Scientists claim that the Ural race is an intermediate or mixed anthropological group of people that possesses the features of a Mongoloid and Caucasoid racial trunks. It is distributed in the Volga region and in Western Siberia. The article will discuss this anthropological group of people, how it was formed, how it differs from other races.
General information
The Ural race is endowed with intermediate sets of anthropological characters between the Mongoloid and Caucasoid races, as well as their combination.
This anthropological trunk includes peoples who live from the Yenisei to Fennoscandia: Mordovians, Chuvashs, Komi, Sami, Mansi, Mari, Nenets, Khanty, Nganasans, Selkuts, Kets, some groups of Bashkirs, Russians, Siberian Tatars, Altai.
Anthropological types of the Ural race are: subural, sublaponoid, laponoid, Ural.
Specific traits
The Ural race (pictured) is characterized by dark and dark blond straight hair, average hairline development, brown eyes, and a highly developed upper eyelid fold. Nose - moderately protruding middle, with a slightly concave back, its tip slightly raised. They have predominantly fair skin, with moderate pigmentation.
The face is relatively wide, but small, moderately flattened and low. Lips are not puffy, usually of medium thickness.
Growth is average and below average.
As you can see, in appearance the Ural race has some similarities with the laponoid group, but it is larger and characterized by Mongoloid features. That is why in some classifications anthropologists combine them into one race.
Formation History: Hypotheses
There are three hypotheses about the origin of the Ural race. According to the first hypothesis, the race was formed as a result of the mixing of the Mongoloid and Caucasoid groups in the territory where they interacted for a long time. In support of this version, the location of the peoples that belong to the Ural race between the ranges of the Caucasoid and Mongoloid races testifies. In this case, the growth of Caucasoid features to the west, and accordingly of the Mongoloid features, to the east.
According to the second hypothesis, the population of the Ural race inherited features of the most ancient anthropological type, which existed even before the division of people into Mongoloid and Caucasoid anthropological trunks. Confirmation of this hypothesis is a peculiar and unique combination of both Caucasoid and Mongoloid characters, as well as the residence of some peoples classified as the Ural race outside the range. For example, the Scandinavian Sami. This hypothesis makes the Urals an ancestral home of Europeans and Mongoloids at the same time.
The third hypothesis suggests that the formation of the intermediate anthropogenic trunk took place in certain environmental conditions and had an adaptive character. Confirmation of the hypothesis is a wide variety of peoples that are members of the Ural race.
Until now, the problem of antiquity, as well as the history of the formation of this race in anthropology, has been debatable. According to experts, the earliest anthropological finds in the Urals date back to the Neolithic and they belong to the Ural anthropological race.
In other words, it formed about 50 thousand years BC. Its origin is still unclear.
Place of formation
The area of formation and the most ancient distribution of the Ural race covered significant territories of the forest area of Eurasia from the Baltic to the Novosibirsk Ob. This means that this race is a truly isolated anthropological group, which can be in the same system, in essence, with the Mongoloids and Caucasians.
Instead of a conclusion
When isolating races of large, small, subraces, anthropological types, anthropologists are guided by the principle of the value and significance of racial attributes, depending on the period of formation of the racial trunk and the territory in which this attribute is characteristic of people.
The later the anthropogenic character formed, the more unsuitable it is for distinguishing between large races. They are distinguished primarily by the structural features of the head and the degree of pigmentation of the skin, that is, by the signs of appearance that have been shared by people from ancient times.
In addition, the antiquity of a racial attribute is determined by the breadth of its distribution. If it is determined by many peoples and on a vast territory, this indicates an ancient formation. If the signs change in a complex way, this also indicates their belonging to a large race.
In 1951, N. N. Cheboksarov, anthropologist, classified racial types and distinguished 3 large races: equatorial, Caucasoid, and Asian-American. The Ural race, according to its classification, is a small race, its territorial distribution: Trans-Urals, Urals, part of Western Siberia. This testifies to the peculiarities of the history of the Urals and the antiquity of these places.