

Human: Why did Europeans come to invent the concept of race?

Assistant: Humans developed the concept of race in part because of their strong desire to categorize and classify people by shared physical or cultural traits.  European thinkers were influenced by a number of ancient ideas, including the theory of polygenesis, which held that human races were originally separate species which had developed over time into the current human races we see today.  Europeans developed the idea of race further through scientific research, including the study of human anatomy and the comparisons of physical characteristics such as skin color and facial features.


Human: Why did Europeans come to invent the concept of race?

Assistant: To me it seems like you’re interested in why Europeans came to identify distinct “races” of humans, and what these “races” represent. To answer your question, I can tell you a bit about how European scholars categorized humanity, and how the “race” concept was used. As we’ll see, it wasn’t used in a good way. 
The term “race” is one that many people think is offensive now, and has fallen out of common usage. It was a way of describing some human groups in a particular way, though it was done without thought to the harm of some groups, and for dubious ends.
Why did Europeans come to invent the concept of race?
Humans developed the concept of race in part because of their strong desire to categorize and classify people by shared physical or cultural traits.  European thinkers were influenced by a number of ancient ideas, including the theory of polygenesis, which held that human races were originally separate species which had developed over time into the current human races we see today.  Europeans developed the idea of race further through scientific research, including the study of human anatomy and the comparisons of physical characteristics such as skin color and facial features.
To me it seems like you’re interested in why Europeans came to identify distinct “races” of humans, and what these “races” represent. To answer your question, I can tell you a bit about how European scholars categorized humanity, and how the “race” concept was used. As we’ll see, it wasn’t used in a good way. 
The term “race” is one that many people think is offensive now, and has fallen out of common usage. It was a way of describing some human groups in a particular way, though it was done without thought to the harm of some groups, and for dubious ends.