How many races can humans be divided into?

According to the differences in physical characteristics, the races in the world in the past were roughly divided into four major races, namely Mongolian race (yellow race), Caucasian race (white race), black race (black race) and Oceania race (brown race).

1, Mongolian race (yellow race)

Yellow race, also known as yellow race, Asian-American race, Mongolian race and Mongolian race, is one of the four major races in the world. Its number ranks second in the four major events. Yellow people are mainly distributed in Urals, East Asia, North Asia, Northeast Asia, Siberia, North South Asia, Southeast Asia and a few Americas and Oceania. The yellow race accounts for about 37% of the world population.

2. Caucasian race (white race)

Caucasian, also known as European race and Caucasian race, refers to a race with specific physical characteristics and is a concept of physical anthropology. White is the largest and most widely distributed race in the world, accounting for about 22% of the world population. Mainly distributed in Europe, North Africa, West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, North America, South America and Oceania. The native place of white people is Europe, North Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia. White people in America and Oceania are mainly of European descent.

The word "white" is a subjective and unscientific name that people used to call this race according to its obvious skin color. In fact, whites include not only traditional Europeans, but also South Asians with darker skin but other physical characteristics similar to traditional Europeans. Moreover, among traditional Europeans, western Europeans and southern Europeans in the Mediterranean region have relatively dark skin colors due to the ultraviolet radiation of temperature, while western Asians and north Africans around the Mediterranean region have darker skin colors than Europeans in the north.

3. Oceania (brown)

Brown people are divided into human races according to heredity and physique, and molecular anthropology research has confirmed the uniqueness of their genetic genes. Generally speaking, brown people include Australian aborigines, melanesians, Papuans and Vader (primitive Australians).

Brown people are the earliest inhabitants of Oceania, South Asia subcontinent and Nanyang Islands. They used to be widely distributed in Oceania, Southeast Asia and South Asia, but they were excluded by new immigrants after the arrival of whites and yellow people. At present, only melanesians and Papua people in Oceania are still the main residents of the islands, and the rest are only distributed in the mountains or deserts in some remote areas of Australia, the South Asian subcontinent and the Nanyang Islands.

4. Black race (black race)

Black people are black people, also known as black people, and black people account for 15% of the world population. Nigro-Australian race and equatorial race are people divided according to heritable physical characteristics, which is one of the human classification theories. Black people generally have dark skin, wavy or curly hair, dark eyes, wide and flat nose, low or medium nasal root, small nasal process, large nostril diameter, lip process, wide mouth, thick lips, and little beard and body hair.

The racial classification of blacks mainly includes Sudanese blacks, Bantu blacks (both of which account for the vast majority of African blacks), Koisan blacks, Cuscito blacks (mixed-race) and Australian aborigines. Before and during the Middle Ages, they were mainly distributed in sub-Saharan Africa. Later, because of imperialism and mercantilism in European countries, a large number of blacks were forced to be sent to South America and North America as slaves.

Extended data:

Before the 20th century, scientists generally believed that human beings were divided into several essentialist races, such as black race (black race), Mongolian race (yellow race) and Caucasian race (white race). But from 1940s, evolutionary scientists began to eliminate this theory.

In addition, race has long been understood as a scientific classification, that is, race is regarded as a hierarchical classification, such as equating race with subspecies; However, since the 1960s, with the new data and models in population genetics research, some scientists began to question this understanding and turned to other concepts such as population and cline (also translated as "gradual group" or "ecological group") to study the differences within human beings.

Since 1990, the new data and models in genomics and cladistics have also given the scientific community a new understanding of the origin of human beings, which has led some scientists to define the division of races by descent rather than characteristics, and think that races should be understood as fuzzy sets, statistical groups or generalized families.

Many evolutionists and sociologists believe that, based on the achievements of biological research in recent years, any definition of human race lacks the rigor and correctness of scientific classification; The definition of race is inaccurate, arbitrary, politicized and conventional, and it changes with different cultural perspectives. Race should be regarded as a social construction.

However, other scientists believe that the concept of race is not groundless, there is indeed a correlation between the concept of race and multi-locus genetic data, and the real motivation for trying to give up the concept of race is mainly political reasons rather than science.

At present, there is no conclusion and consensus on what race is, whether it exists, how many it is, how to define it, how to understand it and how to analyze it.

Baidu encyclopedia-four major races