This chapter provides a series of case studies that explore different ways Archaic and Classical Greeks conceptualized human diversity (modern race and/or ethnicity) in relation to environment, in particular, the land. It explores three inter-related approaches the Greeks took towards understanding this relationship: myths of metals, autochthony, and environmental determinism. I argue that these approaches to the relationship binding human and land attempt to rationalize human difference in a way that privileges indigenous status as well as hereditary superiority. This rationalization might be considered a type of “proto-social Darwinism,” a organization of human diversity that ranks peoples on a scale from superior to inferior based on a normative standard and/or “purity.” This scale derives either from environmental metaphors or in direct relationship to the environment itself.