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Dravidians

How about Dravidians of the Indian subcontinent. They also belong to the Australoid race, don't they? Meursault2004 28 June 2005 21:05 (UTC)

I believe so, or at least Australoid-Caucasoid mixture. --JWB 29 June 2005 07:33 (UTC)

Dravidian is a language family, not a racial type. Both Indian Veddoids and South Indians (who are primarily Caucasoid) speak Dravidian languages.

Yes we know that. But often there is a correlation between these two. Meursault2004 07:16, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

The Veddoid peoples of Sri Lanka are of Australoid stock. The Dravidian-speaking peoples are mostly of Caucasoid descent-from the Mediterranean branch, to be specific. There is some Australoid admixture among people like the Tamils due to intermarriage with local tribals but ultimatley, the Dravidians are mostly Caucasoid. -posted by a Dravidian-speaker, of course.

A response: Dravidians/Tamils are black peoples

Southern Indians are not Caucasians. Dravidians and Tamils are the same people. Dravidians are most certainly not Caucasoid. (You're kidding -- right?) They are Veddoid-Australoid/Negroid peoples. Many politically progressive Tamil/Dravidian peoples have come to know their true history and consider themselves part of the global African community. This "Caucasian" business is ridiculous -- and just another example of wannabe-ism in India's disgusting racist, pigmentocracy. Google it, if you don't believe me. Here are examples of just a few entries., ,, , , , , . When geneticist Spencer Wells went looking for the migratory links between Africa and the rest of the world, his Y-chromosomnal DNA testing took him from the San Bushmen directly to Tamil Province, where he found the next link in a Tamil man. That wave of migration followed up the coastline across ancient land bridges at low sea levels to Australia. It has long been recognized by many scholars that the ancient Dravidians were black African peoples -- as black as any other Australoid peoples, and that includes Australian aboriginies and aboriginal New Guineans.

All this is not to say that the Australoids of Asia are not (like much of humanity) mixed with other ethnic/"racial" strains. However, "Australoids" commonly have alveolar and often maxillary prognathisms and dolichocephalic skulls -- both hallmarks of Negroid/Africoid peoples. Combined with presumed patterns of migration and DNA studies, when it comes to "racial" classification, they clearly are Negroid/Africoid, rather than Caucasoid.

I've edited the text, which for some reason starts out defining Australoids as essentially Australian Aborigines -- which is completely incorrect. The term is somewhat misleading in that it never referred strictly to Australians, but to a broad group of humanity considered essentially "Negroid" in phenotype, but with no clear/obvious (at the time) connection to the African continent. And that is why the term is commonly paired with "Negroid," as in "Australoid-Negroid." "Australoid" was used a general geographic qualifier, distinct from simply "Negroid."

In the 1960s, a family of children from Ceylon, as it was called back then, enrolled in my school. I was struck by the fact that they looked just like me and my family -- darker-skinned than some of us, even. I started reading and came upon text after text that referred to Mohenjo Daro as a black civilization. The link between the Dravidians and AFrica is all throughout the scholarly literature -- and not just in so-called "Afrocentrist" works. It's amazing that people are still so far behind the learning curve on matters such as this! I find it sad that so many peoples rush to deny their African heritage in the face of racism and color-based bias. deeceevoice 07:29, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Current conventional wisdom (Out-of-Africa model) is that all modern humans are of relatively recent African origin, including Europeans. None of the genetic results I've seen show that Europeans are any more distant from modern Africans than Indians, native Australians, Melanesians etc. are.
Phenotypically, some non-Africans, especially Melanesians and Negritos, look more African, but the genes responsible for these features are only a small part of the genome. Europeans and Asians may have evolved lighter skin color and other features in response to enviromental conditions, but this does not mean they are otherwise especially distant from Africans.
Political identification as Black does not guarantee a particular genetic relation. It is a response to similar social conditions in recent history. Even Northern Irish Catholics have identified with African-Americans.
Some of the links you list above use worthless evidence like resemblance of selected words in modern languages, or even the use of hoes and manure! Dolichocephaly was also considered a defining feature of the Nordic race. At least one of the sites seems to be motivated by white racism, arguing that Indians are blacker in order to distinguish Pakistanis as whiter.
Putting all dark-skinned peoples or even most non-Europeans in one bucket is not necessarily progressive; it's a classic white racist position, and many of the older sources that take this attitude reflect this. A less Eurocentric view would be that Europe is just a small part of the diversity on the planet.

