What is the difference between mulatto and mestizo? Difference between mestizo and mulatto. Let us now consider the ways in which mestizos emerged

Almost everyone knows what races there are in the world: Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. But Creoles, mestizos, mulattoes - these names for people belonging to mixed interracial descendants often cause confusion among the common man. Not everyone can immediately and accurately say who is who, especially since there are ambiguous interpretations in scientific interpretations. In this article we will try to answer this rather complex question and finally figure out who is who.

Creoles

Initially, Creoles are the descendants of the colonizers of the territories of America, North and South. The Portuguese, Spaniards, and less often the French entered into marriages with the local Indian population. Creoles are the children from these marriages, as well as all their subsequent offspring. At different historical times, the Creole population of the continents had a great influence on various events, including in terms of winning independence from the colonists.

In Brazil

In this country, Creoles are the descendants of black slaves and the local population. With the advent of blacks on the American continent (they were brought here by Europeans), marriages of Indians with slaves also became common. By the way, the recent leader of Venezuela, Chavez, also had a similar Afro-Indian origin. Such offspring are also called “sambo”.

In Alaska

Here Creoles is the name of the descendants from mixed ties of Russians and representatives of the peoples of the north: Aleuts, Eskimos, and also Indians. As a variation of the name - sakhalyars. These are the descendants of Russians and Yakuts. Thus, the son of the famous Russian pioneer Semyon Dezhnev, Lyubim Dezhnev, was a born Sakhalyar (or Creole in the general sense), since his father was married to a Yakut woman, Abyakayada.

Mulattoes and Creoles

But a child born from a mixed marriage of representatives of the Negroid family is called a mulatto. Metis, Creole and Mulatto are quite different in appearance, so it’s quite difficult to confuse them. For example, the current American president is mulatto, as he was born from the marriage of a Kenyan man and a white-skinned American woman. Often mulattoes are those whose blood is divided in half. The origin of the word has two versions: Arabic and Spanish. That's what they called it in Spain (for example, a cross between a donkey and a mare).

In turn, those with 1/4 black blood were called quadroons, 1/8 - octorons. One of the most famous quadroons is Alexandre Dumas.

Métis

But the concept of mestizo, apparently, is the most general. IN modern society this is the name given to the descendants of any mixed marriages (including mulattoes and creoles). The word itself comes from the French root words and goes back to the Latin root. But in some countries and areas more local definitions of the term remain. In America, for example, mestizos are descendants of Caucasians and Indians. In Asia, this is the name of the descendants of Mongoloids and Europeans. In Brazil - children of the Portuguese and Tupi Indians (Mamelucos).

Melungeons

This is what they call in America the descendants of three Caucasoids and Americanoids (in North and South America). The origin of the term is from the French word for “mixture” (“melange”). There are currently more than 200 cultural groups melangenov.

Métis and mestizo are people who were born from mixed, interracial unions. The word itself is of Latin origin and means “to mix, mixed.” Sometimes this term is used to describe a mixture of breeds of some animals. But in this article we will talk about people. There are quite a lot of mestizos in all countries of the world. You have seen many of them on TV or in glossy magazines. These are, of course, celebrities. In many of them, different races and nationalities are mixed. So, let's begin.

First on our list of celebrities are the girls. Beautiful mestizos are universally considered standards feminine attractiveness. For example, the famous model Adriana Lima. She has Portuguese, Caribbean and French blood. This combination benefited the girl’s beauty.

Angelina Jolie has also been considered a beauty icon for many years. Her mother was a resident of Greece, and her father was English. The girl also has Czech and French-Canadian blood. But Milla Jovovich has Russian roots on her mother’s side. Her father is a Serb. By the way, many argue about the origin of Mila (full name - Militsa) - they say it has nothing to do with interracial. Mixed race or not, the actress is very attractive, and you can’t argue with that.

But Nicole Scherzinger can be called a real mestizo. The famous one was born in Honolulu, and among the girl’s ancestors were Filipinos, Hawaiians and even Russians. The same applies to singer Beyoncé. Born of a Creole mother and an African American father, she is a typical mixed race. This is not surprising, because in Beyoncé’s family, in addition to bright representatives of different races - her parents - there are French and Native Americans.

