Den kaukaside race[1] (også europide[2]) er en gruppering af mennesker, der historisk set betragtes som et biologisk takson, der omfatter nogle eller alle folk i Europa, Nordafrika, Afrikas Horn, Vestasien, Centralasien og Sydasien.[3] Begrebet har været benyttet i biologisk antropologi for mange folk i disse regioner, uden nødvendigvis at henvise til hudfarve.[4] Det blev introduceret i den tidlige racemodel og i antropometri, begrebet udgør en af tre betegnelser for primære menneskeracer (kaukasid, mongolid og negrid).[5] Flere samfundsvidenskabsfolk har argumenteret for at sådanne analyser er rodfæstet i sociopolitologiske og historiske processer snarere end i empiriske observationer.[6] Til trods for dette så benyttes kaukasoid fortsat som en biologisk klassifikation i retsantropologi.[7]
En nylig genetisk undersøgelse, der blev offentliggjort i "European Journal of Human Genetics - Nature" i 2019, viste, at populationer som vest-asiater (arabere), europæere, nordafrikanere, syd-asiater (indere) og nogle centrale asiater er tæt knyttet til hinanden. De kan tydeligt adskilles fra afrikanere syd for Sahara eller østasiatiske befolkninger.[8]
Begrebet "den kaukaside race" blev skabt af den tyske filosof Christoph Meiners i hans Grundriß der Geschichte der Menschheit (1785).
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. ISBN978-0-691-13589-2. OCLC800915872.
Coon, Carleton Stevens (1939). The Races of Europe. New York: The Macmillan Company. s.400–401. This third racial zone stretches from Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco, and thence along the southern Mediterranean shores into Arabia, East Africa, Mesopotamia, and the Persian highlands; and across Afghanistan into India[...] The Mediterranean racial zone stretches unbroken from Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco, and thence eastward to India[...] A branch of it extends far southward on both sides of the Red Sea into southern Arabia, the Ethiopian highlands, and the Horn of Africa.
Susanne Berthier-Foglar, Sheila Collingwood-Whittick, Sandrine Tolazzi (2012). Biomapping Indigenous Peoples: Towards an Understanding of the Issues. Rodopi. s.186. ISBN9401208662. Hentet 4. juli 2016. The [American Anthropological Association] statement is representative of the prevailing view in the contemporary social sciences. Many social scientists have questioned the assumption that race is a scientific or objective reality, contending that it is forged from the discourses of politics, society, and history.{{cite book}}: CS1-vedligeholdelse: Bruger authors parameter (link)
Pickering, Robert (2009). The Use of Forensic Anthropology. CRC Press. s.82. ISBN1-4200-6877-6. Race is both a cultural and a biological term. For more than a century, scientists and philosophers have tried to define race and describe races. Some scientists define only three races: caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid, while other scientists have defined more than 10. In our climate of multi-cultural sensitivity, some scholars, not forensic anthropologists, suggest that race does not exist, or at least it should not be talked about.
Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, On the Natural Varieties of Mankind (1775) — the book that introduced the concept
Gould, Stephen Jay (1981). The mismeasure of man. New York: Norton. ISBN0-393-01489-4. — a history of the pseudoscience of race, skull measurements, and IQ inheritability
Guthrie, Paul (1999). The Making of the Whiteman: From the Original Man to the Whiteman. Chicago, IL: Research Associates School Times. ISBN0-948390-49-2.