page_title: Jan Czekanowski
section_title: Racial classification
hierarchical_section_title: Jan Czekanowski / Racial classification
caption_attribution_description: English: Czekanowski's racial schema for European anthropological types
context_page_description: Jan Czekanowski was a Polish anthropologist, statistician, ethnographer, traveller, and linguist. His scientific contributions include introducing his system of racial classification and founding the field of computational linguistics.
  Czekanowski is known for having played an important role in saving the Polish-Lithuanian branch of the Karaite people from Holocaust extermination. In 1942 he managed to convince German "race scientists" that the Karaites were of Turkic origin although professing Judaism and using Hebrew as a liturgical language. This helped the Karaites escape the tragic destiny of other European Jews and the Romas.
context_section_description: Czekanowski classified Europe into four pure races.  The four pure races were the Nordic, Mediterranean (Ibero-Insular), Lapponoid and Armenoid. The Lapponoid included the central and eastern Europeans along Europe longitudely as well as the Sami people of Northern Europe.
  Czekanowski classified six subraces in Europe which were mixed types of the pure races.   The six mixed racial subraces were: the Northwestern (Nordic and Mediterranean), the Subnordic (Nordic and Lapponoid), Alpine (Nordic and Armenoid), the Littoral (Mediterranean and Armenoid), Sublapponoid (Mediterranean and Lapponoid) and the Dinaric (Lapponoid and Armenoid). The Sublapponoid subrace (also called Pile Dwelling race) lived around the Swiss lakes.
  The Greek letters which symbolise races and types could be capital or lower case.
    Pure Races
  α =Nordic race
  ε =Ibero-Insular race
  λ =Lapponoid race
  χ =Armenoid race
   Mixed Types
  ι =Northwestern mixed type
  γ =Subnordic mixed type
  ω =Alpine mixed type
  ρ or ϱ =Littoral mixed type
  β =Pile Dwelling mixed type
  δ =Dinaric mixed type
caption: This map shows the updated racial classification scheme of the anthropologist Jan Czekanowski in his book Człowiek w czasie i przestrzeni (1967).
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