CULTURAL COMPOSITION: HUMAN DIVERSITY

CULTURAL COMPOSITION: HUMAN DIVERSITY
Human diversity comes out through racial, cultural, linguistic and religious differences. India especially enjoys a great diversity in social and cultural features.

RACE Races are distinguished on the basis of inherited physical characteristics. However, it is rather difficult to draw a clear line between thi! '.races. Many consider skin colour to be a major differentiating factor but this is erroneous. There is a wide. difference in colour within each major racial group; the same skin colour is also found in more than one group. FatiaHeatures and hair-type are now taken to be the best guides tp race. Hair differ in colour and can be straight, wavy or crinkly. The shapes of the eyes, the nose and the overall shape of the head are also significant factors. A number of other invisible charaGter­istics, ,such as blood group, are also considered to define the three major racial groups-the Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid. The Australoid is a minor group; its members \ combine the facial.characteristics of the Negroid group with wavy hair.

Caucasoids include the European, the Semitic (Arabs and Jews) and the Indo-Aryan peoples. Skin colour varies from very fair, as in the north European peoples, to brown in India and south-west Asia. The hair is straight or wavy (or sometimes frizzy) and may be blonde, brown or black. The nose is generally long and narrow. Sub-groups include the Nordics, the Alpine people and the Mediterraneans.

Negroids chiefly inhabit Africa, south of the Sahara. They include many sub-groups such as the Nilotic and Hamitic peoples of eastern Africa, the Bantus of central and southern Africa and the various groups of West Africa. Other minor groups in this category are the Bushmen, the Pygmies and the Negrito peoples of India and South-East Asia, as well as the Melanesians of the South-West Pacific. These peoples have broad, rather flat noses and crinkly or frizzy hair. Their heads are longer than they are broad, and their skin colour ranges from black to brown or yellowish. Their stature too varies: if the Pygmies of central Africa are the shortest people in the world, the Negroes of Sudan and central Africa are among the tallest people of the world.

Mongoloids are inhabitants of northern, eastern and south-eastern Asia. They were the original inhabitants of the Americas. Their eye has a characteristic fold of
skin on the upper lid, and the hair is lank and straight. But there are many minor differences between sub-groups. Short stature cannot be con­sidered a common factor. The name comes from the Mongols of Central Asia. The group also in­cludes the Chinese, Japanese, Burmese, Thais, Viet­namese, Kampucheans and Malays, besides the Eskimos and similar people of northern Siberia such as the Yakuts and Samoyeds, the Red Indians of North Africa and the Amerindians of South America.
Racial characteristics probably developed under the influence of climatic factors, and it is absurd to attribute intellectual qualities on the basis of race.