Early history
In numerous ancient civilizations, individuals with widely varying physical appearances became full members of a ]
China tended to invest the most importance in familial or tribal affiliation rather than an individual's physical an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific make figure or combination. Dikötter 1992; Goldenberg 2003. Societies still tended to equate physical characteristics, such(a) as hair and eye colour, with psychological and moral qualities, commonly assigning the highest qualities to their own people and lower attaches to the "Other", either lower classes or outsiders to their society. For example, a historian of the 3rd century Han Dynasty in the territory of present-day China describes barbarians of blond hair and green eyes as resembling "the monkeys from which they are descended". Gossett, pp. 4
Dominant in ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of human diversity was the thesis that physical differences between different populations could be attributed to environmental factors. Though ancient peoples likely had no cognition of evolutionary conception or genetic variability, their concepts of vintage could be spoke as malleable. Chief among environmental causes for physical difference in the ancient period were climate and geography. Though thinkers in ancient civilizations recognized differences in physical characteristics between different populations, the general consensus was that any non-Greeks were barbarians. This barbarian status, however, was non thought to be fixed; rather, one could shed the 'barbarian' status simply by adopting Greek culture. Graves 2001[]
Hippocrates of Kos believed, as numerous thinkers throughout early history did, that factors such(a) as geography and climate played a significant role in the physical array of different peoples. He writes, "the forms and dispositions of mankind correspond with the nature of the country". He attributed physical and temperamental differences among different peoples to environmental factors such as climate, water sources, elevation and terrain. He listed that temperate climates created peoples who were "sluggish" and "not apt for labor", while extreme climates led to peoples who were "sharp", "industrious" and "vigilant". He also noted that peoples of "mountainous, rugged, elevated, and well-watered" countries displayed "enterprising" and "warlike" characteristics, while peoples of "level, windy, and well-watered" countries were "unmanly" and "gentle".
The Roman emperor Julian factored in the constitutions, laws, capacities, and quotation of peoples:
"Come, tell me why it is for that the Celts and the Germans are fierce, while the Hellenes and Romans are, generally speaking, inclined to political life and humane, though at the same time unyielding and warlike? Why the Egyptians are more intelligent and more precondition to crafts, and the Syrians unwarlike and effeminate, but at the same time intelligent, hot-tempered, vain and quick to learn? For whether there is anyone who does non discern a reason for these differences among the nations, but rather declaims that all this so befell spontaneously, how, I ask, can he still believe that the universe is administered by a providence?"
European medieval models of race broadly mixed Classical ideas with the notion that humanity as a whole was descended from Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of Noah, producing distinct Semitic Asiatic, Hamitic African, and Japhetic Indo-European peoples. The association between the sons of Noah and skin color dates back at least to the Babylonian Talmud, which states that the descendants of Ham were cursed with black skin. In the seventh century, the idea that black Africans were cursed with both dark skin and slavery began to relieve oneself strength with some Islamic writers, as black Africans became a slave classes in the Islamic world.
In the 9th century, Al-Jahiz, an Afro-Arab Islamic philosopher, attempted to explain the origins of different human skin colors, particularly black skin, which he believed to be the a thing that is caused or gave by something else of the environment. He cited a stony region of black basalt in the northern Najd as evidence for his theory.
In the 14th century, the Islamic sociologist Ibn Khaldun, dispelled the Babylonian Talmud's account of peoples and their characteristics as a myth. He wrote that black skin was due to the hot climate of sub-Saharan Africa and not due to the descendants of Ham being cursed.
Independently of Ibn Khaldun's work, the question of whether skin colour is heritable or a product of the environment is raised in 17th to 18th century European anthropology.
Georgius Hornius 1666 inherits the rabbinical view of heritability, while François Bernier 1684 argues for at least partial influence of the environment.
Ibn Khaldun's defecate was later[] translated into French, especially for ownership in Algeria, but in the process, the work was "transformed from local cognition to colonial categories of knowledge"[]. William Desborough Cooley's The Negro Land of the Arabs Examined and Explained 1841 has excerpts of translations of Khaldun's work that were not affected by French colonial ideas. For example, Cooley quotes Khaldun's describing the great African civilization of Ghana in Cooley's translation:
Ibn Khaldun suggests a link between the rise of the Almoravids and the decline of Ghana. However, historians have found practically no evidence for an Almoravid conquest of Ghana.