--JWB 10:36, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Nordics certainly are dolichocephalic whites, but they are an exception to the rule when it comes to Caucasoid classification. Further, their geographic origin places them firmly within the Caucasoid classification. Negroid/Africoid peoples have more biodiversity among them than any other "racial" classification -- which itself is a curious construct. But the "Dravidian" poster claimed, as did others in this venue, that Dravidians are classified as "Caucasian." And that simply is not the case. They very clearly are Australoid-Negroids/Africoids, by virtue of their geographic/migratory origins, cultural connections and close conformity with the Africoid phenotype. There are, indeed, some Pakistanis who are more Caucasoid than Australoid-Negroid/Africoid, as there are some Indians who are more Caucasoid/Asian than Australoid-Africoid. Still, that does not change the fact that Dravidians/Tamils are Australoid-Africoid by any reasonable standard. deeceevoice 12:04, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Futher, you are correct about genetic similarities among the "races" of humankind -- and certainly this is true when it comes to Africans and Asians. DNA testing has shown that certain Australoid populations, like some of the Negrito aboriginals of Southeast Asia and some of the indigenous blacks of New Guinea, are closer genetically to their Asian cousins than to black Africans -- likely owing to the fact that certain populations later developed in isolation with Afro-Asian/Asian populations -- although phenotypically, they may appear clearly Africoid/Negroid. The earliest Asians were, in fact, aboriginal blacks, which is why, when black GIs went to Vietnam in the 1960s, they encountered people they said looked black -- and why Cambodian women frequently were referred to as "soul sisters." It is also why early buddhas in, say, Thailand, for example, look strikingly Africoid and why the earliest renderings of the Buddha show him with tightly coiled, nappy hair; he was, in fact, an Africoid Asiatic. It is no coincidence that the earliest Buddhist artifacts have been found in southeastern India -- just up the coast from -- where? Tamil Province, the land of Dravidian blacks. deeceevoice 12:25, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Buddhist art agrees with what I've read before, that anthropomorphic Buddha art started in Gandhara (ancient Kashmir) in the extreme north and was based on local or Greek models (Greco-Roman sculptures don't have straight hair either!), while the south resisted human representations for longer. South India is mentioned as a transmitter of Buddhist texts to Southeast Asia, but the article doesn't mention or show any South Indian Buddha imagery. Southeast Asian Buddhas' appearance probably reflects the local population, not South India.

India has significant genetic contributions from all of: local or Australoid peoples and Caucasoid and Mongoloid immigrants, with some variation by region, and there is no "pure race". I hope everyone can agree on that. I don't think we can get agreement on any more than that.

I still do not see why lumping all dark people as "Africoid" or other term is desirable, progressive or Afrocentric, instead of white-racist as it usually has been. If the genetic and other diversity is there, why not acknowledge it in the terminology. Saying the primary split is between Caucasians and all darker people is Eurocentric by definition.--JWB 19:18, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Dravidians are different ethnically from the broader Indian population. Persian incursions didn't reach in the deep south of India -- indeed, that is where blacks retreated to escape them. As a result, they remain far less miscegenated than, say the average Hindu-speaking, northern Indians, who are mixed with Asian and Middle Eastern ("Caucasoid") peoples. "Eurocentric by definition"? No, I don't think so. I didn't introduce "Caucasian" into the discussion on the talk page; someone else did. And they got it wrong. I'm merely setting the record straight. In using terms of "racial" categorization, such as "Caucasian"/"Caucasoid", one accepts certain assumptions and enters the realm of formal racial classification. Upon doing so, one immediately must deal with the other, corresponding terms, "Negroid" and "Mongoloid." And "racially" speaking, Dravidians are Negroid peoples. That is how they're quite properly classified when one considers the standard phenotypical critera, as well as -- again -- their geographic origin and cultural characteristics. Funny how people don't balk at all about being called "Caucasoid," but when it comes to being called the "N-word," it's all of a sudden somehow improper; they freak. :p
Further, with regard to old buddhas being modeled on Greek statuary, I'm afraid someone's been yankin' your chain. The Africoid features of the old buddhas of which I write are undeniable. They didn't get that from Greece -- though, admittedly, there was certainly a black, African presence there. (A couple of quick links), And I'm talking tightly coiled hair; nappy, knotty hair here -- not curly little ringlets, not the curls of, say, something akin to Michelangelo's "David" -- in old Laotian and Thai buddhas, particularly.deeceevoice 21:59, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
One more thing. "I still do not see why lumping all dark people as 'Africoid' or other term is desirable, progressive or Afrocentric, instead of white-racist as it usually has been." When one considers phenotypical similarities (upon which the concept of "race" is loosely based), the darker-skinned peoples of the world, such as those discussed in the article and on this discussion page, are certainly at least as similar to one another as, say, Nordics and Turks, who are both classified as Caucasoid -- and some would argue even more so. deeceevoice 08:12, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
I'll answer with a quote from Cavalli-Sforza's The History and Geography of Human Genes (abridged paperback edition) p. 71: Accordingly, at the time the first genetic trees were produced, we also constructed a tree from anthropometric characters, including measurements of the whole body and skin color (Cavalli-Sforza and Edwards, 1964). This tree (fig. 2.2.3) showed marked differences from that obtained with genes; for instance, Australian Aborigines and Africans were closely associated, whereas with genes these populations are the farthest apart. It seemed clear to us that the sensitivity of many anthropometric characters to climate was likely to bias the reconstruction of phylogenetic history. It has been well known since Darwin that adaptive traits are frequently not satisfactory for reconstructing phylogeny, because they express similarities of environments more easily than those of phylogenetic history. We concluded that the lack of agreement between the two types of trees was no cause of alarm, and that genes were more likely to reflect phylogenetic history. In fact, Africans, Australian aborigines, and New Guineans have been exposed to tropical climates for a very long time and are presumably highly adapted to them. The characters available for this first anthropometric investigation were essentially connected with body surface, in particular skin color and size measurements, which are known to be correlated with climate.
The Australoid article should be about the traditional or accepted scientific definitions of the word, flawed as it is. Australoid-Negroid and Africoid are much less used terms (it could be argued that Africoid is a neologism, but I won't) and significant discussion of them should go in their own articles which can be linked from Australoid and others. Google:
  • about 20,100 for Australoid
  • about 461 for Australoid-Negroid
  • about 552 for Africoid
  • about 220,000 for Negroid
If there's a difference between genetic and anthropomorphic results, let's discuss both.
And if you are going to throw in cultural and historical resemblance, that is going beyond the scope of the -oid terms which properly refer to physical characteristics. Lengthy discussion of that belongs in Black (people) and other articles that include cultural and historic scope, which can be linked to.--JWB 18:17, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

This discussion is about Dravidians -- not genetics. And since when did genetics have anything to do with race? Racial categories were developed long before genetics became a discipline. Race is unscientific; genetics is scientific. The two really have very little to do with one another. Dravidians have been classified historically as Negroids/Australoids. That isn't open to debate. It's simple fact. In my readings about Dravidians, the term "Australoid-Negroid" appears constantly, and that is the context in which the term here is used -- again, in a discussion on Dravidians. And, no. Africoid is most certainly not a neologism. Further, with regard to online searches, "Australoid Dravidian" turned up 456 results. "Negroid Dravidian" turned up 836. Booya! :p deeceevoice 21:00, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Yup, and "caucasoid dravidian" returns 560. "australoid-negroid dravidian" got even less, 275. All very small numbers, and if you are going to judge "Australoid Dravidian" as insignificant on the basis of this comparison, then why are we discussing Dravidians in the Australoid article at all? If anywhere, it would seem to go in Dravidian. By the way, hit #1 for "negroid dravidian" mentions "Negroid" only to say that the idea of Dravidians being Negroid is European white racism.
Race in the social and historical sense is certainly not hard science, which is why it's discussed in articles like Race, Race (historical definitions), Black (people), White (people) etc. instead of articles on physical anthropological terms like *oid. Take a look at the scope-limiting section at the beginning of Caucasoid, which should go in the other *oid articles too.
If race is unscientific, anthropometry is scientific, and genetics is scientific, it would seem the latter two should be togeher, not the first two.--JWB 22:37, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Another response

