On Nordic Types

[Jarl]

Coon is openly biased! I mean read this ("The Mediterranean Race in East Africa"):


The different groups studied in Ethiopia share a tendency to dolichocephaly or mesocephaly, and to a narrow face form. In the measurements of the head and face, all are fundamentally Mediterranean, and the negroid traits manifested in the soft parts do not reveal themselves in the measurements, except in nose breadth and in the biorbital and interorbital diameters. The heads are larger than those of the Yemeni Mediterraneans; Amharas (in the sense of Semitic-speaking Abyssinians) have vault dimensions of 194 mm. (length) by 150 mm. (breadth) by 127 mm. (height); these figures could apply as well to Nordics as to Abyssinians.

WTF???


So far the inhabitants of the Abyssinian plateau, whatever their speech and ethnic origin, are (...) comparable to Mediterraneans (...) as well as to North European Nordics.

...!!!



Somalis are hyperleptoprosopic - FI means over 95:


The total face heights of the four groups under consideration range from 122 mm. to 124 mm.; the upper face heights from 71 mm. to 74mm. It is interesting to note that the Sidamos, who are the most negroid, have the broadest foreheads, bizygomatics, and bigonials, the longest menton-nasion heights, and by far the longest upper face heights, of the entire group. It is the Somalis whose upper face height is shortest. All four are leptoprosopic and leptene, the Somalis hyperleptoprosopic.

Yet Coon's Nordics are the same, in spite of the fact the mean FIs of Nordic countries reveal a strikingly different image. Coon seems to have intentionally exaggerated the Scandinavian trend to leptoprospy for the purpose of his Nord-Med theory. Also, if you look at the absolute dimensions, Scandinavians are way more robust than Southerners.

[The Black Prince]

Indeed! It is hard to imagine they looked like Scandinavians living along the Danube. Particularly pigmentation-wise.
Yes, I even forgot to mention. We don't know even of what pigmentation the Hallstatt people were. Actually prior the 20th century all data about pigmentaton is highly subjective caused by the variable perceptance on colour. Or as Beddoe said:

Thus almost all French anthropologists say that the majority of persons in the north of France are blond; whereas almost all Englishmen would say they were dark, each set of observers setting up as a standard what they are accustomed to see around them when at home. What is darkish brown to most Englishmen would be chestnut in the nomenclature of most Parisians, and perhaps even blond in that of Auvergne or Provence; an ancient Roman might probably have called it sufflavus or even flavus. J. Beddoe (1862)



It would be really nice to re-evaluate all these Coonian views... How large were the series Coon used? Where did they come from? What archeological culture and time period?
Well I suppose you own the book TROE, in the back with the cranial tables are listened the anthropological/archaeological sources Coon used for his cranial material. Otherwise here is the link to the cranial tables: http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/troe-appendixI.htm

It is mostly sufficient, though some series might be redated nowadays to a different timeframe. But thats not Coon his fault. As you know a lot of the other archaeological data was redated by the introduction of C-14 and dendrochronology in the later half of the 20th century.

Personally I would love that someone would make an enormous database of remeasured cranial material. This time first taking hundreds of measurements per cranium and taking shape and non-metrical data. Second checking if any possible DNA material could be still retrieved from the material. And as a third point try to produce such a precise as possible timeframe date.
However such a thing would take a lot of funding, and personally I think most people are not as interested in someone requesting funds to measure old skulls. Most people just don't care while others would regard you as acting suspicious, skull measuring has (how sad) still a certain taboo around it in Western culture.


I guess Retzius, Deniker or Ripley adpoted a much better approach. They coined their Nordics from direct studies of modern Nordic populations, not from some 2500 years old cranial series.
Well, don't forget that Coon in TROE tried to give an impressin of ancient European populations. Although I don't like his interpretation of the material. I do like that he tried to give all the ancient and classical European populations and tribes a face.

However explaining how an Early Slav or Anglo-Saxon looked (both most of the times Rowgrave type) is one thing. But interpretating the race of modern populations at the hand of those ancient tribes is not right viewing from a modern population wise idea.


What is a Danubian? Few obscure skulls from the Neolithic? And modern Nordics are judged against Halstatt Illyrians or Celts??? Come on! You got to be joking me...
(I was actually referring to the photograpic plates when stating that Coon's Danubian type is rather mediterranoid in appearance..;))

Well Danubians or better said the first Neolithic immigrants in Europe who expanded along the Danube and later on along the fertile river valleys. They, where definetely Mediterranoid in appearance (atleast the first, later on I doubt it). On the other hand the skull material is scarce...

[Agrippa]

Eickstedt however made up the distinction of Cromagnid and Aurignacid for the Palaeolithic forms and mentioned that the Dalofaelid being largely Cromagnid, Nordid/Teutonordid = Skandonordid Aurignacid derived.

He wasnt that clear in all his writings and sometimes made the distinction more or less clear.

Since the distribution of Nordid and Dalofaelid isnt the same neither, it can make sense to set them apart and pure modern populations, yet even subpopulations, rarely exist at all.

If looking at the past however, one can find more often samples of clearly Nordid types with the narrow faces etc. and it makes little sense to use just averages of populations for analysing their racial variation or making up typological criteria, if there are so clear differences.

V. Eickstedt also used another term, which suits the situation of Northern Europe much better, namely Nordeuropid - opposed to Suedeuropid (Mediterranoid forms).

So you bring the climatic-pigmentation relations together, yet dont put types in one category which show such old and clear differences, thats makes much more sense.

As for C.S. Coon, he was basically right but made many strange assumptions, because not every "overgrown" Nordid with larger measurements is a "Bruenn" and Bruenn is such a stupid term, since the form it refers to was essentially Aurignacoid/leptodolichomorphic and the whole idea makes just sense because of his idea of all larger headed Europeans being "Upper Palaeolithic" and even Neandertal influenced.

Yet he put "Danubians" in the Nordid category using absurd examples of individuals which dont even fit the bill.

But thats a longer debate of course...

[Jarl]

There is one important thing worth noting...


First, lets us go back in history to the beginnings of physical anthropology. What was the origin of the racial term "Nordic"? What was its original meaning? To answer these questions you need to go back to studies conducted by Retzius (on living populations) and physical dimensions maps and "cartographic" studies of Deniker. These first studies showed that Scandinavians are overall more leptoprosopic than their neighbours. The trend was noted and reflected in the leptoprosopy of the Nordic race. However, if you look at the means they are not drastically different to other European means. In fact some regional means in Scandinavia can well fit into mainland Europe.


Extreme variation can be seen in any population, but what does it tell us about the whole populations and race - the answer is... not much. Now, it occurs to me that for some odd reason, Coon extrapolated these leptoprosopic trends and took them to extreme. Look at the plates of Nordics he showed in his supplement and then look at the description of Nordic populations... With the exception of perhaps Sweden, they represent a very different image. Coon was strict about say cranial index, but not about facial index. One standard deviation down from the Nordic facial index was invariably a mark of admixture, while one could be even ten standard deviations above the mean index and would still be considered Nordic. Same goes for absolute dimensions. Coon assumed Nordics are gracile. He had to assume this because of his Med-Nord theory. Yet most of Scandinavia is remarkably robust in terms of absolute dimensions.


What was the result of Coon's a priori method? The result was quite different to that of Deniker and Retzius a posteriori approach. Now most of Scandinavia and Nordic countries turned out to be... some Nordic - Upper Paleolithic "blend" (as if modern Nordics indeed arrived there from the Danube or Abisynia, and not evolved locally). Even though some local means were Nordic, overall the Nordic element was present "in solution"...


Now I would like you to pay attention to what Coon does next. Read this carefully:


So far the inhabitants of the Abyssinian plateau, whatever their speech and ethnic origin, are (...) comparable to Mediterraneans (...) as well as to North European Nordics.

Coon:


- In contrast to Retzius and Deniker, does not measure the means of the living Nordic populations in the first place, to set the standard for what is Nordic and what is not. He a priori ASSUMES a genetic link between Meds and Nords, and sets his yardstick of whats is Nordic on the basis of some obscure Neolithic and antic cranial series.


- In the fragment above, Coon comparers the living modern populations of whole Abissynia to a... single anthropological "type" which he himself subjectively carved out from the Scandinavian population on the basis of some aprioristic assumptions!


Not very consequent, is he? Adopting that method, I can prove a genetic link between absolutely everyone (after all human populations are all variations on a common theme). I can get meaned measurements of all living Pygmies, or Australoid cranial series, and then find a subset of indiviuals that resembles them in virtually any population - be it German, Polish, Swedish or Japanese.

Next, I will artificially "carve out" all these individuals from their continuum, from the maternal population whose variation they are an integral part of, and call them a distinct separate "type" who is pure and unmixed, yet present "in solution"... That way absolutely everything is possible! ;)


However, if you read Coon's data on Denmark, Norway, Iceland or the Netherlands then no... populations of Abissynia are nowhere near.

[Jarl]

Yes, I even forgot to mention. We don't know even of what pigmentation the Hallstatt people were. Actually prior the 20th century all data about pigmentaton is highly subjective caused by the variable perceptance on colour. Or as Beddoe said:

Thus almost all French anthropologists say that the majority of persons in the north of France are blond; whereas almost all Englishmen would say they were dark, each set of observers setting up as a standard what they are accustomed to see around them when at home. What is darkish brown to most Englishmen would be chestnut in the nomenclature of most Parisians, and perhaps even blond in that of Auvergne or Provence; an ancient Roman might probably have called it sufflavus or even flavus. J. Beddoe (1862)

Correct! As for Halstatt series of Coon all I got to say is a big... LOL!!!



Just listen to this... I looked up the series in the appendix, as you suggested. There, instead of giving the author who described them, it said "composite". However there were references to the chapter "The Illyrians" - where Coon for the first times mentions Halstatt series and Halstatt Nordics. Here are fragments from the chapter:


The Hallstatt crania from Austria, including those from the type site itself, form a reasonably homogeneous, entirely long-headed group. 16 (See Appendix I, col. 32.) This group is the legitimate, local successor to the Aunjetitz, and like the latter it resembles the Danubian Neolithic series in many respects. In certain characters, however, it leans in a Corded direction, and these include a heightening of the orbits and a narrowing and lengthening of the nose. Certain of the individual crania are of definitely Corded type. Morphologically, as well as metrically, most of these skulls may without difficulty be designated as "Nordic"; the browridges are moderate, the foreheads moderately sloping, the occiputs protruding, the parietals flattened, the malars compressed, the mandibles deep. The stature was apparently moderately tall. 17

The Austrian Hallstatt series has close connections in two directions: first, with the local Bronze Age and Neolithic populations of central Europe, which preceded it, and second, with the Germanic "Reihengräber" people who followed it after a Keltic interruption. The similarity between Hallstatt and Germanic crania is a commonplace; and if the Reihengräber people were "Nordic", as is generally conceded, then so, in all likelihood, were the Hallstatt people.

The significance of this double continuity is great. It traces the Nordic racial type, in skeletal form, back to the Early Iron Age, and derives this with little alteration from the preceding Age of Bronze. The Bronze Age population which was thus the ancestral Nordic one was in turn derived from a mixture between the local Danubian Neolithic people, who came from the east, and the later Corded invaders. The complexity of the Middle and Late Bronze Age, therefore, and the disturbances caused by the introduction of cremation, during the latter part of the epoch, did not interrupt the racial continuity of central Europe, where racial movements, during the Late Bronze Age, seem to have been somewhat simpler than those of culture.


:) Try to read this carefully again...


1. First Coon assumes apriori that Halstatt Illyrians living in the Austrian mountains and along the Danube were Nordics - although obviously this can't be true if, like he claims, they represented a local continuation of earlier Neolithic cultures...


2. I remember that you mentined Coon found Halstatt crania similar to Danish Iron Age. In fact Coon finds them similar to the... Germanic Reihengraber series. And, at the sime time, to Neolithic Med crania - which pretty much makes him conclude that Nordics can be derived from the Danube region where they evolved from the Neolithic Meds...



That this is a gross bullshit, I don't even have to explain... First of all, it takes one look at the very numerous Germanic Reihengraber series to notice that they are metrically worlds apart from the Halstatt crania and waaaaay more robust. Just compare ancient Germanic columns (Reihengrabers) 40-45 to Halstatt column 32 at:

http://carnby.altervista.org/troe/a-01.htm

Facial indices of 83 to 92... Head length around 190 mm. Head breadth around 140, often above (in contrast to Halstatt 135).



This is includes Norwegian and Swedish Iron Age Germanics - so by all accounts the direct descendants of the original proto-Germanics. Also Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Bajuvars and Hanoverians. The only exception here are the Danish Iron Age carnia which you have mentioned. But now comes the best bit...


I took the liberty of looking closely at the series which Coon used... While the robust Germanic series from Germania (Crania Germanica), France and Anglo-Saxon England encompass one to several hundred cranial series, the Scandinavian series are represented by...



- 14 Swedish crania, evidently different to the Halstatt, and even to the Iron Age Danish series in spite of what Coon says - just have a look at the tables yourself - for instance Facial Index of Swedes is 87.4... while Danish is 92 (3.5 points!)... Now THIS is WAAAY from being SIMILAR...



- 27 Norwegian crania, waaay different to both Halstatt and Danish series.



- 41 Nielsen's Danish Crania... I mean - although way similar than the previous series - even the Danish crania are more robust than the Halstatts. I should perhaps recommend the latest publications - "Physical anthropology and Human Evolution in Denmark and other Scandinavian Countries" or Sellevold's "The Iron Age Man in Denmark". These are far more comprehensive and numerous than fourty-odd Nielsen's series from 1915.




- Halstatt composite series, from different places and time periods in Austria, comprise altogether.... 24 crania!!!





Consequently Coon's is biased and using double-standards. He claims Danish series are like Swedish -while they are clearly not. He claims Halstatt series resemble Germanic series, particularly the Reihengrabers, while they are, by his very own standards, WORLDS APART - with Germanic series being far more robust than Illyrian/Keltic Halstatt.


Now, if this was not enough, on top of it all, his Halstatt Nordic cranial series are made of 6 different series (4 skulls each)... which pretty much gives his extremely elaborate and far-fetched and elaborate Halstett-Med-Nord theory a tragi-comical epilogue and extremely disproportionate, little foundation.



I mean... let's face it... Coon's "Nordic-Med" theory, and consequently his definition of Nordic is based on 4x6 Austrian Halstatt crania + 41 Danish Iron Age Ertebolle crania... In the context of natural variaiton of every human population, this is absolutely nothing.

[Jarl]

As for the seemingly exceptional Danish series, I think its necessary to refer to IRON AGE MAN IN DENMARK (by B.J. Sellevold, U.L. Hansen, and J.B. J4rgensen). Here is a review:


Iron Age Man in Denmark is the result of close collaboration between anthropologists and archeologists and illustrates the value of such interaction. The book is the third and final volume of the Prehistoric Man in Denmark series, which was first published in 1956. The authors have attempted to maintain continuity with the previous volumes, although advances in research have necessarily resulted in some differences. The skeletal material consists of finds reliably dated to the Danish Iron Age (ca. 500 BC to ca. 1050 AD) excluding bog corpses and cremations. The number excluded is large: a total of 1,039 individuals from grave and bog finds


... 1984 not 1915, and 1040 Iron Age Danish crania instead of 40 ;)

[Agrippa]

Same goes for absolute dimensions. Coon assumed Nordics are gracile. He had to assume this because of his Med-Nord theory.

Dont overestimate that, because there are, at least on the skull, very robust Suedeuropid Mediterranoid variants, Atlantomediterranid, Iranid etc. They were and still are individually often indistinguishable from Nordids by general metric-proportional standards and robustness.

Actually his problem was to assume that all more robust forms are "Upper Palaeolithic" and probably even not "fully sapiens". If you substract that from his calculation, everything would have looked very different in certain respects.

If Nordids would be the product of gracile Proto-Mediterranoid and robust Cromagnoid/Proto-Nordoid variants, well, then Nordids are just that, because before that happened, they didnt exist and afterwards they looked like they do now after harmonisation and selection of the respective traits.

The harmonised main form was clearly leptoprosopic though and essentially Aurignacoid in character, so morphologically much closer to Mediterranids.

Yet this is no simple North-South issue, because Cromagnoid forms too existed in the North and the South (Berberid, Guanche etc.).


as if modern Nordics indeed arrived there from the Danube or Abisynia, and not evolved locally

We dont know for sure where the majority came from, but the modern Nordids for sure had more than one influence from different populations and being the product of local harmonisation, which again might have taken place for the bulk of Proto-Nordoids further South though.
They show definitely more traits of rather Southern origin than Dalofaelids or the Borealised Osteuropids, which means to assume that they are the derivate of a Suedeuropid form which adapted to the North is not implausible.

Similar to the derivate-status of Alpinoid and Osteuropid in comparison to the classic Cromagnoid spectrum f.e.

Again, what Coon didnt recognise or mentioned often enough is, that the LBK-bearers themselves were not gracile, but robust, just ill-nourished with negative modification traits, often suffering from inbreeding conditions and various diseases.

The Northern groups of the LBK showed in many variants a great similarity to the later Corded, which were just a "selected" people with a better health status. So what was present in the LBK/Bandkeramiker series as the dominant element became even more dominant in the Corded people, which had a different life style, better health status and higher positive individual and group selection it seems.

We dont know for sure what pigmentation they had, but I'd assume they were in between what we consider Nordid and Mediterranid, but already rather on the modern Nordid side.

If we look further South, we can find pretty robust Aurignacoid/leptodolichomorphic variants of the Mediterranoid spectrum, probably ancestral to modern Atlantomediterrainds and Iranids, even most Dinaroids of today.

So the whole "gracile sapiens" vs. "robust Upper Palaeolithic" remains rather obscure. We just deal with populations and variants which often became more gracile over time by selection and modification, some even reverted that trend and became more robust again etc.

As for the Reihengräber-samples: They show oftentimes significant variation from one population to the other. F.e. among the ancient Germanics were tribes with more or less Cromagnoid/Dalofaelid influences.

Even the Corded people had a greater variation in various regions than I thought some years ago, after looking at the actual material. The dominant form was that of a progressive Nordoid or Nordoid-Mediterranid type, but many variants still had comparatively broad and even very broad noses, other primitive traits as well and a significant minority was rather Cromagnoid.

So on the whole, its very important to stress that in the prehistoric material, my impression is that there was rarely a very clear borderline in continental Europe between Nordid and Mediterranid or between either of them (Aurignacoid) and Cromagnoid. Most populations showed these three elements and its hard to distinguish the first and its an exception from the rule that a larger ancient sample has not at least a minor Cromagnoid influence.

If its about the continental populations, a generally speaking Nordid or at least Nordoid population seems to have come up, in my opinion in a direct line with additional influences from further North in particular, but also further South, from LBK - Corded - Unetice/Aunjetitzer - Iron Age cultures.

To think of the LBK as some sort of gracile Mediterranids in all parts of Europe is a general misconception.

I attached a sample of LBK skulls from the great work of Adelheid Bach about Neolithic populations. Its very important to note the modification influence and other, rather primitive and foreign looking, variants among these prehistoric LBK-people, yet the majority was already at least, what we might call "Proto-Corded", "Proto-Nordoid" or robust Mediterranoid.

Actually some bone measurements make them even more robust than later Corded and Nordoid groups, even though they were shorter and ill-nourished (!), so they seem to have been influenced by robust hunter groups in my opinion.


Facial indices of 83 to 92... Head length around 190 mm. Head breadth around 140, often above (in contrast to Halstatt 135).

As for the head breadth: It increased even in otherwise very extreme leptodolichomorphic individuals, almost all Europid populations but some of India and North Africa.

As for the Hallstatt samples: I know that there was again a huge social status difference, the higher social strata were much taller and had larger measurements, the lower shorter and smaller.

Now we dont know for sure why this was the case, since many other traits seem to be quite similar. It could be social selection and social type breeding (endogamy of the upper class?), a genetic cause inside of a racial spectrum, it could be two racial elements, one being taller, the other shorter, or it could be because of different living conditions, the upper class had less to work, had healthier food and activities.

In my opinion, like so often, I'd assume that all 3 factors and probably another unknown one, played a significant role.

It was sometimes discussed that the hard manual labour might have been done by unfree or at least "foreign" workers, whereas the "lords of the mountains" possessed and controlled the mining.

In any case, this distinction must be made and shows once again how useless averages are, if there is no typological control, making an individual diagnosis and distinguishing the most typical variants in a further differentiation.

Because the Hallstatt people were not just medium sized, but there was a taller upper class and a shorter lower class group. If you ask how we can distinguish them, well, at that time it was easy, because the upper class had specific grave goods the lower ones hadnt...

[Jarl]

Dont overestimate that, because there are, at least on the skull, very robust Suedeuropid Mediterranoid variants, Atlantomediterranid, Iranid etc. They were and still are individually often indistinguishable from Nordids by general metric-proportional standards and robustness.

:) But what is individually indistinguishable??? That is precisely what Im arguing against! By taking single individuals and carving them out from the rest, you can prove genetinc link of Swedes to Somalis, or Pygmies to Eskimos!


Actually his problem was to assume that all more robust forms are "Upper Palaeolithic" and probably even not "fully sapiens". If you substract that from his calculation, everything would have looked very different in certain respects.

If Nordids would be the product of gracile Proto-Mediterranoid and robust Cromagnoid/Proto-Nordoid variants, well, then Nordids are just that, because before that happened, they didnt exist and afterwards they looked like they do now.

The harmonised main form was clearly leptoprosopic though and essentially Aurignacoid in character, so morphologically much closer to Mediterranids.

Yet this is no simple North-South issue, because Cromagnoid forms too existed in the North and the South (Berberid, Guanche etc.).

:) But I question the whole Coonian Cro-Magnid vs Nordid-Med dychotomy and the whole Nordid-Med theory. That is why I went to its roots in the "The Illyrians" chapter where Coon describes the purportedly Danubian-Med origin of Noridics.


We dont know for sure where the majority came from, but the modern Nordids for sure had more than one influence from different populations and being the product of local harmonisation, which again might have taken place for the bulk of Proto-Nordoids further South though.
They show definitely more traits of rather Southern origin than Dalofaelids or the Borealised Osteuropids, which means to assume that they are the derivate of a Suedeuropid form which adapted to the North is not implausible.
Simiolar to the derivate-status of Alpinoid and Osteuropid in comparison to the classic Cromagnoid spectrum f.e.



Nordics as I see it, are simply a subset of natural variability of robust Northern European populations which retained the strongest Cro-Magnon, Upper Paleolithic characteristics.

Whether after the Neolithic Revolution or before, Nordics evolved in Scandinavia and most certainly did not come there from Abisynia, Middle East, Black Sea steppes, or Austria and the Danube...



Again what Coon didnt recognise or mentioned often enough is, that the LBK-bearers themselves were not gracile, but robust, just ill-nourished with negative modification traits, often suffering from inbreeding conditions and various diseases.

The Northern groups of the LBK showed in many variants a great similarity to the later Corded, which were just a "selected" people with a better health status. So what was present in the LBK/Bandkeramiker series as the dominant element became even more dominant in the Corded people, which had a different life style, better health status and higher positive individual and group selection it seems.

We dont know for sure what pigmentation they had, but I'd assume they were in between what we consider Nordid and Mediterranid, but already rather on the modern Nordid side.

If we look further South, we can find pretty robust Aurignacoid/leptodolichomorphic variants of the Mediterranoid spectrum, probably ancestral to modern Atlantomediterrainds and Iranids, even most Dinaroids of today.

So the whole "gracile sapiens" vs. "robust Upper Palaeolithic" remains rather obscure. We just deal with populations and variants which often became more gracile over time by selection and modification, some even reverted that trend and became more robust again etc.

Indeed! And here, the most ridiculous thing, is that Coon moved to bold inferences and explained the evolution and variation of whole Northern European race.... on the basis of 24 composite cranial series! ;)


As for the Reihengräber-samples: They show oftentimes significant variation from one population to the other. F.e. among the ancient Germanics were tribes with more or less Cromagnoid/Dalofaelid influences.

Even the Corded people had a greater variation in various regions than I thought some years ago, after looking at the actual material. They dominant form was that of a progressive Nordid type, but many variants still had comparatively broad and even very broad noses, other primitive traits as well and a significant minority was rather Cromagnoid.

So on the whole, its very important to stress that in the prehistoric material, my impression is that there was rarely a very clear borderline in continental Europe between Nordid and Mediterranid or between either of them (Aurignacoid) and Cromagnoid. Most populations showed these three elements and its hard to distinguish the first and its an exception from the rule that a larger ancient sample has not at least a minor Cromagnoid influence.

Again - to me Nordic is Scandinavian. Thats what the term means. Scandinavians as a whole are not and have never been as gracile as Neoltihic Meds or Abisynians. This is clearly shown by my in the previous post where I take a close look at Coon's scanty cranial series. Coon's ideas are simply inexplicable here.

With the exception of the Danes (41 skulls), none of the Germanic series is nowhere near to the Halstatts, not the mention the Neolithic Meds or Natufians - who by the way are also close to the Dogons and Niger-Congo groups.


If its about the continental populations, a generally speaking Nordid or at least Nordoid populations seems to have come up, in my opinion in a direct line with additional influences from further North in particular, but also further South, from LBK - Corded - Unetice/Aunjetitzer - Iron Age cultures.

To think of the LBK as some sort of gracile Mediterranids in all parts of Europe is a general misconception.

I attached a sample of LBK skulls from the great work of Adelheid Bach about Neolithic populations. Its very important to note the modification influence and other, rather primitive and foreign looking, variants among these prehistoric LBK-people, yet the majority was actually already at least, what we might call "Proto-Corded", "Proto-Nordoid" or robust Mediterranoid.

Actually some bone measurements make them even more robust than later Corded and Nordoid groups, even though they were shorter and ill-nourished (!).

To me this reasoning seems odd. Nordics are typical of the North -as the name suggests. No anthropologist known to me, apart from Coon, asserted that Nordics evolved in any place other than Scandinavia and on the fringes of the Baltic sea - places where now they are most common. Since the earliest historical accounts we can place Nordics in Northern Europe where Germanics lived. Corded crania present a diverse spectrum and they are of no relevance since we cannot form any conclusion on their pigmentation.


Coon's Nordic is not other anthropologists' Nordic. This is the whole point! To all other anthropologists Nordic is the tall, blonde, blue-eyed, meso-to-dolichocephal characteristic of Scandinavia, typical of the NORDIC (as the name suggests) countries.

This is Retzius, Lapognes, Deniker's, Ripley's, Czekanowski's and Eickstedt's Nordic - a modern, living product of the evolution of Scandinavian populations - not Danubian Neolithic, not Unetice, not Corded, and not Halstatt.

And in previous post I demonstrated that Scandinavian populations are and have always been robust and different to the Danubian Neolithic, the Unetice, the Corded, and the Halstatt cultures. So there is no need to play with cranial series of 10 to 40. Skeletal material and modern distribution of blondes tells a different story...




