The Turanid race was a supposed sub-race of the

Caucasian race The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid, Europid, or Europoid) is an Historical race concepts, obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The ''Caucasian race'' was historically regarded as a biologi ...

in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races. The Turanid type was traditionally held to be most common among the populations native to

Central Asia Central Asia is a region of Asia consisting of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the "-stans" as all have names ending with the Persian language, Pers ...

. The name is taken from the obsolete phylum of

Turanian languages Turanian is an obsolete language-family proposal subsuming most of the languages of Eurasia not included in Indo-European, Semitic and Chinese. During the 19th century, inspired by the establishment of the Indo-European family, scholars looked ...

History

Anthropologists An anthropologist is a scientist engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropologists study aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms, values ...

of the 19th and early 20th century posited the existence of a Turanid racial type or "minor race" as a subtype of the Caucasoid race with

Mongoloid Mongoloid () is an obsolete racial grouping of various peoples indigenous to large parts of Asia, the Americas, and some regions in Europe and Oceania. The term is derived from a now-disproven theory of biological race. In the past, other terms ...

admixture, situated at the boundary of the distribution of the Mongoloid and Caucasoid races. The idea of a Turanid race came to play a role of some significance in

Pan-Turkism Pan-Turkism () or Turkism () is a political movement that emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals who lived in the Russian region of Kazan (Tatarstan), Caucasus Viceroyalty (1801–1917), South Caucasus (modern-day Azerbaijan) and th ...

Turanism Turanism, also known as Turanianism, pan-Turanism or pan-Turanianism, is a Pan-nationalism, pan-nationalist political movement built around Pseudoscience, pseudoscientific claims of mongoloid, biological and Altaic, linguistic connections betwee ...

in the late 19th to 20th century. A "Turkish race" was proposed as a Caucasoid subtype in European literature of the period. The most influential of these sources were (1756–1758) by Joseph de Guignes (1721–1800), and ''Sketches of Central Asia'' (1867) by Ármin Vámbéry, which was on the common origins of Turkic groups as belonging to one race, but subdivided according to physical traits and customs, and (1896) by Leon Cahun, which stressed the role of Turks in "carrying civilization to Europe", as a part of the greater "Turanid race" that included the Uralic and Altaic speaking peoples more generally. There was also an ideology of

Hungarian Turanism Hungarian Turanism () is a diverse turanism, Turanist phenomenon that revolves around an identification or association of History of Hungary, Hungarian history and Hungarians, people with the histories and peoples of History of Central Asia, Cent ...

most lively in the second half of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century.

References

{{Historical definitions of race Historical definitions of race Turanism

History

See also

References