Cameron Diaz is another girl from a mixed marriage. On her mother's side, she has German-English roots, and Cameron's father, although born in the USA, was actually Cuban. In addition, she had Indians in her family. This is what can be said about the origin of this bright and beautiful mestizo, the photo of which you see in the article.

There are mestizos among star men. Take, for example, the famous actor Vin Diesel. Disputes about his origin still continue: according to rumors, his family included Italians, African Americans, Germans, Irish, and Dominicans. The man himself has repeatedly declared his involvement in different nationalities and cultures, although he did not say exactly which ones.

Women's favorite Orlando Bloom, originally from Canterbury, can also be called mixed race. His mother was British, his father South African. And handsome Ian Somerhalder is of English-French descent on his father and Indo-Irish on his mother.

The famous actor, star of the movie “Taxi” Sami Naceri: his mother was French, and his father was born in Algeria. And if we talk about our compatriots, a shining example is singer and actor Anton Makarsky. His blood mixed the features of Russian, Gypsy, Belarusian, German, Georgian nationalities.

In the past, when "purebred" was a sign of the aristocracy, mestizos were considered something of a second-class citizen. Today everything has changed. Many people believe, and, I must say, rightfully so, that mestizo or mestizo are truly beautiful and there are not so many of them on our planet.

"Mestizos are beautiful people!" This statement has long been settled in modern culture. They won’t surprise anyone, and many of today’s stars openly talk about which nations’ blood gave them something as beautiful as theirs. But this was not always the case.

In order to understand who people of what nationality can be considered as such, you need to introduce the concept of race. So, this is a set of gene pools of people, collected according to certain biological characteristics and general characteristics. There are three of them - Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasoid. IN pure form they were previously distributed across the continents - Africa was inhabited by Europe - Caucasians, Asia and the American continent - the Mongoloid race. However, population migrations and general globalization gradually led to the fact that races began to mix with each other. This is how mestizos turned out - people in whose blood the genes of several races are mixed.

Initially, in many cultures, mestizos were persona non grata. Until the 20th century there was social inequality between races, including mestizos. In general, initially this term denoted only one variation of Metis - people of exactly this type, descendants of Europeans and indigenous inhabitants of America, Indians. That is, a mixture of Mongoloid and Caucasian races. Representatives mixed type Negroids and Caucasians were previously called mulattoes, and the descendants of the Mongoloid and Negroid races were called sambo. At the moment, all these options are called by one term.

Previously, it was believed that mestizos were people resulting from various mutations. It was assumed that marriages between representatives of different races are not capable of producing healthy offspring, and that among such children there is a high percentage of mutants, defectives or people suffering from certain diseases. In fact, research by ethnographers, geneticists, and sociologists has put everything in its place. Except purely external factors Mestizos are no different from representatives of purebred races in any other way. Moreover, due to the fact that the migration of peoples has become the norm not only within the continent, but throughout the entire planet for several hundred years, there is no need to talk about the purity of races at all. All current people are mestizo in some generation.

If we talk about prevalence, then entire nations are mestizos. The same Arabs, Lebanese, Algerians, representatives of most nationalities of Central and South America are also them.

Well, what can we say about the beauty of mestizos? First of all, it is caused by unusual combinations of facial features, figures, skin color, eyes, and hair among representatives of mixed marriages. For example, blue-eyed people with dark skin they look more unusual, and often more beautiful, than ordinary Europeans or African Americans. The same goes for the beauty of Latin women - a combination light skin and negroid curly hair and dark eyes cannot fail to attract attention. Well, to clearly see what makes mestizos stand out, people whose photos appear on the pages of glossy magazines, look at these pictures. Take a look at photos of Shakira, Beyoncé, Salma Hayek, Vanessa May and other celebrities. All of them are descendants of mixed marriages and have a very expressive appearance.

05/23/2003, Fri, 15:05, Moscow time

Maybe we are all of them to one degree or another? The word "mestis" ( metis) translated from French crossbreed, mixture, it means a person of mixed origin. The second, narrower meaning is a cross between a European and an American Indian. Mulattoes are born from a black man and a European, and the offspring of a black man and an American Indian is called sambo. In the future, of course, we will talk about mestizos in the broader sense of the word, i.e. about people born from parents of different races, clearly distinguishable by biological characteristics. This refers to the so-called large races, since a marriage between, say, a Ukrainian and a Russian or an Englishman and a German will simply be interethnic, and the children born will not be mestizos. But marriages between Caucasians and Mongoloids, Mongoloids and Negroids, Caucasians and Negroids are considered mestizo these groups differ significantly from each other in both appearance, and for a number of other characteristics.