Besides, look yourself how ridiculous Coon's method is:


- Nordics are pre-assumed to be Meds.

- Living blone populations are ignored and Halstatt composite cranial series of 24(!) are adopted as Nordic yardstick, even though they are different to both Iron Age and contemporary Nordic series.

- Subsequently, all modern living populations are checked for they Nordic character by judging against this bizzare yardstick! Totally ridiculous!!

[Jarl]

Ufff... I don't know if you understood what I mean, Agrippa. Frisius did. We are discussing specifically how Coon's determined his STANDARD for what is Nordic in his publication.


It seems he did this by taking the 6 Austrian Halstatt "series" of 3-4 skulls and for some unknown reason he claimed them to be the first Nordics.


Frisisus suggested that the reason was their similarity to Nordic Iron Age Danish schools. However, I can't find any fragment where Coon links these two series together. On the other hand I found a fragment where he compares Halstatt series to Reihengrabers. However, this is not really true and if you look at the table at the end of Coon's book, the Germanic Reihengraber series are very dissimilar to the Halstatt rag-tag 24 skulls. Remarkably dissimilar. Consequently, Coon's claim has little support.

Likewise, his statement that Swedish and Danish Iron Age series are similar, also doesn't hold much truth - check it yourslef!


Indeed. Only the Nielsen's 1915 Danish Iron Age series is similar. However, it consists only of 41 specimens. But clearly Danish series (column 39) is a clear outlier among other ancient Germanics, including other Scandinavians (columns 40-45).


That is why Im curious what Sellevold's series of 1040 crania look like. Do they fall similar to Nielsen's series, or do they resemble more those of other robust Germanics. I did not read Sellevold, but I read many other descriptions of Germanic cranial series collected well after 1915, and much more extensive the Nielsen's sample of 41. And I know they paint a robust picture - just like Coon's Reihen grabers, Norwegians and Swedes, and different to that painted by the Neolithic Med or Halstatt series.





P.S.

An interesting article on Orkney Viking with some biometrics:

http://www.niku.no/archive/niku/publikasjoner/NIKU%20Fagrapport/10_westness.pdf

[Agrippa]

But what is individually indistinguishable??? That is precisely what Im arguing against! By taking single individuals and carving them out from the rest, you can prove genetinc link of Swedes to Somalis, or Pygmies to Eskimos!

Yet we dont talk about single individuals, but higher percentages in this case of course.


Nordics as I see it, are simply a subset of natural variability of robust Northern European populations which retained the strongest Cro-Magnon, Upper Paleolithic characteristics.

By morphological traits, Alpinoids and Osteuropids, even more so Berberids, are more Cromagnoid than Nordids are. This makes no sense.

Dont forget the Upper Palaeolithics became broader and more robust build people during the Ice Age, now the Nordid type is the exact opposite. Despite some possible physiological adaptations, being somewhat heavier and depigmented, his whole anatomy is that of a versatile form of the temperate to warm climate. This can't be the result of the Ice Age environment of the North, never.

The Nordid retained the basic warm type characteristics and always lived and still lives in the rather temperate climates of Northern Europe. Nordids were earlier and in much larger numbers present in Central and Eastern Europe than they ever were North of the Limes Norrlandicus:

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3370&stc=1&d=1260818567

They spread as higher hunters of the Mesolithic and mostly warlike herders and farmers during the Neolithic, not as some sort of Ice Age hunter survivors.


Whether after the Neolithic Revolution or before, Nordics evolved in Scandinavia and most certainly did not come there from Abisynia, Middle East, Black Sea steppes, or Austria and the Danube...

Well, if you define Nordid by the general characteristics they have, you can't make a borderline between Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, they all were strongly Nordid influenced, some Central and Eastern European areas more than some Scandinavian ones actually.

Before the Alpinisation and Dinarisation in Central and South Eastern Europe, we deal with largely Nordid-Mediterranid populations, before the Baltisation in North Eastern Europe, we deal with largely Cromagnoid-Nordoid-Mediterranid populations etc.

As for the Middle East, the Middle East was, at the time the Neolithics came to Europe, racially different, there was no strong Armenoid or Arabid component, there was no Negroid or Mongoloid influence, the majority was essentially Proto-Mediterranoid, many variants being rather robust as I said.

They came into Europe, they were part of the people which later formed the LBK and Corded group, it seems they made it further North too.

But essentially there are just two realistic options for the big Nordisation process:
End of the Ice Age, begin of the Warm Period. In the Mesolithic the Nordisation already started, the relative numbers of Cromagnoids being reduced - the Neolithic just continued that trend and spread it faster and more intensive, and through former borders.


Again - to me Nordic is Scandinavian. Thats what the term means.

Thats why we speak of the Nordic race or Nordid type, its not the same. If in the Nordic lands Lappids or Osteuropids live or lived, Borreby or other racial forms, what does this mean? The name came up because when the researchers were active, Scandinavia was the most Nordid place left. This doesnt mean however, that things were always the same.

Even if you assume they were Upper Palaeolithic, unchanged and more Cromagnoid survivors, they followed the Ice from further South into the North. So it always depends on the time in question whether Scandinavia was their primary center.

Actually in early Neolithic times, you could have called Nordids "Northern Neolithics" - which were largely of the same type through a huge part of Europe North of a certain line, again not just Scandinavia.


Scandinavians as a whole are not and have never been as gracile as Neoltihic Meds

Yes, thats true if you talk about gracile Mediterranean Neolithics, yet its not true for all LBK groups, its not true for all Suedeuropids in general etc.


This is clearly shown by my in the previous post where I take a close look at Coon's scanty cranial series. Coon's ideas are simply inexplicable here.

Yes, but because of other reasons with his "Upper Palaeolithic" game...


With the exception of the Danes (41 skulls), none of the Germanic series is nowhere near to the Halstatts, not the mention the Neolithic Meds or Natufians - who by the way are also close to the Dogons and Niger-Congo groups.

Natufians are very controversial, its hard to put them in a modern category and it depends on the exact comparison you make, traits you use, which results you might get as well.

Neolithic Mediterranoids in general can't be put in the same category, the single individuals resembling "more primitive and foreign" variants I mentioned, were a rather smaller minority in Neolithic Europeans.


To me this reasoning seems odd. Nordics are typical of the North -as the name suggests.

They are typical for the temperate climate zone in Europe, compare with this map:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3295&stc=1&d=1259938302
which shows the primary habitat of the respective racial forms. Nordids or at least Nordoids are by that not limited to Northern Europe, in which they rather inhabitated a small part, South of the Limes Norrlandicus and East of the Cromagnoid settlements in South Western Norway.

Take a look at this thread too:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11365


No anthropologist known to me, apart from Coon, asserted that Nordics evolved in any place other than Scandinavia and on the fringes of the Baltic sea - places where now they are most common.

Actually there were many and the Corded = Nordoid relation was always seen, as all better ones saw the earlier Cromagnoid strains as something "pre-Nordic".

There are racial forms living today in a habitat which is not the one in which they evolved, this says nothing.

Yet for the Nordid type things are insofar different, as this racial form developed its characteristics at least in close proximity or similar climatic-living conditions like that in Scandinavia and the most typical forms which survived to this day spread there too.

Now the modern racial distribution of Europe is something completely different, because race is a process, populations of various regions changed dramatically, so this tells us little about the past in many cases...


Since the earliest historical accounts we can place Nordics in Northern Europe where Germanics lived.

Germanics came up so late, this tells us nothing about the issue.


Corded crania present a diverse spectrum and they are of no relevance since we cannot form any conclusion on their pigmentation.

Well, we have Eastern European populations with a strong Corded influence or even direct lineage and they are rather light pigmented and were described as rather light pigmented from the earlist accounts.

We found light pigmented individuals even in the Far East, among people related to the Kugran-complex of Eastern Europe, we can still find light pigmented people among the Uighurs and other mixed Turkic speakers in Central Asia and further East.

We see the higher percentages of lighter pigmentation in Afghanistan etc.

So they were probably not as light pigmented as modern Nordids, had most likely a greater variation, but they were already lighter than modern Gracilmediterranids we can assume.

And again, morphologically they are closer to modern Nordids (Skandonordid) than all non-Nordid variants of Northern Europe, including Dalofaelids.


Coon's Nordic is not other anthropologists' Nordic. This is the whole point! To all other anthropologists Nordic is the tall, blonde, blue-eyed, meso-to-dolichocephal characteristic of Scandinavia, typical of the NORDIC (as the name suggests) countries.

Coon was basically right, but to strict with his criteria and problematic with his "Upper Palaeolithic" theories.

Most authors, even those you mention, added narrow faced and narrow-longer nosed, among other traits.


- Nordics are pre-assumed to be Meds.

Nordids are by definition light pigmented, Mediterranids dark (in comparison), so Nordids can be Mediterranids, but only "depigmented Mediterranoids", which would put them, if this assumption is right and it seems so, in a similar context like father and son. The son comes from the father and has a lot of his traits, but he isnt the father, he is a different person.

So it is with Nordids. The only question which remains is when Nordoids branched off from the Suedeuropid spectrum, made up their own population in which they got their typical characteristics which set them apart - especially pigmentation.

Now this could have happened earlier (Palaeolithic), medium (Mesolithic) or later (Neolithic) or even more recent (Metal Age).

We dont know for sure, but I'd assume it started latest in the Mesolithic times, but the connection was still there and additional Mediterranoid waves came in, in which the light pigmentation became more adaptive and effective due to selective pressures.

This selective pressures might have been not everywhere of the same strength, so whereas some areas might be more completely depigmented, others less so - not just due to admixture, but because the pressures were not as strong.


- Living blone populations are ignored and Halstatt composite cranial series of 24(!) are adopted as Nordic yardstick, even though they are different to both Iron Age and contemporary Nordic series.

- Subsequently, all modern living populations are checked for they Nordic character by judging against this bizzare yardstick! Totally ridiculous!!

That way you are right, but among ancient and modern populations the Nordid standard type like defined by most authors existed and was among other traits: Tall, rangy (for Europeans), rather Leptosomic, longheaded, narrow faced, narrow nosed, strong facial relief, positive chin and rather narrow, compressed jaws etc.

Just read the standard definition. Again Coon was just too picky with his "small and gracile" standards.

[Jarl]

By morphological traits, Alpinoids and Osteuropids, even more so Berberids, are more Cromagnoid than Nordids are. This makes no sense.

Dont forget the Upper Palaeolithics became broader and more robust build people during the Ice Age, now the Nordid type is the exact opposite. Despite some possible physiological adaptations, being somewhat heavier and depigmented, his whole anatomy is that of a versatile form of the temperate to warm climate. This can't be the result of the Ice Age environment of the North, never.

The Nordid retained the basic warm type characteristics and always lived and still lives in the rather temperate climates of Northern Europe. Nordids were earlier and in much larger numbers present in Central and Eastern Europe than they ever were North of the Limes Norrlandicus:



Well, if you define Nordid by the general characteristics they have, you can't make a borderline between Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, they all were strongly Nordid influenced, some Central and Eastern European areas more than some Scandinavian ones actually.

Before the Alpinisation and Dinarisation in Central and South Eastern Europe, we deal with largely Nordid-Mediterranid populations, before the Baltisation in North Eastern Europe, we deal with largely Cromagnoid-Nordoid-Mediterranid populations etc.


Now, I still think you don't understan what I meant. You often mentioned Nordid in your reply.

But what is "Nordid"???

Thats what Im trying to find out. I know what Retzius, or Deniker's Nordic is - a modern, living, blue-eyed, blonde, leptoprosopic meso-dolichocephal from Scandinavia. Now Coon's Nordic is something else. Something different... and I want to establish what it is coz he did not base it on studies of living populations, but on studies of scanty cranial series...




Thats why we speak of the Nordic race or Nordid type, its not the same. If in the Nordic lands Lappids or Osteuropids live or lived, Borreby or other racial forms, what does this mean? The name came up because when the researchers were active, Scandinavia was the most Nordid place left. This doesnt mean however, that things were always the same.

Indeed. The name came up in Deniker's study of living Scandinavians and Brits. There was no reference to Cordeds, Meds or anything from the past. This was all studies of modern population. Full stop.

But Coon's Nordid came up from studies of cranial series. And to me there is a stupid circular reasoning in his method:

1. He had some pre-conception of what is Nordic from Deniker's studies of modern populations. So dolichocephalic, leptoprosopic - like Retzius, Deniker and all before him had established.


2. With this preconception in mind, he apriori assumed Neolihic Meds and Cordeds were proto-Nordics, and Halstatt Illyrians first Nordics... coz they were dolichocephalic and leptoprosopic.


3. With this theory he re-evaluated the Nordicness of modern populations!





There lies the circular idiocy of it! Not only were his proto-Nordic Danubian and "Nordic" Halstatt cranial series ridiculously scanty, but also he assumed they were Nordic without any hint as to their pigmentation. He assumed these cranial series were Nordic, because they were generally dolichocephalic and leptoprosopic so roughly like.... the modern Scandinavian populations studied by Deniker!

However, this similarity was superficial, coz the series differed from modern Nordic series in both absolute dimensions and exact degree of leptoprosopy and dolichocepchaly!



Nonetheless... Coon ignored it and proceeded to search for his true "Halstatt" Nordics in the modern populations anew... do you see the idem per idem nature of the method???



1. Living Nordic population study ----> Nordic characteristics


2. Nordic characteristics ---> using them Coon assumed Danubian and Halstatt crania are Noridic ---> and from them coined new "Halstatt" Nordic characteristics


3. new "Halstatt" Nordic characteristics ---> new modern Nordic populations study by Coon



Actually there were many and the Corded = Nordoid relation was always seen, as all better ones saw the earlier Cromagnoid strains as something "pre-Nordic"..

As above.

[Agrippa]

Thats what Im trying to find out. I know what Retzius, or Deniker's Nordic is - a modern, living, blue-eyed, blonde, leptoprosopic meso-dolichocephal from Scandinavia. Now Coon's Nordic is something else. Something different... and I want to establish what it is coz he did not base it on studies of living populations, but on studies of scanty cranial series...

On that we can both agree. C.S. Coons problem was that he used misleading and false names (like "Brünn", "Danubian" etc.), often of a too strong ethnic character (like "Keltic") etc.

He used the skeletal material too one sided, making up assumptions you dont find in the actual material itself. F.e., like I mentioned, the Danubians/LBK people, especially those closer to the Nordoid habitat, where no gracile Mediterranids in their majority.

His "Danubians" presented in The Races of Europe are just a joke and just show how he desperately tried to find modern variants which resemble the ancient ones.

[Brännvin]

Just a question, I'm not expert in such issue but, wouldn't be the Frisians in Netherlands the most close people to the Nordic ideal of Coon?

[Agrippa]

Just a question, I'm not expert in such issue but, wouldn't be the Frisians in Netherlands the most close people to the Nordic ideal of Coon?

The Dutch in general and Frisians in particular are very strongly Nordid by all definitions I know of, yet they were often larger, more robust and had/have Cromagnoid influences too.

Closest to Coons and all other definitions of Nordid are usually considered the people of South Eastern Norway and the adjacent areas of South Western Sweden.

[Jarl]

Just a question, I'm not expert in such issue but, wouldn't be the Frisians in Netherlands the most close people to the Nordic ideal of Coon?

I think rather Abissynians and Somalis... ;)


I think, from all Euro living populations the English and the Frisians - both with overall mean FI of about 92-93. Frisians are very robust. Mean bizyg of 140-143, on the other hand the English are darker. However, Coon did not seem to have a blonde fetish - so Id say the English.

Frisians would be more the perfect Teutonordics of Eickstedt and other German scholars.

[Agrippa]

To be fair to Coon, we should also point out, that the Hallstatt-type was not Nordic for Coon alone, but rather one and the most typical type of Nordic. His Nordic definition was much more inclusive, if we think about the other subtypes he described as being Nordic as well.

He therefore just distinguished variants inside of the Nordid spectrum, some others probably saw too, but didnt defined as clearly if at all. Whether this are really the main forms of the modern Nordid racial type is another questio, I would say yes, but his definition of "Hallstatt" was just too strict, especially for size and robustness.

[Jarl]

I think we need to be very carefull while extrapolating the general conclusions.


While it is true that in comparison to say Finns or Slavs, Germanics and particularly Scandinavians are more dolichocephalic and leptopropsopic, and Max von Sydows can be regarded as exemplars emphasising these differences, it is totally misleading when you compare Germanics to Iberians, Arabs, or Somalis. Then other comnbinations of traits will be unique for Scandinavians and will emphasise the differences better.


There lies the danger of extrapolation. Coon was very careful and meticulous about the lower boundary of Nordic FI, presumably because this was the main trait distinguishing Nordics from their Finnic, Slavic and Romance neighbours and all previous scholars put much stress on it.... yet at the same time he totally ignored the upper boundary which according to him could reach well a 100 into infinity. Now this does not reflect the true Nordic populations' variance both in the past and in the present. And thus distorts the image. While it holds truth for the general trends that distinguish Nordics from East Europeans, it cannot be used to distinguish Nordics from Yemeni Arabs or Somalis - coz here the trend is reversed and its the Somalis who have higher FI. Max von Sydow with his FI of 105 or so, is no longer an arch-Nordic! As a matter of fact he's more Somali! See the paradox??? Trends are context-dependent, while means and variance not.



Yet Coon ignored this. He freely assumed that Nordics can have any FI higher than 90 or 92. Althoguh some individuals do it is overall a statistical fallacy. Most Nordics will predominantly fall into lower categories, clustering next to the mean value of the populations that has bred them.



P.S.

Besides, Im still poitining to the circular, illogical reasoning behind Coon's method, the evient scarcity of his material, and disparity between his claims and reality - like with his alleged similarity between Halstatt and Reihengraber, or Danish and Swedish Iron Age series. Post 23 and 25 say it all - his methodology was simply biased and based on too few crania. On top of that it ignored lack of pigmentation data and used circular reasoning, which started from living Nordic material --> to purportedly Nordic cranial series --> back to modern living material...

[Agrippa]

There lies the danger of extrapolation. Coon was very careful and meticulous about the lower boundary of Nordic FI, yet he totally ignored the upper boundary which he set freely to over a 100. Now this does not reflect the mean and distorts the image. While it holds truth for the general trends that distinguish Nordics from East Europeans, it cannot be used to distinguish the trends among Nordics from Yemeni Arab or Somali trends - coz here the trend is reversed and its the Somalis who have higher FI.

Nordids in the narrower sense have many subpopulations which have a higher FI than Mediterranid groups, just larger measurements in comparison.

There is no way to distinguish the Nordid, Mediterranid, Iranid, Aethiopid etc. with the FI, because there variation overlaps so much, that it can be only used as a mean to differentiate them from types with a lower facial index.

By the way, Aethiopids too dont score all that high with the FI, there are rather medium faced individuals of very Europoid or at least Europiform character among them, so dont make up a straw-figure so to say.

Actually one shouldnt overestimate one single trait, which can always be just the precondition for belonging to a racial type, at least its typical spectrum, but doesnt make up the whole type.

F.e. when I looked at a Swiss sample and sorted the pred. Nordid individuals out by appearance on the photograph and their metrical & pigmentation data of which various were more or less mixed, deviating, but still in the range.
There were individuals ranging with their FI in this small sample from 79,7 to 101,6. For the most typical variants of representative character 92 is realistic, above is more representative than below for sure. Usually 88 is a good turning point, only exceptions should be accepted for the standard below, f.e. if they being very typical by all other traits.

The same result came up with Norwegians and the map for the FI also shows that only the South Eastern parts of Norway are pred. Nordid in the narrower sense (= Skandonordid or Teutonordid, what you prefer as term):
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3371&stc=1&d=1260825776

We still with a population which is "not pure" typologically, yet at least predominantely Nordid and voila, they have an expected FI of about 90+.

Interestingly its also the same area in which the LBI is lower than in the rest of Norway:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3372&stc=1&d=1260826119

Interestingly thats also the area which is closest to the areas traditionally inhabited by the Nordoid variants of prehistoric and historic times, especially if looking where the Corded people and related moved, even the earlier Neolithic ones. Can be best described as "flat-fertile-open-land":
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3373&stc=1&d=1260826477

Look at Norway in particular and compare with the map of the FI and CI/LBI:

If you compare this topographic map of Europe with the climate map and then compare where the Corded and Nordoid prehistoric populations were present, you get a very good clue of how things worked for the expansion of the Nordoid herder-warriorrs and mixed farmer-warriors.

[Jarl]

There is no way to distinguish the Nordid, Mediterranid, Iranid, Aethiopid etc. with the FI, because there variation overlaps so much, that it can be only used as a mean to differentiate them from types with a lower facial index.

Indeed. That is why I pointed that here other sets of traits will emphasise the differences better. In comparison to Japanese, yet another set of trends would have to be used. However, like I said - trends do no reflect the overall weight and incidence of traits in the populations, but Mean and Variance does. This is why Coonian Halstatt Nordics are not representative of the Nordics as a whole. Vast majority of Scandinavian Nordics would cluster at the lower bottom of the spectrum close to the mean. So if the mean was 90, then most of them would fall into at FI of 90, 92 or 93 - depending where you'd arbitrarily set your point of cut off.


Now, Somalis and Arabs do have a higher FI than Scandinavians - Nordics in the traditional Retzius' and Deniker's meaning. Deniker's Nordics were leptoprosopic coz Scandinavian FI means oscilated mostly between 88-93. They were not hyperleptoprosopic like Somalis - worlds most leptoprosopic population. And yes - you can easily distinguish Nordic populations from Abissynian populations coz they have different means and different variances. And there is a degree of overlap - but there is overlap for any continous trait between virtually any two larger human populations. So just like I said before - Max von Sydow may represent the Germanic-Slavic differences, but will be useless for Germanic-Cushitic differences. Overall he will not represent the UNIVERSAL, OBJECTIVE characteristics of the Nordic populations. That because he is just an extrapolated trend which does not reflect the true Mean nor the Variance.





Now, back to what Coonian Nordic means... I pointed to the fact that it means nothing real here:

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showpost.php?p=150848&postcount=25

It is a statistical manipulation, a biological fallacy. And it takes no genius to see that. Simply read my posts: 16, 19, 23 and most of all - 25.


The sole foundation of Coon's notion of Halstatt Nordid - his exemplar of pure Nordic is flawed right from the beginning to the end. His methodology is wrong. And its not just about the scarcity of the 24 dispersed crania, whose pigmentation we will never know, and which he used to set his Halstatt Nordic yardstick. But its about the inconsistencies in his method. He claims similarity where series are blatantly not similar. He claims Halstatt Nordic series are Nordic because they resemble ancient Germanic or Scandinavian series, while in fact they are far from Germanic and Scandinavian series, both past and present.

[Agrippa]

I added something to the last post and can just stress that Somalis are not even the most Europid Aethiopids by the way - not the least ones neither, but f.e. the Amhara and Tigre are closer to Europids.

There are other traits to distinguish the various leptodolichomorphic populations from each other, even though the easiest way is to look at the living ;)

Anyway, you agree a Nordid with a FI of 105 is more typical for the type, its character and specialisation in comparison to other Europids, than an individual with an FI of just 78?


his exemplar of pure Nordic is flawed right from the beginning to the end.

Large scale "purity" on a subracial level never existed for a too long time span in my opinion. He often explained racial characters by referrung to very old populations - f.e. "Upper Palaeolithic" = Neandertal influence.

Now thats not true, as I said populations can change with or without admixture, genflow and f.e. the process of Dinarisation was one caused by selective and modification pressures, not a certain proportional mixture of Alpine and Dinaric, which would have never produced such a typical racial form without a clear trend and harmonisation due to selection.

So his failures are not restricted to the "Upper Palaeolithic" and "Nordic" spectrum - and they are actually even more obvious if looking at what he defined as "pure Mediterranean", which is actually just the same game as with the "Nordic". He actually used a very extreme and then took a form (Arabid & Co.) which practically no other author considered typical but rather atypical, making them "pure representatives of the Mediterranean race", which is a joke.

Insofar one has to take a closer look at Coon's work as a whole to understand why he was going wrong on the Nordid type in detail...

[Jarl]

I added something to the last post and can just stress that Somalis are not even the most Europid Aethiopids by the way - not the least ones neither, but f.e. the Amhara and Tigre are closer to Europids.

There are other traits to distinguish the various leptodolichomorphic populations from each other, even though the easiest way is to look at the living ;)

Indeed the Somalis are Cushites with overall Eurasian ancestry at approx 10%. Semitic Amharas (often over-represented in general genetic studies of the Horn) have much higher Eurasian ancestry.


Anyway, you agree a Nordid with a FI of 105 is more typical for the type, its character and specialisation in comparison to other Europids, than an individual with an FI of just 78?

That's most correct. That is the evolutionary trend. I agree. But the trend is quantifiable too. And its nowhere near as strong as in the Somalis. Like I said - the Scandinavian FI means are between 88-93. And thats where most of Nordics will fall. You set the cut off to 93, most will have an FI of 93. You set it to 100, most will start at a 100.


One look at regional means reveals that Scandinavian variance in FI is high. I don't know if as high as among the Somalis, but certainly much shifted towards euryprosopy (if you compare it to Somalian FI variance)... that is lower FI's.


Now...


1. ...if we define our "Nordic golden standard" through studies of living blonde Nordic populations - like Retzius, Deniker, Eickstedt and most sane people did, then individuals with Orientalid-Aethiopid-like CI of 120 will not be as typically Nordic as those with CI of 95.


2. ...if we define our "Nordic golden standard" through studies of 24 Illyrian Halstatt crania from Austrial, then neither the Somalis nor living Nordic populations will ever be typically Nordic.



...simples! ;)

[The Black Prince]

OK I will reply to some of the posts made tonight probably tomorrow.. I have been busy tonight.:)

First I took some supposed groups of pred. Nordid crania:

m.Old Norse (Schreiner)
m. Old Anglo-Saxons (Morant)
m. Old Danes (Nielsen)
m. Old Goths (Retzius, Furst)
m. Westergo Friterpers (Nyessen)
m. Old Hallstatt (Composite)


The first four are Germanic groups who Coon used in his data, As a fifth I included a Frisian Roman/Iron-Age serie from Nyessen (1927). Coon mentions them shortly when reviewing the Netherlands. And as latest I included the 'composite Hallstatt' crania from Coon (1939).

I left out the Orbital Height and Orbital Breadth of all series since two didn't had data about them (the Old Danes and the Friterpers).

Of those measurements I derrived the Z-scores, like Howells did in 1989 with crania from various worldpopulations (Skull Shapes and the Map: Craniometric Analyses in the Dispersion of Modern Homo). But with one addition, I added shape in the comparison. Howells only used raw measurements and no shape indices from the skulls in his computation tables. Though honest makes me say that he had much more metricl data available at his hand (like 50 instead of the 8 I use.;))

http://i46.tinypic.com/111ov4l.png
Z-scores of 5 Germanic groups and one Central European (Hallstatt) serie.

