Caucasian most advanced race?

Question

Early evolutionists believed and taught that the ******* race was the least advanced, followed by the mongoloid race, followed by the caucasion (the most advanced). Was there any scientific evidence for this?

Notes:
1. This question does NOT violate Community Guidelines.
2. The historical record substantiates that this WAS the position of early evolutionists.

I am not talking about their civilizations; I am takling about their development in terms of evolution - how far they were from their common primitive ape-like ancestor

Answer 1

Not that would live up to current standards of evidence. Most of the evidence cited by early scholars (not limited to evolutionists) to substantiate their claims of "white" superiority tended to be biased, especially as most of these scholars were operating with the prior assumption or belief that the white "race" was inherently superior. An examination of the historical and social context of the time period when a great number of these theories were produced is a useful undertaking - basically the 19th Century through the early 20th Century. This was a period of growing imperialism throughout Europe - there was a need to defend the practice of colonialism and much of this defense came in the form of demonstrating the "superiority" of Europeans over other groups. The superiority of some European cultures over others was also a fairly frequent assertion, often going hand-in-hand with growing nationalism and the unification of previously disparate territories that shared language or other cultural features - typically the notion that northern Europeans were superior to southern Europeans.
Unfortunately, the standards used to quantify such superiority were very relative and were based upon measuring other groups' ability to live up to tests of "civilization" or "advancement" or "intelligent" in the home culture of the researcher. In essence, what might be better described as mere differences in cultural patterns came to be described instead as "superiority/inferiority." As a perhaps over-simplified example, a British scholar might have viewed an African as "inferior" because the African did not wear the same clothing, did not have the same manners, and did not practice the same religion as himself.
There were also various tests carried out around this time, including early forms of IQ tests. The problem with such tests is that they sometimes (even today) tend to measure not intelligence so much as cultural fluency. That is, questions are phrased or use concepts in such a way that they reflect the standard culture of the author(s) of the test and someone who is unfamiliar with that same culture is at a disadvantage in understanding and adequately responding to such questions. An example often cited comes from an IQ test administered to US soldiers during WWI - a multiple choice question asking "Crisco is a: patent medicine, disinfectant, toothpaste, food product." If one was not a resident of the US for a particularly long time or simply did not purchase the product Crisco, then correctly identifying what it is would be unlikely. A similar test given to recent immigrants to the US around the same time period resulted in an assumption that recent immigrants were less intelligent than "average" Americans, when the test in many ways simply indicated the extent to which a person was familiar with American culture.
There is also the problem of a priori assignment of individuals or population groups to already established racial categories without first having established the existence or supportability of such categories. Race tends to be a folk taxonomy more than a scientific taxonomy, though the debate on the existence of races as a biological reality continues.
Attempts were also made to show that craniometry and other skeletal measurements showed that certain populations (primarily those that would be identified as black or "*****" in the parlance of the time) were closer to apes than were whites. Phrenology, a related concept, attempted to link various physical features to personality traits, such as tendency to criminal behavior, intellectual ability, etc. The reliability of the measurements is in question, and the association between physical features (phenotype) and personality or character traits is no longer accepted.

Answer 2

Non-caucasion races probably were less advanced at that time. The racism you feared your question would incite is most likely the main reason.
Assuming these scholars used education as a main factor in advancement, you have to consider that very few non-caucasions were allowed an education.
I would assume the scientific evidence early evolutionists used for their studies was to look at their peers. You would not have found many non-caucasion scientists back then.
Isolation probably had a lot to do with it too. Many nations were fairly isolated back then (far east nations for instance).
There may have been studies on evolution that most of the world never heard about.

The hard truth is that those early evolutionists may have been correct, but their racism and short-sightedness was the main cause.

Answer 3

All races are the same species. The early evolutions had the erroneous assumption that all change was an improvement, when it's merely a local adaptation.
My example is: approximately 3,000 years ago, a mutation occured among Scandinavian people that allowed them to digest lactose (milk) specifically they make an enzyme called lactase. [Most people are lactose intolerant.]
This can be viewed as either an improvement (ability to exploit a new food source) or a step down as they can't make vitamin D as efficiently from the sun.
How do we know if everything is an advancement? How do we know all changes among any people have stopped? Changes should not be viewed as better or worse but only as adaptation to local conditions.
Another example is people who wear glasses.
There were two stone age men. One was a great hunter and was able to keep his tribe fed. The women loved to associate with him as a status symbol as having his children gave them status also.
There was also one who was nearsighted so he was a lousy hunter. He did however make beautiful arrowheads that didn't break at the tips. He stayed home making arrowheads and traded them for a share of the meat. This gave him status and he also had many children.
Which one was more 'evolved'? That question can't be answered.

