Expert: John Shea - 4/1/2008

Question
QUESTION: When did first caucasoid man appear ? Was the earliest Cro-Magnon caucasoid ? What caucasoid characteristics did Cro-magnon have ?

ANSWER: Adam
There is no simple answer to this because most of the features people use to identify other humans as "caucasoid" are soft tissues (hair, skin) that do not fossilize.
Our best guess for the the origins of pale skin like that seen among western Eurasians would be after 40,000 years ago, after Homo sapiens dispersed there, and after natural selection had some time to reduce melanofor densities in their skin.
The cranial skeletal features that mark Caucasoids are somewhat older because they occur among the North African populations that were the source of European and west Asian Homo sapiens.
Cheers,
John Shea

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: So cranium of cro magnon was caucasoid ?

Answer
Adam
There is a lot of variability among female Upper Paleolithic European skulls.  Some look "caucasoid" -big noses, chins.  Others (eg. Grimaldi) retain some African characters -alveolar prognathism, frontal bossing.
The simple answer is that the category "caucasoid" doesn't really help one sort Pleistocene-age skulls into meaningful categories.  The characteristics on which the classification is based really only sort out geographically among Holocene-age skulls (i.e., those less than 12,000 years old).
For the authoritative reference on this, see W.W. Howells' book (199?) Skull Shapes and the Map.
Cheers
John Shea