I hoped by putting them in a diagram it would show which groups would be closest together concerning the various measurements and cranial/facial shape... Apparantely it worked, but it looked rather unrelated.:D

http://i49.tinypic.com/2z56sjs.png
Diagram of the 5 Germanic groups and one Central European (Hallstatt) serie. based upon z-scores

Since this didn't worked out as I had hoped I came upon another idea. Just check how much the groups correlate in a multivariate table:

http://i46.tinypic.com/10nezkm.png
Correlation between the 5 Germanic groups and one Central European (Hallstatt) serie. Based upon Z-score, not standardized.

http://i46.tinypic.com/j9pppk.png
Correlation between the 5 Germanic groups and one Central European (Hallstatt) serie. Standardized differences.

Apparantely the Hallstat serie is closest with the ancient Goths serie measured by Retzius and Fürst (what Coon named: Swedish Iron Age) and second are the Reihengräbers, who are here represented with the Anglo-Saxons of Morant. Other Rowgrave data was provided by Coon in TROE, yet a lot of the metrical data is not available, most likely those parts of the skulls are to much damaged or missing/not preserved.

So apparantely Coon did his math rather well, even I was surpised since the Iron Age Danes are one of the furthest away groups together with the Frisians and the Norse.:confused:

(of course I could have made a mistake, so tomorrow when my head is clear I will look it over again..:p)

[Jarl]

http://i49.tinypic.com/2z56sjs.png

Coming to think about it... If you remove the Danish (teal) series, the Halstatt will be a clear outlier for 5 out of 10 categories.



http://i46.tinypic.com/j9pppk.png
Correlation between the 5 Germanic groups and one Central European (Hallstatt) serie. Standardized differences.

Apparantely the Hallstat serie is closest with the ancient Goths serie measured by Retzius and Fürst (what Coon named: Swedish Iron Age) and second are the Reihengräbers, who are here represented with the Anglo-Saxons of Morant. Other Rowgrave data was provided by Coon in TROE, yet a lot of the metrical data is not available, most likely those parts of the skulls are to much damaged or missing/not preserved.

So apparantely Coon did his math rather well, even I was surpised since the Iron Age Danes are one of the furthest away groups together with the Frisians and the Norse.:confused:

(of course I could have made a mistake, so tomorrow when my head is clear I will look it over again..:p)

Are you certain Ancient Goths is the same as Coon's Swedish Iron Age??? Here is what Coon wrote about the series:


The Swedish population of the Iron Age, best represented by a smaller group of 14 males (see Appendix I, col. 40), was essentially the same as that in Denmark.

...14 crania... tinyyyyy :rolleyes:



Btw! Did you use this table, for measurements of the 24-crania, Halstatt composite series (column 32)???

http://carnby.altervista.org/immagini/troeappendixI006.jpg


It contains a mistake! It gives Facial Index of 87, while in fact it should be 92.5! Check it yourslef. Perhaps that is why you got it so close to the Swedish series which also has an FI of 87.


But if you calculate it directly from the Halstatt bizyg and total facial height, it will give you 92.5. There must have been a misprint.


If you set the facial index to 92.5, Im certain Halstatt will not be anywhere so close to the Swedes or Reihengrabers. By the way, Coon claimed that Swedes were almost the same as Danes. From your diagram they are obviously far from being the same.



Anyway...

http://i46.tinypic.com/j9pppk.png


Apart from the Swedes, the Halstatt is an outlier in the group. All scores varying from 1,3 to 1,6. Let us remember that Swedish series counts only 14 crania, which for a relatively big country and for the whole period of Iron Age.... is absolutely nothing.



P.S.

Actually... which measurements did you use, The Black Prince? ;)

[Jarl]

Have a look at it.

1. Coon claims 41 Iron Age Danes are the same as 14 Iron Age Swedes. Well, they are clearly not. It takes one look at the measurement tables in the Appendix to see that. But your analysis further proves it.

2. Coon claims his Halstatt is similar to German Reihengrabers. I do not know which Reihengrabers he had in mind, but its obvious to me that Halstatts are nowhere near to the Norwegians, Anglo-Saxons, Hanoverians, nor Franks or Bajuwars... It is clear from the very tables Coon himself had used. Now, from your analysis, it also seems to me quite clearly that Frisians are also way apart. We thus got all the ancient Germanic nations of the Jutland Peninsula and surroundings. None resembled Halstatt Illyrians (or Kelts).

3. Your analysis indicates its the Iron Age Swedes rather than the Danes who are more similar to the Halstatts. However, I don't think u have used Facial Index in your analysis. Had you used it, youd probably get much different results.

Halstatt FI = 92.5, Danish FI = 91.9, while the Swedish FI is 87.4, clearly much less than that of the two previous series. However, it is quite funny, coz in spite of these two specific dimensions that constitute the FI - that is total facial height and bizygomatic breadth - the Swedish series is overall more like the Halstatt. So Danes have much much more similar FI, but Swedes are more similar overall.



But I think it is essential to look at the WHOLE picture. If you take the series of the Germanic populations of Jutland and Scandinavia - the Frisians, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes (so by all accounts the direct ancestors of the most Nordic modern populations) then...

...the bullshit 24 Halstatt crania, lumped together from 6 different series, from different locations, spanning the whole Iron age (!), will be a clear outlier. Much more gracile, much more leptoprosopic, much more Med-like. Some individual Nordic Germanic series may approach it more than others in certain measurements - for instance Swedes in their CI, while Danes in their FI, like we said (and its natural - all populations have high variability so some will by chance be more similar than others), but overall, the Germanic and Nordic series will be much distinct... like here:

http://i46.tinypic.com/j9pppk.png

Have a look at Old Danes' column - Old Danes cluster neatly with most of other Nordic Germanic series - with the Old Norse, the Anglo-Saxons, and with the Frisians... This is our NORDIC standard.

The 14 rag-tag Swedish crania can be ommitted, they are too few and although quite gracile and similar to Halstatts in most measurements, they differ substantially in Facial Index... by 5 points! They are not even leptoprosopic, while this is the key Nordic trait according to Coon.

Consequently, Coon cannot claim that Halstatt series must have been Nordic because... they resembled the Swedish Iron Age series, coz in the main Nordic trait they are totally different. Halstatts are leptoprosopic with FI of 92.5, while Swedes are mesoprosopic with FI of 87.4, lower by 5 points! Besides, Swedish series count 14 crania, while Halstatt 24 composite, both of which are absolutely not sufficient to cover the populations in question in the time-span of whole Iron Age. That is really the main point. No matter how similar these so called "series" were, they are simply way too little and too spread out in time and space, to make any inferences in the first place!

[Jarl]

But I think it is essential to look at the WHOLE picture. Some individual Nordic Germanic series may approach it more than others in certain measurements - for instance Swedes in their CI, while Danes in their FI, like we said (and its natural - all populations have high variability so some will by chance be more similar than others), but overall, the Germanic and Nordic series will be much distinct.

That is really the main point. No matter how similar these so called "series" were, they are simply way too little and too spread out in time and space, to make any inferences in the first place!

On top of it all (very controversial "similarity", outstanding scarcity of crania) sits the insurmountable problem of PIGMENTATION.


Nordic is by definition blonde, blue-eyed and fair. How do we know these 24 Halstatt Illyrians from Austria didn't have raven-black hair, olive skin and tar-black eyes??? The answer is... we simply cannot. Using Coon's logics, Arabs and Somalis could also be Nordic (had they been found in Europe). Are they dolichocephalic? Yes they are. Extremely! Are they leptoprosopic? Yes they are. Most leptoprosopic in the world! Are the Nordic? Err.... no???


Using Coon's logic I could pick up a set of "Nordic" skulls in any given people - Sarmatians, Slavs, Iberians. The only issue is that "Nordic cranium" is an oxymoron - unless we know it came from a Nordic population in the first place.


Coon claimed Halstatt series are Nordic coz they resemble Germanic series (which in fact they don't really resemble). Now my question is - why use some composite, 24 crania from Austria as a yardstick of Nordicness? Why bother with Halstatts at all? Why not use the Iron Age Germanic crania as a Nordic standard directly???

I fear that the correct answer to this question should be:


1. "to prove the purportedly Mediterranean origin of Nordics".

2. or... even worse... "to artificially carve out blonde Northern lepto-dolichocephals from the natural continuum of blonde phenotypes in their mother population... and relate them more to the dark Southerners".


Why to do that? Well... only Coon knows... or rather knew. Certainly there was some misconception going on. Like I said, Coon was openly biased. Read the chapter on Illyrians or the hilarious chapter on Abissynia. There was definitely some agenda going on there.




P.S.

;) One more funny thing...

Have a look at the Halstatt crania meaned Facial Index. It is 92.5, which on the living material should be approximately 90.5 - only moderately leptoprosopic. How the hell does this relate to the hyperleptoprosopic, Orientalid or Aethiopid-like faces with FI > 100 he posted in the Corded and Halstatt Nordic section???

[Majar]

Definitely the Nazis blended Falish and Nordic into one, while Coon blended Meds and Nordics. There is no trace of Coonian Nordo-Mediterranism in these posters.

Well, they were the NSDAP, so it makes sense they would choose to idealize German-looking faces. They had in mind the creation of a "New Folk," to rival the mongrel Soviet Man. Like dog breeders creating a new breed, they seem to like the physical robustness of a square jawed Cromagnid-Fälisch überGerman combined with the blondness & fine facial features of the Scandinavian type Nordics.

[Jarl]

Well, they were the NSDAP, so it makes sense they would choose to idealize German-looking faces. They had in mind the creation of a "New Folk," to rival the mongrel Soviet Man. Like dog breeders creating a new breed, they seem to like the physical robustness of a square jawed Cromagnid-Fälisch überGerman combined with the blondness & fine facial features of the Scandinavian type Nordics.


Ineed. But I think that is because they believed their senses, not some vague set of twenty-four, 2500 year old crania. The more I read the works of Guenther, Czekanowski, Michalski and Polish anthropologists, particularly those where they classified whole sets individuals - the more I become convinced that they were sensitive to the notion of natural variation. For instance Wanke, Czekanowski and Michalski used a combined set of Nordic traits, and if an individuall fell overall into most of them, they were not fussed even if his FI or HI was off by few points. One of the main features of the Polish School was that it was fairly liberal as to the Nordic CI. Individuals with CI of up to 80, or even above could be still classified as Nordics if they were otherwise ok.



Later on, in an excellent analysis, the director of the Polish Institute of Anthropology - Tadeusz Bielicki, demonstrated that in fact, Nordics are simply a product of their maternal population. He used several hundred Nordics from Silesia, and demonstrated that for every single trait - CI, FI, NI, hair colour, the distribution of these traits among Nordics was exactly the same as for the whole maternal population. For instance, if maternal population had a mean CI of 83, and only 5% of individuals had CI of 75, then also a proportional fraction of Nordics had this CI... and so on.



I think that also Guenther and Eickstedt believed Nordics and Faelids to be a part of one evolutionary Northern spectrum. Im quite certain they did not buy into the Neanderthal-Hybrid, Mediterranean-Nordic bs developed simultaneously by Coon in the US.

[The Black Prince]

Btw! Did you use this table, for measurements of the 24-crania, Halstatt composite series (column 32)???

http://carnby.altervista.org/immagini/troeappendixI006.jpg


It contains a mistake! It gives Facial Index of 87, while in fact it should be 92.5! Check it yourslef. Perhaps that is why you got it so close to the Swedish series which also has an FI of 87.


But if you calculate it directly from the Halstatt bizyg and total facial height, it will give you 92.5. There must have been a misprint.


If you set the facial index to 92.5, Im certain Halstatt will not be anywhere so close to the Swedes or Reihengrabers.

Originally I only putted the metrical data in an Excell sheet, the indices are directly derrived from the metrical data, not from TROE.;)



Are you certain Ancient Goths is the same as Coon's Swedish Iron Age??? Here is what Coon wrote about the series:



...14 crania... tinyyyyy :rolleyes:

...


By the way, Coon claimed that Swedes were almost the same as Danes. From your diagram they are obviously far from being the same.


Ho, don't forget what Coon said about the Swedes:

The Swedish population of the Iron Age, best represented by a smaller group of 14 males72 (see Appendix I, col. 40), was essentially the same as that in Denmark. There are, however, a few differences - the vault is higher, the face wider, the upper face shorter. Perhaps these more peripheral Scandinavians showed a little of the older blood.

source (http://carnby.altervista.org/troe/06-06.htm)





Anyway...

http://i46.tinypic.com/j9pppk.png


Apart from the Swedes, the Halstatt is an outlier in the group. All scores varying from 1,3 to 1,6. Let us remember that Swedish series counts only 14 crania, which for a relatively big country and for the whole period of Iron Age.... is absolutely nothing.

Well the skulls didn't came out of the whole of Sweden, since the northern half of Sweden was not densely inhabited during that period. Probably but I'm not sure, all skulls (N=14) came from nowadays Götaland and Skania.

So actually these skulls probably represent the Old Goths and the Old Danes!, The skull serie from Iron Age Denmark are more likely to be Old Jutes/Kimbres than Danes.. because the Old Danes still resided on nowadays Skania in Sweden during the Iron Age. This doesn't matter for the metrical data, but I wanted to state this anyway..:)


P.S.

Actually... which measurements did you use, The Black Prince? ;)
Like I said.;)

The first four are Germanic groups who Coon used in his data, As a fifth I included a Frisian Roman/Iron-Age serie from Nyessen (1927). Coon mentions them shortly when reviewing the Netherlands. And as latest I included the 'composite Hallstatt' crania from Coon (1939).

I used abbreviations from Howells (1989), here I mention them with the expressions Coon used between brackets:

GOL : Glabella-Ophistocranion length [Maximum length: headlength]
XPB : Extra Parietal breadth [Maximum breadth: headbreadth]
BBH : Basion-Bregma heigth [ '' :headheight]
ZAB : Zygomatic breadth [Bizygomatic diameter]
NLH : Nasal height [Nose height]
NLB : Nasal breadth [Nose breadth]
FTH : Facial Total height [Total Face height]
FUH : Facial Upper height [Upper Face height]
OBH : Orbital height [ '' ]
OBB : Orbital breadth [ '' ]
XPB / GOL* : Cranial index
BBH / GOL* : Height-Length index
BBH / XPB* : Height-Breadth index

(*: these indices are all multiplied by hundred, otherwise the figure is so low)

[Jarl]

Well the skulls didn't came out of the whole of Sweden, since the northern half of Sweden was not densely inhabited during that period. Probably but I'm not sure, all skulls (N=14) came from nowadays Götaland and Skania.

So actually these skulls probably represent the Old Goths and the Old Danes!, The skull serie from Iron Age Denmark are more likely to be Old Jutes/Kimbres than Danes.. because the Old Danes still resided on nowadays Skania in Sweden during the Iron Age. This doesn't matter for the metrical data, but I wanted to state this anyway..:)

Indeed... or the Heruli who were said to reside on the Danish Isles before they were expelled by the Danes.



I used abbreviations from Howells (1989), her I mention them with the expressions Coon used between brackets:

GOL : Glabella-Ophistocranion length [Maximum length: headlength]
XPB : Extra Parietal breadth [Maximum breadth: headbreadth]
BBH : Basion-Bregma heigth [ '' :headheight]
ZAB : Zygomatic breadth [Bizygomatic diameter]
NLH : Nasal height [Nose height]
NLB : Nasal breadth [Nose breadth]
FTH : Facial Total height [Total Face height]
FUH : Facial Upper height [Upper Face height]
OBH : Orbital height [ '' ]
OBB : Orbital breadth [ '' ]
XPB / GOL* : Cranial index
BBH / GOL* : Height-Length index
BBH / XPB* : Height-Breadth index

(*: these indices are all multiplied by hundred, otherwise the figure is so low)

Ah! So you did not use Facial Index? That's good! You evaded the misrprint then ;)



There are, however, a few differences - the vault is higher, the face wider, the upper face shorter. Perhaps these more peripheral Scandinavians showed a little of the older blood.

Few differences? :) The bloody face is wider by 5 points! It's not even anywehere near to being leptoprosopic. Its 87.4 - that's worlds apart! Swedes might resemble the Halstatts as far as nose or cranial index is concerned, but definitely they are much different in terms of facial index.


The allegedly "similar" Reihengrabers are yet more different!


And what did he mean by "peripheral Scandinavians"? If Sweden is on the Scandinavian periphery then I got no idea what constitutes the heartland...

[The Black Prince]

On a sidenote, although all the data I used is correct.

First: I didn't use the indices on the face. Perhaps for a future version I will apply them too.

Second: here I used measurements (N=8) and shapes (N=3) at the same time. Therefore the outcome is somewhat altered. e.g. measurements make up 8/11 of the correlation table while shape only 3/11..

In a future version I will make on correlation table on the measurments and one on the correlation in shape, these can than be both used separately as combined and will provide a better comparance of the series inbetween.:)

[The Black Prince]

Indeed... or the Heruli who were said to reside on the Danish Isles before they were expelled by the Danes.
Yup, and there are more of course, though I doubt that the tribal formation during the Iron Age was constant the same and comparable with those of the Early Roman Empire when Tacitus wrote his Germania.
Even during the time of the Roman Empire the tribal formations changed (e.g. fromation of the Alamanni and Frankish confederation) though now also the presence of the Romans might have acted as catalyzing agent in this cause. In any case the process of changing tribal formation was not endogenous..


Ah! So you did not use Facial Index? That's good! You evaded the misrprint then ;)
hehe you beat me to it, just before I would post my future efforts on the subject.:D

[The Black Prince]

And what did he mean by "peripheral Scandinavians"? If Sweden is on the Scandinavian periphery then I got no idea what constitutes the heartland...
Coon used most likely the archaeological approach to Iron Age Scandinavia (thus not geographically). Denmark and especially Jutland was in those days the centre of Scandinavian culture.
Peripheral Scandinavians, or better said peripheral of the Scandinvain culture were the people of South Sweden, the coastline of Norway. Also Northern Germany, Northwest Poland and the Northern Netherlands btw. Though they were also peripheral to the La Tène culture.


Nordic is by definition blonde, blue-eyed and fair. How do we know these 24 Halstatt Illyrians from Austria didn't have raven-black hair, olive skin and tar-black eyes??? The answer is... we simply cannot. Using Coon's logics, Arabs and Somalis could also be Nordic (had they been found in Europe). Are they dolichocephalic? Yes they are. Extremely! Are they leptoprosopic? Yes they are. Most leptoprosopic in the world! Are the Nordic? Err.... no???
No, Nordid is per definition one who is (pred.) descended from a group of people that resided during the Iron Age in Northern Europe.

I strongly doubt that every Iron Age Dane, Herule, Goth or etc.. was blond and blue eyed.

Personally I more favour what you said before about the Polish school. Not that Nordid thus per definition blond and blue eyed (like Ripley or Grant claimed). Rather that certain traits like these: a specific range of haircolour and eyecolour, together with specific metrical ranges on skulls and other body parts and together with its specific ranges on shape of skulls and other bodyparts, are more common within the Nordid group.

Here it is:


The more I read the works of Guenther, Czekanowski, Michalski and Polish anthropologists, particularly those where they classified whole sets individuals - the more I become convinced that they were sensitive to the notion of natural variation. For instance Wanke, Czekanowski and Michalski used a combined set of Nordic traits, and if an individuall fell overall into most of them, they were not fussed even if his FI or HI was off by few points. One of the main features of the Polish School was that it was fairly liberal as to the Nordic CI. Individuals with CI of up to 80, or even above could be still classified as Nordics if they were otherwise ok.



Using Coon's logic I could pick up a set of "Nordic" skulls in any given people - Sarmatians, Slavs, Iberians. The only issue is that "Nordic cranium" is an oxymoron - unless we know it came from a Nordic population in the first place.
True, I could do the same. there have also been found North-European skulls with Inca bones (a harmless genetic caused pathology on skulls). Though the Inca bone is most common among descnedants of the Inca's it does not mean that North-Europeans once had direct contact and intermixture with Andid populations.



Coon claimed Halstatt series are Nordic coz they resemble Germanic series (which in fact they don't really resemble). Now my question is - why use some composite, 24 crania from Austria as a yardstick of Nordicness? Why bother with Halstatts at all? Why not use the Iron Age Germanic crania as a Nordic standard directly???
Hmm the reason why he bothers is because there might be a direct Hallstatt cultural influence within Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Denmark. It is an old archaeological theory but was still widely believed in the 1930's. It was thought that the Hallstatt Proto-Kelts where the initiator of the La Tène culture and the Harpstedt-Seedorf culture. The first are the true Kelts and the second are the true Germanics.

Although this theory of an ancient Hallstatt elite across Central- and Northern Europe got abandoned during the '60s and '70s. Nowadays it seems some of it might be true. Not as much in a sense of a direct elite of Hallstatt origin over Notralpe Europe, but a material culture that by the exchange of gifts expanded over this area. And the La Tène, earlier seen as emerging after the Hallstatt declined are nowadays seen (because of better dating) as a continuation of the Hallstatt culture.

[Jarl]

I got some nice data on Germanic series by Bernhard:


http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/7716/bernhard268269.jpg


http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/2953/bernhard270271.jpg



It was posted by someone long ago on HBF. You probably have it too. If not I though you could use it. No Scandinavian series is described, but there are Viking series from Iceland, Orkneys and Shetlands, and Ireland.

[Agrippa]

I think that also Guenther and Eickstedt believed Nordics and Faelids to be a part of one evolutionary Northern spectrum.

Well, they believed in a different origin of the two forms, but that the original Nordid was longer apart from the Mediterranid type - from the Aurignacoid source, than most other and later authors.

Actually Eickstedt thought Central Asia was the cradle of the Europid and especially Nordid race, even the biodynamic centre of all of humanity.

However, the separation of Nordid and Mediterranid was rather not that old in my opinion and I once made up the comparison with a family. Because of mixture the Nordid and Dalofaelid types might be now closer to each other, but they still came from different sources and specialisation, so its like two brothers looking in some traits quite different, yet in others close and are genetically close, but a cousin, more distantly related genetically, has the same facial features like one of the brothers, from the grandfather they share.

So it is with Nordid and Dalofaelid, they repeat an older variation, older than depigmentation and Nordisation, which appears over and over again and the similarity to Mediterranids is due to that ancient relation. Now depending on the situation, the living conditions and environment, sometimes the Nordid and sometimes the Cromagnid/Dalofaelid anatomy would be more advantageous. Basically, the warmer the climate is, the more its made for the Nordid, the colder = Dalofaelid, very cold and unfavourable = Baltisation.

Thats largely how it works in the Northern and North-Eastern depigmented spectrum.

From Bernhard and Kandler-Palsson (1986), the Germanic clusters. Note that all more ancient Nordoid populations (Swedish Wohnplatzkultur, "German and Polish" Corded Ware) cluster closer to each other, probably this is also due to the living conditions at that time. Otherwise they are still in the Germanic range one has to note.

I also added measurements of various Germanic samples, of which all were at least pred. Nordid in racial character, from the same work. Unfortunately they have no full facial height and index, but just midfacial one, yet its also interesting to note the facial breadth of the samples. More than 137 is truly exceptional and one coming from the Krim sample, of which we can assume it was mixed.

I'd say the Nordid average would, if being purified from other influences, clearly below 134 for that time. One could say the average facial index index for that time could be about 90+ for the purified samples.


It was posted by someone long ago on HBF. You probably have it too. If not I though you could use it. No Scandinavian series is described, but there are Viking series from Iceland, Orkneys and Shetlands, and Ireland.

Yes, by me. :)

[Jarl]

Well the skulls didn't came out of the whole of Sweden, since the northern half of Sweden was not densely inhabited during that period. Probably but I'm not sure, all skulls (N=14) came from nowadays Götaland and Skania.

But the Danes - even though most gracile and leptoprosopic from all Reihengraber Germanic series (columns 39-45 in Coon's Appendix) - still turn out to be much closer to other Germanics, the robust Frisians, Norwegians and Anglo-Saxons than to Halstatts!


The ones who are closest to Halstatt rag-tags... are 14 Swedes with mean FI of... 87.4! Have you noticed this as well??? ;)

[Jarl]

Well, they believed in a different origin of the two forms, but that the original Nordid was longer apart from the Mediterranid type - from the Aurignacoid source, than most other and later authors.

Yes! I know most XIX-century anthropologists distinguished between the East (Combe-Capelle, Brno, Predmos) and West UP (Cro Magnon) types. But I think, in fact I know, that all European antrhopologists derived Nordics from a local source, distinct to that of Meds. Some derived Nordics from Cro-Magnons, but most from the Magdalenians or Solutreans - as I read it in several reviews by Czekanowski, Mydlarski and other Polish anthropologists, most primarily from Bruniquel and Laugerie Basse type of fossils.


Actually Eickstedt thought Central Asia was the cradle of the Europid and especially Nordid race, even the biodynamic centre of all of humanity.

Brings to my mind the Magdalenian culture of Euro-Asian tundra.


However, the separation of Nordid and Mediterranid was rather not that old in my opinion and I once made up the comparison with a family. Because of mixture the Nordid and Dalofaelid types might be now closer to each other, but they still came from different sources and specialisation, so its like two brothers looking in some traits quite different, yet in others close and are genetically close, but a cousin, more distantly related genetically, has the same facial features like one of the brothers, from the grandfather they share.

So it is with Nordid and Dalofaelid, they repeat an older variation, older than depigmentation and Nordisation, which appears over and over again and the similarity to Mediterranids is due to that ancient relation. Now depending on the situation, the living conditions and environment, sometimes the Nordid and sometimes the Cromagnid/Dalofaelid anatomy would be more advantageous. Basically, the warmer the climate is, the more its made for the Nordid, the colder = Dalofaelid, very cold and unfavourable = Baltisation.

Thats largely how it works in the Northern and North-Eastern depigmented spectrum.


To be honest I am not certain how we can relate modern blonde Europids of North Europe to either Cro-Magnons or Neolithic Meds. No matter if depigmentation occured after or before the Neolithic Revolution, modern populations are a product of several waves of settleres coming into Europe, and subsequent drift and evolution. However, Scandinavians and North Europeans seem to be metrically closest to Cro-Magnons out of all human races.


Whether European UPs were already blonde, or blondism evolved more recently, after Neolithic - it is silly to search for Nordics by analysing skeletal material whose pigmentation will forever remain unknown. Its all pure unfounded speculation. All we know for sure is that Nordics evolved around the Baltic sea - and the evolutionary trend was strongest in Scnadinavia and among the proto-Germanic stock.


Now this stock, presumably residing in Jutland and Scandinavia, has been a product of several migration waves. One of them could have contributed blondism, one dolichocephalism, another one leptoprosopy... We will never know. And this is obviously a simplified image - coz traits like blondism an leptoprosopy were in all contributing populations, yet at different frequency/intensity.


