The Races Of Mankind by M. Nesturkh Free PDF book (1964) with Illustrations





The problem of the races of mankind is one of the most important in anthropology, the science that studies the natural history of man with all the variations due to age, sex, geographical and other factors. The races of mankind are, in actual fact, geographical (or territorial) variations, historically conditioned, of a single physical type—man.The writings of the founders of Marxism-Leninism contain many valuable statements on such problems as the connection between the origin of the races and the natural geographical conditions of life of primitive man, the distant ancestor of the present-day peoples, the gradual obliteration of racial differences in the course of historical development, the racial mixtures that make up modern nations and the absolute invalidity of racism.A correct conception of the races of mankind is of particularly great political and scientific importance today, in the period of the collapse of the colonial system and the unparalleled development of the struggle for national liberation by the dependent and colonial peoples. The ideologists of imperialism, in their efforts to provide a basis for class, national and colonial oppression, have advanced the false “theory” of the physical and mental inequality of races, of the existence of “higher” and “lower” races, of races that are capable and those that are incapable of independent social, economic and cultural development.Racism is closely bound up with reactionary nationalism and chauvinism. The Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, adopted by the Twenty-Second Party Congress, lays special stress on the fact that nationalist prejudice and the survivals of former national discord constitute the sphere in which resistance to social progress may be the longest, fiercest, most stubborn, and most implacable. The misanthropic inventions of the racists stand in direct contra¬ diction to the data provided by anthropology.The appearance of a popular but scientifically sound book on the races of mankind written by a Soviet anthropologist, therefore, is very opportune. This present book, by Professor M. F. Nesturkh, is based on the methodological principles of Soviet anthropology and the factual data obtained by that science. The author connects the origin of the races with the origin of mankind as a whole and acquaints the reader with the present status of these two problems; he deals at length with the history of the formation, dissemination and mingling of indi¬ vidual anthropological (racial) types and their groups, uses facts to expose the reactionary nature of racism and proves that it has no foundation in science. Professor Nesturkh naturally devotes greater attention to anthropology proper, but he makes extensive use of other natural and social sciences—comparative anatomy, physiology, paleontology, archaeology, ethnography, psychology, and linguistics— in accordance with Frederick Engels’s well-known postulate that anthropology is the transition from the morphology and physiology of man and his races to history.It must not be thought that Professor Nesturkh’s book is limited to an exposure of racism. The problems dealt with are of a much broader cognitive significance. Among other things the reader will find the latest information on the anthropoids of the Tertiary period (the distant an¬ cestors of man and the modern anthropoid apes), the earliest hominids (Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus), Neanderthal man and the fossil men of the modern type. The author also deals with the natural selection of the earliest men, geographical isolation, inter-racial crossing, the times and places in which the great races were formed, the ways in which they became disseminated and the relation of tribes, nationalities and nations to the races. He takes the reader on a journey through the animal kingdom to the world of man and introduces him to the beginnings of human history, in the course of which the laws of evolution that apply to the organic world have been replaced by the qualitatively new laws of social development.