Who Exactly is a “Caucasian?”

what do Sri Lanka Somalia Sweden and Syria all have in common well other than the fact that they all start with the letter S they all belong to the same race the Caucasian race everyone knows that or maybe not if for hundreds of years historians anthropologists and linguists have been trying to make sense of the world and the human species and this has led to the classification of humanity based on some immutable and more transient characteristics such as language religion culture and appearance thus after hundreds of years of observation study most Western scholars had come to the conclusion that a large segment of the human population could be divided by common origin mostly based off skull shape body type and facial features rather than skin color and the majority agreed on the grouping of a gargantuan segment of people including Ethiopians Europeans Middle Easterners most South Asians and even the Burnie is at one point but not Finn's our Hungarians as strange as that sounds as a population having at least a partial common ancestor origin dubbed the Caucasian race but the question is do these groups actually have anything to do with each other whatsoever and the short answer actually is yes does this mean that all of these groups are descended from Europeans no obviously not in the vernacular of using the term Caucasian solely to describe people of European descent is extremely strange to say the least considering modern Caucasians from the caucasus mountain regions such as armenians as Ceres and Georgians don't exactly look like the typical Caucasian leading to some anthropologists using the term kakizou instead or as a more general term although I prefer not to use either of these in a professional or personal setting for a variety of reasons which I'll get into later now it is true that there were many ideological motivations and pseudo scientific explanations behind the historical use of the proposed classifications of the human species but this is true for literally almost any other field of study when looked at through a certain lens and doesn't mean we should entirely discount the work of honest men whose research has compounded upon each other for generations giving a surprisingly accurate picture of the world even before genetic technology or the Internet so I'll probably explain in further detail in future videos but when it comes to measuring admixture from a genetic standpoint it's generally distinguishable between four main ancestral gene pools that being sub-saharan African which includes the niger congo peoples or the typical black African the African hunter-gatherer population says the koi pygmies and the Nilus horns Eastern Eurasian which includes North East and Southeast Asians and occasionally Native Americans as well southern Eurasian which includes the original inhabitants of South and Southeast Asia as well as those of Papua New Guinea Australia and Tasmania and lastly Western Eurasian principally the ancestors of Europeans Middle Easterners North Africans and the bulk of the Indian subcontinent although Eastern Eurasians and Africans may have the most obvious phenotypic similarities within their respective groupings phenotype is not always a good indicator in genetic classification as many Australian Aborigines and Melanesian peoples despite their surface level similarities to Africans are actually the most genetically disparate populations in the world similarly there is a large degree of diversity in terms of physical appearance among Western Eurasian populations due to the vast area they inhabit and one common misconception is that genetic similarity or distance is based off appearance which is where archaic descriptors kind of fall apart it makes much more sense when looking at different population groupings in terms of genetic clustering rather than a simple line in the sand due to the complexities of human migration intermixing and genetic drift but nevertheless as mentioned it's possible to distinguish these components and modern people groups today because of genetic technology now the term Caucasian was coined in American English vocabulary from claims from German anthropologists in the 18th century that the people of Europe the Middle East South Asia and North Africa originated in the caucasus mountain region which is where they claim the purest ancestry there found which is false on many levels so it's just bizarre to me that this term has persisted and spread to so many countries around the world although yes I acknowledge that this is simply the common vernacular that has evolved over the centuries and most people don't know the atom illogical origin behind the term so although the different races of humanity have split many thousands of years ago that doesn't mean there hasn't been intermixing between them during this time period although Western Eurasian and sub-saharan Africans diverged roughly sixty to a hundred thousand years ago those from the Middle East even those from in da Gama's communities with no recent African heritage are genetically closer to sub-saharan Africans than Europeans although the genetic gulf is comparatively still large considering eastern and western Eurasians only diverged around 20 to 25 thousand years ago and have had considerably more contact on the Eurasian landmass additionally one of the most glaring differences between these races is the inner breeding of archaic humanoid populations such as Neanderthal or Denis event or others who are actually genetically diverged from modern humans by almost a million years classification is quite difficult for some groups such as North Africans with the bulk of their gene pool originating in the Middle East although they've also had significant input from sub-saharan and European sources depending on the group which is why now we're going to jump into admixture rates there are large differences in admixture between different so-called Caucasian groups and I suppose we might as well start with the group most heavily associated with this label the Europeans who are actually not entirely racially pure depending on the method of measurement sub-saharan African admixture is distributed across southern Europeans at rates of around 1.5 to even four percent depending on the individual although this is mostly due to inter mixing with North Africans rather than