# The 'mulattos': an unprecedented integration  
One of the least studied but very significant problems lies in the formation, from the end of the fifteenth century, of a large minority of mixed-race populations, which caused great perplexity in Portuguese society. They were inserted into a zoomorphic classification structure designed to add the men and women designated as mulattos to the vast category of Muslims, and in so doing, refusing to accept them as Portuguese. In this way their classification based on the assumption of their sexual hyperactivity - especially the mulattas - derived  
from their African blood, marked the construction of a lasting and devaluing archetype that has not yet completely disappeared.