Take a look at the photos in the following links. Then tell me the poeple of south India are "Caucasian." The very notion is absurd!

Claims of "Caucasian" identity are simply wannabe-ism -- in a nation with a history of brutal violence and oppression along race/color lines. India is rife with internalized values of white supremacy and self-loathing -- in short, wannabe-ism. No one who is aware of the true history of the Indian subcontinent would dispute the fact that the indigenous populations of India are black/Africans.

Aryan invasion theory and Dravidian race discuss the Hindu nationalist viewpoint that both claims of Caucasian and African identity are wannabe-ism or 19th century racist wishful thinking. On this question, Afrocentrism is agreeing with Eurocentrism against India-centrism.
Nobody here asserted Dravidians are Caucasian. Caucasoid is not the same as Caucasian, and White is not identical with either. Same for Negroid or Africoid, Negro or African, and Black. It's plausible to view some Indians as both Black and Caucasoid.--JWB 20:46, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

"Caucasoid is not the same as Caucasian...." WTF? I'd like to see you prove that. Talk about double-speak. That's just flat out nonsense! LMAO And then: "It's plausible to view some Indians as both Black and Caucasoid." Yessiree, Bob. It is -- and therein lies the fallacy of the Caucasoid racial classification of south Indians. There's no rhyme or reason for it. There, white folks get tripped up in their own "logic." Again, what sets the Sudroid/Veddoid/Dasya blacks of India apart from Caucasians is not only their skin color, but their facio-cranial characteristics, which place them firmly within the Negroid range. They are no less black than the blacks of Nubia or other Nilotics, some of whom have relatively narrow nasal indices and somewhat straight hair. And then there are those, such as the Tamils/Dravidians/Dalits/Jawara and other Adamantese peoples, many of whom have classic Australoid features and are virtually indistinguishable physically from Australian Aborigines. They are no less black than the other Australoids of Asia. They are clearly Negroid peoples. The "Caucasoid" classification is sheer nonsense. Again, the direct DNA link established by Spencer Wells from Africa to southern India/Tamil province (and then on to Australia), as found in the blood specimen of a contemporary Tamil/Dravidian man is incontrovertible. And, again, throughout the literature, Dravidian blacks are classifed as Australoid/Negroid peoples. deeceevoice 21:59, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Caucasoid vs. Caucasian: If they're identical, why are there two separate words? Here's a dictionary definition distinguishing them (and also noting they are not synonymous with white or European):
Australoid-Negroid: I've never seen the term in modern references, or anywhere for that matter before the Googled websites (which after scanning the first 10-20 seem to be an unholy alliance of Western white racists, Pakistani white racists, and Afrocentrists). I'm guessing it had some currency in the scientific racism era pre-WWII, but not in later science.
  • Bartleby's AUSTRALOID NEGROID does not connect the two words, and gives geographic ranges that intersect only in Melanesia (neither of them contain India at all).
  • Cavalli-Sforza's book does not connect the two terms, and explicitly covers the question (p. 355-6) of whether Negritos, Veddoids, "pre-Dravidians" are intermediate between Africans and Australians, and finds they are not, but instead genetically close to their S and SE Asian neighbors. Also, on map Fig. 2.11.1 on p. 135, the strongest tendency (1st principal component) in Cavalli-Sforza's genetic data shows Europeans as most similar to Africans, and Asians and Americans as less similar to Africans, with Australians as least similar. The following weaker principal components show different but weaker splits of the world.
  • Spencer Wells suggests Australians split 60k years ago and South Indians 45k years ago. This is similar to the time depth for the development of Europeans from Africans, so doesn't show Australians and South Indians are any more closely related to Europeans than Africans are. In Wells says a first exodus at 60-50ky led to Australians, while a second exodus at 45ky led to Eurasians and Americans. This would mean Europeans and Indians are equally related to modern Africans, while Australian Aborigines are less related. In Wells is quoted as listing a first migration from Africa east as far as Australia sometime after 60ky, giving rise to all non-Africans, with migration from India to Central Asia contributing to northern peoples. Again, all non-Africans are approximately equally related to Africans. --JWB 00:52, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

