Johann Friedrich Blumenbach named five human types in the late 1700s. The term Caucasian is drawn from the Caucasus mountain range which is on the border of Europe and Asia. He found that the people who looked like him were the most beautiful, especially Georgian women.
Scientists weren’t the first to divide humanity along racial – and and racist – lines. But for hundreds of years, racial scientists claimed to provide proof for those racist hierarchies – and some still do.
Resources for this episode:
Fatal Invention, by Dorothy Roberts
The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter