10 Facts About Giuseppe Sergi

Giuseppe Sergi was an Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of Mediterranean peoples.

Giuseppe Sergi rejected existing racial typologies that identified Mediterranean peoples as "dark whites" because they implied a Nordicist conception of Mediterranean peoples descending from whites who had become racially mixed with non-whites which he claimed was false.

Giuseppe Sergi later took courses in physics and anatomy, finally specializing in racial anthropology as a student of Cesare Lombroso.

Giuseppe Sergi was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1885.

Giuseppe Sergi began the journal Atti della Societa Romana di Antropologia.

Giuseppe Sergi was initially assigned temporary premises in the School of Application for Engineers in San Pietro in Vincoli but in 1887 moved to the old building of the Roman College, where Sergi dedicated part of the space to the creation of an anthropological museum.

Giuseppe Sergi argued that the Mediterraneans were more creative and imaginative than other peoples, which explained their ancient cultural and intellectual achievements, but that they were by nature volatile and unstable.

Giuseppe Sergi ridiculed Nordicists who claimed that the leading Greeks and Romans were of Nordic background and argued that the Germanic invasions at the end of the Roman Empire had produced "delinquency, vagabondage and ferocity".

Giuseppe Sergi believed that the Aryans were originally "Eurasiatic" barbarians who migrated from the Hindu Kush into Europe.

Giuseppe Sergi argued that the Italians had originally spoken a Hamitic language until the Aryan Italic language spread across the country.