direct mixture with sub-saharan x' Eastern Europeans similarly have a small degree of Eastern Eurasian admixture around one to three percent among most slavic populations although this is as high as eight to nine percent of on the finns and northern Russians who are an amalgamation of slavic and uralic peoples in the region as i recently discussed in a past video in the overseas diaspora the bulk of those of you pianned descent latinamerica have at least some Native American or African ancestry with the rates quite high in countries like Brazil where the average white Brazilian is over 20% non-european and ancestry although contrary to popular belief the percentage of US Americans with native heritage is actually quite small with a larger proportion having African ancestry likewise in Australia white Australians with Aboriginal heritage is fairly low due to a constant stream of European migrants since the 1800s although New Zealand definitely has a higher degree of miscegenation from the indigenous Maori population India is around 10 to 15 percent Central Asian or step into European a group including the Scythian stoke Aryans and original indo-iranians not exactly European but the group most closely related historically and genetically and many people including some Indians falsely believe that this is the only Western Eurasian gene flow into South Asia but even before the South Asians including Davidians at a large amount of Western Eurasian admixture from older migrants from the Middle East in the United States history it was indeed long debated whether Middle Easterners south asian people were caucasian and therefore eligible for citizenship and long story short the Supreme Court ruled that Middle Easterners Iranians Arabs and Turks qualified while Indians did not which has had a large impact on the general public and the u.s. census in which Middle Easterners North Africans and Central Asians are still considered white while those from the subcontinent are grouped together with East and Southeast Asians which is rather strange as although there is overlap and culture between these latter groups genetically speaking most South Asian groups are definitely closer to Western rather than Eastern Eurasians another hybrid realm would be that of the Turkic Central Asians and having much of the former Soviet Union parts of neighboring China Mongolia and Afghanistan whose genetic makeup varies considerably by group with the Turkmen having quite a large degree of original Western Asian DNA while the Kyrgyz generally have the largest Turkey Eastern Eurasian DNA yet despite this historically the entirety of these peoples were almost never considered Caucasian which seems similar to the situation of the uralic peoples mentioned earlier who were similarly not considered Caucasian due to the Eastern origin of the EUR a lien family now when it comes to the Horn of Africa a lot of people have a difficult time wrapping their heads around the fact that these horn Africans were historically considered to be a part of the Caucasian race however when you look at the genes as I discussed in my last video over the afro-asiatic world you find that the horn african groups are divided between Western Eurasian and sub-saharan African DNA with the O monocles being the most African and habesha being the least even having a slight majority Western Eurasian genome most Kushites such as the Oromo far beta or somali actually have about as much Western Eurasian and African DNA as Sudanese Arabs on average so the dichotomous racial classification between Caucasian and African especially doesn't add up in this region as the Horner's really are just their own thing and this makes sense as the majority of Somalis and other Horner's have always considered themselves to be very racially distinct from other Africans large numbers of Somalis on bantu slaves from further south the British census and Kenya in the early 20th century distinguish between what they called black Africans and Kushites and today just ask any Somali or Ethiopian about it themselves however what's the cutoff of Western Eurasian ancestry for inclusion into the Caucasian race ninety percent fifty percent thirty percent this black and white explanation of the world will never match the reality of the situation as humans have been intermixing for thousands of years and especially today when new migration and miscegenation is quickly changing the world believe it or not I actually really like this map here which shows the basal racial components of different areas of the planet in the present day and yeah it isn't the most detailed but sometimes that's a good thing and painting a quick and simplified snapshot of a situation even though it's much more complicated in reality gypsies Caucasian Arabs Caucasian Pakistanis Caucasian Jews occasion so Molly's Caucasian so congratulations on being a part of the Caucasian race as we all know people of the same race always get along 100% of the time so stop complaining about each other already so just who exactly is a caucasian it's a rather how dating question with a long and convoluted answer but don't worry I'll also be doing videos soon of the complicated genetic makeup of so called Asians sub-saharan Africans and other groups that are often simplified in Western vernacular and studies and keep in mind I'm not exempt from using these outdated vernacular in the past as well as it's simply the ease is a way to convey these ideas to an audience that isn't so well-versed on the semantics and intricacies so go ahead and let me know your thoughts on the matter of just who is a Caucasian and for today's poll let me know which other colloquial races you'd like to see me break down as well and as always this has been Mason thanks for watching everyone and I'll see you next time

Channel: Masaman

Views: 558,080

Keywords: masaman, Who exactly is a Caucasian, Caucasians, Caucasian, Western Eurasian, Eurasian, Caucasoid, Caucasian Race, Caucasoid Race, Western Eurasian DNA, Are you Caucasian, White Race, European Race, Race, Ethnicity, DNA, Genetics, Genetic drift, Ancestry, Who is Caucasian, Who is a Caucasian, Middle East, Europe, Central Asia, North Africa, North Africans, South Asians, Racial Ancestry, Asian Race, Ancestry dna, ancestry dna test, Maps, Map

Id: K40h_MiBFr8

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 27 2019