On top of it all, these Nordic evolutionary trends were most definitely affected by chance. They developed as a fraction of general Europid variability - through founder effects, drift and isolation...


This is the perspective of evolutionary genetics. And search for some primeval "Nordic race" and "Med race" stinks of the XIX-century belief in primeval "pure races" and convergent evolution of humanity from different species.



From Bernhard and Kandler-Palsson (1986), the Germanic clusters. Note that all more ancient Nordoid populations (Swedish Wohnplatzkultur, "German and Polish" Corded Ware) cluster closer to each other, probably this is also due to the living conditions at that time. Otherwise they are still in the Germanic range one has to note.

I also added measurements of various Germanic samples, of which all were at least pred. Nordid in racial character, from the same work. Unfortunately they have no full facial height and index, but just midfacial one, yet its also interesting to note the facial breadth of the samples. More than 137 is truly exceptional and one coming from the Krim sample, of which we can assume it was mixed.

I'd say the Nordid average would, if being purified from other influences, clearly below 134 for that time. One could say the average facial index index for that time could be about 90+ for the purified samples.



Yes, by me. :)


:) I thought it was you! Excellent! Many thanks, Agrippa! Hope Frisius will make a good use of it.


P.S.

Id be very careful with Corded-Ware horizon. It was vast and encompassed almost all PIEs - which by all accounts cannot be considered Nordic. I think that Nordic traits should be most definitely inferred from studies of living Nordic populations combined with studies of ancient proto-Germanic series from Scandinavia and vicinity of Jutland - coz thats were historically the evolutionary trend for blonde individuals has been strongest.

[The Black Prince]

To be honest I am not certain how we can relate modern blonde Europids of North Europe to either Cro-Magnons or Neolithic Meds. No matter if depigmentation occured after or before the Neolithic Revolution, modern populations are a product of several waves of settleres coming into Europe, and subsequent drift and evolution. However, Scandinavians and North Europeans seem to be metrically closest to Cro-Magnons out of all human races.

About the different waves of settlers after the Younger Dryas, I agree. However Cromagnons (not referring to the individual Cro-Magnon but UP's) as you said most close to North-Europeans of all European populations. Would you say this because of the possible link between Gravettian culture and the HG I1?



All we know for sure is that Nordics evolved around the Baltic sea - and the evolutionary trend was strongest in Scnadinavia and among the proto-Germanic stock.
True...But than my question is were are Coon's Keltic Nordids from?

Oh I don't like the prefix Keltic neither, it is an ethnic term (when seeing at Celtae and Keltoi) and most Kelts weren't pred. Nordoid, rather a metrical mixture between Nordoid/Mediterranoid, Tauroid and Alpinoid. Further the people that cling on the linguistic use of Keltic are even from a wider range of types..

But where is this 'Northwestern' type from?



Now this stock, presumably residing in Jutland and Scandinavia, has been a product of several migration waves. One of them could have contributed blondism, one dolichocephalism, another one leptoprosopy... Or alternatively these trends could have evolved by chance - as a fraction of general Europid variability - through founder effects, drift and isolation...
Just mix a Faelid with a Corded skull, add in some gracilization* and perhaps some minor other ingredients.. and eh Voila! a Modern Nordid..:p..:D

But indeed without kidding, gracilization seems an ongoing process when viewing the averages of world populations over time. Gracilized Faelid skulls and gracilized Corded skulls would produce something very modern day North-European like, especially when mixed.

[Agrippa]

Whether European UPs were already blonde, or blondism evolved more recently, after Neolithic - it is silly to search for Nordics by analysing skeletal material whose pigmentation will forever remain unknown. Its all pure unfounded speculation.

Well, I wouldnt say its a hopeless cause, because sooner or latter I'm quite sure we will have genetic results which can make up conclusions on the pigmentation status.

Actually it has been done with some Scythians, like I already mentioned.

As for the Corded Ware horizon - well, they jumped North to exactly the areas you mentioned, its all quite complicated if its about pigmentation etc., we dont even know how much of a continuity we had in various areas, its all speculative.

But again, we will have the genetic results in the near future, I'm rather optimistic about that. If they would combine typology, prehistory and genetics more efficiently, this puzzle could be solved in some decades or even just a couple of years I guess.

[Jarl]

About the different waves of settlers after the Younger Dryas, I agree. However Cromagnons (not referring to the individual Cro-Magnon but UP's) as you said most close to North-Europeans of all European populations. Would you say this because of the possible link between Gravettian culture and the HG I1?

Im not certain. If there is a ling between Gravettian and Middle East, then this seems to be more attributable to the influx of Capelle-Brno-Predmost like populations, with clear marks of the Middle East, and certain proto-morphic features, by some called Negroid-like or Autraloid-like. The earlier, Aurignacian would be then the culture of Cro-Magnons. This I think has been the consensus :)



True...But than my question is were are the Coon's Keltic Nordids from? Oh I don't like the prefix Keltic neither, it is an ethnic term and most Kelts weren't pred. Nordoid, rather a metrical mixture between Nordoid, Tauroid and Alpinoid.


I don't think we can say anything here coz we simply do not know what was the pigmentation of the people of La Tene or Halstatt cultures. Calling them Nordic is misleading. Even though they might have been similar to Germanics in terms of cranial biometrics, their pigmentation was bound to be different. This is precisely why I cannot understand Coon's methodology.

1. He's got a preconception of what is Nordic derived from earlier studies of living Scnadinavians.

2. With these preconceptions he assesses Nordicness of old skulls, and chooses some of them as a new examplar of the true "ancient Nordic" - in spite of scarcity of crania, lack of data on pigmentation.

3. He starts re-assessing the Nordicness of living populations again, using his new standards derived drom skeletal material...


... totally illogical and bizzare!


Just mix a Faelid with a Corded skull, add in some gracilization* and perhaps some minor other ingredients.. and eh Voila! a Modern Nordid..:p..:D

But indeed without kidding, gracilization seems an ongoing process when viewing the averages of world populations over time. Gracilized Faelid skulls and gracilized Corded skulls would produce something very modern day North-European like, especially when mixed.

:) Indeed! Gracilisation has been going on - due to new mutations, drift, new selection (adoption of agriculture), and possibly also influx of some newcomers, Neolithic farmers from the Middle East, R1a steppe herdsmen and so on... but I want to once again emphasise that:

A In determination of what is Nordic, Coon's method is circular and flawed. It is ultimately based on Retzius and Deniker's studies of living Nordic populations.

B In determination of what is Nordic, all we know is that historically most Nordic peoples have been the Germanics, particularly Scandinavians (including Jutland).



And from A and B it clearly follows that we cannot determine Nordic traits from studying cranial data alone - coz we don't know the pigmentation, and in the end, at the very foundations of our method will invariably and inevitably lie within the same old XIX-cen preconception of "Nordic" derived directly from observations of modern populations!


This is our "Nordic Standard", marked in red:

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/5639/germanischecluster.jpg

Direct ancestors of the most blonde and most Nordic modern living populations - the Germanic Scandinavians. They form a tight cluster with robust Reihengrabers: Anglo-Saxons, Bajuwars and others...




As for the Corded Ware horizon - well, they jumped North to exactly the areas you mentioned, its all quite complicated if its about pigmentation etc., we dont even know how much of a continuity we had in various areas, its all speculative.

We need to draw a visible distinction between skeletal studies, which don't tell us anything about pigmentation, and studies of living material which do, and in determination of Nordic traits rest on what we know. And all we know for sure is that the evolutionary trend for blonde, Nordic people is most evident among Germanics, particularly Scandinavians, which tells us that is has been strongest in the proto-Germanic stock.

And all other inferences should start from here - from what we know.


And you CANNOT evade it. Even if you go back in time and start assessing and evaluating the Nordicness of ancient skeletal series, you will still do it with an already existing pre-conception of "Nordic", derived from living Germanic-Nordic populations!

Do you understand?

If I search for Nordic skulls it is because I have some pre-conception of what is Nordic in the first place - from experential knowledge. If I assume ancient Germanic series were Nordic - it's beacuse something in my experience tells me who Nordics are - in this case I know living Germanics are most Nordic. To defy this reasoning is to defy basic laws of deduction/induction. It is simply to lie.


And that is what in effect Coon did...

[The Black Prince]

True, but that was not what I meant with Keltic Nordid, I meant the type that was most common among the (old Belgians and) Britons. I think Bunak meant this type when he described his North-Western subtype from the Atlanto-Baltic type.

I only read a short translated line about Bunak his typology for Northern Europe:



Atlanto-Baltic race

The Atlanto-Baltic (or Atlantic) minor race - is a division of the major Europeoid race. It is extended essentially among the peoples of north and northwest Europe. Characteristic features: high narrow face, ortognathism, narrow lips, strong nasal projection with straight spine, high percentage of light eyes and hair, soft hair, straight and wavy, an increase in beard and whiskers growth, very light skin, tall stature. It is assumed on this combination of features that the Atlanto-Baltic race is a depigmented version of the Indo-Mediterranean race. Is differs from the very similar White Sea-Baltic race in terms of a greater height and smaller width of face, a straight nose, large stature, somewhat darker pigmentation (determined, naturally, in percentages for the population, but not for individually) and with a large increase in the beard and whiskers.

Types:

The northwestern type of the Atlanto-Baltic race - extends to Great Britain, East Norway and Sweden, and is distinguished from the southeastern version by a narrow face and dolicho- or mesocephaly.

The southeastern type of the Atlanto-Baltic race - is extends to the north of Germany, and is distinguished from the northwestern version by a wider face and brachycephaly.

The Scandinavian type of the Atlanto-Baltic race - extends in the northeastern part of the area of this race among the Norwegians, the Swedes, the Latvians, the Estonians and the adjacent peoples. It is characterized by high stature and very light pigmentation.
Though I simplify it here: but there is a parallel with Northwestern as Keltic-Nordid/Nord-Atlantid and Scandinavian as Teutonordid/Skandonordid and Southeastern as Borreby-Faelid blend/mix.

[Jarl]

So it seems. Bunak's North-Western is the darker, blue-eyed meso-dolichocephal. It's Coon's Keltic Nordic, Deniker's North-Western type, Eickstedt's Westische type and Lundman's North-Atlantid. In most schemes, it is pretty much a category of Nordic - and indeed its most common in Western Germanic countries.

[Agrippa]

And all other inferences should start from here - from what we know.

But I might add that the Nordid standard is not and can't be Scandinavia as a whole, but just specific subpopulations, primarily those of South Eastern Norway and adjacent South Western Swedish provinces.

If you read Bryn about the Norwegian regional variants and their differences, even those of personality, mentality. Its clear you deal with the more energetic, faster schizothymes in the South East and they are also those which are more typically Nordid in the narrower sense.

Because f.e. some other parts of Norway are under stronger Alpino-Cromagnoid and Cromagnoid or even Lappid influence, or of Sweden Osteuropid, Cromagnoid in some areas Alpinoid and Lappid too.

As for Coon, we agreed on his work being far from perfect.

[Jarl]

But I might add that the Nordid standard is not and can't be Scandinavia as a whole, but just specific subpopulations, primarily those of South Eastern Norway and adjacent South Western Swedish provinces.

Because f.e. some other parts of Norway are under stronger Alpino-Cromagnoid and Cromagnoid or even Lappid influence, or of Sweden Osteuropid, Cromagnoid in some areas Alpinoid and Lappid too.

As for Coon, we agreed on his work being far from perfect.

That is why "Nordic" is not a population, nor an individual, but an evolutionary trend based primarily on blondism, meso to mild dolichocephaly and leptoprosopy.

This is the trend that distinguished the Germanic Nordic (Scandinavian) populations from other Europids. This trend is given by MEAN and VARIANCE. Surely Scandinavians are greatly variable - some recapitulate this trend more, some do less. But to define the trend, we have to ultimately refer to the living Scandinavian populations. Only from there we can proceed into the past and start speculating on the racial character of skeletal material.

And this is why I argue that Coon misinterpreted the Nordic trend. In Scandinavian populations the trend towards blondism is the strongest. Blonde individuals are most frequent. Yet it does not come together with hyperleptoprosopy. No blonde population has ever been overall hyperleptoprosopic, not even his own Halstatts. As a matter of fact blonde Scandinavian populations are characterised by mild leptoprosopy.


Coon used the modern "Nordic" preconception (worked out by XIX-century anthropologists studying living Scandinavians) to find the first Nordics, the true primeval Nordics, among the old cranial series, and then, on their base, to re-establish and formulate new "Nordic" characteristics ... to subsequently apply them back to the modern populations!


But the point is - this whole method is fantastic, unmathematical, based on abiological notions and illogical. All we can do is to start from what we know for certain, what we can experience with senses - the sure foundation represented by studies of living Nordic Scandinavians, and, by extension, Nordic Germanic cranial series of the past.

[Agrippa]

But to define the trend, we have to ultimately refer to the living Scandinavian populations.

What is a population? It is a genpool, a group of people which more or less exchange their genes with each other, reproduce with each other.

Oftentimes this being determined by a region, a language, a common religion, culture, customs etc.

Now what does it mean if you have a population which ultimately came up of two different sources and changed little since the two groups mixed, still repeating the same basic typological variation. What does this tell you about the evolutionary trends working on it?

Especially if some groups came together rather recently in some areas and lived seperate from each other before?

Now even a small Lappid influence f.e. would change the whole picture of a given (sub-) population in Scandinavia, probably even drastically. Just think about the strong antagonism between basic standard Nordid and Lappid, the deviation a mixture will produce.

As in South Western Norway, we deal with an older, pre-Nordoid population element there, which influenced the average significantly, making the people there darker, shorter headed etc.

The same goes for the broad faced Cromagnid variants with the low orbits etc., the low-smaller eyes and so on. They are clearly distinguishable as well.

Just putting them into one population without further distinction, just means to ignore the typological differences inside the group.

If you put all Finns into one population and make up "THE Finnish type", that would be just a joke with the Southern Finns being so much more Nordoid-Indoeuropean influenced, the Northern and Eastern ones so much more Osteuropid and Uralic influenced.


Yet it does not come together with hyperleptoprosopy.

In many regions it does. Blondism is just one trait out of others and similar to skin color, its mostly determined by regional selective forces, so all variants which come into a specific region and selective regime will change accordingly - yet they might keep other traits from the older heritage and background.

Blondism is important to distinguish Nordid from Mediterranid, its rather worthless for making a distinction between Nordid and Dalofaelid and Osteuropid - for the latter the Facial Index is crucial distinctive trait.


No blonde population has ever been overall hyperleptoprosopic, not even his own Halstatts. As a matter of fact blonde Scandinavian populations are characterised by mild leptoprosopy.

I would say its like with all other traits: From a certain measurement to X.
F.e. a Nordid can be middle long headed, long headed or very long headed - never short headed. Can have a narrow nose or very narrow nose - never broad nosed. Can have mixed or blue eyes, never dark ones. Can be tall or very tall - never short. Can be more or less rangy, never short-legged. Can have a medium or strong relief, never a weak one. Can have a medium or very prominent nose, never a flat one, etc., etc.

Same goes for the FI, there is a borderline, which only extreme individual variation and mixed ones will exceed, but from that number on, we deal with variants which have mild to extreme leptoprosopy.


abiological notions and illogical

Well, not totally if the past populations/subpopulations were more typical and pure than those we know today, which would be just a logical assumption insofar, as certain trends became (Dinarisation, Alpinisation, Baltisation) stronger long after the Nordisation took place in many parts of Europe and the civilisation, even more so modern world, led to a series of increased panmixture.

F.e. Walloons came to Sweden, Eastern Norwegians had contacts to other parts of Scandinavia and Europe, Lappid mixture and Osteuropid influences moved Southward over time etc.

But from what I know, he was just "too extreme". So his idea was not totally absurd, but its execution imperfect so to say.

[Agrippa]

As for the work of Bryn, a Russian member named Yavolod of Thiazi posted his work, its worth to read, but in German:
http://narod.ru/disk/8733154000/bryn-der-nordische-mensch-1929.rar.html

Bryn saw the broader faced variants as a Nordid variant, if the other traits were still that of the standard form. He however distinguished inside of Norway basic regional forms and populations, which he also distinguished on a cultural-psychological base. Going after his description, the South Eastern Norway population is clearly the more typically Skandonordid (standard Nordid in the narrower sense) group.

A more detailed discussion in German, with exemplary images:
http://forum.thiazi.net/showthread.php?t=153127

[Jarl]

What is a population? It is a genpool, a group of people which more or less exchange their genes with each other, reproduce with each other.

Oftentimes this being determined by a region, a language, a common religion, culture, customs etc.


Precisely so. That is why "Nordic" used to reflect the specificity of Scandinavian populations overall. It was a general umbrella term for the average Northern Europid phenotype.



Now what does it mean if you have a population which ultimately came up of two different sources and changed little since the two groups mixed, still repeating the same basic typological variation. What does this tell you about the evolutionary trends working on it?


Which two different sources? Didn't they change at all? Are you suggesting here that Scandinavians develiped as a result of mixing of Cro-Magnon-like UP hunter-gatherers and Med-like Neolithic farmers? And even up to this very day all Scandinavians repeat the UP and the Nelithic Med variant in to-to, like Coon said? Well my answer to this is simple.


1. There is not just "two sources". We have no idea how many populations contributed towards modern Scandinavians and what were precisely their contributions. But there was definitely more than two.


2. Furthermore, modern Scandinavians do not resemble either the UP Cro-Magnons, nor the Neolithic Meds so it did not "change little" and there is absolutely no "repeating the same basic typological variation". And how could there be one after 12 000 - 7000 years of meiotic recombination and evolution? Look at the dendrogram you posted a the previous page - ancient Nordic series cluster nowhere near to modern Medieval Germanic series.



Especially if some groups came together rather recently in some areas and lived seperate from each other before?

Now even a small Lappid influence f.e. would change the whole picture of a given (sub-) population in Scandinavia, probably even drastically. Just think about the strong antagonism between basic standard Nordid and Lappid, the deviation a mixture will produce.

As in South Western Norway, we deal with an older, pre-Nordoid population element there, which influenced the average significantly, making the people there darker, shorter headed etc.


How do you know they represent a pre-Nordoid element, who was darker? How do you define Nordid then???



The same goes for the broad faced Cromagnid variants with the low orbits etc., the low-smaller eyes and so on. They are clearly distinguishable as well.

Just putting them into one population without further distinction, just means to ignore the typological differences inside the group.

If you put all Finns into one population and make up "THE Finnish type", that would be just a joke with the Southern Finns being so much more Nordoid-Indoeuropean influenced, the Northern and Eastern ones so much more Osteuropid and Uralic influenced.


I think we are doing two much different things, Agrippa. You are mixing skeletal studies with studies of modern populations. You are applying ancient skeletal standards to divide a modern population into types.


You are trying to dismantle a living Nordic population into separate types by applying to it 10,000 - 5,000 yrs old Cro-Magnon and Med standards derived from skeletal material, and assuming freely the "two sources" origin - where you equate all modern graciles with 10, 000 yr old MEDs and robust with 10,000 yr old UPs. And obviously 99% u get a mix.


You are doing precisely what Coon did. Trying to apply the notion of pirmeval homogenous races into reality, which is completely different. All we can see today are the living Scandinavians - a product of many thousands years of evolution. Let me repeat:




1. No matter if depigmentation occured after or before the Neolithic Revolution, modern populations are a product of several waves of settleres coming into Europe. However, Scandinavians and North Europeans seem to be metrically closest to Cro-Magnons out of all human races.




2. Whether European UPs were already blonde, or blondism evolved more recently, after Neolithic - it is silly to search for Nordics by analysing skeletal material whose pigmentation will forever remain unknown. Its all pure unfounded speculation.




3. All we know for sure is that Nordics evolved around the Baltic sea - and the evolutionary trend was strongest in Scnadinavia and among the proto-Germanic stock. Now this stock, presumably residing in Jutland and Scandinavia, has been a product of several migration waves. One of them could have contributed blondism, one dolichocephalism, another one leptoprosopy... We will never know. And this is obviously a simplified image - coz traits like blondism an leptoprosopy were in all contributing populations, yet at different frequency/intensity.




4. On top of it all, these Nordic evolutionary trends were most definitely affected by chance. They developed as a fraction of general Europid variability - through founder effects, drift and isolation.





That is what we know. Moder populations are much different to ancient ones. They do not resemble either Cro-Magnons or the Meds. And there is a high degree of shared genepools and a metrical overlap between most human populations. So you might find 1 in a 1000,000,000 Cro-Magnon like Scandinavian, but overall the population is way more different. And two source model is an absolute speculation. Its been certainly more than that. Plus you also get the drift, which you Agrippa notoriously ignore. So may I remind you of the Neutral Theory in evolutionary genetics. After 12,000 years drift together with gene flow changed all European populations. Drift can significantly alter small populations, even if they share a close common ancestor. One inbred village in Norway can after 2000 years represent a totally different type to another, even though no mixing has been involved.



We are presented with the final effect of thousands of years of evolution. We cannot relate any modern blonde indiviual, or a Scandinavian for that matter, to any ancient skeleton whose pigmentation we will never know. This is apples and oranges. If Somali crania were dug out from European soil, would they be considered Nordic too? Look, you assume "two sources", but the issue is:


1. We do not know how many populations contributed to modern Scandinavian genepool, and what was the contribution of each of them.


2. We do not know how strongly bottlenecks, inbreeding and drift affected Scandinavian populations in the past and how it shaped their variation.


3. We got very scarce skeletal series from the Bronze Age and before. We do not know what was their mean and variance. It is simply impossible to infer it on the basis of collections counting 12-41crania. We do not know their pigmentation.


4. Human populations evolved from a common source an there is a big degree of overlapping variations. This is why skeletal similarity does not equate to immediate genetic link and ancestry. You can't relate directly 24 Halstatt skulls to modern Scandinavians, and say: "these are the ancestors of all Scandinavian lepto-dolichocephals" only because they are superficially similar -coz its illogical and stupid, devoid of sense and evidence. Just like you can't relate the Somali or Arabid skulls to those of modern Swedes who happen to be more gracile and Arabid-like (which Coon did).


This way you can prove anything. Tiny cranial series of 12 or 24 will tend to be homogenous. And you are bound to find individuals recapitulating a similar trend in any larger population - not because of direct ancestry and genetic relation, but because of COMMON HUMAN VARIABILITY.





Blondism is important to distinguish Nordid from Mediterranid, its rather worthless for making a distinction between Nordid and Dalofaelid and Osteuropid - for the latter the Facial Index is crucial distinctive trait.

The thing is. These boundaries are purely arbitrary and have no biological significance. They do not stem naturally. Unless a Nordid represents an "average" Scandinavian, and Dalofalid an "average" German. Then its simply comparing two populations reflected by these "standard types". You are aware of it?


I would say its like with all other traits: From a certain measurement to X.
F.e. a Nordid can be middle long headed, long headed or very long headed - never short headed.

:) Why not? I really wonder... how you define Nordid...


Can have a narrow nose or very narrow nose - never broad nosed. Can have mixed or blue eyes, never dark ones. Can be tall or very tall - never short. Can be more or less rangy, never short-legged. Can have a medium or strong relief, never a weak one. Can have a medium or very prominent nose, never a flat one, etc., etc.

Same goes for the FI, there is a borderline, which only extreme individual variation and mixed ones will exceed, but from that number on, we deal with variants which have mild to extreme leptoprosopy.

Then please tell me how exaclty you establish this "borderline" for FI or any other Nordic trait?

[Jarl]

Lets adopt a minimalistic approach. I guess instead of discussing 100 things at the same time, lets foucs on one, Agrippa. My question is simple and straightforward - how do you define "Nordic"???


Because that's more less what Ive been trying to establish here with Frisius. Look at the concepts of "Nordic" and track them back to their root. I know that terms like Lapogue's "Homo Europaeus", Ripley's "Teutonic", or Deniker's "Nordique", as the very name suggest, were derived from studies over living Germanic populations. Now what is your Nordic?


Im asking because you seem to have a very definite conception of what "Nordic" is. You are saying it can be this but can't be that:


Can have a narrow nose or very narrow nose - never broad nosed. Can have mixed or blue eyes, never dark ones. Can be tall or very tall - never short. Can be more or less rangy, never short-legged. Can have a medium or strong relief, never a weak one. Can have a medium or very prominent nose, never a flat one, etc., etc.

Same goes for the FI, there is a borderline, which only extreme individual variation and mixed ones will exceed, but from that number on, we deal with variants which have mild to extreme leptoprosopy.


So precisely on what grounds you base your definition and your "borderlines" saying that a Nordic can be this, but can't be that?

[Agrippa]

Actually my idea is rather that of a region in which people form a population, a genpool. Certain traits came in by this, certain others by that group. Overall the morphology and proportions of the Nordid type are closer to that of other Aurignacoids, the morphology and proportions of the Dalofaelids and Cromagno-Alpinoids to late Cromagnoids.

Regionally this or that form was being selected, so it doesnt matter if they mixed, because they did, since the product was the end result of a selection we can call Nordisation, which basically meant the adaptation of a basic Aurignacoid form to the Centra-Northern European climate and living situations of the Neolithic and Metal Age times.


2. Furthermore, modern Scandinavians do not resemble either the UP Cro-Magnons, nor the Neolithic Meds so it did not "change little" and there is absolutely no "repeating the same basic typological variation".

Well, there are Corded skulls you can put to a modern Nordid which look the same, have basically the same body proportions etc. You can't do that with a Dalofaelid skull, yet alone a Cromagno-Alpinoid one, everybody can see the differences instantly.


Look at the dendrogram you posted a the previous page - ancient Nordic series cluster nowhere near to modern Medieval Germanic series.

1. All types changed over time in a certain way, f.e. somewhat broader heads etc., so many moderns will cluster closer because of the later trends, yet in detail you can still see the ancient relations.

2. Thats a closely related sample, if you would have add to the dendrogramm other types and populations, things would look very different, especially if looking for the typological traits.

For the Neolithics you can make up a Nordoid and Nordoid-Mediterranoid relation vs. the rest:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3407&stc=1&d=1261057563

Corded Ware & related (like Fatjanovo, Estonian Battle Axe), Swedish sampel (Schwedische Wohnplatzkultur), Kurgan culture (Ockergrabkultur).

The rest is a Cromagno-Alpinoid and Dinaroid group, now look were f.e. the Danish Funnel-Beakers are (23-25) which were a non-Nordoid group at that time and in this sample.


How do you know they represent a pre-Nordoid element, who was darker? How do you define Nordid then???

Definition already explained. We do know that, because they deviate in so many traits and seem to be in an area of retreat, constantly pushed further by the Nordids from the plains so to say. Which is why this population is nowadays mixed and rather Nordid already, but its reasonable to assume the Nordids were the later wave or when the non-Nordids came later, they are in any case an element which was not originally related to the Nordid groups.

Read Bryn on that.


I think we are doing two much different things, Agrippa. You are mixing skeletal studies with studies of modern populations. You are applying ancient skeletal standards to divide a modern population into types.

They must not be too ancient by the way, its just clear that todays populations are rather a mess, made up by the civilisation and huge nations, which united many tribal and other groups. If you do the same in Africa, you get a totally distorted picture either. Yet if you have a region in which the respective forms are still rather isolated, you get a very clear picture of the evolutionary past.

That is why Europe is in some respects "more difficult" and the comparison with the past crucial, because the modern situation is oftentimes rather unrelated or just distantly related to the real evolutionary trends of the past.


You are doing precisely what Coon did. Trying to apply the notion of pirmeval homogenous races into reality, which is completely different. All we can see today are the living Scandinavians - a product of many thousands years of evolution. Let me repeat:

Thats like saying you deal with "living Americans" - one is a Negroid, the other Nordeuropid, next Mediterranid, a Mestizo - but oh, they are all "living American citizens"...

Living Scandinavians had selective pressures which worked on them all - that is the Nordeuropid combination, only non-Nordeuropids excluded. Then there was Nordisation which produced the Nordid type and predominantely Nordid subpopulations, like that of South Eastern Norway-adjacent parts of South Western Sweden are still quite typical, other parts became more mixed over time or were never that strongly Nordid influenced.


However, Scandinavians and North Europeans seem to be metrically closest to Cro-Magnons out of all human races.

Nordid skull:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3408&stc=1&d=1261058398

Cromagnid skull (reconstruction is not entirely correct, but the basic form is):
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3409&stc=1&d=1261058396

Pred. Dalofaelid/Cromagnid facial morphs:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3410&stc=1&d=1261058764

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3411&stc=1&d=1261058840

Pred. Nordid facial morphs:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3319&d=1259965205

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3320&d=1259965205

Now I and others selected the individuals for the morph, according to the classic definitions, yet these two elements are present and in no way you say the different is "unimportant".

Aurignacoid vs. Cromagnoid traits on the skull:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3412&stc=1&d=1261059031


1. We do not know how many populations contributed to modern Scandinavian genepool, and what was the contribution of each of them.

Thats true, but we know that different types exist in Scandinavia today and this goes far beyond what we can consider a normal variation in a harmonised racial form. You dont find that in unmixed tribals usually, you had a much lower variation in most ancient populations if its about crucial traits of adaptive character.


The thing is. These boundaries are purely arbitrary and have no biological significance. They do not stem naturally. Unless a Nordid represents an "average" Scandinavian, and Dalofalid an "average" German. Then its simply comparing two populations reflected by these "standard types". You are aware of it?

Populations and types are not the same. Populations are groups of people living together, forming a genpool. Types are categories derived from those populations, as a whole or parts of them, if there is a strong variation inside of it. Types are usually best explained as a racial specialisation, an adaptation to specific habitat and living conditions over time due to selective forces and gendrift.

Usually large modern populations are always typologically mixed and neighbouring populations usually just differ in their relative numbers. F.e. Sweden has not as much Cromagnoids as Norway, Norway not as much Osteuropids as Sweden, North Western Germany more Dalofaelids than Sweden, Dutch more Atlantid/Mediterranid than North Western Germany, North Eastern Germany more Osteuropid than North Western Germany etc.

Yet you have basically the same racial ingredients in all of them. The Nordid type is present throughout Europe almost, yet its strongest in South Eastern Norway and the adjacent parts of South Western Sweden at the present time.

This doesnt tell us necessarily something about where the type came up or where it was strongest in the past, thats just the present situation.


Then please tell me how exaclty you establish this "borderline" for FI or any other Nordic trait?

That are general anthropological standards which were made up by worldwide comparisons and by looking at the existing worldwide variation. F.e. humans on average have FI's from x to y. There are broader and narrower faced individuals and populations. By looking at the existing regional and worldwide variation of racial types, you can make up a borderline between what is, by general standards, a narrow, medium or broad face (same goes for every other trait) and with such tables you distinguish that.

Now if you have a racial type, you detected it by comparisons and regional variation, you try to a find a typical group of people which represents it best, making up the standard for the racial type for all areas.

If you detect deviating forms, they can be formed into subtypes or new types, depending on the importance of the deviation.

F.e. for the Nordid type the unmixed, autochthonous people of the mentioned regions in Norway and Sweden are the best living representatives.


So precisely on what grounds you base your definition and your "borderlines" saying that a Nordic can be this, but can't be that?

The Nordid type made an adaptation resulting in depigmentation - a non-depigmented individual doesnt have that adaptation = non-Nordid.

One of the reasons is the lack of UV-rays over some months of the year, a lack of Vitamin D in the diet and possibly also the sheer potential in a darker environment, as well as possible sexual and social selection.

The Nordid type made an adaptation for a narrow and high nose (various possible advantages [climatic: longer pathway of the air through the nose, important in drier and/or colder areas, constitutional, social and sexuel selection etc.], its just the case, a fact however).

The Nordid type made an adaptation for a rangy, highly effective body build which is however in strong contrast to the Allen's Rule:


In fact, in ecology there's a "rule" recognizing this principle at work among geographical races of single species. Called Allen's Rule, it states that certain extremities of animals are relatively shorter in the cooler parts of a species' range than in the warmer parts. By "extremities" is mainly meant arms, legs, ears, and snout or nose.

http://www.backyardnature.net/ecorules.htm

That is not the case in Nordids, the are no "Borealised" cold type, unlike Osteuropids and especially Lappids are, Dalofaelids more than Nordids too.

But because of their leptomorphic and rangy body type, they had in the changing and temperate climate to have at least one trait, despite possible physiological adaptations, important to survive the cold months:

BERGMANN'S RULE
It's also a matter of basic physics that the larger a sphere, the less is its surface area relative to its total volume. Therefore, large balls lose heat more slowly, relative to their size, than small ones. You might guess, then, that animals tend to be larger in cold areas than in tropical ones. In fact, Bergmann's Rule asserts that geographic races of a species possessing smaller body size are found in the warmer parts of the range, and races of larger body size in cooler parts.

This rule can't be applied that easily for humans in all regions and other factors have to be kept in mind, yet its clear that this is one of the reasons why many other Aurignacoid forms became gracilised, somewhat reduced or have at least such a type (compare Atlantomediterranid vs. Gracilmediterranid), but Nordids not.

The Nordid type is because of that and other factors (high level individual and group selection, relatively good nutrition etc.) tall.

So for most traits of the Nordid racial type, there are reasons. If an individual doesnt have them, its not a full Nordid by its adaptation and traits, would have had a possible selective disadvantage at the time, in the populations in which the Nordid type was produced.

If you compare those traits with that of the Cromagno-Alpinoid variants in Norway, they are so strong differences, of so great importance, there must have been different source populations and/or selective pressures working on them, there is no other option for that pattern.


So precisely on what grounds you base your definition and your "borderlines" saying that a Nordic can be this, but can't be that?

To answer that question ones more in short:
You can have polar bears with black fur, no problem, that can happen, yet its very clear that polar bears in general have white fur and a bear with a black one has a significant disadvantage in the habitat of the polar bear.

Same goes for racial differences, otherwise there wouldnt be that clear patterns. Obviously civilisation changed things, because in a civilisation very different variants and types can live and survive, which wouldnt have been equally adapted under more "natural" or "wild" circumstances in ancient tribes.


Also compare with this thread:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11365&highlight=racial+typology

[Jarl]

Actually my idea is rather that of a region in which people form a population, a genpool. Certain traits came in by this, certain others by that group. Overall the morphology and proportions of the Nordid typ are closer to that of other Aurignacoids, the morphology and proportions of the Dalofaelids and Cromagno-Alpinoids to late Cromagnoids.


But how do you define the Nordid type and its proportions in the first place? :)




Regionally this or that form was being selected, so it doesnt matter if they mixed, because they did, since the product was the end result of a selection we can call Nordisation, which basically meant the adaptation of a basic Aurignacoid form to the Centra-Northern European climate and living situations of the Neolithic and Metal Age times.

Well, there are Corded skulls you can put to a modern Nordid which look the same, have basically the same body proportions etc. You can't do that with a Dalofaelid skull, yet alone a Cromagno-Alpinoid one, everybody can see the differences instantly.


Yet again... we are using terms like "Nordic" "Nordicisation" - but what exactly do they mean to you???



For example, how do you know "Nordicisation" was adaptation of some Aurignacoids - whom we know from a tiny group of several skulls from Upper Paleolithic? Combe-Capelle for instance is said to be almost exactly like Natufian skulls - while Natufians are half-way between modern Euros and Niger Congo Africans. I just do not see any link between modern Scandinavians and what you call Upper Paleolithic "Aurignacoids".



You speak of "Nordics" and "Nordicisation" as a process of adaptation visible today. Lets omit the fact that you constantly ignore drift and neutral change and everywhere see selection/adaptation. Just tell me... how did you define Nordic in the first place? Coz if you are saying: "the product was the end result of a selection we can call Nordisation" then you obviously have to have some pre-conception, some idea of what Nordicisation and Nordic is.... otherwise you are talking about something you do not know, which does not make any sense... so where do you derive your concept of Nordic from?



Like here:


Definition already explained. We do know that, because they deviate in so many traits and seem to be in an area of retreat, constantly pushed further by the Nordids from the plains so to say. Which is why this population is nowadays mixed and ratherNordid already, but its reasonable to assume the Nordids were the later wave or when the non-Nordids came later, they are in any case an element which was not originally related to the Nordid groups.

Read Bryn on that.


I just do not have a clue of what you are talking about. You are continuously refering to "Nordids" or "Nordics"... You say that Nordics are this, or that. You are saying that they came from one place, and settled in another... etc.etc.

You give me an example of a Nordic skull:


Nordid skull:

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3408&stc=1&d=1261058398

But my question is still the same. WHAT makes you think this is a Nordic skull??? What is your "Nordic" - where did you get the concept from???


Have you met the only true exemplar of Nordic who told you he incarnated the perfect Nordic features and gave you a list of all Nordic measurements?



Living Scandinavians had selective pressures which worked on them all - that is the Nordeuropid combination, only non-Nordeuropids excluded. Then there was Nordisation which produced the Nordid type and predominantely Nordid subpopulations, like that of South Eastern Norway-adjacent parts of South Western Sweden are still quite typical, other parts became more mixed over time or were never that strongly Nordid influenced.

Again - so what is this Nordid type?



Aurignacoid vs. Cromagnoid traits on the skull:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3412&stc=1&d=1261059031

But this is some diagram representing characteristics of a 40,000 year old Cro Magnon 1 cranium, and, presumably, the equally old, Natufian-like Combe-Capelle cranium...


What relevance does it have to my direct question - where did you get an idea of what a "Nordid" type is?





Because here you seem to agree with me:


Populations and types are not the same. Populations are groups of people living together, forming a genpool. Types are categories derived from those populations

Indeed! Types are simplified depictions of meaned characteristics of a population - thats was Lapogues, Denikers and Ripleys idea!


But here you start talking mumbo-jumbo to me:


Usually large modern populations are always typologically mixed and neighbouring populations usually just differ in their relative numbers. F.e. Sweden has not as much Cromagnoids as Norway, Norway not as much Osteuropids as Sweden, North Western Germany more Dalofaelids than Sweden, Dutch more Atlantid/Mediterranid than North Western Germany, North Eastern Germany more Osteuropid than North Western Germany etc.

Yet you have basically the same racial ingredients in all of them. The Nordid type is present throughout Europe almost, yet its strongest in South Eastern Norway and the adjacent parts of South Western Sweden at the present time.

This doesnt tell us necessarily something about where the type came up or where it was strongest in the past, thats just the present situation.


You start talking about populations being composed of some objective "types" or "ingredients" - how you define these ingredients? What makes you think they exist at all???


And how do you define the "Nordic" ingredient? Where do you ultimately get the notiona of a Nordic standard from???



The Nordid type made an adaptation resulting in depigmentation - a non-depigmented individual doesnt have that adaptation = non-Nordid.

One of the reasons is the lack of UV-rays over some months of the year, a lack of Vitamin D in the diet and possibly also the sheer potential in a darker environment, as well as possible sexual and social selection.

The Nordid type made an adaptation for a narrow and high nose (various possible advantages [climatic: longer pathway of the air through the nose, important in drier and/or colder areas, constitutional, social and sexuel selection etc.], its just the case, a fact however).

The Nordid type made an adaptation for a rangy, highly effective body build which is however in strong contrast to the Allen's Rule:

That is not the case in Nordids, the are no "Borealised" cold type, unlike Osteuropids and especially Lappids are, Dalofaelids more than Nordids too.

But because of their leptomorphic and rangy body type, they had in the changing and temperate climate to have at least one trait, despite possible physiological adaptations, important to survive the cold months:

This rule can't be applied that easily for humans in all regions and other factors have to be kept in mind, yet its clear that this is one of the reasons why many other Aurignacoid forms became gracilised, somewhat reduced or have at least such a type (compare Atlantomediterranid vs. Gracilmediterranid), but Nordids not.

The Nordid type is because of that and other factors (high level individual and group selection, relatively good nutrition etc.) tall.

So for most traits of the Nordid racial type, there are reasons. If an individual doesnt have them, its not a full Nordid by its adaptation and traits, would have had a possible selective disadvantage at the time, in the populations in which the Nordid type was produced.

If you compare those traits with that of the Cromagno-Alpinoid variants in Norway, they are so strong differences, of so great importance, there must have been different source populations and/or selective pressures working on them, there is no other option for that pattern.

Like above... You are saying that "Nordid this and Nordid that" - but what are we really talking about here? What is the Nordid type - where do you get the objective, factual knowledge of what Nordic is? From some divine "Nordic" oracle???

[Agrippa]

To sum it up for you:
There are various populations and subpopulations which show a certain heterogenity. Now you can make up comparisons of the respective traits, if there is a certain regional, inherited trait combination more common in one area, than in another.

Now you can define that more common trait combination.

F.e. the average "mixed Nordid" population deviates exactly in the direction explained above, those which deviate INSIDE of this population deviate usually in the direction of another main population type.

So its about populations and subpopulations you are dealing with, you are getting your types from, but its the "purified" and clearly defined category which is the type in contrast to the population.

Just read Bryn on the differences between the three basic Norwegian groups, South Western, Northern, South Eastern.

The South Western ones deviate towards Central European Alpino-Cromagnoids, especially the element which doesnt show the Nordid traits as defined by the more typical subpopulation of the South East.

The same can be said for Finland, in which the Southern populations deviate towards the South Eastern Norwegians typologically, the Northern towards other Osteuropid populations. Obviously you can find in all those populations and subpopulations deviating forms, which are representatives of another typological element.

If you just lump all of Norway or all of Finland together, you get a totally false impression, you deal with different habitats, different regional (sub-) population history (includung possible source populations - oftentimes its even reflected in the genetic traits, like its the case for haplogroups in Norway as a tendency and overall in Finland) and respective selective pressures working on them.


But how do you define the Nordid type and its proportions in the first place?

Types are regionally more common, inherited trait combinations, usually representative for a certain evolutionary tendency, kind of specialisation.

For Norway, since we are on that example:
Norway deviates from the Central European countries insofar, as that it has taller, lighter, more longheaded, narrow faced etc. people.

Inside of Norway, the same pattern can be observed between Lappid mixed North, South Western Norway and South Eastern Norway. Therefore, the South Eastern populations is the more distinct (from others) and typical (for the deviation) group of people we call the Nordid racial type.

If you look at the prehistoric and historic remains of people, you can find similarities and dissimilarities and going by that, this typical Nordid element we defined typologically has specific relations to other groups of people, from other times, cultures and regions.

People which work just with population biology get a much lower distance and less typical form of racial specialiation by just lumping together various types of a populations, without looking at the intrapopulation variation and specific racial forms inside of it.

Basically, you can come up with subpopulations using f.e. a gradient from Nordid to Alpinid by using:
South Eeastern Norwegians
South Western Norwegians
Western Germans
Walloons
Central French

The same can be done for Osteuropid:
South Western Swedish
Central Swedes
Southern Finns
Northern Finns

To include South Western Norwegians in a "Nordic" sample without further differentiation means just to include an Alpino-Cromagnoid element and every South Eastern Norwegians who deviates towards the mixed averages of lets say Western Germany (Alpinoid deviation) or Southern Finland (Osteuropid deviation) is less typical for the Nordid type, because he shows clear affiliations to other racial forms.


Yet again... we are using terms like "Nordic" "Nordicisation" - but what exactly do they mean to you???

Nordisation is the process which leads to the typical Nordid, inherited trait combination and can be explained by defining a source group which was under specific (f.e. low UV-light, etc.) selective pressures.

A highly "Nordicised" population has a strong Nordid trait dominance, f.e. South Eastern Norwegians, whereas the British Atlantid-Nordatlantid are between Atlantomediterranid and Nordid in comparison.


For example, how do you know "Nordicisation" was adaptation of some Aurignacoids - whom we know from a tiny group of several skulls from Upper Paleolithic? Combe-Capelle for instance is said to be almost exactly like Natufian skulls - while Natufians are half-way between modern Euros and Niger Congo Africans. I just do not see any link between modern Scandinavians and what you call Upper Paleolithic "Aurignacoids".

Well, it hasnt to be a direct genetic link, but we know from the Upper Palaeolithic Europid variation that there were two Proto-Europoid forms, the Cromagnoid and the Aurignacoid one. These traits appear in different prehistoric populations, they are present in the European Europid and general Europid genpool.

Depending on the situation, the selective pressures, the traits of the leptodolichomorphic Aurignacoid or eurydolichomorphic Cromagnoid dominated. F.e. during the last Ice Age Cromagnoid forms became more dominant than they were before, during the following warm period leptodolichomorphic variants from the refugia and the Near East successivelly substituted the Cromagnoid traits.

You can see that as a change inside of a population too, in which there are two basic form types, defined by a specific proportional character, set of traits and they are two extremes of a mixed spectrum. Now depending "on the need" (= selective pressures) this or that form, in the tradition of the old Upper Palaeolithic skulls we know, becomes more or less dominant.

Actually the Combe Capelle skull had still very primitive traits beside some quite progressive ones and at that time the skull of Cro Magnon was significantly more progressive. Its perfectly reasonable to assume admixture and a recombination of traits resulting in more progressive, more modern Aurignacoids - if they didnt developed those traits on their own.

However, the differences observed between these two extreme skull types are just to big, for not assuming a different origin, a different isolate for at least a limited period of time. Its also possible, that the same trait combination we call Cromagnoid, came up independently in different populations. Thats at least possible, they just represent a specific physical type then.

Crucial is, there is this huge, recognisable difference in the ancient populations, as well as in the modern. The Nordid type is leptodolichomorphic, so was Combe Capelle, Brünn etc., so are Atlantomediterranid, Gracilmediterranid, Iranid etc. - and they share other traits too, in comparison to the Cromagnoid form types and derivates (Dalofaelid, Berid, Alpinoid, Osteuropid etc.), which the latter lack. Whether that was just convergent evolution without a genetic input, we can't say for sure now, but it seems to be rather unlikely, considering the similar details present, which are hard to explain "by chance".


Have you met the only true exemplar of Nordic who told you he incarnated the perfect Nordic features and gave you a list of all Nordic measurements?

Again: The Scandinavians deviate from other populations in the direction of the Nordid type, yet they are not fully Nordid, show deviations among themselves, like explained above in the South Western Norway vs. South Eastern Norway example.

So you extrapolate the direction in which "the population tends to" and making up a trend, which result being the ideal type definition. By that, an individual with a very narrow nose, is more typical for that type, which extrapolates a trend in the living, than one who doesnt has that adaptive trait, but resembles more closely members of another subpopulation/population.

But this is some diagram representing characteristics of a 40,000 year old Cro Magnon 1 cranium, and, presumably, the equally old, Natufian-like Combe-Capelle cranium...


What relevance does it have to my direct question - where did you get an idea of what a "Nordid" type is?

Because Nordid and Dalofaelid or Mediterranid and Berberid/Palaeatlantid or Indid and Indobrachid all show basically the same pattern if being compared with each other.

Regionally the Aurignacoid (South Eastern Norway, coastal Sardinia, Kashmiri etc.) or Cromagnoid (Guanche, parts of the Berbers, broader elemnt in Westphalia - as derivates Osteuropid, Alpinoid and Lappid groups) pattern can be observed as a clearly dominant form.

Rest already explained more than once.

[Jarl]

To sum it up for you: There are various populations and subpopulations which show a certain heterogenity. Now you can make up comparisons of the respective traits, if there is a certain regional, inherited trait combination more common in one area, than in another. Now you can define that more common trait combination.

Indeed! That’s how you get the “average type” from simple population studies at different levels. At each level we will have a slightly different image Scandinavia - - -> Norway, Sweden - - -> Osterdal, Bergen, Oslo, Gotland etc.



F.e. the average "mixed Nordid" population deviates exactly in the direction explained above, those which deviate INSIDE of this population deviate usually in the direction of another main population type.

So its about populations and subpopulations you are dealing with, you are getting your types from, but its the "purified" and clearly defined category which is the type in contrast to the population.

Just read Bryn on the differences between the three basic Norwegian groups, South Western, Northern, South Eastern.

The South Western ones deviate towards Central European Alpino-Cromagnoids, especially the element which doesnt show the Nordid traits as defined by the more typical subpopulation of the South East.

The same can be said for Finland, in which the Southern populations deviate towards the South Eastern Norwegians typologically, the Northern towards other Osteuropid populations. Obviously you can find in all those populations and subpopulations deviating forms, which are representatives of another typological element.

But again and again and again...

....you are talking of “Nordid populations” and “Nordid traits” without giving the term any meaning… You talk of Nordid traits - without explaining how you define Nordid traits in the first place!



If you just lump all of Norway or all of Finland together, you get a totally false impression, you deal with different habitats, different regional (sub-) population history (includung possible source populations - oftentimes its even reflected in the genetic traits, like its the case for haplogroups in Norway as a tendency and overall in Finland) and respective selective pressures working on them.

But why is this a “totally false image”???

No two subpopulations will ever be the same. No two villages and, in fact, no two individuals will be the same. Not even monozygotic twins. That’s why a “type”, which exemplifies the “average” most typical characteristics of a given population, will be always be relative and subjective - totally dependent on the population you select it from. An average type of Scandinavia will be slightly different to an average type of Norway, which will be still slightly different to an average type of Osterdal etc. And they will change in time too... This is natural, biological and objective - not “false”.



Types are regionally more common, inherited trait combinations, usually representative for a certain evolutionary tendency, kind of specialisation.

For Norway, since we are on that example:
Norway deviates from the Central European countries insofar, as that it has taller, lighter, more longheaded, narrow faced etc. people.

Inside of Norway, the same pattern can be observed between Lappid mixed North, South Western Norway and South Eastern Norway. Therefore, the South Eastern populations is the more distinct (from others) and typical (for the deviation) group of people we call the Nordid racial type.

If you look at the prehistoric and historic remains of people, you can find similarities and dissimilarities and going by that, this typical Nordid element we defined typologically has specific relations to other groups of people, from other times, cultures and regions.

People which work just with population biology get a much lower distance and less typical form of racial specialiation by just lumping together various types of a populations, without looking at the intrapopulation variation and specific racial forms inside of it.

Basically, you can come up with subpopulations using f.e. a gradient from Nordid to Alpinid by using:
South Eeastern Norwegians
South Western Norwegians
Western Germans
Walloons
Central French

The same can be done for Osteuropid:
South Western Swedish
Central Swedes
Southern Finns
Northern Finns

To include South Western Norwegians in a "Nordic" sample without further differentiation means just to include an Alpino-Cromagnoid element and every South Eastern Norwegians who deviates towards the mixed averages of lets say Western Germany (Alpinoid deviation) or Southern Finland (Osteuropid deviation) is less typical for the Nordid type, because he shows clear affiliations to other racial forms.

Yet again you are talking about some types which are “regionally more common”, about “typical Nordid type” and “typical Nordid element” - and my question is still the same – on what grounds do you define these types – like Nordid type?

You say types are regionally more or less common, exist in solution in populations. So how do you then objectively define them? How do you dismantle a population into Nordids and Cro-Magnids etc.? To say a population has Nordids and Cro-Magnids you need to know what a Nordid is, in the first place. So what defines a “typical Nordid” to you???





Nordisation is the process which leads to the typical Nordid, inherited trait combination and can be explained by defining a source group which was under specific (f.e. low UV-light, etc.) selective pressures.

A highly "Nordicised" population has a strong Nordid trait dominance, f.e. South Eastern Norwegians, whereas the British Atlantid-Nordatlantid are between Atlantomediterranid and Nordid in comparison.


Aha! "Nordicisation" leads to "typical Nordic"... Idem per idem...

So what is this “typical Nordid" and "typical Nordid trait combination”, how you define it???


From some “source group”? Which one would that be??? I see, according to you, not the Scandinavians coz you wrote:



Again: The Scandinavians deviate from other populations in the direction of the Nordid type, yet they are not fully Nordid, show deviations among themselves, like explained above in the South Western Norway vs. South Eastern Norway example.



So what or who is fully Nordid?

[Gooding]

What a fascinating discussion! My question at this point is simply this: Is there a truly Nordid phenotype without minor influences from other groups that might reside in the same country? It seems that the majority of any population in the world today will be of an "intermediate" physical type. This question is more concerned about what outward physique rather than any deep DNA or 23andme $400.00 questions.Thoughts?

[Jarl]

What a fascinating discussion! My question at this point is simply this: Is there a truly Nordid phenotype without minor influences from other groups that might reside in the same country?


No. There is no and there has never been any "true Nordid" exemplar. It is a myth. A "Nordid type" is a function of the population we select it from at any given time.


A Nordid phenotype is a natural product of Nordic genepool. Some indiviuals might be more typical and cluster near to the mean, thus recapitulating the avarage phenotype of Nordic nations. Some may be more extreme, like platinum blondes, and they recapitulate not the avergae character, but the specificity - the traits which are most specific and exclusive/most common in Nordic nations.




It seems that the majority of any population in the world today will be of an "intermediate" physical type. This question is more concerned about what outward physique rather than any deep DNA or 23andme $400.00 questions.Thoughts?


There has never been any other type than "intermediate" coz there has never been any homogenous races of human clones - all alike - which subsequently blended together.


Every human population has a great internal variability. It has always been like that. That is the way of evolution. Greater variability = greater genetic resources and potential to adapt when environment is changing.


Even any two parents can produce a considerable variation in their offspring by recombining different parts of their genomes. No two sets of genes are the same. No two phenotypes are the same. Genomes work together. As a unity.

No genes are irrelevant. A Gene encoding a rare enzyme might still influence expression of other genes and contribute towards the phenotype. All genes contribute to the phenotype.


That is why a Nordic Swede will be genetically more related to Swedes, not Somalis, or Nordic Poles or Finns. Some gene frequencies vary a lot, and products of a Nordic genepools are exclusive to that genepool. It is virtually not possible for, say a Baltic or Slavic genepool to produce exactly the same genotype as the Nordic genepool would produce... And some superficial, crude similarities in cranial index will not change the image.


