Peoples of the Caucasus
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Peoples_of_the_Caucasus".

For the term "Caucasian" referring to all white people, see Caucasian race.
Ethno-Linguistic groups in the Caucasus region
Ethno-Linguistic groups in the Caucasus region
The village of Tindi, in Dagestan, in the late 1890s. The photograph was taken by M. de Déchy
The village of Tindi, in Dagestan, in the late 1890s. The photograph was taken by M. de Déchy

This article deals with the various ethnic groups inhabiting the Caucasus region. There are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region.[1]

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Peoples speaking Caucasian languages

Peoples of Caucasus that speak languages that belong to the Caucasian language family are divided into two groups — North Caucasian and South Caucasian.

North Caucasian peoples:

South Caucasian peoples:

The largest peoples of the Caucasian language family are Georgians (4,600,000), Chechens (800,000), and Avars (500,000). Georgians are only Caucasian people that have their own independent state — Georgia, while some other of those peoples possess their republics within the Russian Federation: Adyghe (Adygea), Cherkess (Karachay-Cherkessia), Kabardins (Kabardino-Balkaria), Ingush (Ingushetia), Chechens (Chechnya), while Northeast Caucasian peoples mostly live in Dagestan. Abkhazians live in Abkhazia, which is de facto independent, but de jure is autonomous republic within Georgia.

Chechens in the 19th century

Circassian warrior

Pyotr Bagration, a famous Russian–Georgian general

Lak girl (1883 photograph)

Chechen children in Pankisi

Dagestani couple in traditional dress (circa 1907 to 1915)

Peoples speaking Indo-European languages

Peoples of Caucasus that speak languages that belong to the Indo-European language family.

Armenians number 3,215,800 in their native Armenia, though approximately 8 million live outside the republic, forming the Armenian diaspora. Elsewhere in the region, they reside in Nagorno-Karabakh (which is de facto independent, but de jure is part of Azerbaijan), Georgia (primarily Samtskhe-Javakheti, Adjara, and Abkhazia), and the Russian North Caucasus. The Ossetians live in North Ossetia-Alania (autonomous republic within Russia) and in South Ossetia, which is de facto independent, but de jure is part of Georgia. The Yazidi Kurds reside in the western areas of Armenia, mostly in the Aragatsotn marz. An autonomous Kurdish region was created in 1923 in Soviet Azerbaijan but was later abolished in 1929. Pontic Greeks reside in Armenia (Lori, especially in Alaverdi) and Georgia (Kvemo Kartli, Adjara, and Abkhazia). Russians mostly live in the Russian North Caucasus and their largest concentration is in Stavropol Krai, Krasnodar Krai, and in Adygea.

Armenian girls

Armenian folk musicians

Armenian children at the UN Cup Chess Tournament in 2005

An Armenian Apostolic clergyman

A group of Russian children on a hillside

Yazidi Kurds

A Greek (Pontian) man in traditional clothes from Trebizond

Ossetian girl (1883 photograph)

Peoples speaking Altaic languages

Main article: Altaic peoples

Peoples of Caucasus that speak languages that belong to the Altaic language family.

The largest of the Altaic-speaking peoples on Caucasus are Azeris (8,700,000), who live primarily in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Dagestan and Armenia (before 1991). Other Altaic-speakers live in their autonomous republics within Russian Federation: Karachays (Karachay-Cherkessia), Balkars (Kabardino-Balkaria), Kalmyks (Kalmykia), while Kumyks and Nogais live in Dagestan.

Performing Azeri musicians

An Azeri woman from Baku (19th century)

Karachay patriarchs in the 19th century

Kalmyks

Connection to Caucasian race

The indigenous peoples of Caucasus, and the geographic location of it — being on the border of Europe and Mideast — had directly lent their name to the designation of the white race as "Caucasian".

The famed exemplary Georgian skull Blumenbach discovered in 1795 to hypothesize origination of Europeans from the Caucasus.
The famed exemplary Georgian skull Blumenbach discovered in 1795 to hypothesize origination of Europeans from the Caucasus.

The term "Caucasian" originated as one of the racial categories developed in the 19th century by people studying craniology. It was derived from the region of the Caucasus mountains[2]. The 18th century German philosopher Christoph Meiners first named the concept of the Caucasian race[3], but the term was more widely popularized in the 19th century under the name "Varietas Caucasia" by the German scientist and naturalist, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) who "borrowed the name Caucasian" from Meiners.[2] Blumenbach based the classification of the Caucasian race primarily on skull features, which Blumenbach claimed were optimized by the Caucasian peoples,[4] particularly a single skull from the Caucasia which resembled German skulls.[5] It was from this similarity that he conjectured Europeans having arisen in the Caucasia.[5] Blumenbach wrote about the "primeval"[3] Caucasian race which he believed was "the oldest race of man"[3] and the "first variety of humankind"[3].

Caucasian variety — I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; and because all physiological reasons converge to this, that in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the autochthones (birth place) of mankind[6]

In 1915, French diplomat and man of letters Arthur de Gobineau popularized ideas about race: "I must say, once and for all, that I understand by white men the members of those races which are also called Caucasian[7]… [these] white races… had their first settlement in the Caucasus."[7]

The Caucasus was historically an area of fascination for Europeans. Myths of the Caucasus featured Prometheus and Jason and the Argonauts.[8] Greek mythology considered women from the Caucasus to have magical powers.[3], such as Medea of Jason and the Argonauts fame. In Greek mythology, this area was thought of as a kind of hell since Zeus imprisoned many Titans who opposed him (e.g. Prometheus) there. In this sense, these Titans were banished outside the civilized world to an area inhabited by Colchians. The Greeks considered them barbaric.[9]

References

  • Mile Nedeljković, Leksikon naroda sveta, Belgrade, 2001.

Notes

  1. ^ Caucasian peoples, Encyclopædia Britannica
  2. ^ a b Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, University of Pennsylvania
  3. ^ a b c d e Painter, Nell Irvin. Yale University. "Why White People are Called Caucasian?" 2003. September 27, 2007. [1]
  4. ^ Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, The anthropological treatises of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, translated by Thomas Bendyshe. 1865. November 2, 2006. [2]dead link – history
  5. ^ a b Gossett, Thomas F. New Edition Race The History of an Idea in America, New York:Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-19-509778-5 p. 38
  6. ^ Blumenbach , De generis humani varietate nativa (3rd ed. 1795), trans. Bendyshe (1865). Quoted e.g. in Arthur Keith, Blumenbach's Centenary, Man, Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (1940).
  7. ^ a b Gobineau, Arthur (1915). The Inequality of Human Races. Putnam. Retrieved on 2007-10-18.
  8. ^ Caucasus, Historical Notes [3]
  9. ^ (Ovid, Metamorphoses V 830-845)

See also
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