Answer 4

Whites are exactly the same distance as every other human from the common ancestor of all of us. It is surprisingly short for humans and we have much less genetic diversity than most mammals. We were subjected to cold climates and that stress might have pushed evolution a little faster but I doubt it could be measured and gene flow would have spread any significant advantages to all other populations. The most centralized population would probably have an advantage because they would get more input from all races. We aren't the smartest. We aren't the fastest. We were lucky recently when we inherited guns, germs and steel as stated by Jarrod Diamond that allowed Europeans to colonize the world. A thousand years ago, Europeans were devastated in combat with Asians when the Mongols attacked so it would be kind of silly to assume any significant evolutionary advantage of whites.

Answer 5

Trust me, this type of thinking occurred during the dark ages of evolution from 1900-1940s. Most scientists and politicians had turned their backs on Darwin and started making claims about populations that were unfounded and self-serving. From 1950s onwards, Darwinian style evolution was reestablished, which was much more politically correct as well as being the regular type of correct.

The non-darwinian evolutionary beliefs were pseudoscientific. Many scientists tried to show that humans evolved in Asia rather than Africa, since Africa was considered so backwards. That is why many scientists were so willing to play right into the Piltdown hoax.

I will emphasize that Darwin never stated that any race had any sort of superiority, though he did mention certain traits that were adaptive (e.g. long arms in people living in valleys, short arms for those living on mountains).

Answer 6

No, there was no evidence for it, or, rather, they made up some evidence, and then mis-interpreted other evidence to support their assumption of white superiority.

Read Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man for details.

At first, for instance, they looked for signs of "more advanced" types, and found them prevalent in whites, not in other races. Then they found that neotony (stretching out of immature stages) explained a lot about human evolution.

Then they suddenly started finding evidence that white are more physically immature, and other races less so -- the opposite of what they'd found before.

You can prove a lot of absurd conclusions by cherry-picking your evidence.

Most whites back then were racist, which influenced their science. Now that we know more and are a bit more civilized (well, most of us are), we realize that race isn't even an intelligible concept that falls apart completely as soon as you look at it.

Interesting coincidence, isn't it? No matter what (irrelevant) criteria they used, their own race always turned out to be superior.

I remember seeing a documentary about that African-American fighter around the turn of the previous century (the one James Earl Jones played in "The Great White Hope") -- a jounralist pointed out his obvious inferiority to his white opponenet, because the white was hairier than he was.

hee!

If you're determined to be racist, you can find or produce the evidence. Doesn't make it true.

Answer 7

The only reason early white anthropologists believed this is that the Asian races had already unified their empires (with the exception of Genghis and Kublai, late starters in the empire game) is that the Caucasians were really the only people bent on bringing the other races under their empirical banner. By and large, other cultures stuck to dominating their own people and geographic ares. So, the whites of the day assumed that other races weren't as 'advanced' since they had not rode to our gates and overrun us yet.

Answer 8

Don't forget scholar that the early evolutionists you refer to were caucasians!

They had evidence based on their findings or of people they believed to be scholars in those days.

Here they believed christians, that anything colored is bad and dirty, and red is evil, and they did not have the advancement they have today.

Chinese invented gunpowder and smelting, Mayans the earliest calander, Natives corn maize and Penicillan.

Perhaps they invented the telescope, but star gazing had already been mapped thouroughly by other cultures?

So you figure it out if they scammed other cultures to create offshoots of what had already been discovered?

Answer 9

Caucasian is a pretty broad catergory I am of mixed ancestry [asian/european/african-all three groups that you mention] and am mostly mistaken for being mediterranean or syrian,other relatives are mistaken for anglo saxon,so really thats a very blurry line your drawing in the term 'caucasian'.I dont even think there is a nice neat linear line you can follow from ape to 'caucasians' when 'caucasians' vary so enormously physically from finland to Greece.

Eurasia itself was made up of multiple groups/people who contributed to the world we have now.It depends what aspects of our lives you're talking about ?have our values advanced,our technology advanced?what exactly?

So far as advancements in technology,science and finance they can rarely be determined by race but perhaps by country.I would assume Americans were clearly advancing those fields because its an area thats vital to them.Whereas other groups dont find it vital to their existence.

Answer 10

In my opinion there is no such thing as race, a sociological system that we have invented to divide people into groups. People from different places on the earth look different because of the way they live and the way their ancestors have lived before them. There is no biological difference between people in Asia, Africa or Europe. If you travel from South Africa up to Finland you will see that there is no point that people change from dark brown to light brown therefore there is no black and white, people are no black or white.
Therefore your question in my opinion is irrelevant.