“The Ancient Egyptians, in their painted sculptures and wall paintings, represented four human populations or “races,” symbolized by pigment colors. The artists painted figures representing the Egyptians red, the Semites yellow, the Negros black, and the Mediterranean peoples white” (Rogers, 22). Pigmentation was included but often did not harmonize well with the other criteria. Many of the earlier authorities gave skin color prime importance as a criterion of race classification and applied the racial terms for racial types. :(Rogers, 22-23).
Hypotheses on pigmentation and the effects of it have clearly dated back. Claude Nicolas le Cat (1700-1768) had a series of hypothesis, but what had caught my attention was his view suggesting, “the diet as derived from various soils may influence skin colour” (Wasserman, 35). “Black skin came as a consequence of a skin disease, and that the black races originated from the marriage of two such sufferers” (Wasserman, 35). Bolk (1929) had suggested the shade and tone of the pigmentation clearly had to do with the level of intelligence one could capacitate. “The Nordic races are the farthest retarded. Darkening with age is the ‘last utterance of the process of pigmentation.’ He believes that the darkening of the new-born Negro, a process which is much more