Origin
The term "Caucasian race" was coined by the German philosopher Christoph Meiners in his The Outline of History of Mankind (1785).[4] In Meiners' unique racial classification, there were only two racial divisions (Racen): Caucasians ("white and beautiful") and Mongolians ("brown and ugly"). These terms were used as a collective representative of what Meiners personally regarded as good looking and far less attractive, based solely on the appearance of the skin of the face, for example the Germans and the Tartars he considered Caucasian, and the best looking, while Jews, Slavs and Native Americans as Mongolian, and ugly in the face.
[Berin there goes your theory, anyhow, lets continue...]
The earliest anthropologists, such as Blumenbach however came to recognize that skin pigmentation within European populations differed, without explaining it with the obsolete idea of admixture with another race. Thus Blumenbach, in the 3rd edition of his On the Natural Variety of Mankind, recognized that poorer European people (such as peasants) whom he observed generally worked outside, often became darker skinned ("browner") through sun exposure.[13] He also came to realize that darker skin of an "olive-tinge" was a natural feature of some European populations closer to the Mediterranean Sea.
[Phew...]
Full article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
