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• History of Christianization of Europe
• Soviet Union, Communist influence
• Map of European ethnic groups
• Map of Fascism in Europe (1922-75)
• History of Islamic conquest in Europe
• Religions & ethnic groups in Russia
• Detailed map of French colonization
• Detailed map of British colonization
• Napoleon's conquests & legacy

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• Muhammad cartoon crisis in pictures
• Stalin's private summer home
• Ravenna: capital of Gothic empire
• Czar Nicholas II's Ukrainian palace
• European traditional costumes/dress
• Inside the Vatican, house of all wealth

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• Islamic Mujahidin vs. Spain & El Cid
• Poland-Lithuania vs. Teutonic Order
• Nevskiy's Russia vs. German Crusaders
• Mussolini vs. Libyan Islamic fighters
• Qadafi: Europe will soon be Islamic
• Ivan the Terrible vs. Muslim Tatars 

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

• The Gypsies in history and today, Europe's public enemy
• History of Jihad in Chechnya
& Caucasus vs. Russians
• History of the Muslim Tatars in Russia
• Ethnic & religious history of Serbs, Croats, & Bosnians
• Breakaway states and independence movements in Europe
• The ancient Germanic Runic alphabet and Runestones
• Inside Bulgaria, 1st Slavic nation,
land of Thracian masters of gold
• Visual history of Yugoslavia
• 4,000-year-old white mummies of China, bringers of Buddhism 

--MORE & NON-ENGLISH--

Map of world ethnic groups & families
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)

Print this Article    •    About the Author    •    Bibliography/Sources

Below is a map the EHL has published charting the major dispersal of dominant ethnic and cultural groups in the world. As with religion, ethnic heritage is the keystone which symbolizes the heritage and identities of all cultures of the world. As in studying our other ethno-cartographic maps, studying the below map will gain a better understanding of European cultural heritage and the impact they have upon the world. With the exclusive EHL cultural cartography, one can find a country on the map layer and thus determine its religious composition or ethnic heritage by looking at our colour indications! If you have any questions, please feel free to notify us.

Mapping Information & Extra Notes:

The field of ethnocartography is difficult and often controversial. Many communities and cultures claim falsely to be be completely independent ethnic or racial groups because of independence movements and nationalism, like the Catalans of Spain. Other communities include other unrelated groups as their relatives for the same reason. Romanians and Bulgarians often link themselves to the original inhabitants of the region, the ethnically-Iranian Thracians, out of national pride and distinction, though there often is little evidence or even common agreement. Many Europeans dismiss the Albanians as Slavic tribes who mixed in with the hated Muslim enemy (i.e. with the Turkish race), though Albanians claim descent from an ancient Roman era culture (the Illyrians) despite having almost no factual basis for it. This makes ethnic cartography difficult. Places like Africa have historically had such little ethnocultural and nationalist development that it is impossible to know whether or not there are 500 completely unrelated races in Africa or 5. This all compounds the difficulty of charting the ethnic groups and races of the world. The fact that on this map Africa is charted as "African", and the Americas are charted as "Native American" is not Eurocentric, but a legitimate reflection of these region's lack of specific development on ethnic or racial grounds. Further, the growth of modern multicultural and liberal characteristics, primarily derived from American academia, have worked to transfer the meaning of "ethnicity" from racial heritage to language use, largely for sociopolitical means. This error dismisses the blatant reality of the unique and independent histories, customs, cultures, and genetics of the many different peoples of the world. On this map, each color represents a different ethnic family in the world. Further, scholars disagree on different terminology and classifications. America lumps the many different ethnicities of Europe under the banner of "Caucasian" for social and political reasons, despite the fact that Caucasians (Georgians, Armenians, Azeris) are not European at all, and the languages are unrelated. For example, modern academia especially in America links the Mongols and Turks -- two very different racial groups -- together because of a similar language family, despite the historic evidence that the incredibly different Mongol race adopted a Turkic language for functions of its massive empire. This map addresses blatant ethnic and racial characteristics of the world's many cultures, not linguistic ones.

The United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have been excluded, even though the latter three typically consist of French, British (Germanic), or Celtic ethnic heritage. Due to immigration and large indigenous populations, no clear majority exists in the case of the United States, or that the majority may be called "European" or white, and no single European ethnicity is clearly dominant. Each group term refers to the main ethnic origin of each nation, not solely language nor cultural heritage as in common academia of today. The Uzbeks for example are culturally, linguistically, and religiously (meaning Islamic) Turkic, but they have no ethnic nor racial relation to the Turks, but rather to the Mongols. Smaller communities, like the Basques of Spain, are not shown due to their small size and relatively unimportant status in history. Large ethnic groups without their own states are shown where they most intensely populate, such as the Kurdi (ethnic Iranian) Sunnis in eastern Turkey, northwest Iran, and Iraq. Note that some colors are used repeatedly on the entire global map because there are too few colors to appropriately chart the wide variety of races and ethnic groups in the world. The fact that the Native American "Indians" are charted in red just like the Greeks is, obviously, not an implication of their common origin, but a deficiency in color variety. They are far apart enough to make this blatantly obvious intentionally.

The many diverse Native American tribes and peoples in the Americas are treated differently by different sources. Most academics classify the majority of the American nations as "white" or "mixed Hispanic", and treats "indigenous" tribes like the Guarani and Nahuatl as a peripheral minority population. Other sources classify Hispanic/mixed as native people who have adopted Spanish cultural, religious, and especially linguistic imports, and does not imply that the majority of the Americas have genetically mixed blood. This map only reflects the genetic aspect.

The Indian subcontinent is divided in two based upon linguistic, anatomic, cultural, and ethnic markers. There is no "Indian" race nor ethnicity, as India prior to foreign conquest (by the British) was a collection of a variety of warring nations and tribes south of the Islamic empires to the north. The south have been marked as Dravidian, and the north that of the Indic Indo-Aryans; they are unrelated. The Sinhala of Sri Lanka and the Divehi of the Maldives have embraced historical political ties with the north, thus they have embraced Indo-Aryan languages but may have no relation to them. So too, the Mongol race is charted as independent from their Chinese neighbors to the south as announced by their distinct history, culture, language, anatomy, and a much later civilization than the Chinese to the south. The Malays of Indonesia, the Philippines, Borneo, etc., and the Asians of Indochina all bear common descent via what are today referred to as the Chinese or the related earlier Austronesian group.

Colors which extend beyond nations (like the Asiatic Malay Indonesian color extending into western Papua) is intentional, included to show that these portions are dominant Asiatic in a black ethnic territory.

Click the below map for the full-size version! Click on the map to zoom.

If an error has been made, or you think some important information has been omitted and needs inclusion for clarity, please notify the EHL Staff.

________________________________________

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

James Mayfield is the owner and Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I am working for a doctorate in history, with a specific emphasis on Islamic and European histories. I am well versed in all world cultures, ethnicities, religions, languages, politics, and historical evolution in relation to and against each other.

BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES USED:

The image used as the basis for the map is widely redistributed and is not protected.