Typology in

anthropology Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of be ...

was the categorization of the human species by races, based solely on traits that are readily observable from a distance such as head shape, skin color, hair form, body build, and stature. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, anthropologists used a typological model to divide people from different ethnic regions into races, (e.g. the

Negroid Negroid (less commonly called Congoid) is an obsolete racial grouping of various people indigenous to Africa south of the area which stretched from the southern Sahara desert in the west to the African Great Lakes in the southeast, but also to i ...

race, the

Caucasoid race The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid, Europoid) is an obsolete racial classification of human beings based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The ''Caucasian race'' was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, d ...

, the

Mongoloid race Mongoloid () is an obsolete racial grouping of various peoples indigenous to large parts of Asia, the Americas, and some regions in Europe and Oceania. The term is derived from a now-disproven theory of biological race. In the past, other term ...

, the Australoid race, and the Capoid race which was the racial classification system as defined in 1962 by

Carleton S. Coon Carleton Stevens Coon (June 23, 1904 – June 3, 1981) was an American anthropologist. A professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, lecturer and professor at Harvard University, he was president of the American Association of ...

). The typological model was built on the assumption that humans can be assigned to a race based on similar physical traits. However, author Dennis O'Neil says the typological model in anthropology is now thoroughly discredited.O'Neil, Dennis. Palomar College. "Biological Anthropology Terms." 2006. May 13, 2007.

/ref> Current mainstream thinking is that the morphological traits are due to simple variations in specific regions, and are the effect of climatic selective pressures.Modern Human Variation: Models of Classificatio

/ref> This debate is covered in more detail in the article on Race (classification of human beings), race.

Notes

References

*Brown, Ryan A and Armelagos, George, "Apportionment of Racial Diversity: A Review" Evolutionary Anthropology 10:34–40 200

{{Historical definitions of race Anthropology Historical definitions of race

See also

Notes

References