So all you Baltic, Slavic or Iberian, or whatever wannabe-Nordics, can now quit with thinking that a longer face will make you more "assimilable" or "Scandinavian-like"... No. It will not. The ugliest, most neanderthal-like Swedish Cro-Magnid is still a genuine manifestation of the Nordic genepool, much more than some continental, riffian, Baltic, Slavic or Somali "Nordics".

[Gooding]

So all you Baltic, Slavic or Iberian, or whatever wannabe-Nordics, can now quit with thinking that a longer face will make you more "assimilable" or "Scandinavian-like"... No. It will not. The ugliest, most neanderthal-like Swedish Cro-Magnid is still a genuine manifestation of the Nordic genepool, much more than some continental, riffian, Baltic, Slavic or Somali "Nordics".

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=1982&d=1244409890

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=1983&d=1244409890
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=1984&d=1244409890

I've never really considered myself much of a wannabe of anything, except possibly a full blood Occitan..

[Jarl]

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=1982&d=1244409890

I've never really considered myself much of a wannabe of anything, except possibly a full blood Occitan..

You are of general Western European ancestry, with notable input from the Isles and France, and that where your affinities lie. Never suggested you specifically are a wannabe-Nordic so no offence intended... but I know there are a few around here and its them whom Ive addressed, cheeky bastards ;)

[Gooding]

You are of general Western European ancestry, with notable input from the Isles and France, and that where your affinities lie. Never suggested you specifically are a wannabe-Nordic so no offence intended... but I know there are a few around here and its them whom Ive addressed, cheeky bastards ;)

I hear you..sorry about the paranoia, but sometimes you can never be too careful.:)No offence taken at all and I do thank you for the classification as well.:thumb001:

[Agrippa]

....you are talking of “Nordid populations” and “Nordid traits” without giving the term any meaning… You talk of Nordid traits - without explaining how you define Nordid traits in the first place!

I did many times already and various authors, including those you mentioned, did. But oh well.

So far I will just give a set of traits which is typically Nordid and accepted by most anthropologists and its most of the time from-to:
Light pigmentation
Simple to wavy hair
Open eyes, usually even or going down external (never slanted)
Tall
Leptomorphic, leptomorphic-mesomorphic
Medium-longheaded
Narrow face-very narrow face
Narrow-very narrow nose
etc.

Whats narrow or broad etc. being defined by the general standards anthropologists agreed upon, like:
Coloration of the hair, eye and skin after the various plates and tables, like usual from-to variation inside a type.

Some measurement for comparison, mostly after v. Eickstedt, general anthropological standards:
Hyperdolichokephal (sehr langköpfig): x-70,9
Dolichokephal (langköpfig): 71,0-75,9
Mesokephal (mittellangköpfig): 76-80,9
Brachykephal (kurzköpfig): 81,0-85,4
Hyperbrachykephal (sehr kurzköpfig): 85,5-90,9
Ultrabrachykephal (extrem kurzköpfig): 91,0-x

Facial index:
sehr breit: x-78,9
breit: 79,0-83,9
mittel: 84,0-87,9
schmal: 88,0-92,9
sehr schmal: 93,0-x

(so borderline is 88,0 usually, a Nordid should have 88,0+ FI)

Nasal index:

World:
Sehr schmal: x-54,9
Schmal: 55,0-69,9
Mittelbreit: 70,0-84,9
Breit: 85,0-99,9
Sehr breit: 100,0-x

Europe:
Sehr schmal: x-54,9
Schmal: 55,0-59,9
Mittelbreit: 60,0-64,9
Breit: 65,0-69,9
Sehr breit: 70,0-x

Nordid NEVER (with pathological exceptions) above 70, more typical is below 55,0.

After Lundman, the body type "virile" is most typical for Nordid, juvenile and mature appear to though, and represent the typical progressive Europid trias:
http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/6697/krperbautypencds8.jpg (http://img165.imageshack.us/i/krperbautypencds8.jpg/)http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/krperbautypencds8.jpg/1/w1014.png (http://g.imageshack.us/img220/krperbautypencds8.jpg/1/)


So how do you then objectively define them? How do you dismantle a population into Nordids and Cro-Magnids etc.? To say a population has Nordids and Cro-Magnids you need to know what a Nordid is, in the first place. So what defines a “typical Nordid” to you???

Most anthropologists looked at and measured a population and oftentimes they got two or more trait combinations which sticked out. In Nordeuropid populations of tall dolichocephals, the broad faced Dalofaelid variants stick out comparatively and can be distinguished by many traits, including form of the nose, the orbits, facial height, facial breadth, form and breadth of the lower jaws, the facial profile, the body type etc.

So by simply looking or measuring a respective mixed Nordid-Dalofaelid sample, you immediately get the respective trait combinations which appear as typical extremes. Especially if comparing such a mixed group with a more clearly Nordid, the difference becomes even more apparent and by having such relatively "pure" groups of people, we know we dont deal with an omnipresent variation inside one type, but two different racial forms which often, but not always, form a common population.

Obviously if you have a "pure Nordid" group, it could very well be that they had "mixed ancestors" but the typical Nordid traits (opposed to the Dalofaelid) became dominant due to selective forces over time, until only small remnants of the Dalofaelid morphology survived and they are metrically perfect representatives of Nordid proper.


From some “source group”? Which one would that be??? I see, according to you, not the Scandinavians coz you wrote:

Look, the question is just WHEN the proto-Nordoids entered Scandinavia, yet its almost impossible that all Nordids descend from the same core group which resided just in Scandinavia, because we find at least Proto-Nordoid skulls en masse throughout Europe all the time since the late Neolithic and Nordids are pretty common in a very huge area into which no Scandinavian mass immigration took place, like the large parts of Eastern Europe and Central Europe which are at least predominantely Nordoid.


What a fascinating discussion! My question at this point is simply this: Is there a truly Nordid phenotype without minor influences from other groups that might reside in the same country? It seems that the majority of any population in the world today will be of an "intermediate" physical type.

All types in Europe have more to do with just a specific set of genes rather than general genetic relations. Its like it is with domestic animals which were set free and if being put in the same environment, under the same selective pressures, they largely developed the same adaptation, racial form as those living there thousands of years, becoming almost indistinguishable.

Such "feral" animal breeds can be seen around the world, especially the colonies, since there they had a good chance of expanding.

Racial forms in general and (sub-) racial types in particular have to be seen the same way, they are adaptations primarily, rather than ancestral groups - they can be both, most of the time, they are to a certain degree both, but its very important to note that they dont have to be.


A "Nordid type" is a function of the population we select it from at any given time.

Exactly. Its the extrapolation of a population's variation and its developments, Race is process, we always deal with "snapshots" from the evolutionary perspective. But thats not just true for racial types, its also true for races, even for species, for lifeforms in general.


Some indiviuals might be more typical and cluster near to the mean, thus recapitulating the avarage phenotype of Nordic nations.

There are no "Nordic nations" in the racial sense insofar as all of them are part of that racial form, they never were, dont are and never will be, because there is always a wider, older or younger variation present, which goes in a completely different direction. A Baltid or Lappid f.e. is in various regards the exact opposite of a Nordid inside of the Europid spectrum, so to put them together makes no sense at all.

To use the "feral animals" example, thats like putting a poodle and a dingo in one "population" and making an average type from that. No, the dingo is one race, the poodle another and if the poodle-individuals would survive under the circumstances which produced the dingo, they will sooner or later become a dingo type. Until then, they are a different racial form. The same can be applied to humans, with various racial types and forms being just put together by history and chance, which doesnt make them more alike, until selection and harmonisation produces a new race or makes on of the forms dominant again.

There is a natural variation even in harmonised types, but what we can observe in most modern larger populations goes far beyond that.


Some may be more extreme, like platinum blondes, and they recapitulate not the avergae character, but the specificity - the traits which are most specific and exclusive/most common in Nordic nations.

Thats true and is what the typological concept is about. But "nations" are usually a bad starting point. Think of ancient tribes having at best some hundred members, today we deal with cities of millions of people, modern traffic and panmixture etc.


Every human population has a great internal variability. It has always been like that. That is the way of evolution. Greater variability = greater genetic resources and potential to adapt when environment is changing.

Well, it always depends on the selective regime, simple as that. The environment and living conditions will produce a type which can procreate successfully in it - or the population will die off.

Now in some populations the advantage of lets say a very narrow nose is very small or not present at all, it doesnt make a disadvantage neither. So if the narrow nosed people come into this area and population, their narrow noses will appear from time to time, intermediate ones being more common though, but they won't spread nor they will decrease - if there is no chance-factor involved like gendrift.

But the same introduction of just a small number of narrow nosed individuals might produce a whole race or population with narrow noses, if their selective advantage is significant and the process gets enough time - this might even result in a selective sweep, a population in which no other but narrow nosed variants exist.

From that point of view, variation is per se neither good or bad, it always depends on the setting, the habitat, living and selection conditions for whats advantageous or disadvantageous.


Even any two parents can produce a considerable variation in their offspring by recombining different parts of their genomes. No two sets of genes are the same. No two phenotypes are the same. Genomes work together. As a unity.

They rather work against each other, in competition. However, thats again a generalisation, because it depends on the parents of course. Taking the same example like above, if they come from the mixed narrow-broad nosed population, they might have one narrow, one medium and one broad nosed child side by side, like some F2 mulattoes.

If they come from a narrow nosed group of people, they will only produce their same kind (inherited trait combination, race), like f.e. Nordid parents. Only what varies in their respective bloodlines, population or race will vary in their children. We dont repeat the Homo erectus variation neither, those traits being, fortunately, eliminated.


All genes contribute to the phenotype.

But not all positions on the genome are active. Actually we dont know about the effect of everyone of it, we just know or can guess about the effect of some, we still learn...


why a Nordic Swede will be genetically more related to Swedes

But there are limits for that too. He will be most likely closer related, even by the sheer numbers of mostly unimportant genes, to a Nordid Norwegian than to a Lappid-Nordid Swede.


It is virtually not possible for, say a Baltic or Slavic genepool to produce exactly the same genotype as the Nordic genepool would produce...

We share a lot of genes with Apes, even with flies, with potatoes actually too. Its a limited number of genes which makes the big difference in the phenotype. So a mass of general animal, human genes is one thing, inactive mass another, a small part makes up the racial differences and an even smaller part makes up the difference between physically excellent sportspeople and models, intellectual genius, great politicians and leaders or stupid fugly...

The genes important for adaptation are crucial, in general and from the human perspective even more so.


So all you Baltic, Slavic or Iberian, or whatever wannabe-Nordics, can now quit with thinking that a longer face will make you more "assimilable" or "Scandinavian-like"... No. It will not. The ugliest, most neanderthal-like Swedish Cro-Magnid is still a genuine manifestation of the Nordic genepool, much more than some continental, riffian, Baltic, Slavic or Somali "Nordics".

Such an individual would just exist, because the process of Nordisation, the selective regime leading to the Scandinavian people becoming predominantely Nordid, lasted not long enough or wasnt intensive enough everywhere.

Its about advantageous traits which make up the value, the rest is just some kind of relation rational people dont care about. Its like having a son which is a crippled retarded from birth. Genetically related yes, but never the same as the healthy son or even nephew. Because the nephew is a better investment, will produce related offspring of value and with a chance to survive on the longer run, the failed son not.

Btw.: Dalofaelids are a progressive Nordeuropid racial form in my book, they are just not Nordid proper, that doesnt make them as a rule "lesser beings" if you think thats what I'm saying, because I'm not.

Furthermore a Nordoid from Poland, Russia or Switzerland would be better suited for the conditions in which the Nordid type of Scandinavia was bred than a deviating f.e. Lappid variant, because he has the same important characteristics of adaptive quality, would have fitted into the respective groups then, the Lappid not.

Simple example: Imagine they threw spears and used the full length of their body and arms in a fight - the Lappid or any kind of non-mature, reduced racial form wouldnt have had the same qualities.

If they would have run on the open land for their animals, hunted for others or defended their herds and territory, again, some kind of short legged individual wouldnt have made it.

Or if the season became dark and there was a lack of vitamin D - again, those which had a darker skin would have had a greater problem and so on...

Like the small poodle can't compete with the dingo, even if the dingo a distant relative of the poodle which became formed by his environment over time, its easier to substitute one feral dog with another, than with a genetic relative of some kind, which just lacks the necessary traits...

[Jarl]

I did many times already and various authors, including those you mentioned, did. But oh well.

So far I will just give a set of traits which is typically Nordid and accepted by most anthropologists and its most of the time from-to:

Light pigmentation
Simple to wavy hair
Open eyes, usually even or going down external (never slanted)
Tall
Leptomorphic, leptomorphic-mesomorphic
Medium-longheaded
Narrow face-very narrow face
Narrow-very narrow nose
etc.

Whats narrow or broad etc. being defined by the general standards anthropologists agreed upon, like:
Coloration of the hair, eye and skin after the various plates and tables, like usual from-to variation inside a type.

Some measurement for comparison, mostly after v. Eickstedt, general anthropological standards:
Hyperdolichokephal (sehr langköpfig): x-70,9
Dolichokephal (langköpfig): 71,0-75,9
Mesokephal (mittellangköpfig): 76-80,9
Brachykephal (kurzköpfig): 81,0-85,4
Hyperbrachykephal (sehr kurzköpfig): 85,5-90,9
Ultrabrachykephal (extrem kurzköpfig): 91,0-x

Facial index:
sehr breit: x-78,9
breit: 79,0-83,9
mittel: 84,0-87,9
schmal: 88,0-92,9
sehr schmal: 93,0-x

(so borderline is 88,0 usually, a Nordid should have 88,0+ FI)

Nasal index:


Nordid NEVER (with pathological exceptions) above 70, more typical is below 55,0.

After Lundman, the body type "virile" is most typical for Nordid, juvenile and mature appear to though, and represent the typical progressive Europid trias:


Ha! So thats it! You derive your notion of "Nordic" from the traits accepted as Nordic "by most anthropologists"! So you ultimately rest your knowledge on a belief! You believe in absolute authority of typologists and you assume their knowledge is objective and credible - you don't want to know how they sourced it? :)

Tell me then...where did they get all these borderlines for Nordic traits? How did they arrive at them? So you are surely aware of the fact they all worked it out as a set of charactersitics approximating in general the living Nordic Scandinavians???


...and that no two typologists ever completely agreed on what a Nordic is and what "boundaries" it has.



Most anthropologists looked at and measured a population and oftentimes they got two or more trait combinations which sticked out. In Nordeuropid populations of tall dolichocephals, the broad faced Dalofaelid variants stick out comparatively and can be distinguished by many traits, including form of the nose, the orbits, facial height, facial breadth, form and breadth of the lower jaws, the facial profile, the body type etc.

So by simply looking or measuring a respective mixed Nordid-Dalofaelid sample, you immediately get the respective trait combinations which appear as typical extremes. Especially if comparing such a mixed group with a more clearly Nordid, the difference becomes even more apparent and by having such relatively "pure" groups of people, we know we dont deal with an omnipresent variation inside one type, but two different racial forms which often, but not always, form a common population.

Obviously if you have a "pure Nordid" group, it could very well be that they had "mixed ancestors" but the typical Nordid traits (opposed to the Dalofaelid) became dominant due to selective forces over time, until only small remnants of the Dalofaelid morphology survived and they are metrically perfect representatives of Nordid proper.


Aaah! That is completely not true my friend! Blondism tends only to be associated with dolichocephaly if the maternal population tends to be dolichocephalic! Same goes for association of blondism with other traits... There is no special genetic linkage of blondism with dolichocephaly. Its been proven. Traits that are used in physical anthropology are not linked together or associated the same way through all populations - we no longer in the 30s Agrippa. This was refuted in the 50s in Amercia, and 60s in Europe! There is no evidence for any objective types.

Just read any work on typology and on how crossing over works... ;)

[Jarl]

I mean... if you really believe in 20s 30s typology - in existence of some objective universal types that are the some in all populations - like that dolichocephaly or blondism tends to come together with narrow faces, narrow noses throughout all populations - forming some objective Nordic combination that somehow naturally "sticks out"...

...then we might as well end the discussion here ;)

[The Black Prince]

Physical anthropology is partly exact science (e.g. the metrics, mathematical calculations, chronologic dating). However since the record is uncomplete (the physical remains of every person who has ever lived with name tag), for a complete or even partly synthesis about the subject of a physical definition of the phenomenon 'Nordid' it is always also derrived for a (important) part on scholar interpretation.

And that is just the itch, because since not the entire 'Nordid' phenomenon is exact it stays open for debate. But should therefore the idea of a 'Nordid' type, population, ideal or race/subrace be unvalid? Because there is some truth in the unvalidness of the Nordid phenomenon, since it can never be proven or solved (e.g. a binding solution can only exist in pure exact science f.i. 1 unit and 1 unit is 2 units).

However we do know one thing for sure: If we make a map of Europe than certain physical traits do recombine in certain areas. Not that the entire local population has these traits, but they are more common.

A second step would be to make a map of Europe and only record the recombination of physical traits of the 'natives' in the area (f.i. in the Netherlands that would reach towards the 18th century, and for some earlier). With 'natives' I mean the people that descend fully from people from that region. This would leave some big blank spots on our map, but the other areas are now more highligtened (f.i. Dinarian Mnts., Iceland, Ireland, some Alpine regions, inlands of Scandinavia, etc..).

A third step would be to record those recombinations of physical traits following a unform standard (so blond means the same in Sicily as in Götaland).

As a fourth step we now can make a map of Europe filled with a typology which corresponds with the modal (not always average!) phenotypes for specific regions. Standard deviations can be used to even quite exact measure the spread of variation within each population and research how clinal and how non-clinal the distribution of traits is.

-- Until now we are still relative exact busy, OK, we applied our own (arbitrary) standard, but we use it uniform. The rest is more getting interpretative--

F.i. we can check how much the nowadays 'native' population looks like the ancestral population by measuring skulls from gravefields in those areas. And if they differ (which they always do): If we have ancient skulls, well the possibilities are endless: is it another migrating group that caused the difference?, is it a change in diet and labour? is it selection based upon (social) environment, etc..
And perhaps we can acces direct ancestors of the natives. Than we can check upon things like: is there gracilization going on or robustization?, are people getting taller or smaller?, etc..

Why we could want to do this? because we want to know the origin, f.i. Iceland was colonized in the Middle Ages, not earlier. A native population would have his origin somewhere else. An Icelandic type would never make it in a major descriptive phenotype for a casus as Europe. Anyway at some point we will run into a serious lack of evidence, since not everything is preserved as well, or even lots of evidence is intentionally removed (most graves in graveyards are removed after a 100 or 150 years to make place for new 'clients'), this also accounts often for ancient tombs.

Here is were it comes completely down to tiying the loose ends with scholar interpretation. That is f.i.:

History: e.g. we know that Iceland was colonized by Irish monks, Norwegian Vikings who had Irish (and other) slaves).
Common sense: a occurence of broad noses in a obsure part of Europe could imply Australoid admixture, however it doesn't make much sens of course..
Etc.


Anyway at a certain point ('a certain point' already implies that it is relative not exact), we would have a couple of the most logical syntheses. The rest is a thread like 'On Nordic types'.;)

---

Of course we could use genetics, an old field of science. But the last decades with the introduction of new ways of research to it, it can be really attributive.

However as traditional Physical Anthropology it has the same flaws. At some point you run out of exact data e.g: to often contamination so only a small part of the ancient material can be used. And an unknown history: was there selection of which males were allowed to procreate (those with big guns, polygamie, etc..). Many more itches can emerge, MtDNA an Y-DNA are extremely vulnerable for this.

At a certain point, like the traditional Physical Anthropology, it relies on interpretation of the material of evidence.

[Jarl]

Physical anthropology is partly exact science (e.g. the metrics, mathematical calculations, chronologic dating). However since the record is uncomplete (the physical remains of every person who has ever lived with name tag), for a complete or even partly synthesis about the subject of a physical definition of the phenomenon 'Nordid' it is always also derrived for a (important) part on scholar interpretation.

And that is just the itch, because since not the entire 'Nordid' phenomenon is exact it stays open for debate. But should therefore the idea of a 'Nordid' type, population, ideal or race/subrace be unvalid? Because there is some truth in the unvalidness of the Nordid phenomenon, since it can never be proven or solved (e.g. a binding solution can only exist in pure exact science f.i. 1 unit and 1 unit is 2 units).

However we do know one thing for sure: If we make a map of Europe than certain physical traits do recombine in certain areas. Not that the entire local population has these traits, but they are more common.

A second step would be to make a map of Europe and only record the recombination of physical traits of the 'natives' in the area (f.i. in the Netherlands that would reach towards the 18th century, and for some earlier). With 'natives' I mean the people that descend fully from people from that region. This would leave some big blank spots on our map, but the other areas are now more highligtened (f.i. Dinarian Mnts., Iceland, Ireland, some Alpine regions, inlands of Scandinavia, etc..).

A third step would be to record those recombinations of physical traits following a unform standard (so blond means the same in Sicily as in Götaland).

As a fourth step we now can make a map of Europe filled with a typology which corresponds with the modal (not always average!) phenotypes for specific regions. Standard deviations can be used to even quite exact measure the spread of variation within each population and research how clinal and how non-clinal the distribution of traits is.


:) Precisely! This is just what the XIX century anthropologists did - typology based on biometric cartography and derived from studying local living populations! Just like it was done Lapogue, Deniker and Ripley! Without the antievolutionary, abiological "objective pure type" myth.




-- Until now we are still relative exact busy, OK, we applied our own (arbitrary) standard, but we use it uniform. The rest is more getting interpretative--

F.i. we can check how much the nowadays 'native' population looks like the ancestral population by measuring skulls from gravefields in those areas. And if they differ (which they always do): If we have ancient skulls, well the possibilities are endless: is it another migrating group that caused the difference?, is it a change in diet and labour? is it selection based upon (social) environment, etc..
And perhaps we can acces direct ancestors of the natives. Than we can check upon things like: is there gracilization going on or robustization?, are people getting taller or smaller?, etc..

Why we could want to do this? because we want to know the origin, f.i. Iceland was colonized in the Middle Ages, not earlier. A native population would have his origin somewhere else. An Icelandic type would never make it in a major descriptive phenotype for a casus as Europe. Anyway at some point we will run into a serious lack of evidence, since not everything is preserved as well, or even lots of evidence is intentionally removed (most graves in graveyards are removed after a 100 or 150 years to make place for new 'clients'), this also accounts often for ancient tombs.

Here is were it comes completely down to tiying the loose ends with scholar interpretation. That is f.i.:
History: e.g. we know that Iceland was colonized by Irish monks, Norwegian Vikings who had Irish (and other) slaves).
Common sense: a occurence of broad noses in a obsure part of Europe could imply Australoid admixture, however it doesn't make much sens of course..
Etc.

Anyway at a certain point ('a certain point' already implies that it is relative not exact), we would have a couple of the most logical syntheses. The rest is a thread like 'On Nordic types'.

Precisely. By studying skeletal material we need to be very careful when relating it to the present as we do not know the exact evulotionary history of populations in question. We simply dont know who and how much contributed. What was the drift etc. etc. We cant know pigmentation of skeletal material. We cant know the variance particularly if series are little or from a single place. On top of it all we have a problem outlined by me here:





A quote from C.S. Coon:

"So far the inhabitants of the Abyssinian plateau, whatever their speech and ethnic origin, are (...) comparable to Mediterraneans (...) as well as to North European Nordics. "



1. In contrast to Retzius and Deniker, Coon does not measure the means of the living Nordic populations in the first place, to set the standard for what is Nordic and what is not. He a priori ASSUMES a genetic link between Meds and Nords, and sets his yardstick of whats is Nordic on the basis of some obscure Neolithic and antic cranial series.


2. In the fragment above, Coon comparers the living modern populations of whole Abissynia to a... single anthropological "type" which he himself subjectively carved out from the Scandinavian population on the basis of some aprioristic assumptions!


3. Not very consequent, is he? Adopting that method, I can prove a genetic link between absolutely everyone (after all human populations are all variations on a common theme). I can get meaned measurements of all living Pygmies, or Australoid cranial series, and then find a subset of indiviuals that resembles them in virtually any population - be it German, Polish, Swedish or Japanese. Next, I will artificially "carve out" all these individuals from their continuum, from the maternal population whose variation they are an integral part of, and call them a distinct separate "type" who is pure and unmixed, yet present "in solution"... That way absolutely everything is possible!


However, if you read Coon's data on Denmark, Norway, Iceland or the Netherlands then no... populations of Abissynia are nowhere near.


Coon's liking of the Abissynias (a whole population/ethnicity) to North European "Nordics" (a "type" carved out from population variation spectrum) is the best depiction of how fallible and misleading superficial biometrical similarity can be.

[Agrippa]

You are just nitpicking by now, but ok...


Ha! So thats it! You derive your notion of "Nordic" from the traits accepted as Nordic "by most anthropologists"! So you ultimately rest your knowledge on a belief! You believe in absolute authority of typologists and you assume their knowledge is objective and credible - you don't want to know how they sourced it? :)

I know how they did it and explained it already. This methodology is logical and with the standard typological concepts for Europe you can easily define the most part of the racial variation in Europe. So this 6-type scheme I use can be applied to practically every racial variation and shows the most important adaptive trends.

If there would be too huge holes or this would explain nothing, of course I would challenge it, but from all I know, read and saw, the standards just make sense, they grasp the most important parts of the physical racial variation.


Tell me then...where did they get all these borderlines for Nordic traits? How did they arrive at them? So you are surely aware of the fact they all worked it out as a set of charactersitics approximating in general the living Nordic Scandinavians???

Yes, but once they got the standard, they worked on the archaeological material, to study the ancient skulls and how the type might have derived, this is exactly what you dont accept but is necessary.

Additionally once they got the deviation for the respective regions, populations, they could see that certain subpopulations are closer to the standard, like South Eastern Norway for Nordid proper and they purified the typological concept from the present admixtures. Thats just the difference to population biology. You deal with races, not with populations in typology! The populations being just used to get to meaningful typological concepts.

Some Pygmies or some Negrid tribes in the jungle might be 100 percent from this or that type, but for the reasons mentioned, this is rarely the case for Europe, you almost always deal with the dominant, majority element, others are most of the time present too.


...and that no two typologists ever completely agreed on what a Nordic is and what "boundaries" it has.

Well, the more reasonable ones solved it by making two types or at least subtypes for the tall, longheaded, light Nordeuropid spectrum, namely (Skando-, Teuto-, Göta-, Corded-, Hallstatt- etc.) Nordid in the narrower sense and Dalofaelid (Faelish, Cromagnoid, Dalonordid etc.).

By that they could easily define the basic variation of this Nordeuropid spectrum and recognised two basic variants which can be distinguished by many features.