What are nationality and race?

We have come close to the need to clarify terminology. Nationality is determined by three main parameters. Firstly, it is a person’s awareness of his belonging to a particular nationality. Secondly, the presence of its own language. And thirdly, the presence of self-awareness in this language. There is, however, a fourth sign, introduced by Lev Gumilyov, these are behavioral stereotypes, ethno-psychological characteristics of a person, which are very indicative.

Race is a general biological category, characterized by the similarity of the gene pools of the populations that make up the race, and the presence of a certain geographical area of ​​origin and distribution. Traditionally, there are three main races: Caucasians (or Eurasian race), Negroids (Equatorials) and Mongoloids (Asian-American race). But many anthropologists believe that from a biological point of view there are much more races - at least 8 or 10. In particular, we can name the South African (Bushmen and Hottentots), Australoid, Ainoid, Americanoid race and a number of others. Their representatives differ in some significant morphological characteristics, such as skin, eye and hair color, facial structure, etc. There are purely biological mechanisms of division into races. Firstly, in order for a group with a unique gene pool to form, isolation is necessary; then, due to the principle of randomness in the occurrence of mutations (both for a specific gene and for the time of occurrence), the group begins to automatically diverge, which is also facilitated by the probabilistic nature of the fixation of new mutations . Secondly, in different climatic and geographical zones, in the course of adaptation and natural selection, traits appear that contribute to survival in a given area. Thirdly, there is a mixture different groups, previously existing separately from each other, as a result of which intermediate variants arise, some of them being distinguished as small races.

Race as such exists not only in humans, but also in animals - crows, wolves. All of them (unlike breeds of cats and dogs) are of natural origin. Man is by nature very polymorphic and polytypic; unlike domestic animals, he was not affected by artificial selection. Races differ not only in external signs, but also geographically, i.e. Every race, when formed, has a separate habitat. There are also deeper racial characteristics, such as blood groups. Molecular biology provides enormous material for studying the structure of the genome. If you classify races, for example, by blood groups or DNA fragments, then both coincidences and differences with the traditional classification based on morphological characteristics are possible. But if you increase the number of loci to determine the so-called “genetic distances,” then the similarity of both types of classification increases.

Is humanity a single species?

Now there is not a single anthropologist, geneticist or biologist who doubts this. Moreover, there are no prerequisites that could in the foreseeable future lead to the formation of a new species of man, if only because the globe can be considered as an isolated system. However, on the scale of the Universe, too little time has passed to talk about whether there is any movement in the depths of humanity towards the creation of a new species. There are clear differences between rapid social phenomena and the much slower movement occurring in the population, which is based on biological, evolutionary processes. Figuratively speaking, humanity flew into space with the same genome with which it emerged from the cave 40 thousand years ago. However, the unity of the species does not interfere with significant intraspecific diversity, which is characteristic of biological organisms. Moreover, diversity is the basis for the sustainability of a species. This applies not only to social and biological phenomena, but also to culture.

Let us now consider the ways in which mestizos emerged.

Miscegenation is directly related to migration processes. In genetics there is the concept of “gene flow”, i.e. slow mutual penetration of two large groups with different morphological characteristics. There are so-called contact zones, i.e. areas where mixing of populations occurred. Such zones, in particular, are Western Siberia (confluence of Caucasoids and Mogoloids), North Africa (Caucasoids and Negroids), Southeast Asia (Caucasoids, Mongoloids and Australoids). In these areas, mixing mechanisms operate for tens of thousands of generations and the process of crossbreeding can be traced back to 6 thousand years BC, when, due to the successful development of the Neolithic economy and an increase in population in subsequent eras, mass migrations began. Oddly enough, later migrations of people had relatively little impact on the anthropological composition of the population.

The development of civilization has given rise to new concepts, for example, “mestizos of war” - they appear as a result of a fairly long stay of the occupying army in a certain territory. So, in Vietnam, long years a former French colony, a whole generation of French-Vietnamese mestizos was born. The same thing happened in Japan, where the American army was stationed after World War II. We can separately consider “colonial” mestizos, say, Anglo-Indians, of whom there are about 1 million today. In general, among the reasons for the mixing of gene pools we can name the lack of women on one of the contacting parties, mixed marriages according to various social reasons establishing good neighborly relations through kinship, the desire to avoid the harmful consequences of inbreeding, the destruction of the male part of the population and the captivity of the female, leading to demographic genocide, etc.

