TheTuranid race was a supposed sub-race of theCaucasian race in the context of anow-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races. The Turanid type was traditionally held to be most common among the populations native toCentral Asia. The name is taken from the obsolete phylum ofTuranian languages.[1][page needed]
Anthropologists of the 19th and early 20th century posited the existence of a Turanidracial type or "minor race" as a subtype of the Caucasoid race withMongoloid admixture, situated at the boundary of the distribution of the Mongoloid and Caucasoid races.[2][3]
The idea of a Turanid race came to play a role of some significance inPan-Turkism orTuranism in the late 19th to 20th century. A "Turkish race" was proposed as a Caucasoid subtype in European literature of the period.
The most influential of these sources wereHistoire Générale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mongols, et autres Tartares Occidentaux (1756–1758) byJoseph de Guignes (1721–1800), andSketches of Central Asia (1867) byÁrmin Vámbéry, which was on the common origins of Turkic groups as belonging to one race, but subdivided according to physical traits and customs, andL'histoire de l'Asie (1896) byLeon Cahun, which stressed the role of Turks in "carrying civilization to Europe", as a part of the greater "Turanid race" that included the Uralic and Altaic speaking peoples more generally.[4] There was also an ideology ofHungarian Turanism most lively in the second half of the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th century.