The Iranids too have a more refined, somewhat more gracile and leptomorphic variant and a somewhat broader, slighty Cromagniform one. Yet in their case, this is why I dont emphasize the difference there to the same degree like in the Nordeuropid case, its really only this and nothing else. There face is not that short, the rest of the facial features are basically the same and usually even this broader-robust variant has rather leptomorphic proportions of a similar kind, so rather like what some call "Anglo-Saxon" for the Nordoid case rather than Dalofaelid proper in comparison.

So its a very limited variation in comparison, since the Dalofaelids have in their essence a very different morphology (eyes-orbit, nasal shape, profile, jaws etc.).


...and that no two typologists ever completely agreed on what a Nordic is and what "boundaries" it has.

If you would have used tall, longheaded, light pigmented = most basic, narrow faced, narrow nose being added by almost all of them, as they distinguished between at least the two basic types/subtypes among Nordeuropids, which they only interpreted differently at times, namely as types or just subtypes.

This distinction between Nordid proper and Dalofaelid was more widespread than that between Atlantomediterranid and Gracilmediterranid or Norid and Adriatid f.e.


Traits that are used in physical anthropology are not linked together or associated the same way through all populations - we no longer in the 30s Agrippa. This was refuted in the 50s in Amercia, and 60s in Europe! There is no evidence for any objective types.

I know very well that urban populations tend to be taller, more dolichocephalic and darker than their environment in Northern Central Europe. That dolichocephaly and tall variants being very common in many regions and there is no stringent correlation between this and light pigmentation, obviously not!

Dont forget that blondism in particular is subdominant, so if you have a mixed population, even if 50 percent of the genpool are genes for light pigmentation of the hair, only about 25 percent will have the lighter hair, 75 percent darker, very light blond being the absolute exception.

If you consider the Atlanto-Pontid (Atlantomediterranid and Pontid, taller Mediterranid subtypes) element, you can correct for a lot of the variation observed, if you add the genetic pattern, most of the rest.


There is no special genetic linkage of blondism with dolichocephaly.

Nice you accept that too, if you read my posts carefully I never said something else. Blondism was developed in the North and Central, Central-Eastern areas primarily, but the respective other traits can be linked to other populations mostly, which the Nordoids were related to before they became adapted to the more Northern climate and depigmented.

But as a rule, if looking at the most typical variants just from the morphological perspective, you get more blonds in most regions in which Nordid proper mixed with darker racial elements other than the morphologically related Mediterranid spectrum.


I mean... if you really believe in 20s 30s typology - in existence of some objective universal types that are the some in all populations - like that dolichocephaly or blondism tends to come together with narrow faces, narrow noses throughout all populations - forming some objective Nordic combination that somehow naturally "sticks out"...

Regionally and as a racial formation. Inside of the populations, its still very common and such variants are often interchangeable to the Nordid proper from Scandinavia. Yet it doesnt have to be, my whole Atlantid/Nordomediterranid description is actually based on the fact, that pigmentation is inherited independently and subdominant, so that a darker pigmentation will dominate in a mixed or intermediate form, even if a large number of light pigmentation genes is present.


Coon's liking of the Abissynias (a whole population/ethnicity) to North European "Nordics" (a "type" carved out from population variation spectrum) is the best depiction of how fallible and misleading superficial biometrical similarity can be.

You can find individuals of the Nordid, Mediterranid, Iranid, Indid and Aethiopid racial types which all have a very similar morphology.

Now thats rather exceptional, yet you find NONE from types which are not leptodolichomorphs/Aurignacoids, because the proportional differences are too big.

You can ignore that similarities, which are based on the same adaptative strategies which run parallel to the parts climatic-regional adaptation (which those types share with regional genetic relatives), but thats your problem and its not absurd to make comparisons between any population and type, its just the argument which matters.

F.e. in this case the more similar variants among Nordid, Mediterranid, Orientalid, Indid, Aethiopid all were herders or mixed farmers with a dominance of animal husbandry and a very warlike culture, with a longer phase of high level individual and group selection.

So its, to me, most important to look behind the facade, at the causes and evolutionary trends which produced a variation, a race/type and population. Therefore its much more important, to use the feral animal example again, why the Dingo developed its traits and how, rather than to know whether some of them had a poodle back in their bloodline...

By the way, I mentioned it already, but I repeat it again, the archaeological, genetic, typological and population biology works can be put together to get a more complete picture. F.e. in Eastern Europe we can link the strongly Europid, progressive and rather Nordoid variants almost directly with yDNA haplogroup R1a in many regions, whereas N is clearly not associated with this Europid standard types.

I made a map with the historical or current centres of the more important racial types and subtypes of Europe and the adjacent areas:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3413&stc=1&d=1261133855

If you compare that with the yDNA distribution:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3414&stc=1&d=1261133851

And again the thread about the racial relations and climatic adaptations in this thread for comparison:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11365

I might also add, that Corded samples were tested for R1a, as were Nordoid steppe people.

[Jarl]

You are just nitpicking by now, but ok...

I know how they did it and explained it already. This methodology is logical and with the standard typological concepts for Europe you can easily define the most part of the racial variation in Europe. So this 6-type scheme I use can be applied to practically every racial variation and shows the most important adaptive trends.

If there would be too huge holes or this would explain nothing, of course I would challenge it, but from all I know, read and saw, the standards just make sense, they grasp the most important parts of the physical racial variation.


Yes,(...)


(...)Well, the more reasonable ones solved it by making two types or at least subtypes for the tall, longheaded, light Nordeuropid spectrum, namely (Skando-, Teuto-, Göta-, Corded-, Hallstatt- etc.) Nordid in the narrower sense and Dalofaelid (Faelish, Cromagnoid, Dalonordid etc.).

By that they could easily define the basic variation of this Nordeuropid spectrum and recognised two basic variants which can be distinguished by many features.

The Iranids too have a more refined, somewhat more gracile and leptomorphic variant and a somewhat broader, slighty Cromagniform one. Yet in their case, this is why I dont emphasize the difference there to the same degree like in the Nordeuropid case, its really only this and nothing else. There face is not that short, the rest of the facial features are basically the same and usually even this broader-robust variant has rather leptomorphic proportions of a similar kind, so rather like what some call "Anglo-Saxon" for the Nordoid case rather than Dalofaelid proper in comparison.

So its a very limited variation in comparison, since the Dalofaelids have in their essence a very different morphology (eyes-orbit, nasal shape, profile, jaws etc.).

If you would have used tall, longheaded, light pigmented = most basic, narrow faced, narrow nose being added by almost all of them, as they distinguished between at least the two basic types/subtypes among Nordeuropids, which they only interpreted differently at times, namely as types or just subtypes.

This distinction between Nordid proper and Dalofaelid was more widespread than that between Atlantomediterranid and Gracilmediterranid or Norid and Adriatid f.e.

Ok. Seems like we have an agreement thus far. I agree that typology can recapitulate variation and trends only if based on facts - that is on studies of modern living populations.


Not everything is "adaptive" not every variation is adaptation. Have you actually ever heard of Kimura's Neutral Theory?


...but once they got the standard, ...

So ARE you saying that we obtain the standard from the studies of living populations?


...they worked on the archaeological material, to study the ancient skulls and how the type might have derived, this is exactly what you dont accept but is necessary.


I am not exactly certain why it should be necessary. Presumably because one wants to elucidate the evolutionary history and establish a link between modern living races and skeletal material, right?


Ok. This is an ambitious aim and such studies and comparisons are not entirely unfeasible. All I am pointing to, is the fact that typological studies on the cranial series present a serious problem when you want to compare them with the living. They are lacking in soft parts - so establishing exact indices is difficult, while determining their pigmentation is simply impossible.

Now, while its not an insurmountable hinderance in studies of main racial categories - Negroids, Monogoloids etc., in studies of, say Europeans, it presents a massive obstacle as Caucasoid crania are very similar. One might achieve a better resolution with use of non-metric characteristics like presence of additional foramens or bones, or study dental variation, but as far simple cranial biometrics is concerned distinguishing between ancestors of Swedes or Slavs, or Illyrians is a complete nonsense.

Past European communities were rural, largely dispersed and relatively inbred. Particularly in isolated places like mountains, peninsulas or islands. However, on the mainland, populations were very variable. If you gathered cranial data from cemetaries of German or Polish villages you would see that there are often significant differences between them. Some might be metrically perfectly German or even Scandinavian, while others might be more Czech-like, or Russian-like.

And this should give you a hint at what I said before. That simple biometrics is simply not enough to establish a genetic link. The similarity might be supreficial, due to random factors, chance. This is best depicted Coon's fallacious liking of the Abissynias (a whole population/ethnicity) to North European "Nordics" (a "type" carved out from population variation spectrum). There is some degree of biomertic similarity, but no immediate gentetic link.

Its not possible to establish genetic link and evolutionary history from skeletal material alone - all you can get is some degree of biometric similarity, thats all. You do not have a time vehicle to see if the people whose skeletons you uncovered are the REAL ancestors of the people who superficially resemble them now, after 3000 or 30 000 years.

You can use archeology as an aid. If cemetaries have been used for a long time and there are signs of continuation in the material culture. For instance, in Scandinavia we have a continuation of Germanic cultures and its fairly safe to assume a relative genetic continuity way back to Nordic Bronze Age. But thats 1000 BC. Not 50 000 BC or 30 000 BC like with some Upper Paleolithic fossils. And even then, archeology is far from being a perfect science. Material continuity can be deceptive and not always reflect influxes and migrations. Likewise, not every change in material culture has to be an effect of immigrations or mixing.

Another thing is the number of crania and distribution. With exception of Medieval Ages, skeletal series are scrace and skewed - they come from several places and are far from covering the whole population in a random uniform way. Therefore, the image which they present is not a reliable measure of population diversity. In the past, when noone was using statistics, T-tests or Anova - nobody cared that much about how numerous the cranial series were, as noone knew how to quantify and evaluate similarite - how to tell what presents a genuine link with a high degree of probability and what is just a random similarity caused chance.

So why it might be fruitful to compare Medieval and modern crania, or even living populations to ancient or prehistoric ones, it is absolutely necessary to remember a degree of biometrical similarite does not equate to a genetic link.




Some Pygmies or some Negrid tribes in the jungle might be 100 percent from this or that type, but for the reasons mentioned, this is rarely the case for Europe, you almost always deal with the dominant, majority element, others are most of the time present too.

You write exactly like Joseph Deniker! Just like him you seem to suggest that at some stage of human evolution there existed homogeous pure races, composed in 100% of some pure types!

But Deniker was born 150 years ago and died nearly 100 years ago. Its 2010 soon. Deniker believed in existence of some ancient pure races, which are now totally mixed everywhere - apart from some isolated Bushmen and Pygmies (u even used his example!).

But it's kinda funny, coz that was the reason why Deniker studied the living populations. His typological concepts were based on meaned characteristics of ethnic groups and local populations. Thats clearly revealed by the names he has given them - Northern, Alpine, Western, Vistulan etc. Although Deniker believed that at some stage of evolution there were pure races (possibly he believe in convergent multi-origin evoltuion from different species), he actually never ever claimed that it is possible to establish some objective true types or objective standards.



Additionally once they got the deviation for the respective regions, populations, they could see that certain subpopulations are closer to the standard, like South Eastern Norway for Nordid proper and they purified the typological concept from the present admixtures. Thats just the difference to population biology. You deal with races, not with populations in typology! The populations being just used to get to meaningful typological concepts.


Actually this is important so I took the liberty of changing the order and putting this at the end.





You mentioned "the standard". I understand that by this you mean some subjectively chosen set of features that recapitulates a
trend observed in a living population and defines a typological race or a type like "Nordid". Now my question is... What is LESS subjective to base your "Nordid standard" on?




A - a living Scandinavian population?

B - a living Swedish or Norwegian population?

C - the Early Medieval Scandinavian cranial series of several hundred?

D - a composite series of 24 skulls from 6 different places from the Halstatt period in Austria?



That is what I have been trying to get from you in the past 5 or so posts... what are these standards - like "typical Nordid traits"? How do you think typologists get them???

[Agrippa]

Not everything is "adaptive" not every variation is adaptation. Have you actually ever heard of Kimura's Neutral Theory?

Indeed...


According to Kimura, when one compares the genomes of existing species, the vast majority of molecular differences are selectively "neutral."

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?p=152177#post152177

Thats true for races and populations too, yes it is, but its also the difference between the racial type and the population. Because genetic relations might be based largely on such neutral allels, yet the fundamental racial differences, especially inside a larger group of related variants, like the Europid or Mongolid etc. race being largely based on adaptive trends and not neutral gendrift.

The distribution and character of the racial traits which are of real importance clearly speaks for that.

But its also important to note the source population, because from the starting point of a group, the evolutionary change which already happened, the neutral variation present in it, are crucial for the way they actually adapt to a certain habitat and way of living.

Obviously if you transplant Sinids from China to Norway and Nordids from Norway to China, both at 2000 B.C., its rather unlikely they become the same even in many thousands of years the others became in this region, but they will run through similar selective mechanisms, resulting in similar or other adaptation to the new environment. In any case, they will change by selective pressures working on them.

Nordid proper and Dalofaelid are, similar to Berberid and Mediterranid in the South, two ways of adaptation to a certain habitat and climate, but from a different starting point and different in detail, even though they converge regionally and individually beyond recognition.


So ARE you saying that we obtain the standard from the studies of living populations?

Only if the living populations show the trend and the variants in the purity we need them.

I give you an example to get away from the emotionally more loaded Scandinavian-Nordeuropid example:

You find a population of Indid-Weddoid tribals in India. Now you know what traits Indids have from another population, but just imagine you dont know anything about the Weddoids. You just see a mixed, heterogenous group of people which shows something you already know (Indid) and a second, so far unknown element (Weddoid) with most individual variants being in between.

Obviously its absurd to make out of such a heterogenous population the new typological standard, but rather by looking at the individual variation, trying to purify the other (Weddoid) element and finally comparing these results with possible other populations and skeletal, genetic, historical etc. data.

F.e. are there concrete descriptions of these people, are there genetic hints, do the skeletal remains show similarities, probably a much clearer picture than you can get if looking at such a long time mixed population.

Some Indianid types in America have already exactly that problem too. You know they existed in a more pure form, you know they mixed with European Europids and Negrids, by working on this population, you get a clue, but you dont get the original type, the element for which you search and which is the source of this typical racial characteristics.


I am not exactly certain why it should be necessary. Presumably because one wants to elucidate the evolutionary history and establish a link between modern living races and skeletal material, right?

Correct. Where did they come from, when did they come, what traits did they have at start, how did they change over time, why did they change, additional influx of other people, changing conditions in their habitat, new selective forces and adaptive trends, bottlenecks and gendrift, influence of nutrition and diseases etc., etc.

Without that, its like a crime scene without witnesses - everything already happened, but you dont know what exactly, who did it and why did it happen at all, which incidents led to the situation you came into.

Without that, you might very well be the next victim, because if you dont know anything, you can't prevent it from happening again or changing the course of action the next time with your better knowledge.
So that way, to investigate these anthropological cases is part of the human nature, the trial to simply know, to be curious, to plan and to act accordingly. Thats our human success story and we have to look at our own biological history and present day situation to have more options, a better life and being better prepared - on the long run, besides general curiosity of course, which is always important to us, even if the practical consequences are minor to non-existent...


All I am pointing to, is the fact that typological studies on the cranial series presents a serious problem when you want to compare them with the living. They are lacking in soft parts - so establishing exact indices is difficult, while determining their pigmentation is simply impossible.

Well, point is, if there are plenty of candidates which fit into the image of a Proto-Nordoid group, while some dont fit into it, you still can't be sure, yet you can at least know who can't be the primary source or was at least at that time very different.

Again, this problem exists now, it will not exist for too much time any longer, because genetic tests will solve that. From what we know and gathered, the Central-Eastern European populations which have still a large portion of Nordoid variants and were at that time oftentimes "classic" Nordoid and/or Nordo-Mediterranid populations, are known for having R1a and R1b among them, they are known for being often lighter or even light from what we know, at least North of a certain line, and the modern descendents are so too.

By the way, while this problem can be solved with the help of genetic science, the language problem can't be solved that easily, probably never.

Very similar criticism came up for the material cultures and skeletal remains of the prehistoric times, that language can't be read in them, and thats right.

But you can build up logical chains to the known historic evidences, so that there is, in the end, little place for a false speculation on this matters neither.

F.e. we dont know for sure before that time, but its a 90 + percent probability of the Kurgan/Ockergrab and Corded cultures being actual Indoeuropeans.

If thats not enough for you, nothing will be enough, its the best theory and evidence we can get and everything speaks for it, little to nothing against. Any scientific scepticism has only one purpose for this case, namely to go on with the research, not being too secure and trying to expand our knowledge about that issue, because even if that part seems to be clear, there is still a lot of interesting facts we can gather about it.


Now, while its not an insurmountable hinderance in studies of main racial categories - Negroids, Monogoloids etc., in studies of, say Europeans, it presents a massive obstacle as Caucasoid crania are very similar.

Yes, but Cromagnoid and Aurignacoid aren't, Alpinoid and Dinaroid even less so. A Dinaroid Bell Beaker is very different from a Protonordoid/Nordomediterranid Corded Ware, the Cromagnoid from either and the gracile Southern Italian Mediterranid variants too.

So there is some basic variation present, talking about those cases, everybody can distinguish them once being used to their appearance...


One might achieve a better resolution with use of non-metric characteristics like presence of additional foramens or bones, or study dental variation, but as far simple cranial biometrics is concerned distinguishing between ancestors of Swedes or Slavs, or Illyrians is a complete nonsense.

Its no complete nonsense, but you might very well know why its difficult, because they were so similar, they were more similar to each other quite often, than to their modern counterparts, because Dinarisation and Baltisation happened largely later...

Again, compare the Bell Beakers with the Corded or Unetice remains and things look very different. The Osteuropid elements of the Slavs too can be traced back to North Eastern Europe primarily etc.


If you gathered cranial data from cemetaries of German or Polish villages you would see that there are often significant differences between them. Some might be metrically perfectly German or even Scandinavian, while others might be more Czech-like, or Russian-like.

Well, thats why you dont make enough progress with populations alone. At that time, areas like that of Hungary, Czechia and Russia had so many migrations, so many changes, even of the climate, the ethnos, the social structures, wars etc., that you can hardly expect them to be one unit like some small tribals were.

Variation was in many of those small tribals present too, even very strong one at times, but oftentimes not, many were very homogenous and those were the core groups for the typical racial variants you still find in the centres I tried to show in the map of my last post.


That simple biometrics is simply not enough to establish a genetic link. The similarity might be supreficial, due to random factors, chance. This is best depicted Coon's fallacious liking of the Abissynias (a whole population/ethnicity) to North European "Nordics" (a "type" carved out from population variation spectrum). There is some degree of biomertic similarity, but no immediate gentetic link.

Well, there is a genetic link, but this genetic link might not be much stronger between a Nordid or a Dalofaelid or an Alpinoid with the Aethiopid so to say, its the general link of Europids to East Africans...

But they got certain traits from the same Europoid variation and the similarities are based on facts like that they both lived in a rather:
Dry environment
Hot to temperate climate
Were Herders and mixed farmers with dominant animal husbandry
Very warlike and mobile people
High level individual and group selection worked on them for quite some time
etc.

Thats true for Nordid, Atlantomediterranid, Dinarid, Iranid, Nordindid and Aethiopid in particular.

You can make up a chain of highly progressive Europoid types from the North to the South which show similarities (same basic principle out of the Europoid variation) and dissimilarities (mixture with other forms, but primarily regional adaptation to the climate).

Nordid:
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/8554/daneclauss1ue.th.jpg (http://img191.imageshack.us/my.php?image=daneclauss1ue.jpg)

(Atlanto-) Mediterranid:
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/1277/302gt.th.jpg (http://img191.imageshack.us/my.php?image=302gt.jpg)

Dinarid:
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/5651/dinaric.th.jpg (http://img194.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dinaric.jpg)

Iranid:
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/6579/pathanhindukush.th.jpg (http://img191.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pathanhindukush.jpg)

Arabid:
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/307/cci00004.th.jpg (http://img191.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cci00004.jpg)

(Nord-) Indid:
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/525/indidnordindid5ur.th.jpg (http://img192.imageshack.us/my.php?image=indidnordindid5ur.jpg)

(Süd-) Äthiopid:
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/4296/suedaethiopid.th.jpg (http://img194.imageshack.us/my.php?image=suedaethiopid.jpg)


There is some degree of biomertic similarity, but no immediate gentetic link.

This similarity comes most likely both from related source populations as well as similar adaptations. The neutral genes are, like explained with Kimura, only relevant for reconstructing genetic relations and migrations, if its about the basic racial specialisation, we deal with one basic Europoid form which is leptomorphic and with the Taurid mountain-type exception rather dolichocephalic and appears in very different climates, with local adaptations (like pigmentation in particular).

Its like one breed of animals which occupies different territories, yet they have largely the same way of life, similar basic qualities, just adapt whats necessary to the new environment in a rather minimalistic approach.

Now a Lappid racial variant is by most of those basic qualities so completely different from Nordid, that even if the neutral genetic relations are present, they are racially insofar unrelated, as they go in a completely different direction in so many ways.

Climate is just one part and distinguishes this variants from leptodolichomorphic-progressive spectrum of Europids from each other, but thats not everything and the rest has a lot to do with way of life, which was developed from Mesolithic and Neolithic times on, under "favourable breeding conditions" so to say.


So why it might be fruitful to compare Medieval and modern crania, or even living populations to ancient or prehistoric ones, it is absolutely necessary to remember a degree of biometrical similarite does not equate to a genetic link.

Exactly, convergent evolution is always possible, its just about probabilities. For the Protonordoids and the Indoeuropeans f.e., we have just probabilities right now, but the chance is so high, that we can work with those hypothesis, until its refuted or substituted by something more likely.


Just like him you seem to suggest that at some stage of human evolution there existed homogeous pure races, composed in 100% of some pure types!

Actually I used that as an example, but I see it different from Deniker. Because my view is that they were just that pure and homogenous, because they were isolated and under enormous selective pressure.

Such a degree of isolation and directed selective pressures can be present in many times and areas, yet it doesnt have to be. Even with a fluent border, without a clear borderline, you can get a trend in populations and subpopulations, leading to more or less specified variants over time.

Exactly like I described in my typology thread, variants can appear "mixed" because they just made not the full way to the realisation of the racial trend or they really mixed two "fully evolved" forms. Both is possible and everything in between.

But now comes the clue, if you have ancient populations which show what you have to expect from the current trends, its quite logical or at least possible, until you prove the opposite, that those represent such a "pure" manifestation of a trend which became "contaminated" over time afterwards (!).


You mentioned "the standard". I understand that by this you mean some subjectively chosen set of features that recapitulates a
trend observed in a living population and defines a typological race or a type like "Nordid". Now my question is... What is LESS subjective to base your "Nordid standard" on?

A - a living Scandinavian population?

B - a living Swedish or Norwegian population?

C - the Early Medieval Scandinavian cranial series of several hundred?

D - a composite series of 24 skulls from 6 different places from the Halstatt period in Austria?

The living Swedish and Norwegian people (ethnic, autochthonous, many generations etc.) are most important, because the others, even if being more typical, represent the past.

Yet I can't really answer that question, because from my point of view, they all seem to be a Nordid standard equally, they represent the variation of the Nordid type over time and in different regions. F.e. I consider a typical Skandonordid, "Trönder" or Eastnordid all being Nordid, despite the present differences.


That is what I have been trying to get from you in the past 5 or so posts... what are these standards - like "typical Nordid traits"? How do you think typologists get them???

Well, we get closer to an agreement because of that:

I agree that typology can recapitulate variation and trends only if based on facts - that is on studies of modern living populations.

We both agree how they got their traits, their first ideas, but the problem remains you talk about modern populations as if they are something fixed and not based on the variation of different elements, which is, especially in Europe, just not true.

As I said the autochthonous people of South Eastern Norway and adjacent South Western Sweden are a pretty good starting point, yet you still speak about "Scandinavia" as a whole as if this is something you dont want to step back from.

A population is nothing else but the existing breeding group, if there were 1000 such breeding groups in an area and just because a new nation under a new ruler and with fast mass transportation, roads etc. was formed, there is just one left in which they all become integrated, what does that mean to you? That all the variation present before in the smaller breeding units suddently disappears magically? No, of course it doesnt.


I'm not talking about every racial form, yet European racial types in particular, being "pure" on a large scale at a certain point of evolutionary history, because they are just trends and pure is for me just the word - in this context - for an individual or group which has all basic inherited traits and reproduces them without deviation other than by pathological processes, mutation or mixture.

Even that state of "purity" was rarely reached for the stricter definitions in a greater area, yet it was approached and groups were much closer to it than they are today.

[Östsvensk]

Agrippa, as far as I understand it, most Scandinavians are pred. Nordid by blood, even if not showing it on the outside. What would happen if Scandinavians of pred. Nordid blood, but with for example an Osteuropid or Alpinid phenotype, started becoming racially aware and bred with those of pure Nordid families? Would Scandinavia easily become fully Nordid in only a few generations?

I know that it might sound like a weird question, but I think that the thought is interesting. :)

[Agrippa]

Agrippa, as far as I understand it, most Scandinavians are pred. Nordid by blood, even if not showing it on the outside. What would happen if Scandinavians of pred. Nordid blood, but with for example an Osteuropid or Alpinid phenotype, started becoming racially aware and bred with those of pure Nordid families? Would Scandinavia easily become fully Nordid in only a few generations?

I know that it might sound like a weird question, but I think that the thought is interesting. :)

Just imagine you have a Swedish area in which there are exists a subpopulation with a genpool for the basic racial traits being made up in a relation of 70 : 30 for Nordid : Osteuropid.

Now an individual with a Nordid phenotype might still have Osteuropid traits recessively and vice versa.

But again its about probabilities. Once you have in some generations only matings of Nordid phenotype x Nordid phenotype, even if in the first generations strongly deviating variants will appear, therere number would fall drastically in every generation, until its being not more common than various spontaneous genetic defects are.

Thats how evolution in a nutshell (I know its simplified) works, its everything about selection and if the selection says: Only Nordid phenotypes mate, the result will be a clearly Nordid population.

Actually, you could make up a highly Nordid population in a relatively short time, even in just a limited numbers of generations, out of highly mixed group of individuals.

Just think about some F2 (Filial Generation) or F3, even more so later generatiosn of mulattoes (Europid-Negrid) showing strong Nordid single traits, or even the most basic trait combination. If you would "breed them", you could make up an almost classic or even more extreme Europid and Negrid population out of them.

Thats one of the reasons why in the past admixture, genflow from foreign people was not always that important at all, because the useful genetic input was spread in the population, all others bred out. So even if 20.000 B.P. full Negrids would have entered Europe, only useful things would have been left, but their basic racial type disappeared in just a few generations, considering the selective pressures then.