Are there any abnormalities, be it physical, mental or intellectual, associated with miscegenation?
American researchers have proven that anomalies are no more common among mestizos than in other groups. There is also no need to talk about intellectual inequality associated with race; everything depends on socio-cultural development, upbringing, and education. In 1938, a French expedition discovered a very ancient and primitive tribe in Paraguay, which fled at the sight of scientists, leaving a one-and-a-half-year-old girl by the fire. Anthropologists picked her up, brought her to Paris, and she, born in the Stone Age, became a real Parisian, absolutely adapted to the European way of life and speaking three foreign languages. Another example: Pushkin and Dumas were mestizos, and no one doubts their genius.

As for the external characteristics of mestizos, no disharmony is observed; moreover, they are often very beautiful.
Since the Neolithic, man has been persistently and successfully breeding new breeds of animals, but there has always been some very strong internal prohibition on “human breeding.” Marriages between cousins and sisters, not to mention direct incest. Probably, in the course of gaining experience and identifying the undesirable consequences of inbreeding, there was a gradual exclusion of consanguineous marriages, which became entrenched over a series of generations in the form of severe prohibitions that went beyond religious systems. Probably, these taboos were established before religions took shape. The example of the Australian aborigines is very indicative - they created an amazing system of counting kinship, where each person knows his origin and, accordingly, who could potentially become his wife. In Siberia, in some places, the tradition of knowing one’s genealogy has also been preserved, designed to exclude closely related marriages. There is an amazing example when an 8-year-old Aleut girl from the Commander Islands dictated to a scientist a list of her relatives in half a notebook. Of course, people consciously controlled this process. At a certain stage, aristocrats faced the problem of inbreeding, in particular, royal families, where dynastic marriages were accepted, as a result of which almost all royal families were related. A good example Tsarevich Alexei, a hemophiliac hereditary disease, which also affected other crowned families.

There are many more mestizos on earth than one might think. For example, Cubans, American Indians, almost the entire black population of America, and in the southern states there is less mixing than in the northern ones - a kind of echo of the confrontation between the democratic north and the slave-owning south. The mestizo groups of the Caribbean and Central America are often called Creoles. But the Polynesians are such a unique group that they can be classified as a separate race.

You can recognize a mestizo by some “deviation” from the canonical features characteristic of specific races. For example, in Siberia one often encounters people with all the morphological characteristics of the Mongoloids and blue eyes Europeans. Another example is North Africans or black Americans with European features and clear signs Negroid race. In Altai, the Mongoloid type is common in combination with noticeable facial hair, which is not typical for pure Mongoloids; you will never meet a Chinese or Mongolian with a thick beard or a lush mustache.

From an anthropological point of view, what are the prospects for humanity? Is it possible that someday it will become a single race and give birth to a new Adam and Eve?
IN modern world There are processes of globalization, mixing of countries and peoples. Nevertheless, it is obvious that this cannot be expected in the foreseeable future; human biology is quite conservative, and in order for any serious changes to occur on a universal human scale, let alone take hold, thousands of generations must pass. However, over the past 35 thousand years, it is possible to trace some trends characteristic of the entire species. For example, there is a reduction in the dentofacial apparatus, which is probably associated with a change in the way of eating and cooking. Apparently, people will soon lose their wisdom teeth; in many groups of the population they are no longer there, they are not even erupting. On the other hand, weakening of this apparatus leads to an increase in the number of oral diseases. The bite changed 45 thousand years ago in people the upper and lower jaws coincided, but in us the upper jaw protrudes slightly forward. The fact is that the lower jaw is a free bone, not connected to others, and therefore is reduced faster. There are other universal human trends - acceleration, for example. However, predicting such processes is quite difficult. Moreover, in all of Russia there is only one institute of anthropology at Moscow University, and also the department of anthropology at Moscow State University; it is worth mentioning the department of anthropology at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (for comparison, there are about 200 different institutes of physics in Moscow alone).

Oddly enough, the science of man as a social and biological being in the unity of all its aspects practically does not exist.

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