Hypothetical racial grouping
The Aryan race is a pseudoscientific historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people who descend from the Proto-Indo-Europeans as a racial grouping .[ 1] The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan , used by modern Indo-Iranians as an epithet of "noble". Anthropological , historical , and archaeological evidence does not support the validity of this concept.[ 4]
The concept derives from the notion that the original speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language were distinct progenitors of a superior specimen of humankind, and that their descendants up to the present day constitute either a distinctive race or a sub-race of the Caucasian race , alongside the Semitic race and the Hamitic race .[ 7] This taxonomic approach to categorizing human population groups is now considered to be misguided and biologically meaningless due to the close genetic similarity and complex interrelationships between these groups .[ 8] [ 9] [ 10]
The term was adopted by various racist and antisemitic writers during the 19th century, including Arthur de Gobineau , Richard Wagner , and Houston Stewart Chamberlain ,[ 11] whose scientific racism influenced later Nazi racial ideology . By the 1930s, the concept had been associated with both Nazism and Nordicism ,[ 13] and used to support the white supremacist ideology of Aryanism that portrayed the Aryan race as a "master race ", with non-Aryans regarded as racially inferior (Untermensch , lit. ' subhuman ' ) and an existential threat that was to be exterminated .[ 15] In Nazi Germany , these ideas formed an essential part of the state ideology that led to the Holocaust .[ 16] [ 17]
^ Knight Dunlap (October 1944). "The Great Aryan Myth" . The Scientific Monthly . 59 (4). American Association for the Advancement of Science : 296–300. Bibcode :1944SciMo..59..296D . JSTOR 18253 .
^ Ramaswamy, Sumathi (June 2001). "Remains of the race: Archaeology, nationalism, and the yearning for civilisation in the Indus valley" . The Indian Economic & Social History Review . 38 (2): 105–145. doi :10.1177/001946460103800201 . ISSN 0019-4646 . S2CID 145756604 .
^ Mish, Frederic C., Editor in Chief Webster's Tenth New Collegiate Dictionary Springfield, Massachusetts. 1994 – Merriam-Webster See original definition (definition #1) of "Aryan" in English. 0. 66
^ Templeton, A. (2016). "Evolution and Notions of Human Race". In Losos, J.; Lenski, R. (eds.). How Evolution Shapes Our Lives: Essays on Biology and Society . Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press. pp. 346–361. doi :10.2307/j.ctv7h0s6j.26 . ISBN 9780691170398 . JSTOR j.ctv7h0s6j . ... the answer to the question whether races exist in humans is clear and unambiguous: no.
^ Wagner, Jennifer K.; Yu, Joon-Ho; Ifekwunigwe, Jayne O.; Harrell, Tanya M.; Bamshad, Michael J.; Royal, Charmaine D. (February 2017). "Anthropologists' views on race, ancestry, and genetics" . American Journal of Physical Anthropology . 162 (2): 318–327. doi :10.1002/ajpa.23120 . PMC 5299519 . PMID 27874171 .
^ American Association of Physical Anthropologists (27 March 2019). "AAPA Statement on Race and Racism" . American Association of Physical Anthropologists . Retrieved 19 June 2020 .
^ Paul B. Rich (1998). "Racial ideas and the impact of imperialism in Europe" . The European Legacy . 3 (1): 30–33. doi :10.1080/10848779808579862 .
^ Gregor, A James (1961). "Nordicism Revisted". Phylon . 22 (4): 352–360. doi :10.2307/273538 . JSTOR 273538 .
^ Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews . Oxford University Press . ISBN 978-0191613470 .
^ Cite error: The named reference :7
was invoked but never defined (see the help page ).
^ "Aryan" . Holocaust Encyclopedia , United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . Retrieved 25 February 2022 .