Mediterranean race

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Irish man of Mediterranean type, from Augustus Henry Keane's Man, Past and Present (1899).

The Mediterranean race (sometimes Mediterranid race) is one of the sub-races into which the Caucasian race was categorized by most anthropologists in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries.[1] According to various definitions, it was said to be prevalent in Southern Europe and Southeast Europe, in Western Asia, in North Africa, in the Horn of Africa, in Central Asia, in Latin America (through Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Lebanese ancestry), and in certain parts of the British Isles and Germany.[2][3][4][5][6][7] It is characterized by medium to tall stature, long (dolichocephalic) or moderate (mesocephalic) skull, a narrow and often slightly aquiline nose, prevalence of dark hair and eyes,[8] and rosy pink to dark brown skin tone; olive complexion being especially common.[9]

Racial theories[edit]

Early debates[edit]

These differentiations occurred following long-standing claims about the alleged differences between the Nordic and the Mediterranean people. Such debates arose from responses to ancient writers who had commented on differences between northern and southern Europeans. For the Greeks and Romans, Germanic and Celtic peoples were considered wild red haired barbarians. Pseudo-Aristotle argued that the Greeks were an ideal people because they possessed a medium skin-tone, in contrast to pale northerners and dark southerners. By the nineteenth century, long-standing cultural and religious differences between Protestant northwestern Europe and the Roman Catholic south were being reinterpreted in racial terms.[10]

19th century[edit]

In the nineteenth century, the division of humanity into distinct races became a matter for scientific debate. In 1870, Thomas Huxley argued that there were four basic racial categories (Xanthocroic, Mongoloid, Australioid and Negroid). The Xanthocroic race were the "fair whites" of north and Central Europe. According to Huxley,

On the south and west this type comes into contact and mixes with the "Melanochroi," or "dark whites"...In these regions are found, more or less mixed with Xanthochroi and Mongoloids, and extending to a greater or less distance into the conterminous Xanthochroic, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Australioid areas, the men whom I have termed Melanochroi, or dark whites. Under its best form this type is exhibited by many Irishmen, Welshmen, and Bretons, by Spaniards, South Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, and high-caste Brahmins...I am much disposed to think that the Melanochroi are the result of an intermixture between the Xanthochroi and the Australoids. It is to the Xanthochroi and Melanochroi, taken together, that the absurd denomination of "Caucasian" is usually applied.[11]

By the late nineteenth century, Huxley's Xanthochroi group had been redefined as the "Nordic" race, while his Melanochroi became the Mediterranean race.

William Z. Ripley's The Races of Europe (1899)[12] created a tripartite model that was later popularised by Madison Grant. It divided Europeans into three main subcategories: Teutonic, Alpine and Mediterranean.

European Racial Types according to Ripley[13]
Head Face Hair Eyes Stature Nose Synonyms
Teutonic Long Long Very light Blue Tall Narrow; aquiline Nordic (Deniker), Homo Europaeus (Lapouge)
Alpine (Celtic) Round Broad Light chestnut Hazel, gray Medium, stocky Variable, rather broad, heavy Occidental (Deniker), Homo Alpinus (Lapouge)
Mediterranean Long Long Dark brown or black Dark Medium, slender Rather broad Ibero-Insular, Atlando-Med. (Deniker)

20th century[edit]

Distribution of European racial types, from Madison Grant's The Passing of the Great Race (1916). Mediterranean race is shown in yellow; green indicates the Alpine race; bright red is the Nordic race.

In Germany, Britain and the USA, it became common for "white supremacists" to promote the merits of the light-colored hair, light-colored eyes Nordic race as the most advanced of human population groups: the "master race". Southern/Eastern Europeans were deemed to be inferior, an argument that dated back to Arthur de Gobineau's Nordicist claims that racial mixing was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire.[14] However, in southern Europe itself alternative models were developed which stressed the merits of Mediterranean peoples, drawing on established traditions dating from ancient and Renaissance claims about the superiority of civilization in the south.

