The Mediterranean race (also Mediterranid race) is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on the now-disproven theory of biological race. According to writers of the late 19th to mid-20th centuries it was a sub-race of the Caucasian race. In various definitions it was said to be prevalent in the Mediterranean Basin and areas near the Mediterranean and Black Sea, especially in Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, North Africa, most of West Asia, the Middle East or Near East; western Central Asia, parts of South Asia, and parts of the Horn of Africa. To a lesser extent, certain populations of people in Ireland and western parts of Great Britain, despite living far from the Mediterranean, were thought to have some minority Mediterranean elements in their population, such as Wales and Cornwall.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."The Races of Europe by Carleton Stevens Coon. From Chapter X: The British Isles: "The Neolithic economy was probably first brought to Britain by the bearers of the Windmill Hill culture from the Continent, and they, in turn, were members of the group which had invaded western Europe from North Africa by way of Gibraltar. The racial type to which these Windmill Hill people presumably belonged was a small Mediterranean, but there is little or no direct skeletal evidence from England to confirm this. By far the most important Neolithic movement into Great Britain, and into Ireland as well, came by sea from the eastern Mediterranean lands, using Spain as a halting point on the way. It was this invasion which passed up the Irish Channel to western and northern Scotland, and around to Denmark and Sweden. The settlers who came by sea were the Megalithic people, and belonged to a clearly differentiated variety of tall, extremely long-headed Mediterranean, which was presumably for the most part brunet. This racial group furnished both Great Britain and Ireland, which consisted, before their arrival, of nearly empty land, with a numerous and civilized population which has left many descendants today."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.Anne Maxwell. Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics, 1870–1940. Paperback edition. Sussex Academic Press, 2010. P. 150."Our area, from Morocco to Afghanistan, is the homeland and cradle of the Mediterranean race. Mediterraneans are also found 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, 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 centre 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 Irish people with black hair and dark complexions were said to be the descendants of Spanish sailors shipwrecked during the Spanish Armada of 1588 and were often referred to as "Black Irish" particularly in the United States.
Carleton S. Coon characterized the subgroup as having shorter or medium (not tall) stature, a long (dolichocephalic) or moderate (mesocephalic) skull, a narrow and often slightly aquiline nose, the prevalence of dark hair and eyes,C.S. Coon, Caravan : the Story of the Middle East, 1958, pp. 154-157 and frequently darker skin, ranging from cream to tan or dark brown skin tone; olive complexion being especially common and epitomizing the supposed Mediterranean race.The Races of Europe by Carlton Stevens Coon.
Racial theories Early debates Racial 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. The Greek and Roman people considered the Germanic and some Celtic peoples to be wild, red haired barbarians. Aristotle contended that the Greeks were an ideal people because they possessed a medium skin tone, in contrast to pale northerners. By the 19th century, long-standing cultural and religious differences between Protestant northwestern Europe and the Catholic south were being reinterpreted in racial terms.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
19th century In the 19th 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 (Xanthochroic, Mongoloid, Australioid and Negroid). The Xanthochroic race were the "fair whites" of north and central Europe. According to Huxley,
By the late 19th century, Huxley's Xanthochroi group had been redefined as the "Nordic" race, whereas his Melanochroi became the Mediterranean race. As such, Huxley's Melanochroi eventually also comprised various other dark Caucasoid populations, including the Hamites (e.g. Berbers, Somalis, northern Sudanese, ancient Egyptians) and Moors.
William Z. Ripley's The Races of Europe (1899) created a tripartite model, which was later popularised by Madison Grant. It divided Europeans into three main subcategories: Teutonic, Alpine and Mediterranean.William Z. Ripley, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1899). Ripley noted that although the European Caucasoid populations largely spoke Indo-European languages, the oldest extant language in Europe was Basque. He also acknowledged the existence of non-European Caucasoids, including various populations that did not speak Indo-European or Indo-Iranian languages, such as Hamito-Semitic and Turkish groups.
+ European racial types according to RipleyRipley (1899), The Races of Europe, p. 121; Synonyms column shortened 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 Narrow, slightly aquilline Ibero-Insular, Atlanto-Mediterranean (Deniker)
20th century
During the 20th century, white supremacists and Nordicists in Europe and the United States promoted the merits of the Nordic race as the most "advanced" of all the human population groups, designating them as the "master race". Southern/Eastern Europeans were deemed to be inferior, an argument that dated back to Arthur de Gobineau's claims that racial mixing was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire.See . 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) 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 civilisation in the south.
Giuseppe Sergi's much-debated book The Mediterranean Race (1901) argued that the Mediterranean race had likely originated from a common ancestral stock that evolved in the Sahara region or the Eastern part of Africa, in the region of the great lakes, near the sources of the Nile, including Somalia, and which later spread from there to populate North Africa, and the circum-Mediterranean region.Giuseppe Sergi, The Mediterranean Race: A Study of the Origin of European Peoples (BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008), pp. 42–43. 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."Giuseppe Sergi, The Mediterranean Race: A Study of the Origin of European Peoples (BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008), p. 250. He explained this 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."Giuseppe Sergi, The Mediterranean Race: A Study of the Origin of European Peoples (Forgotten Books, 2018), p. 36.