The concept of race as a categorization of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) has an extensive history in Europe and the Americas. The contemporary word race itself is modern; historically it was used in the sense of "nation, ethnic group" during the 16th to 19th centuries.Kennedy, Rebecca F. (2013). "Introduction". Race and Ethnicity in the Classical world : An Anthology of Primary Sources in Translation. Hackett Publishing Company. p. xiii. ISBN 978-1603849944. "The ancients would not understand the social construct we call "race" any more than they would understand the distinction modem scholars and social scientists generally draw between race and "ethnicity." The modern concept of race is a product of the colonial enterprises of European powers from the 16th to 18th centuries that identified race in terms of skin color and physical difference. In the post-Enlightenment world, a "scientific," biological idea of race suggested that human difference could be explained by biologically distinct groups of humans, evolved from separate origins, who could be distinguished by physical differences, predominantly skin color...Such categorizations would have confused the ancient Greeks and Romans."Bancel, Nicolas; David, Thomas; Thomas, Dominic, eds. (23 May 2019). "Introduction: The Invention of Race: Scientific and Popular Representations of Race from Linnaeus to the Ethnic Shows". The Invention of Race : Scientific and Popular Representations. Routledge. p. 11. ISBN 978-0367208646. 'The Invention of Race' has assisted us in the process of locating the "epistemological moment," somewhere between 1730 and 1790, when the concept of race was invented and rationalized. A "moment" that was accompanied by a revolution in the way in which the human body was studied and observed in order to formulate scientific conclusions relating to human variability." Race acquired its modern meaning in the field of physical anthropology through scientific racism starting in the 19th century. With the rise of modern genetics, the concept of distinct human races in a biological sense has become obsolete. The American Anthropological Association's 1998 "Statement on Race" characterized race as a social construct rather than a biological reality.
Etymology The word "race", interpreted to mean an identifiable group of people who share a common descent, was introduced into English in the 16th century from the Old French (1512), from Italian : the Oxford English Dictionary cites the earliest example around the mid-16th century and defines its early meaning as a "group of people belonging to the same family and descended from a common ancestor".“Race, N. (6).”, I.1.a., Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, March 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5821361223. It also introduces the first use of the word "race" as a term referring to an "ethnic group" in 1572.“Race, N. (6).”, I.1.b., Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford UP, March 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/582136122 An earlier but etymologically distinct word for a similar concept was the Latin word meaning a group sharing qualities related to birth, descent, origin, race, stock, or family; this Latin word is cognate with the Greek words "genos" (), meaning "race or kind", and "gonos", which has meanings related to "birth, offspring, stock ...".
Early history In many ancient civilizations, individuals with widely varying physical appearances became full members of a society by growing up within that society or by adopting that society's cultural norms (Snowden 1983; Lewis 1990).
Ancient Egypt
The Ancient Egyptian (New Kingdom) funerary text known as the Book of Gates distinguishes "four groups" in a procession. These are the "red-brown" Egyptians, the "pale" Levantine and Canaanite peoples or "Asiatics", the "black" "Nubians" and the "fair-skinned Libyans"."The first are RETH, the second are AAMU, the third are NEHESU, and the fourth are THEMEHU. The RETH are Egyptians, the AAMU are dwellers in the deserts to the east and north-east of Egypt, the NEHESU are the Cushites, and the THEMEHU are the fair-skinned Libyans" Book of Gates, chapter VI (), translated by E. A. Wallis Budge, 1905. The Egyptians are depicted as considerably darker-skinned than the Levantines (persons from what is now Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Syria and Jordan) and Libyans, but considerably lighter than the Nubians (modern Sudan). Men would be painted dark reddish-brown, while women could be painted "white, tan, cream, or yellow". Classical archaeologists typically ascribe this divergence to the differing lifestyles of men and women. According to Charles Freeman, depictions of women with light skin suggested a high status, and were a "sign that a woman did not have to work in the sun".
Classical antiquity Classical civilizations from Rome to China tended to invest the most importance in familial or tribal affiliation rather than an individual's physical appearance (Dikötter 1992; Goldenberg 2003). Societies still tended to equate physical characteristics, such as hair and eye colour, with psychological and moral qualities, usually assigning the highest qualities to their own people and lower qualities to the "Other", either lower classes or outsiders to their society. For example, a historian of the 3rd century Han dynasty in the territory of present-day China describes barbarians of blond hair and green eyes as resembling "the monkeys from which they are descended".Gossett, Thomas F. New Edition, Race: The History of an Idea in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Dominant in ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of human diversity was the thesis that physical differences between different populations could be attributed to environmental factors. Though ancient peoples likely had no knowledge of evolutionary theory or genetic variability, their concepts of race could be described as malleable. Chief among environmental causes for physical difference in the ancient period were climate and geography. Though Greek thinkers in ancient civilizations recognized differences in physical characteristics between different populations, the general consensus among Greeks was that all non-Greeks were barbarians. This barbarian status, however, was not thought to be fixed; rather, one could shed the 'barbarian' status simply by adopting Greek culture. Classicist James H. Dee states "the Greeks do not describe themselves as 'White people'or as anything else because they had no regular word in their colour vocabulary for themselves."James H. Dee, "Black Odysseus, White Caesar: When Did 'White People' Become 'White'?" The Classical Journal, Vol. 99, No. 2. (December 2003 – January 2004), pp. 163 ff. According to the historian Nell Irvin Painter, people's skin colour did not carry useful meaning; what mattered is where they lived.
