term. Embedded in it is the racism that both our field and general society utilized it for decades ago, but that's not even the main reason we don't use it. It's just a useless term. "Negroid" describes a narrow range of morphological characteristics that do not necessarily co-vary within the supposed group, and which freely occur outside the group. That's useless. Even a very broad term like "African" is much more useful, because that at least gives us a discrete group of people.

Note that I have NEVER said that race does not exist. Go back and check all of my answers. I have never, ever written that. If I did, then I was wrong. What I have said is that race is scientifically invalid, and it is. Race based studies were discredited, definitively, almost a century ago. Like I mentioned before, traits that are supposed to be hallmarks of each race do not co-vary, and they exist abundantly outside the group. If you look at large groups of people, traditional race-based studies don't hold up to scrutiny.

But race certainly does exist. If it didn't, we wouldn't talk about it so often. Race is a social convention, and things like this are just as real as physical differences. They are not the same thing, but they have real power nonetheless. People identify with race, people group other people by race, but most people don't actually take a long, hard look at race and what it really entails.

When they do, they generally end up like me. Such has been my experience, and the evidence to which I have been privy.

I have absolutely no idea what the h**l you mean by "crude blind sensation of seeping oneness." You are definitely being less than clear about criticising me. If you still feel like following me around and posting the equivalent of "Nuh uh, you're wrong because [seemingly random gobbledygook using big words so it sounds intelligent]," feel free. I like the attention.

Answer 2

Don't confuse 'race' with 'ethnic group'.  There are many subdivisions under Caucazoid, and many subdivisions under Negroid, and many subdivisions under Mongoloid, and these subdivisions are called 'ethnic groups'.

Caucazoid:

Italian

German

Irish

French

Lithuanian

Lapplanders

Indian, from India

etc. etc.

Negroid:

Negrito

San

Pygmy

Watusi

etc. etc.

Mongoloid:

Han Chinese

Japanese

Mongolian

Indonesian

Polynesian

American Indian

Mayan

Aztec

Esquimeau (Eskimo)

etc. etc.

The various ethnic groups are in the thousands which fall from the three main racial types.

Answer 3

You're basically mired in junk science dismissed by most modern scientists.

Answer 4

There goes The Ry-Guy yet again, with his 'race does not exist'

spindoctoring. Anyone that states that people that use the term

'negroid' do not have any amount of credibility, demonstrates that

they themself do not have any amount of credibility. There are

some people in the magreb that are africans, but not negroids,

so 'negroid' can be a useful term.

As long as The Ry-Guy continues this behavior, I will publicize

it's psychological basis. The belief that race does not exist

is the result of the psychological desire to disrupt the fundamental

logical truth that different entities are not necessarily equivalent.

The sensation of disrupting that fundamental truth is a crude blind

sensation of seeping oneness. That desire, in turn, results from

the evolutionary psychological effects of the environment in

which a person's ancestors evolved.

I would add 'australoid' to the list, since there are also distinct

australoid cranial/facial traits. The terms are useful because the

different regional subspecies of homo sapien have evolved separately

for a long period of time, thus producing sets of associated traits.

Native americans are a racial mixture, being a mixture between

australoids, east asians, and caucasoids. Mongols may be

part australoid, so the term 'mongoloid' is not necessarily

accurate. Centralids are the most australoid of the native american

races.

Answer 5

I'm unsure what you're asking or why. There is much human variation. I don't think anthropology uses those terms to any great extent, does it?

What are those facial features you want to discuss?