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The Lightest ethnic group in Europe......
??????
This is an essential issue in my life.
I think the lightest Europeans are Canarians.
Before propounding any conclusions as to the racial history of western Barbary, it seems advisable to consider the racial history of that supremely marginal cultural province, the Canary Islands. These islands, consisting of Lanzarote and Fuertaventura near the coast of Rio de Oro, Gran Canaria, Teneriffe, Gomera, and finally Palma and Hierro on the western fringe, were occupied by a Neolithic population of white racial type when the Spaniards conquered them, with great difficulty, during the fifteenth century. The adjacent African mainland, an utter desert, had by then long been the home of primitive Bedawin Arabs and of negroes.102
It is unlikely that the Guanches, as the native Canarians were called, had arrived there by the end of the Pleistocene, since no archaeological remains of a pre-Neolithic culture have been found, and the islands themselves are of recent volcanic origin. The Canarians lived by breeding pigs, sheep, and goats, and by the cultivation of barley and perhaps of wheat, although their use of the latter cereal is questionable. They ground their grain on rotary querns, and used chipped stone cutting implements. Polished stone celts of materials not found on the islands have been discovered by archaeologists, and iron spear points as well; apparently the Neolithic axe was given up by the early colonists through lack of material, and the metal of later visitors was also irreplaceable. Pottery is of a Neolithic type, but textiles were lacking. Arabic words in the speech of most of the islands, as well as alphabetic inscriptions on rocks, and the rotary querns, indicate that the islands were visited sporadically by people from the mainland from Neolithic times to the seventh century of the present era, if not later. The basic culture is a Neolithic Schweinhirtenkultur in Menghin's sense, with various losses and accretions.
At the time of the Spanish conquest, the islands contained a varied population of different physical types, stratified in social classes. There was definitely a tall, blond element, which lived by its flocks for the most part, and which seems to have been socially superior; a darker, more Mediterranean element which was more agricultural. Gran Canaria and Teneriffe were the centers of blondism, while of the two outlying islands, Hierro was prevailingly brunet, and Palma partly blond. The coastal islands of Lanzarote and Fuertaventura contained almost exclusively a tall, brunet population. The Guanches were described by the Spaniards as being frequently of giant size, and it is apparent from the difficulties of the Spaniards that they were redoubtable fighters.
The osteology of the Guanches has been exhaustively studied,103 and does not wholly support the Spanish descriptions. For example, the mean statures reckoned from the long bones in Teneriffe and in Gran Canaria are only 166 cm. The crania as a whole are of moderate size; mesocephaly seems to have been the prevailing head form, with a cranial index of 75-76 in Teneriffe, Gran Canaria, and Hierro, and of 77.7 in Gomera. Since this is equivalent to cephalic indices of 77 to 80, it is apparent that the Guanches were less dolichocephalic than most living North Africans. The upper faces of most were not particularly long, and euryene crania are as numerous as mesene; in Gomera, the euryene are more numerous. The characteristic nose form in the outward islands (Lanzarote and Fuertaventura not studied) is mesorrhine, with the narrowest in Teneriffe (of Teneriffe, Gran Canaria, Gomera, and Hierro) and the least so in Hierro. The orbital index mean is in all islands low, exceptionally so in Gomera. The majority of crania from all islands is chamaeconch.
The Guanche skulls as a whole are unlike those of modern European Mediterraneans, and resemble northern European series most closely, especially those in which a brachycephalic element is present, as in Burgundian and Alemanni series. Hpaton has divided them into clearly differentiated types, which include a Mediterranean, a Nordic, a "Guanche," and an Alpine. The "Guanche" accounts for 50 per cent of the whole on the four islands of Teneriffe, Gomera, Gran Canaria, and Hierro; the Nordic for 31 per cent, the Mediterranean for 13 per cent, and the Alpine for most of the remainder. The "Guanche" is particularly prevalent on Teneriffe, the Alpine on Gomera, and the Mediterranean on Hierro.
Hooton's "Guanche" type skulls, although not as large as the Afalou bou Rummel crania, resemble them morphologically, with heavy browridges, strong muscular markings, low orbits, and lambdoidal flattening.104 His Nordic crania are distinguished from the Mediterranean sub-group largely on a basis of size and robusticity. The Alpine crania bear what Hooton considers to be a slightly Mongoloid cast, as is also found in early European brachycephalic skulls of the Mesolithic and earlier.
After the Spaniards had conquered the Guanches and converted the survivors, they proceeded to intermarry with these new Christians, who.......
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Originally Posted by Shah-Jehan
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