You've obviously misunderstood the definition. I don't have to read the link to know that "Caucasian" and "Caucasoid" when applied to people are synonymous terms. To say, as you have, that "Caucasoid is not the same as Caucasian" is patently ridiculous and makes no sense whatsoever. And, duh. I never said "Caucasian" meant "white" -- merely that, applied to the blacks of India, it is a misnomer. They are clearly Negroid peoples by virtue of the same phenotypical criteria used to classify other peoples as Negroid. deeceevoice 02:30, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Further, I'm not constructing a family tree. Again, according to the phenotypical metrics established to discern one "race" from another, Australoids are clearly Negroid. And they commonly have been considered such. And Dravidians/Tamils are Australoid-Negroids. They are ethnically and "racially" distinct from the wider Hindu population farther north and long ago rejected the racist, color-based caste system of broader Indian society. deeceevoice 08:05, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Cavalli-Sforza actually does show a tree based on anthropomorphics, and also one just based on skull shape. (p. 71-2) They do show Australians and New Guineans joining Africans for the first split, but then parting ways at the second split. Indians are not shown.
Tamil Nadu and the other southern states certainly do have a caste system about as strong as North India's. It also has had a strong backlash anti-caste movement, of which the African-identified section is only a small part. More commonly, opposition to the caste structure is expressed as socialism, or as demands for affirmative action, or by conversion from Hinduism to a less caste-based religion like Christianity, Buddhism or Islam. Finally, Southern Brahmin groups are as dark as the Southern population in general, so it is not a color issue unless you project color issues onto remote prehistory with the Aryan invasion theory.
Neither are the southern states oppressed within India. They are more prosperous than India in general and have very successfully achieved autonomy within the Indian federal system and preserved the four major Dravidian languages as official state languages.--JWB 16:13, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I am well aware that the southern states of India are actually more generally among the more prosperous of the nation. It is also clear that the Aryan invasion is more than a "theory." The Brahmin caste tries to deny it ever happened, but the history is clear -- archaeologically and insofar as the Vedic texts, which (as the references I've provided clearly document) provide graphic accounts of the horrors of the Aryan onslaught which forced Dravidians/Tamils south. With regard to Cavalli Sforza, Australoids are Australoids. They are classified together as a group for a reason. The Tamils/Dravidians are quite Australoid in appearance. The Veddoid blacks of India, commonly called "Caucasoid" because of their relatively narrow nasal index and relatively straight hair (despite their dark skin) are absolutely no different from Nubians, Ethiopians and other Cushitic/Nilotic peoples of the Nile Valley, who clearly are classified as Negroid -- for the very same reasons. And, no matter how you try to parse the language, "Caucasoid" and "Caucasian" are the same thing. One is simply an adjective, the other a noun. And to state that they are not is simply absurd. deeceevoice 09:38, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Caucasoid and Caucasian are both nouns and adjectives. The suffix -oid means "resembling" or "has a form like". When applied to a noun it usually means a broader or looser category than the original noun. For example, spheroid is broader than sphere and contains spheres as a subset, but not all spheroids are spheres.
Bartelby's on Caucasian and Caucasoid: These terms refer to a broad group of peoples indigenous to Europe, western Asia, northern Africa, and much of the Indian subcontinent. Caucasian and Caucasoid are in some ways the most problematic of the traditional racial terms, not so much for any offensive character as for their widespread misuse as a synonym for “white” or “European.” Many of the peoples traditionally included in this category, such as the Berbers of North Africa and the various Hindu and Muslim peoples of northern India, have skin color noticeably darker than most Europeans and as such are not usually considered to be white. Obviously they are not European either.
