Japhetic people
Sign in to savethumb|230px|right|This T and O map, from the first printed version of Isidore's [[Etymologiae (Augsburg 1472), identifies the three known continents (Asia, Europe, and Africa) as respectively populated by descendants of Sem (Shem), Iafeth (Japheth), and Cham (Ham).]]
Article
14 sectionsContents
- In the Book of Genesis
- Biblical genealogy
- Ancient and medieval ethnography
- Ethnogenetic interpretations
- Pseudo-Philo
- Later writers
- Renaissance to Early Modern ethnography
- Book of Jasher
- Anthropology
- Linguistics
- See also
- References
- Bibliography
- External links
thumb|230px|right|This T and O map, from the first printed version of Isidore's [[Etymologiae (Augsburg 1472), identifies the three known continents (Asia, Europe, and Africa) as respectively populated by descendants of Sem (Shem), Iafeth (Japheth), and Cham (Ham).]]
The term Japhetites (sometimes spelled Japhethites; in adjective form Japhetic or Japhethitic) refers to the descendants of Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis. The term was used in ethnological and linguistic writings from the 18th to the 20th centuries as a Biblically derived racial classification for the European peoples, but is now considered obsolete. Medieval ethnographers believed that the world had been divided into three large-scale groupings, corresponding to the three classical continents: the Semitic peoples of Asia, the Hamitic peoples of Africa, and the Japhetic peoples of Europe.