Nevertheless, some commentary from Ancient Greece has been recognized by some scholars as racial. The anonymous ancient Greek text the 'Alexander Romance' describes an exchange of letters between Alexander the Great and Queen Candace of Meroe (in Nubia), in which the queen writes: "Do not despise us for the colour of our skin. In our souls we are brighter than the whitest of your people." Herodotus described the Scythian Budini as having deep blue eyes and bright red hairHerodotus: Histories, 4.108. and the Egyptians – quite like the Colchians – as (, "dark-skinned") and curly-haired.Herodotus: Histories, 2.104.2. Later, Xenophanes of Colophon described the Aethiopians as black and snub-nosed and the Thracians as having red hair and blue eyes.Xenophanes of Colophon: Fragments, J. H. Lesher, University of Toronto Press, 2001, , p. 90. In his description of the Scythians, Hippocrates states that the cold weather "burns their white skin and turns it ruddy."
In the second of his Satires, the Roman satirist Juvenal writes "let the straight-legged man laugh at the club-footed man, the white man (albus) at the black ()", although many varying translations are possible. In his fictional dialogue Hermotimus, the Hellenised Syrian satirist Lucian speculates on whether an isolated Ethiopian would assume out of hand that there are no "white or yellow" men on Earth.
Ancient Romans used the term , a neutral term for "white," to refer to themselves. Romans would also use the term (translation: 'white'), which refers to the physical phenomenon of whiteness, to refer to their skin colour. The Roman writer Julius Firmicus Maternus would contrast the Germaniae candidi (white Germans) with 'Ethiopians', while Pliny spoke of Northern Europeans having candida atque glacialis cutis or "white and frosty skins". The term candidus was later replaced during the Germanic invasion of Rome by the term , which served a similar purpose, and which has survived in modern languages such as French , Spanish , Portuguese , and Italian . Like candidus, blancus, was a neutral term used for Caucasian peoples.
According to Lloyd A. Thompson, terms such as Aethiop, which Romans used for black people, carried no social implications, although “blacks in Roman society were at all times largely slave-immigrants or progeny of such immigrants" and "their numbers were always small”. Though phenotype-related stereotypes certainly existed in Ancient Rome, inherited physical characteristics were typically not relevant to social status. The historian Frank M. Snowden has stated that people who looked different from the typical Mediterranean populace, such as black people, were not excluded from any profession and there are no records of stigmas or biases against mixed race relationships. In contrast, the classicist Michele George writes that "The somatic differences of Blacks reinforced their visible difference from Italian aesthetic norms and facilitated a connection with slaves, the proverbial aliens in Roman thought. Thus, although their numbers among the slave population were relatively small, the presence of Blacks in Roman art is dominated by the slave context."
Several Roman authors, such as Tacitus and Suetonius, expressed concerns in their writings about Roman "blood purity" as Roman citizens from outside of Roman Italy increased in number. Their concerns did not match modern ideas of race or ethnicity, and had little to do with features such as skin colour or physical appearance.
Late antiquity In late antiquity, some early Christian writers began connecting the metaphorical goodness and morality associated in European culture with the colour white to the physical skin colour itself, while at the same time associating the negative concepts attached to the colour black with dark skin. For example, the writer Paulinus of Nola claimed that Ethiopians had been turned black due to committing vices. Similarly, Gregory of Nyssa believed that "Christ came into the world to make blacks white … Babylonians into Jerusalemites, the prostitute into a virgin, Ethiopians radiantly white." When speaking of baptising an Ethiopian, Fulgentius of Ruspe said he saw the Ethiopian as one who was "not yet whitened by the grace of Christ." According to a 7th-century biography, Pope Gregory I bemoaned the presence of Anglo-Saxon child slaves in Rome who were "white of body and have blonde hair". In the 8th century, the English monk The Venerable Bede, generally associated the black skin of Ethiopians with "spiritual darkness" but at the same time rejected any idea that the colour differences between, as he termed it, "a black Ethiopian and a white Saxon" would affect their fates during the Last Judgement.
The 6th-century Byzantine scholar Procopius referred to various invading barbarian tribes as being white, such as the Gothic tribes who he claimed had "white bodies and fair hair" and the Hephthalites or "White Huns" who, according to him, had "white bodies and countenances". Indian scholars also referred to the Hephthalites as Sveta Huna (White Huns).
Middle Ages