Pre-modern conceptions of whiteness
[1] Coloured terminology is occasionally found in Graeco-Roman ethnography[2][3] and other ancient and medieval sources, but these societies did not have any notion of a white or pan-European race.
[5][6][7] Historically, before the late modern period, cultures outside of Europe and North America, such as those in the Middle East and China, employed concepts of whiteness.
[12] In the ancient and medieval societies of Europe, Asia, and North Africa, light skin, especially among women, came to be a sign of living a privileged lifestyle, having noble ancestry, and also became an indicator of beauty.
[17][19] In contrast the Akkadian word ṣalmu ("black") would be used to describe people with dark skin, such as the Nubian pharaoh of Egypt's 25th Dynasty.
We know the Egyptians were not oblivious to skin color, however, because artists paid attention to it in their works of art, to the extent that the pigments at the time permitted.
[28] According to Charles Freeman, depictions of women with light skin suggested a high status, and were a "sign that a woman did not have to work in the sun".
"[37] A later scenario is written about by one of the Tannaim in which a potential groom refuses to marry a woman who he believes to be "ugly" and "black" (sḥehorah) until he finds out she is in fact "beautiful" and "white" (levanah).
[45] Bengali scholar Jayantanuja Bandyopadhyaya records that in the Rigveda, the god Indra distributed the lands of the conquered Dasa to the "white-coloured" Arya.
[49] The Indian scholars Varsha Ayyar and Lalit Khandare assert that colourism, or discrimination based on skin pigmentation, has existed in India since pre-colonial times, predating any Eurocentric concepts of whiteness.
[53] Kadira Pethiyagoda also states that while varna does literally mean colour, and was used to classify groups of people and express differences, recent scholarship suggests these terms were symbolic.
[56] Men with pale or light skin, leukochrōs (λευκόχρως, "white-skinned") could be considered weak and effeminate by Ancient Greek writers such as Plato and Aristotle.
[61] In Greek literature women including goddesses such as Hera and Aphrodite and mortals such as Penelope, Andromache, and Nausicaa can be described as leukōlenos (λευκώλενος, "white-armed").
[72] Herodotus described the Scythian Budini as having deep blue eyes and bright red hair[73] and the Egyptians – quite like the Colchians – as melánchroes (μελάγχροες, "dark-skinned") and curly-haired.
"[77][78] The 2nd century Anatolian Greek sophist Polemon of Laodicea advocated a view of ancient physiognomy which attributed variations in skin and hair colour to the actions of the Sun.
An anonymous 4th century Latin treatise, based on the work of Polemon, describes several stereotypes, including some related to skin colour, such as the claim that light-skinned "Northern" people are "courageous and bold and so forth".
The Arabic translations of Polemon similarly includes white skin in a list of several traits held by Greeks of Hellenic or Ionian descent.
[86] According to the Roman geographers Pomponius Mela and Pliny, a group of white Ethiopians (leukaethiopes), possibly a reference to lighter-skinned Berbers, inhabited the North African interior.
[94][95][96][97][98][99] In his fictional dialogue Hermotimus, the Hellenised Syrian satirist Lucian speculates on whether an isolated Ethiopian would assume out of hand that there are no "white or yellow" men on Earth.
"[103] A similar event is recorded in the Historia Augusta, in which the emperor Septimius Severus is enraged by presence of an Ethiopian soldier, "troubled as he was by the man’s ominous colour".
Their concerns of blood purity did not match modern ideas of race or ethnicity, and had little to do with features such as skin colour or physical appearance.
"[112] According to Alleyne (2002), "When Christianity was adopted (and adapted) by Rome and then spread throughout the Empire, it came to be grafted onto a social religious system that had already developed a racial and ethnic hierachy and a colour symbolization which exalted whiteness and downgraded blackness.
"[114] According to a 7th century biography, Pope Gregory I bemoaned the presence of Anglo-Saxon child slaves in Rome who were "white of body and have blonde hair".
"[126] The Arab explorer Ahmad ibn Fadlan during his northern travels detailed the Rus' people of the Viking Age as being "blonde and ruddy" and "big men with white bodies.
[134] According to historian Arnold J. Toynbee, Arab rulers of the Umayyad Caliphate would sometimes refer to Persians and Turkish subjects as "the ruddy people", implying their racial inferiority.
Dark skin – depicted in art using brown, black, blue, grey and sometimes purple hues – often signified negative moral and spiritual qualities distinct from physical appearance.
Thus, the image of Saladin facing Richard I in the 14th century Luttrell Psalter depicts the Saracen with dark blue skin and a monstrous expression.
[150] By the Late Middle Ages, the idealised, light-skinned features of high status figures in Gothic art signalled their moral purity, social rank, and political authority.
The princesses of Chivalric romance and the noble ladies of courtly love literature similarly combined white skin with other positive social markers: slender proportions, graceful bearing, and expensive dress.
[151] The ideal of feminine beauty was formalised in the 12th century by Matthew of Vendôme in the Ars Versificatoria, which includes two descriptions Helen of Troy as a model.
[153]Lower-class labourers ("churls") and drunkards typically have dark or ruddy faces and skin – for example, Perkyn Revelour ("brown and as berye") and the canon's yeoman (with a "leden hewe").