The fact that Mediterranean peoples were responsible for the most important of ancient civilizations was a problem for the promoters of Nordic superiority. Giuseppe Sergi's much-debated book The Mediterranean Race (1901) argued that the Mediterranean race had likely originated in the Sahara region in Africa, and spread from there to populate North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and the circum-Mediterranean region. Sergi added that the Mediterranean race "in its external characters is a brown human variety, neither white nor negroid, but pure in its elements, that is to say not a product of the mixture of Whites with Negroes or negroid peoples."[15] In his book The Mediterranean Race, Sergi also hypothesized that the Mediterranean, the African and the Nordic races all originated from an original Eurafrican species.[16][17] He explained his taxonomy as inspired by an understanding of "the morphology of the skull as revealing those internal physical characters of human stocks which remain constant through long ages and at far remote spots[...] As a zoologist can recognise the character of an animal species or variety belonging to any region of the globe or any period of time, so also should an anthropologist if he follows the same method of investigating the morphological characters of the skull[...] This method has guided me in my investigations into the present problem and has given me unexpected results which were often afterwards confirmed by archaeology or history."[18]

According to Sergi, the Mediterranean race was the "greatest race of the world" and was singularly responsible for the most accomplished civilizations of ancient times, including those of Greece, Rome, Phoenicia, Carthage, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Persia. The four great branches of the Mediterranean stock were the Libyans, the Ligurians, the Pelasgians and the Iberians.[19] Ancient Egyptians, Ethiopians and Somalis were considered by Sergi as Hamites, themselves constituting a Mediterranean variety and one situated close to the cradle of the stock.[20] To Sergi, the Semites were a branch of the Eurafricans who were closely related to the Mediterraneans. He also asserted that the light-skinned Nordic race descended from the Mediterranean race.[16]

Later in the 20th century, the concept of a distinctive Mediterranean race was still considered useful by theorists such as Earnest Hooton in Up From the Ape (1931) and Carleton S. Coon in his revised edition of Ripley's Races of Europe (1939). These writers subscribed to Sergi's depigmentation theory that the Nordic race was the northern variety of Mediterraneans that lost pigmentation through natural selection due to the environment.[21]

According to Carleton Coon, the "homeland and cradle" of the Mediterranean race was in North Africa and Southwest Asia, in the area from Morocco to Afghanistan.[22] He argued that smaller Mediterraneans traveled by land from the Mediterranean basin north into Europe in the Mesolithic era. Taller Mediterraneans (Atlanto-Mediterraneans) were Neolithic seafarers who sailed in reed-type boats and colonized the Mediterranean basin from a Near Eastern origin. He argued that they also colonized Britain where their descendants may be seen today, characterized by dark brown hair, dark eyes and robust features. He stressed the central role of the Mediterraneans in his works, claiming "The Mediterraneans occupy the center of the stage; their areas of greatest concentration are precisely those where civilization is the oldest. This is to be expected, since it was they who produced it and it, in a sense, that produced them".[22]

C. G. Seligman also asserted that "it must, I think, be recognized that the Mediterranean race has actually more achievement to its credit than any other, since it is responsible for by far the greater part of Mediterranean civilization, certainly before 1000 B.C. (and probably much later), and so shaped not only the Aegean cultures, but those of Western as well as the greater part of Eastern Mediterranean lands, while the culture of their near relatives, the Hamitic pre-dynastic Egyptians, formed the basis of that of Egypt."[23]

In the USA, the idea that the Mediterranean race included certain populations on the African continent was taken up in the early twentieth century by African-American writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, who used it to attack white supremacist ideas about racial "purity". Such publications as the Journal of Negro History stressed the cross-fertilization of cultures between Africa and Europe, and adopted Sergi's view that the "civilizing" race had originated in Africa itself.[24]

H.G. Wells referred to the Mediterranean race as the Iberian race.[25]

After the 1960s, the concept of an exact Mediterranean race fell out of favor, though the distinctive features of Mediterranean populations continued to be recognized.[26][27][28][29]

Physical traits[edit]

A brunette Mediterranean type
Brunette Mediterranean type, cephalic index 76
An Italian man of Mediterranean type
Italian man of Mediterranean type, from the Fischer Lexikon (1959)

The Mediterranean race was traditionally regarded as one of the primary Caucasoid races next to the Nordic, Alpine and Armenoid (Beals and Hoijer, An Introduction to Anthropology – 1953).[30]

The first Physical and Social description of the Mediterranean race (then termed "Celtic race") was given by the Scottish scientist William Rhind in 1851. In -Section XV – The Caucasian race and its sub-races- Rhind gave the following description:[31]
"The Celtic Race (anc. Galatae, Pyreni), are characterised by a well-formed head, elongated from front to back, and moderate in breadth; face oval; features well defined and elegantly formed; complexion dark; dark brown or black eyes; black hair turning early gray; form middle size, handsome; feet and hands small. Mental powers quick, active, and energetic, rather than profound. Passions and affections strong. Fond of society, but not forgetful of injuries. Monarchial in their governments. They occupy the southern and insular parts of Europe."

