Blumenbach was the originator of the unfortunate title “Caucasian”[[67]] to represent the typical European and the inhabitants of Eastern Asia and Northern Africa. He chose the name partly because the Caucasus produces the most beautiful race of men, and also on account of the fine Georgian skull in his collection.[[68]] It was unfortunate, since, as Ripley points out (1900, p. 436), nowhere else in Europe is found such a heterogeneity of physical types—the only one conspicuously missing being the fair-haired, blue-eyed European—and such a diversity of language, sixty-eight dialects being here jumbled together, and only one possessed of (possibly) Aryan origin. The name “Caucasian” has, therefore, not led to clarification of ideas in the complex problem of European ethnology. Keane (1899), however, supports its use, saying: “Those who object to Caucasic are apt to forget the vast field that has to be embraced by this single collective term.” “Caucasic, when properly understood ... cannot be dispensed with until a more suitable general term be discovered” (p. 447).
[67]. Anthrop. Treatises of Blumenbach, translated by T. Bendyshe, 1865, pp. 265, 269.
[68]. Waitz, 1863, p. 233, f.n., who adds: “without any intention on his part to express thereby an opinion as to the cradle of these peoples.” Keane, 1896, p. 226.
Other Classifications.
The next important classification was that of Cuvier, who derived mankind from the three sons of Noah, Japhet being regarded as the parent of the Caucasic, Shem of the Mongolian, and Ham of the African races. The divergence of type between the three brothers is not explained, except that the blackness of the descendants of Ham was attributed to the curse imposed by Noah on Canaan, the son of Ham (Gen. ix. 25).
Other classifications followed, the divisions varying from two species, white and black, Virey (1801), to the fifteen or sixteen of the Polygenists, Desmoulins (1825-6), and Bory de Saint-Vincent (1827), and the thirty-four of Haeckel (1873).
In America L. Agassiz, an uncompromising opponent of evolution, asserted, in 1845,[[69]] the unity of mankind as a species; but in 1850[[70]] we find him distribute eleven or twelve, in 1853 (in Nott and Gliddon) eight, human species in as many geological and botanical provinces. But this theory had been previously promulgated by Desmoulins (1826) and by Swainson (in 1835).[[71]] As Waitz rightly says: “They are completely in error who, adopting the views of Agassiz, assume as many original types of mankind as there are typically different peoples on the globe” (1864, p. 203).
[69]. Smith, 1850, Unity of the Human Races, p. 349.
[70]. Christian Examiner, Boston, July, 1850.
[71]. Treatise on the Geography and Classification of Animals.