The Capoid race is an historical racial category proposed in 1962 by anthropologist Carleton S. Coon and named after the Cape of Good Hope; these people had formerly been regarded as a sub-type of the historical racial category Negroid.^[1][2]

This new division was proposed because of the very different appearance of those of the Capoid race from others of what was formerly called the Negroid race (golden brown rather than sepia colored skin, peppercorn hair rather than wooly hair, and Epicanthic eye folds). Coon argued that the term Negroid race should be abandoned, and the people of that race who are not Capoids should be termed the Congoid race^[1].

More recent research in population genetics refers to populations within sub-Saharan Africa as "Khoisanid" and "Black African".^[3](This term also has the advantage that it conforms to the way the other races are named, i.e. by the geographic area inhabited by people most typical of that race [in this case, the Congo basin], instead of by their color.).

Contents 1 Location of the Capoid race 2 Classification of the Capoid race 3 Proto-Capoid race identified with first non-African Homo Sapiens 4 See also 5 References

[edit] Location of the Capoid race

The Capoid race is now present primarily in Southern Africa, mainly in Namibia, as the Khoi (Hottentot) and San (Bushmen) peoples, and as part of the ancestry of the more populous Xhosa people and others in the region, though the presence of the Khoisan languages Hadza and Sandawe farther north, and possibly fossil evidence, suggest a Capoid presence in East Africa today. Archaelogical evidence indicates that the Capoids formerly dominated in Central Africa, but were later pushed back and expelled (some may have been absorbed) by the Congoid Bantu expansion in the 1st millennium BC, due to the possession by the Bantus of superior iron weapons, which easily overcame the stone weapons of the Capoids. ^[4]

[edit] Classification of the Capoid race

The term Capoid implies a judgment that they are sufficiently distinct from those who were formerly termed Negroids (now termed Black Africans) to warrant dividing the Black African race into two separate races, the Capoid and the Congoid. This judgment was originally made on the basis of visible physical features, but more recently genetic studies have shown the Khoisan to be distinct from all other peoples in some genetic markers; there is also a high level of diversity between different Khoisan groups, indicating that other Black Africans separated from the Khoisan a very long time ago, 30,000 years ago at the very least. ^[5]

[edit] Proto-Capoid race identified with first non-African Homo Sapiens

Recently, it has been suggested that the first anatomically modern homo sapiens to migrate out of Africa and give rise to modern humans in the rest of the world were similar to the Khoisan. While some genetic markers shared between Khoisan, Ethiopians and non-Africans can be interpreted as supporting this hypothesis; however, some regard it as anachronistic to identify a modern race with one alive tens of thousands of years ago.

[edit] See also

• Khoisan

[edit] References

v • d • e Historical definitions of race Present Asian people · Black people · White people Earlier major historic concepts Capoid race · Caucasoid · Mongoloid · Negroid · Australoid · Proto-Australoid Other historic concepts and historic sub races Africoid peoples · Alpine race · American Indian race · Arabid race · Armenoid race · Aryan race · Corded-Nordics · Dinaric race · Dravidian race · East Baltic race · Hamitic race · Iranid race · Malayan race · Mediterranean race · Negrito · Nordic race · Semitic race · Turanian race · Race in India Historical definitions of races in India · Martial Race

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