According to William Z. Ripley, the marked features of the Mediterranean race were dark hair – dark eyes – long face – dolichocephalic skull and a variable narrow nose.[13]

C. S. Coon wrote that marked Mediterranean features included skin color ranging "from pink or peaches-and-cream to a light brown", a relatively prominent and aquiline nose, considerable body hair, and dark brown to black hair.[32]

According to Renato Biasutti, frequent Mediterranean traits included "skin color 'matte'-white or brunet-white, chestnut or dark chestnut eyes and hair, not excessive pilosity; medium-low stature (162), body of moderately longilinear forms; dolichomorphic skull (78) with rounded occiput; oval face; leptorrhine nose (68) with straight spine, horizontal or inclined downwards base of the septum; large open eyes."[33]


In 2012, National Geographic Society released a new Genealogical DNA test which enables members of the public to participate in the Genographic Project. The test included a Mediterranean genetic component among its 43 reference populations. The component was found at its highest frequencies in individuals from the Levant, North Africa, Southern Europe, the Caucasus and Iran – people from Sardinia (67%), Lebanon (66%), Egypt (65%), Tunisia (62%), Georgia (61%), Kuwait (57%), Greece (54%), Italy (54%), Iberian peninsula (48%), Northern Caucasus (46%), Romania (43%), and Iran (42%) in their reference populations. It is also found throughout the rest of Europe: Germany (36%), Great Britain (33%), Denmark (30%), West Africa as well as the Middle East and Western Asia. According to the authors, this component is "likely the signal of the Neolithic population from the Middle East, beginning around 8,000 years ago, likely from the western part of the Fertile Crescent."[34][35][36]

