Which of the following human races inhabitates in China, Mangolia and Japan ?

Question

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Correct — D, Mongoloid. In the classical racial classification still printed in school geography and anthropology syllabi, the peoples of East and North-East Asia — China, Mongolia, Japan, Korea and Siberia — are grouped as the Mongoloid stock, and the group is named after Mongolia itself, which makes the stem almost self-answering once you notice it. The physical traits the older texts list for the group are the epicanthic fold that gives the eye its oblique set, high and prominent cheekbones, a flat facial profile, straight coarse black hair, sparse body and facial hair, yellowish-brown skin and medium stature. UPSC asked the same group from the description rather than the geography in 1997, offering the sentence 'they are people of yellow complexion, oblique eyes, high cheek bones, sparse hair and medium height' and keying Mongoloids. Two riders matter for how you use this. First, the classification is a nineteenth-century construct — Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's five varieties of 1795 named the 'Mongolian' among them — and modern population genetics does not support discrete biological races; human variation is continuous and most genetic diversity sits within any so-called race rather than between races. Second, examinations continue to test the vocabulary, so learn it as the history of a classification rather than as biology. Note also that the booklet prints 'inhabitates' and 'Mangolia'; both are the Commission's own spellings and are reproduced here as the student saw them.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The Negroid stock of the classical scheme belongs to sub-Saharan Africa, with the related Negrito element found in the Andaman Islands, the Malay peninsula and the Philippines. UPSC's 1997 prelims keyed exactly this group for the tribal population of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Nothing in the East Asian population history connects to it.  (b) The Australoid stock covers the Aboriginal peoples of Australia and Melanesia, and in the Indian classification the Proto-Australoid element identified among many tribal populations of central and peninsular India. It lies to the south of the Asian landmass, not in China, Mongolia or Japan.  (c) Nordic is not a parallel unit at all — it is a sub-type of the Caucasoid stock, associated with Scandinavia and north-western Europe and described in the older texts as tall, long-headed, fair-skinned and light-eyed. In B. S. Guha's classification of the Indian population the Nordic element is placed in the north-west of the subcontinent, nowhere near East Asia.

Concept: Physical anthropology of the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries tried to sort humanity into a small number of 'races' by visible traits — skin colour, hair form, nasal index, cephalic index and stature. Blumenbach's 1795 scheme named five varieties (Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American and Malayan); later writers compressed these into the threefold Caucasoid–Mongoloid–Negroid division, with Australoid often added as a fourth. Indian syllabi carry a national version of the same exercise: B. S. Guha, working with the 1931 Census of India, distinguished six racial elements in the Indian population — Negrito, Proto-Australoid, Mongoloid, Mediterranean, Western Brachycephals and Nordic. The Mongoloid element in Guha's scheme is placed in the Himalayan belt and the North-East, in Palae-Mongoloid and Tibeto-Mongoloid forms. Contemporary genetics has abandoned the framework as a biological account of human variation, but the terminology persists in examination syllabi and in older textbooks.

State PCS 2024 Q94 — Geography PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q94 — Geography PYQ with Answer