The Caucasus is a region bordering Asia Minor, is located between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea which includes the Caucasus Mountains and surrounding lowlands. The highest peak is Mount Elbrus (5642m).
The nations that comprise today's Caucasus include Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and parts of Russia. The northern slopes of the Caucasus are in the Russian Federation: Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai and the autonomous republics Adygea, Kalmykia, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan. The northern section of the Caucasus is known as the Ciscaucasus, and the southern as the Transcaucasus.
The term Caucasian race is used almost exclusively in the United States to refer to people whose ancestry can be traced back to Europe, North Africa, West Asia, South Asia and parts of Central Asia. It was once considered a useful taxonomical categorization of human racial groups based on a presumed common geographic and/or linguistic origin.
In the United States, it is currently used primarily as a distinction loosely based on skin color alone for a group commonly refered to as Whites, as defined by the American government and census bureau. In the British Isles, "Caucasian" follows the North American definition, but in continental Europe, "Caucasian" currently refers almost exclusively to people who are from the Caucasus.
The term itself derives from measurements in craniology from the 19th century, and its name stems from the region of the Caucasus mountains, itself imagined to be the location from which Noah's son Japheth, traditional Biblical ancestor of the Europeans, established his tribe prior to its supposed migration into Europe.