Races and Racism for Kids
Biologically, there is really no such thing as race.
People come in a lot of different skin and hair colors, but there is
no sharp division between them, only a gradual blending. And the color
of your skin and your hair doesn't tell anything else about you: it
doesn't tell whether you are smart or stupid, or whether you are nice
or mean, or whether you are lazy or hard-working. So this part of the
site is not really so much about different races, as about how people
long ago thought about skin color and language, and what they thought
that meant.
From the Stone Age through
the Middle Ages, all over the Mediterranean,
Europe, and Western Asia, people
don't actually seem to have been very interested in skin color. They
did notice that northern people
were generally lighter-skinned, and southern
people were generally darker, but they didn't think that this meant
anything else about them - and they were right. Most of the people we
talk about on this site were in the middle: not pale white, and not
dark brown either, but a sort of pale brown.
On the other hand, this doesn't mean that ancient and medieval people
thought everyone was the same. They did divide people up into groups,
and they did think that different groups had different characteristics,
and generally of course they thought that their own group was the best.
West Asian
people
Egyptian people
African people
Indian people
Chinese people
Main people page
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