Greeks, Romans, In Addition To Races

Sometimes I await at around "other" Stack Exchanges such equally math, history, together with linguistics. An hr ago, I was stunned past times around incredible answers to a rather uncomplicated query well-nigh the history:

What did the Romans telephone telephone dark people (sub-Saharan)?

What did the Romans telephone telephone dark people (sub-Saharan)? In classic Latin too equally vulgar latin together with slang. That is, what nosotros today telephone telephone PoC, blacks, n-word etc, depending on context.

Senile Purdue mathematician Alexandre Eremenko has demonstrated how the political correctness tin brand one's encephalon absolutely unusable.




His answer:

In my before answers on like questions,

What are around examples of racism inward pre-modern literature?
How did people categorize each other inward the nub ages, how did racism work?

I expressed the catch that neither Romans nor Greeks nor Jews (of the fourth dimension when the Bible was written) had words to designate races. Race is a modern invention. I challenged anyone to abide by a counterexample. No counterexample was e'er shown to me. People were described past times their province of origin, religion, ethnicity, but non past times race. From the ancient literature nosotros cannot fifty-fifty brand a decision of the peel colouring of diverse personages. Was the Queen of Sheba who visited Solomon black? How well-nigh personages of Heliodorus's Aethyopica? Who of them was black?

Besides Scipio Africanus, at that topographic point was an emperor Gaius Pescennius Niger Iustus, a 100% Italian, of a noble Roman family. Of course of report inward Latin "niger" way "black". But this had naught to practise alongside race.

Wow, together with hence this thinker "believes" that ancient Greeks together with Romans couldn't recognize races, something that every 2-year-old minor fry from any ethnic grouping together with any historical epoch may demonstrably do. What is his evidence? He doesn't know the race of several historical figures; together with he tin abide by a white whose advert is Black (Shirley Temple Black would live on a Czech's example). Impressive evidence, indeed. ;-)




Eremenko's thought well-nigh the race-free Roman Empire is clearly consummate nonsense. All the ancient nations were intensely aware of races together with they greatly cared well-nigh races – together with they could racially recognize smaller portions of the mankind. Let me simply re-create my reply here:

Ancient Romans used the discussion Aethiops/Aethiopem which was derived from Greek Αἰθίοψ ‎(Aithíops).

But the other reply isn't right when it says that the discussion Aithiops had no important except for the terra firma of "Ethiopia". Instead, the discussion is a combination created from αἴθω ‎(aíthō, “burn”) + ὤψ ‎(ṓps, “face”).



Click for to a greater extent than pictures of famous dark Romans

So the Greco-Roman discussion for the blacks was basically a "burned face". The advert of "Ethiopia" was derived from "burned face". In the Greco-Roman world, "Ethiopia" was believed to include the whole non-Roman Africa. It was the universal discussion for that vaguely known usage of the world.

The thought that former nations didn't recognize races is absolutely preposterous from a historical viewpoint. On the contrary, it's simply the terminal xxx years when it became stylish for around people to deny races together with their importance. This denial has absolutely no precedent inward whatsoever historical epoch.

The master copy important of Aethiops was purely racial. This is demonstrated past times dozens of proverbs together with of import texts. For example, the Bible's Jeremiah 13:23

si mutare potest Aethiops pellen suam aut pardus...

which is currently translated equally

Can the Ethiopian modify his skin, or leopard its spots?

That's the modern translation despite the fact that the context makes it really clear that past times definition, "Aethiops" was someone defined past times having a nighttime skin. For thousands of years, "whitening the Aethiops" was considered the #1 idiom for "doing an impossible thing". One can't whiten a dark because blacks are defined past times their non existence white.

Well, at those former times, it was pretty much guaranteed that a soul coming from non-Roman Africa had dark skin. That's why the straightforward "logical" connectedness betwixt these 2 characteristics was basically right - to a greater extent than accurate than it is today. But they were aware of both together with for obvious reasons, the peel colouring is to a greater extent than of import for the empirical categorization of a human than his (hypothetical) province of origin.