Alpine race

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Western anthropologists classified humans into a variety of races and subraces. Of these, the name Alpines was given to a physical type predominant in central Europe, somewhat shorter, narrower shouldered and darker skinned than those they classified as Nordics. They were considered to be a sub-group of the Caucasian race. This model was first clearly defined in William Z. Ripley's book The Races of Europe (1899), which proposed three European categories: Teutonic (later termed Nordic), Mediterranean and Alpine. A distinctive Alpine type had been proposed by earlier writers, but it was Ripley who promoted it to one of the main divisions.

Ripley argued that the Alpines had originated in Asia, and had spread westwards along with the emergence and expansion of agriculture, which they established in Europe. By migrating into central Europe, they had separated the northern and southern branches of the earlier European stock, creating the conditions for the separate evolution of Nordics and Mediterraneans. This model was repeated in Madison Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race (1916), in which the Alpines were portrayed as the most populous of European and western Asian races.

In Carleton Coon's rewrite of Ripley's The Races of Europe, he developed the argument that they were reduced Upper Paleolithic survivors indigenous to Europe. Coon argued that they were linked to their unreduced (Brunn, Borreby) counterparts.

Despite the large numbers of this alleged race, the characteristics of the Alpines were not as widely discussed and disputed as those of the Nordics and Mediterraneans. Typically they were portrayed as solid peasant stock, the reliable backbone of the European population, but not outstanding for qualities of leadership or creativity.

The concept of a distinctive Alpine race is no longer generally used within physical anthropology.