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Karim Murji, John Solomos (2005). Racialization: Studies In Theory And Practice. Oxford University Press. p. 215. ISBN 0199257035. 
  4. ^ The Races of Europe by Carlton Stevens Coon. From Chapter XI: The Mediterranean World – Introduction: "The next strip to follow, in a geographical sense, would be the whole highland belt of central Europe stretching over to the Balkans, to Asia Minor, and across to the Caucasus and Turkestan. This second zone, however, is one of immense racial complexity. In it various branches of the greater Mediterranean family, of Neolithic date and later, have been modified by combining in various proportions with each other and with the autochthonous Alpine race. The key to the complexity of this zone lies in the genetic action of this last entity, which is apparently a reduced, somewhat foetalized, or more highly evolved branch of the old Paleolithic stock than those which we have been studying in the north. Since, however, it is the action of this element upon the Mediterranean family which is important here, it will be easier to study this zone after having surveyed the population of a third belt, that occupied by the purest living representatives of the Mediterranean race. This third racial zone stretches from Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco, and thence along the southern Mediterranean shores into Arabia, East Africa, Mesopotamia, and the Persian highlands; and across Afghanistan into India. This zone is one of comparative racial simplicity. In it the brunet Mediterranean race lives today in its various regional forms without, in most cases, the complication of the Paleolithic survivals and reemergences which have so confused the racial picture on the ground of Europe itself. Only in the mountains of Morocco and Algeria, and in the Canary Islands, is such a survival of any importance. The Careful study of living populations of the Mediterranean race in its early homelands will do much to simplify the task which lies ahead."
  6. ^ Patrizia Palumbo. A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present. University of California Press, 2003. P. 66.
  7. ^ Anne Maxwell. Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics, 1870–1940. Paperback edition. Sussex Academic Press, 2010. P. 150.
  8. ^ C.S. Coon, Caravan : the Story of the Middle East, 1958, pp. 154-157
  9. ^ The Races of Europe by Carlton Stevens Coon.
  10. ^ G. W. F. Hegel claimed that the Latin people maintained "the principle of disharmony" in contrast to the Germans. Johann Fichte asserted that the Mediterraneans were deficient because of the corruption of their language. See Poliakov, L., The Aryan Myth, 1974
  11. ^ On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind, Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1870)
  12. ^ William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1899)
  13. ^ a b Ripley (1899), The Races of Europe, p. 121; Synonyms column shortened
  14. ^ See Gobineau and Chamberlain. Such ideas were repeated by Gobineau's admirers such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Richard Wagner (in his essay Herodom and Christianity), and later by the Nazis. See Der Reichsführer SS/SS-Hauptamt, Rassenpolitik (SS handbook on race)
  15. ^ Giuseppe Sergi, The Mediterranean Race: A Study of the Origin of European Peoples, (BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008), p.250.
  16. ^ a b Gilette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy, 2002
  18. ^ Giuseppe Sergi, The Mediterranean Race: A Study of the Origin of European Peoples, (Forgotten Books), pp.36.
  19. ^ Giuseppe Sergi, The Mediterranean Race: A Study of the Origin of European Peoples, (Forgotten Books), p.166.
  20. ^ Giuseppe Sergi, The Mediterranean Race: A Study of the Origin of European Peoples, (Forgotten Books), pp.39-44.
  22. ^ a b "Our area, from Morocco to Afghanistan, is the homeland and cradle of the Mediterranean race. Mediterraneans are found also in Spain, Portugal, most of Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean islands, and in all these places, as in Southwest Asia, they form the major genetic element in the local populations. In a dark-skinned and finer-boned form they are also found as the major population element in Pakistan and northern India ... The Mediterranean race, then, is indigenous to, and the principal element in, the Southwest Asia, and the greatest concentration of a highly evolved Mediterranean type falls among two of the most ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, notably the Arabs and the Jews (Although it may please neither party, this is the truth.). The Mediterraneans occupy the center of the stage; their areas of greatest concentration are precisely those where civilization is the oldest. This is to be expected, since it was they who produced it and it, in a sense, that produced them.", Carleton Coon, the Story of the Middle East, 1958, pp. 154–157
  23. ^ The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 54. (Jan. - Jun., 1924), p. 30.
  24. ^ The African Origin of the Grecian Civilization, Journal of Negro History, 1917, pp. 334–344
  25. ^ Wells, H.G. The Outline of History New York:1920 Doubleday & Co. Volume I Chapter XI "The Races of Mankind" Pages 131–144 See Pages 98, 137, and 139
  26. ^ Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, "Dans le Bassin méditerranéen, la ressemblance entre tous les peuples vivant des deux côtés de la mer est remarquable" ("In the Mediterranean Basin, the similarity between all peoples living on both sides of the sea is great"), Evolution biologique, évolution culturelle (L'evoluzione della cultura), Odile Jacob, 2005, p. 119
  27. ^ Jean-Michel Dugoujon, "Les populations du pourtour méditerranéen forment une entité anthropologique de loin plus cohérente que celles proposées par les découpages entre pays ou entre continents." ("The people around the mediterranean sea form an anthropological entity much more coherent than those proposed by the divisions between countries and between continents."), Diversité des allotypes des immunoglobulines d’une population berbère de la vallée de Tacheddirt, Dugoujon, 2005
  28. ^ Eleven populations around the Mediterranean basin were analysed by Tomas et al. 2008 (Catanzaro, Cosenza, Reggio di Calabria, Sicily from the South of Italy; Valencia, Ibiza and Majorca from the East of Spain; Tunisia; Morocco; Turkey and Iraq and the genetic distance between them was very low (except for Moroccans). Tunisians and Middle Eastern populations did not show a significant level of differentiation with northern populations. The conclusion was :"Tunisians did not show a significant level of differentiation with northern populations as mentioned by others. (...) The genetic distance between populations in the Middle East and the western part of the Mediterranean area was very low, most likely reflecting the effect of the Neolithic Wave and recent migration events. Only the Moroccan population showed a significant genetic distance from the remaining Mediterranean populations including populations that are geographically close to it, showing the importance of the Strait of Gibraltar as a geographic barrier and supporting the idea of a low impact of the Neolithic demic diffusion and more recent migrations in North-West Africa", X-chromosome SNP analyses in 11 human Mediterranean populations show a high overall genetic homogeneity except in North-west Africans (Moroccans), Tomas et al. 2008
  30. ^ Nida, Eugene Albert (1954). Customs and Cultures. Pasadena. 
  31. ^ Rhind, William (1851). Second-Class Book of Physical Geography. Edinburgh. 
  32. ^ Carleton S. Coon on the Mediterranean Race – from C.S. Coon, Caravan : the Story of the Middle East, 1958, pp. 154–157
  33. ^
  34. ^ Who Am I: Regions Overview
  35. ^ Genographic Project – Geno 2.0—A Revolutionary Breakthrough, National Geographic Society
  36. ^ Who Am I: Reference Populations Overview


  • Giuseppe Sergi. The Mediterranean Race: a Study of the Origins of European Peoples. London: Walter Scott.

External links[edit]