It is clear that there have been movements of lighter skinned people from the northwest into India at various periods in history, and that Indo-European languages entered India this way, but interpreting the Vedas as white-black conflict is problematic; see Aryan invasion theory#Racial interpretations of the Vedic Aryans, Indo-Aryan migration#Physical Anthropology, and Dasa#Etymology of Dasa and related terms. The Dravidian languages themselves are also suspected to have entered India from the northwest at an earlier date.
Yes. I'm aware of another theory, which is echoed in some Afrocentrist thought, that the Dravidians are the result of a north-down migration, of blacks who left the Nile Valley, who are referrred to in the old literature as Elamites. I recall reading several texts and at least one by a Dravidian who made such claims, and they are also credible. Regardless of the point of entry into India (it is certainly likely India was populated by blacks from both the north and the south), the ties with/affinities with black Africa are there, and the people are -- again -- no different from the Negroid Australoids of New Guinea and Southeast Asia and no different from the Negroid Nilotics, Cushite and Oromo peoples of North Africa. deeceevoice 19:52, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
The Elamo-Dravidian connection is based on the relation between the languages, though recently Sergei Starostin argued that Elamite and Dravidian are no more related to each other than they are to Afro-Asiatic, Indo-European, Uralic, and others.
Elam was in what is now southwestern Iran and I haven't encountered statements that the Elamites were black or had been traced to origins somewhere else.
Everyone now agrees Africans migrated to India and the rest of the world; the question is just the time scale. Speculation based on genetics suggests an initial migration 60k or so years ago, while some Afrocentric theories seem to postulate considerably later migrations in historic or legendary time.
On the other hand, with respect to non-African migrations to Africa or to other lands thought to have been African-populated, Afrocentric theories prefer very late dates after civilizations in these places were already flourishing, while genetically based speculation is more likely to talk about a reflux migration from the Middle East to Africa much earlier (I haven't seen dates but I'm guessing they're thinking 20k-30k years ago) providing some non-African genetic input to Eastern and Southern Africans, and/or migration 10k years ago or later associated with the spread of Afro-Asiatic languages.--JWB 22:31, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
Anyway, back to discussion of the Australoid page itself.
Certainly the term Australoid refers to a resemblance between some South Asians and native Australians. This is the raison d'etre of the term. But it should be mentioned that a special relation between the two groups is debatable or limited in scope, for example they have been found to be not genetically close. A more conservative statement in the light of current knowledge would be that there are South Asians with physical traits that overlap with those of various races.
I am not sure why Pakistanis are specially mentioned. They probably have less Australoid traits than other South Asians.
I have no idea where the statement about Australoids in the Americas comes from. I have only seen statements that early American skulls show various traits that have some similarity to some modern races. I don't know of whole peoples who are known to be Australoid.
Negrito and Australoid are defined as contrasting physical types. While some sources go on to hypothesize a relationship between the two, to simply state that Negritos are a subset of Australoids is misleading. This should be presented as one POV on racial development, rather than a consensus statement about modern groups. Negritos of course physically resemble some Africans much more than they resemble Australian Aborigines.
Australoid-Negroid is not found in most modern references. It should be mentioned as a term that formerly had more currency, or that is still current among certain groups, and is based on resemblances in certain traits but not others.--JWB 18:41, 16 October 2005 (UTC)
I think when he talked about Austrailoids in the Americas, he might also have been referring to certain tribes in Baja California (that were wiped out from smallpox) and the Tiera del Fuego-ians.
I only ever see the australoid-negroid construction among Afrocentrists. Australoids may have retained more African characteristics by keeping closer to the equator, but having left sub-Saharan Africa before Caucasians and being quite genetically distinct, it makes no sense to call them the same race as Sub-Saharan Africans.