If you have two very different basic forms in a population, its most likely the mixture took place not long ago, or the environment allows both of them to survive. Yet the highly specialised forms we find around the world wouldnt have come up, if the survival rate and heterogenity was present in the past and everywere, so we can assume mixture always took place, but the selective forces and just sometimes chance made something specific out of it.

To sum it up: Some people say its absurd to speak of races or racial types if looking at brothers from the same father and mother, having different "racial traits".

Now put into the context mentioned above, this changes little, because one brother would have an easier time to survive X situation, the other Y and this being also determined, for the specific situations the racial type was made for, by his racial characteristics.

And even out of such a mixed family, a new "pure family" can easily come up over some generations due to selective pressures, respective mating.

Just look at some upper class Latin Americans, they are by phenotype and race close to 100 percent Europid, yet some have significant genetic input from other races, they were just bred back to the Europid standard over time, since that was advantageous for the social success, mating and probably even certain skills, so that some of those "mixed" have more Europid characteristics than some "pure Europids".

[Östsvensk]

That's quite an interesting answer. When you spoke about differences on brothers, that is also true on me and my brother, as he isn't Osteuropid (might have a little influences, but no more).

I find it quite strange though that I turned at least pred Osteuropid (Baltid), considering that I am only "25%" (I only have one Osteuropid grandparent, and that is my maternal grandmother). One could think that I should have been more of an Ost-Nord mix. But it didn't go that way. I guess it's the same story as how my brother got dark green eyes, while all of our modern family is blue-eyed. One can never know how it will turn out.

[Jarl]

Indeed...

Damn, Agrippa! Why do your posts always have to be long? :P Haha! Let me digest it. We seem to be having some consensus here. I will reply tomorrow ;)

[Agrippa]

That's quite an interesting answer. When you spoke about differences on brothers, that is also true on me and my brother, as he isn't Osteuropid (might have a little influences, but no more).

I find it quite strange though that I turned at least pred Osteuropid (Baltid), considering that I am only "25%" (I only have one Osteuropid grandparent, and that is my maternal grandmother). One could think that I should have been more of an Ost-Nord mix. But it didn't go that way. I guess it's the same story as how my brother got dark green eyes, while all of our modern family is blue-eyed. One can never know how it will turn out.

Talking about myself, I have brown eyes, but funnily I could have get every eye color possible, because both my parents have mixed eyes, my father grey-green, my mother bluegreen-brown. Such a couple could produce really every eye color present in the European variation, but its all about chance during the process of meiose/recombination.

As for yourself, you most likely have certain Nordid traits in your phenotype and even more in your genotype so to say - at least if there was no recombination of formerly recessive traits of Baltid character running in your family.

To compare with my case again, though having brown eyes, I most likely still have the light eye genes, they are just "silent" in my phenotype, now if I would have got blue eyes, the dark eye genes can't be just silent, at least most, but eliminated, since light eye genes are recessive/subdominant.

Similar things can be said for many traits, but not for a racial type as a whole, because the inheritance pattern is different for every trait...

[Jarl]

Indeed...

Perfect! :) Some features can't confer any immediate advantage and are therefore subjected to weak selection. If selection against many deletorious alleles has been still too weak to completely eliminate them, then selection against, say, slightly turned up or convex nose, has to be negligible. These features are most likely results of random factors = mutation and random drift.



Thats true for races and populations too, yes it is, but its also the difference between the racial type and the population. Because genetic relations might be based largely on such neutral allels, yet the fundamental racial differences, especially inside a larger group of related variants, like the Europid or Mongolid etc. race being largely based on adaptive trends and not neutral gendrift.

Some of it certainly. We've got for instance the Vitamin-D hypothesis as a possible explanation for depigmentation. But it is necessary to remember that random factors also played a role even in evolution of major races. For instance founder effects - as in out of Africa migrations - determined which fraction of the original variability would be then subjected to further evolution under new conditions.


The distribution and character of the racial traits which are of real importance clearly speaks for that.

Yes. Of real importance = those who indeed present (or rather presented) a strong selective advantage, like pigmentation, scikle cell trait etc.


But its also important to note the source population, because from the starting point of a group, the evolutionary change which already happened, the neutral variation present in it, are crucial for the way they actually adapt to a certain habitat and way of living.

Obviously if you transplant Sinids from China to Norway and Nordids from Norway to China, both at 2000 B.C., its rather unlikely they become the same even in many thousands of years the others became in this region, but they will run through similar selective mechanisms, resulting in similar or other adaptation to the new environment. In any case, they will change by selective pressures working on them.

I fully agree. That's why I wrote about the importance of early migrations and founder effects, which determined the original variability selection could choose from. Selection would be the same, but the variability would be different. Its like building same sort of structre but with a different set of elements available.


Nordid proper and Dalofaelid are, similar to Berberid and Mediterranid in the South, two ways of adaptation to a certain habitat and climate, but from a different starting point and different in detail, even though they converge regionally and individually beyond recognition.

I would be more careful here and simply say these robust-gracile forms represent are simply two sides of common Europid human variation, of a innate spectrum of variation present in most Caucasian and perhaps not only Caucasian populations. Obviously those more inbred and isolated ones tend to have smaller spectra and be more homogenous.



Only if the living populations show the trend and the variants in the purity we need them.

I give you an example to get away from the emotionally more loaded Scandinavian-Nordeuropid example:

;)


You find a population of Indid-Weddoid tribals in India. Now you know what traits Indids have from another population, but just imagine you dont know anything about the Weddoids. You just see a mixed, heterogenous group of people which shows something you already know (Indid) and a second, so far unknown element (Weddoid) with most individual variants being in between.

Obviously its absurd to make out of such a heterogenous population the new typological standard, but rather by looking at the individual variation, trying to purify the other (Weddoid) element and finally comparing these results with possible other populations and skeletal, genetic, historical etc. data.

F.e. are there concrete descriptions of these people, are there genetic hints, do the skeletal remains show similarities, probably a much clearer picture than you can get if looking at such a long time mixed population.

Some Indianid types in America have already exactly that problem too. You know they existed in a more pure form, you know they mixed with European Europids and Negrids, by working on this population, you get a clue, but you dont get the original type, the element for which you search and which is the source of this typical racial characteristics.

Yes. I agree that there can be and there are cases where population mixing occured and you can track back some of the features to the "original types". However, while this is easy with traits like prognathism, its not so easy with continuous traits like go-op length or eu-eu breadth. The problem here lies in the limited value of skeletal-to-living comparisons of which I wrote before, in evaluation of variability from cranial data.

In your example Veddid-Indids, we can cross-compare the living populations. We have linguistics and historical accounts of Veddas as the first inhabitants of Ceylon. Additionally we have the Paleolithic crania and modern living Australoids as our standard check and indicator of archaic, older features.

So today - you can go back to your living unmixed Veddids and estimate the Veddid standard. You will esablish the means and the variance which will give an idea of the trends and differences. Obviously, like with all human populations that share a substantial chunk of common variability, boundaries for many traits will be blurred and not clear-cut. And this is perfectly natural.

I guess, even if you did not have any living Veddids, you could use the Australoids for cross-reference. However, they were separated from Veddids thousands of years ago and evolved in different conditions. So some clearly archaic proto-morphic traits you could assign to the ancient Veddid-Australoid spectrum, however many traits and features would remain undindetified. Particularly the simple biometric ones like bizygomatic breadth or others, skull breadth etc.

So there are serious limits to this elucidation of evolutionary history. Some traits can be traced back to their origin, some cannot. Some contitute a recent addition, some are a part of innate human variation shared by most populations.


One cannot just follow Coon and happily use single crania which are quarter-Negroid/Australoid like Combe-Capelle or Predmost, or simple fakes, like Galley Hill, and triumphantly claim they have found the ancestors of a substantial chunk of modern Europid variability represented by the "Nordid traits" because... both have a leptoprosopic FI! Coz this is simply a total bullshit.


Some Indianid types in America have already exactly that problem too. You know they existed in a more pure form, you know they mixed with European Europids and Negrids, by working on this population, you get a clue, but you dont get the original type, the element for which you search and which is the source of this typical racial characteristics.


But I like what you wrote here. It seems to me that you agree that a type is not some objective, divinely designed entity - always constant and always the same across all populations and through whole history, but varies with time and place/population. A type is just an individual who is typical or specific for a given population in a given set of quantitative traits. Like I said, because of crossing over linkage for most biometric traits is weak. In a brachycephalic, concave nosed population, most blondes will be brachycehalic and concave-nosed. In a different population blondism will tend to associate with a different set of features and so on.


Obviously, in some cases of historical mixing we can elucidate the original populations and assign some traits to each of them. Say that one was more this and another one was more that - however exact boundaries of certain traits will be always impossible to establish... because of common variability.

We could quantify the frequency of some traits by thorough biometric surveys conducted on both ancestral populations before they mixed, or, least preferably, on the extensive skeletal material. Only then we could establish means and variance, and sketch the trends and differences between the populations.

Our understanding is limited by the quantity of data plus our knowledge of its history. If the the cranial data is scarce and dispersed through time and space, and additionally we do not know anything about its history coz its prehistoric and no written sources were made at that time, it is impossible to establish means and variance, not to even mention some genetic link.


Correct. Where did they come from, when did they come, what traits did they have at start, how did they change over time, why did they change, additional influx of other people, changing conditions in their habitat, new selective forces and adaptive trends, bottlenecks and gendrift, influence of nutrition and diseases etc., etc.

Without that, its like a crime scene without witnesses - everything already happened, but you dont know what exactly, who did it and why did it happen at all, which incidents led to the situation you came into.

Without that, you might very well be the next victim, because if you dont know anything, you can't prevent it from happening again or changing the course of action the next time with your better knowledge.

So that way, to investigate these anthropological cases is part of the human nature, the trial to simply know, to be curious, to plan and to act accordingly. Thats our human success story and we have to look at our own biological history and present day situation to have more options, a better life and being better prepared - on the long run, besides general curiosity of course, which is always important to us, even if the practical consequences are minor to non-existent...


:) Yeah! Obviously it would be beneficial to know the answers to all the problems I marked in bold. However, like I said before there are obvious limits to living-skeletal comparisons. The less data we've got and the older it is, the harder it becomes to draw any certain conclusions.



Well, point is, if there are plenty of candidates which fit into the image of a Proto-Nordoid group, while some dont fit into it, you still can't be sure, yet you can at least know who can't be the primary source or was at least at that time very different.

Well here the issue is - "Nordid traits" can have multiple origins. All biometric continous traits are characterised by mean and variance. Every human population has its own variance. It is difficult to estimate if Nordic gracilisation is more an effect of influx of Neolithic or PIE genes, or perhaps an effect of mutation and drift in isolated Scandinavia - prehistoric world's end. Likewise, it is also hard to say when and where blondism evolved. I much more agree with the last statement.

Like I said. Nordic is essentailly the set of typical or specific Scandinavian traits. To track it back, one would have to look into the origin of proto-Germanics, proto-Indoeuropean etc. And here there is no gross consensus. Definitely there has been a strong input from the original Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers (in comparison to mainland), and a strong drift as well.





Again, this problem exists now, it will not exist for too much time any longer, because genetic tests will solve that. From what we know and gathered, the Central-Eastern European populations which have still a large portion of Nordoid variants and were at that time oftentimes "classic" Nordoid and/or Nordo-Mediterranid populations, are known for having R1a and R1b among them, they are known for being often lighter or even light from what we know, at least North of a certain line, and the modern descendents are so too.

By the way, while this problem can be solved with the help of genetic science, the language problem can't be solved that easily, probably never.

I believe that is the modern consensus - R1b an I1a European UPs, and R1a Eurasian, Corded-Ware ppl (possibly PIEs).



Very similar criticism came up for the material cultures and skeletal remains of the prehistoric times, that language can't be read in them, and thats right.

But you can build up logical chains to the known historic evidences, so that there is, in the end, little place for a false speculation on this matters neither.

F.e. we dont know for sure before that time, but its a 90 + percent probability of the Kurgan/Ockergrab and Corded cultures being actual Indoeuropeans.

Yup. Thats just what I wrote above. There was definitely some input from R1a PIEs into proto-Germanic population, which probably became proto-Germanic as a result.



If thats not enough for you, nothing will be enough, its the best theory and evidence we can get and everything speaks for it, little to nothing against. Any scientific scepticism has only one purpose for this case, namely to go on with the research, not being too secure and trying to expand our knowledge about that issue, because even if that part seems to be clear, there is still a lot of interesting facts we can gather about it.

No, no. You did not understand me Agrippa. Im not questioning the proto-Nordic character of R1a Cordeds, or I1a/R1b UPs. These are facts which can be inferred from genetics. However Nordic - is a modern trend. The final result of evolution through mixing and drift.

That is why I totally disagree with Coon's fetishism. With old-school typologists' belief in some pure types defined by razor-sharp boundaries. This is no Dungeons&Dragons. Here, Coonian typology is particularly fallacious as it tries to reverse the induction, which naturally follows from modern population study --> to study of cranial data. We can define which skeletal series are potentially proto-Nordic from the knowledge we have today. The knowledge of what modern Nordic populations are and what their history is. You can't reverse that. Coon's tried to but in the end he still used the XIX-cen concept of Nordic derived from modern studies of the living. His reasoning still followed from modern population study --> to study of cranial data --> an back to modern population data.



Yes, but Cromagnoid and Aurignacoid aren't, Alpinoid and Dinaroid even less so. A Dinaroid Bell Beaker is very different from a Protonordoid/Nordomediterranid Corded Ware, the Cromagnoid from either and the gracile Southern Italian Mediterranid variants too.

So there is some basic variation present, talking about those cases, everybody can distinguish them once being used to their appearance...

Ok. This is important.




Here the problem is Aurignacoid. What is it? The Galley Hill fake which we can omit straight away. What's left??? Some half-Australoid, primitive protomorphic element from Middle East exemplifie by Brno, Combe-Capelle and Predmost. The only link to modern gracile populations is some overall similarity in certain dimensions... I became interested and studied this quite thoroughly. I wrote about it in the "CroMagnid vs Aurignacid" threa. Look it up if you have time.

Comble-Capelle, Brno and Predmost form a spectrum of crania associated directly with the Paleolithic Middle East and semi-Negroid Natufians. I read more on Combe Capelle - I found out that apart from Natufians, it closely resembles in many ways two gracile, leptoprosopic Paleolithic crania found in East Africa.

I think there is no doubt that East Africa + Middle East was the nucleus of gracilisation. No wonder, first AMH fossils come from Omo-Kibish in Ethiopia, and predate European one by tenths of thousands of years.

So basically... saying that gracile Europids come from Aurignacoids is like saying that AMH comes from East Africa. True. But that does not mean there is an immediate genetic link between Somalis and gracile Europids ;)

As a result you get this:


Well, there is a genetic link, but this genetic link might not be much stronger between a Nordid or a Dalofaelid or an Alpinoid with the Aethiopid so to say, its the general link of Europids to East Africans...

But they got certain traits from the same Europoid variation and the similarities are based on facts like that they both lived in a rather:
Dry environment
Hot to temperate climate
Were Herders and mixed farmers with dominant animal husbandry
Very warlike and mobile people
High level individual and group selection worked on them for quite some time
etc.

Thats true for Nordid, Atlantomediterranid, Dinarid, Iranid, Nordindid and Aethiopid in particular.

You can make up a chain of highly progressive Europoid types from the North to the South which show similarities (same basic principle out of the Europoid variation) and dissimilarities (mixture with other forms, but primarily regional adaptation to the climate).

Nordid:
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/8554/daneclauss1ue.th.jpg (http://img191.imageshack.us/my.php?image=daneclauss1ue.jpg)

(Atlanto-) Mediterranid:
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/1277/302gt.th.jpg (http://img191.imageshack.us/my.php?image=302gt.jpg)

Dinarid:
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/5651/dinaric.th.jpg (http://img194.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dinaric.jpg)

Iranid:
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/6579/pathanhindukush.th.jpg (http://img191.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pathanhindukush.jpg)

Arabid:
http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/307/cci00004.th.jpg (http://img191.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cci00004.jpg)

(Nord-) Indid:
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/525/indidnordindid5ur.th.jpg (http://img192.imageshack.us/my.php?image=indidnordindid5ur.jpg)

(Süd-) Äthiopid:
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/4296/suedaethiopid.th.jpg (http://img194.imageshack.us/my.php?image=suedaethiopid.jpg)



This similarity comes most likely both from related source populations as well as similar adaptations. The neutral genes are, like explained with Kimura, only relevant for reconstructing genetic relations and migrations, if its about the basic racial specialisation, we deal with one basic Europoid form which is leptomorphic and with the Taurid mountain-type exception rather dolichocephalic and appears in very different climates, with local adaptations (like pigmentation in particular).

This gracilisation is a part of an early variation spectrum, innate to most huma populations. Perhaps this similarity is due to a common more recent heritage of Horner proto-Caucasoids, Middle Eastern and European Caucasoids.



Its like one breed of animals which occupies different territories, yet they have largely the same way of life, similar basic qualities, just adapt whats necessary to the new environment in a rather minimalistic approach.

Now a Lappid racial variant is by most of those basic qualities so completely different from Nordid, that even if the neutral genetic relations are present, they are racially insofar unrelated, as they go in a completely different direction in so many ways.

Climate is just one part and distinguishes this variants from leptodolichomorphic-progressive spectrum of Europids from each other, but thats not everything and the rest has a lot to do with way of life, which was developed from Mesolithic and Neolithic times on, under "favourable breeding conditions" so to say.

Exactly, convergent evolution is always possible, its just about probabilities. For the Protonordoids and the Indoeuropeans f.e., we have just probabilities right now, but the chance is so high, that we can work with those hypothesis, until its refuted or substituted by something more likely.

With the presence of gracile forms among European Caucasians, Middle Easterners, North and East Africans its most likely a recent common ancesty, like I said before. And proximity of East African -Middle Eastern gracilisation nucleus, to Europe and North Africa. There is very strong evidence tha gracilisation and evolution of anthropologically modern humans (AMH) took place in North-East Africa and from there it spread into North-Western Africa and
Eurasia, mixing with "Cromagniform" like populations.

But like I said. Its a bit like saying that AMH and gracilisation evolved in North-East Africa... kinda obvious.


Actually I used that as an example, but I see it different from Deniker. Because my view is that they were just that pure and homogenous, because they were isolated and under enormous selective pressure.

Such a degree of isolation and directed selective pressures can be present in many times and areas, yet it doesnt have to be. Even with a fluent border, without a clear borderline, you can get a trend in populations and subpopulations, leading to more or less specified variants over time.

Exactly like I described in my typology thread, variants can appear "mixed" because they just made not the full way to the realisation of the racial trend or they really mixed two "fully evolved" forms. Both is possible and everything in between.

But now comes the clue, if you have ancient populations which show what you have to expect from the current trends, its quite logical or at least possible, until you prove the opposite, that those represent such a "pure" manifestation of a trend which became "contaminated" over time afterwards (!).

I agree. Isolation, selection and drift in small populations can result in significant inbreeding and homogenisation. But if you agree that crossing-over and recombination exists and types (average trends, typical sets of traits) change in time, and differ across populuations, then we have same understanding of evolutionary fundamentals. And it seems to me you agree on this one... or am I mistaken?



The living Swedish and Norwegian people (ethnic, autochthonous, many generations etc.) are most important, because the others, even if being more typical, represent the past.

Yet I can't really answer that question, because from my point of view, they all seem to be a Nordid standard equally, they represent the variation of the Nordid type over time and in different regions. F.e. I consider a typical Skandonordid, "Trönder" or Eastnordid all being Nordid, despite the present differences.

If so then we really do agree. Initially however I got an impression you believe in some rigid, constant objective types and seriously feared for a moment that you might regard the others as half-neanderthals... ;)


Well, we get closer to an agreement because of that:


We both agree how they got their traits, their first ideas, but the problem remains you talk about modern populations as if they are something fixed and not based on the variation of different elements, which is, especially in Europe, just not true.

As I said the autochthonous people of South Eastern Norway and adjacent South Western Sweden are a pretty good starting point, yet you still speak about "Scandinavia" as a whole as if this is something you dont want to step back from.

A population is nothing else but the existing breeding group, if there were 1000 such breeding groups in an area and just because a new nation under a new ruler and with fast mass transportation, roads etc. was formed, there is just one left in which they all become integrated, what does that mean to you? That all the variation present before in the smaller breeding units suddently disappears magically? No, of course it doesnt.

I'm not talking about every racial form, yet European racial types in particular, being "pure" on a large scale at a certain point of evolutionary history, because they are just trends and pure is for me just the word - in this context - for an individual or group which has all basic inherited traits and reproduces them without deviation other than by pathological processes, mutation or mixture.

Even that state of "purity" was rarely reached for the stricter definitions in a greater area, yet it was approached and groups were much closer to it than they are today.

Well, thank you. That explains to me your way of reasoning and I think we do not really differ on the methodology or direction of inference. Nor on basic concepts of a type and principles of evolution of populations. Perhaps you tend to ascribe more variation to selection, while to me the neutral variation plays an equally important role, particularly when petty biometic traits are concerned. The only issue on which we do differ is the approach to investigate and tie the “elements”, or populations, of the past with the present variation in modern populations. I am very cautious with such skeletal-living comparisons, particularly when we are dealing with Paleolithic crania. I explained the reasons for this in the beginning of this post and in my previous post.

[Jarl]

What would happen if Scandinavians of pred. Nordid blood, but with for example an Osteuropid or Alpinid phenotype, started becoming racially aware and bred with those of pure Nordid families? Would Scandinavia easily become fully Nordid in only a few generations?

Would we get full wolves if we kept crossing dogs to wolves? ;)



...but that sounds racist doesn't it? :P


P.S.

What's the point? Don't get obsessed by nordicism. Every genepool needs its variability. I guess, Scandinavian population is no exception. It also needs its variation, even the untypical extreme one.

[Östsvensk]

Would we get full wolves if we kept crossing dogs to wolves? ;)



...but that sounds racist doesn't it? :P


P.S.

What's the point? Don't get obsessed by nordicism. Every genepool needs its variability. I guess, Scandinavian population is no exception. It also needs its variation, even the untypical extreme one.

It was just a hypothetic question. I don't think that the gene pool should be fully Nordid, as I'm personally very weak when it comes to Cromagnoid women.

[Jarl]

It was just a hypothetic question. I don't think that the gene pool should be fully Nordid, as I'm personally very weak when it comes to Cromagnoid women.


And at the level of personal choice I would leave it... as long as 99% of time there is a Swedish father and a Swedish mother ;)

[Agrippa]

If selection against many deletorious alleles has been still too weak to completely eliminate them, then selection against, say, slightly turned up or convex nose, has to be negligible. These features are most likely results of random factors = mutation and random drift.

No, it doesnt have to mean it. It can mean that the selective advantages were big once, produced different variants, but they are weak now or the time was to short to lead to another harmonisation.

We can't say it for sure, but there are again probabilities and those probabilities come up from the fact, that a variation is to strong for being neutral. F.e. even relatively clear cut racial forms and subpopulations have still a variation inside of them, thats just natural and this natural variation can be somewhat stronger or weaker, depending on what I said above.

But if you have lets say 15 percent of the individuals having an CI of 90 and 20 having one about 74, its very clear that we deal with two different elements just united in one population at this time, most likely not for too long. Because such extremes usually won't be reached by gendrift alone, which is a rather weaker factor in Europe anyway. Now if you isolate these respective elements you might be able to connect them to other from outside this population - then this case is relatively clear...

Nasal shape for sure was under significant selective pressures, not for small details, but the general form, from a functional (breathing, blood circulation), indirect (constitutional, growth type, craniofacial proportions etc.) and signal (social dominance, sexual attractiveness, etc.).

By the way, even some originally neutral traits which appeared by chance might have become a selective impetus due to sexual and social selection processes. F.e. by becoming a specific standard for a group of people, this trait became preferred and was therefore advantageous to the carrier, even without having any functional use otherwise. That way you can explain differences too, thats what one might call "tribal distinction" or differentiations.

Actually it worked similar for some animals too, for having better clues to the other's status and group membership etc.

In any case, the extreme differences f.e. between Nordid and Osteuropid are in no way and most details NOT explainable by neutral factors, but can be put into a bigger context of selective regimes working for both independently and very different source populations forming the starting point.


I would be more careful here and simply say these robust-gracile forms represent are simply two sides of common Europid human variation, of a innate spectrum of variation present in most Caucasian and perhaps not only Caucasian populations. Obviously those more inbred and isolated ones tend to have smaller spectra and be more homogenous.

I dont know whether what I describe with Aurignacoid and Cromagnoid were seperate populations and races at any point in history, but I think its very likely considering the differences, that regional variants of the respective kinds lived rather isolated. Now what I do know is, that its rather unlikely they stayed seperate once larger, interconnected populations in the Europid spectrum came into existence, so latest from Mesolithic times on.

Yet some variants and types are still at this or that end of the Europid basic craniofacial variation (before Dinarisation and the derivates Baltisation and Alpinisation came up) present in Europids and this mostly due to selective processes.

If you want to put it that way and to connect it to your examples, its like an established set of physical variants as some sort of genetic tool shop, present in most larger populations, but most tools being used only here and there, exactly were needed. F.e. the potential depigmentation or darker pigmentation, so a wide mutative spectrum for skin, hair and eye color coloration seems to be something typically Europid.


However, while this is easy with traits like prognathism, its not so easy with continuous traits like go-op length or eu-eu breadth.

I know that, yet you can't generalise on that. F.e. if you find the Bell Beaker skulls of a clear Dinaroid type and specific headlength and then, in an Unetice group close to the areas where they appeared, 10 out of 100 in a burial ground show that very same pattern and other 10 an intermediate one - Unetice/Aunjetitzer were pred. Nordoid or at least Nordoid-Mediterranid, you can draw your own conclusions based on probabilities. Its at least much more logical to assume the Bell Beakers brought that element than to think of it being something which came up by neutral drift in a homogenous population.


I guess, even if you did not have any living Veddids, you could use the Australoids for cross-reference.

Well, the Australids are in some respects very different and Weddids something rather unique in various traits which neither fit into Europid, Mongoloid or Australoid actually. But rather "something mostly reduced in between".


One cannot just follow Coon and happily use single crania which are quarter-Negroid/Australoid like Combe-Capelle or Predmost, or simple fakes, like Galley Hill, and triumphantly claim they have found the ancestors of a substantial chunk of modern Europid variability represented by the "Nordid traits" because... both have a leptoprosopic FI! Coz this is simply a total bullshit.

If there would be nothing in between, it would be complete bs. indeed, yet, like with my example for a logical chain of evidences from Corded/Kurgan to proven Indoeuropean people in history, you can do the same for Nordoids at least from Mesolithic, latest Neolithic times on. Not before, but afterwards, and these Protonordoids show so great similarities to other leptodolichomorphs, that it makes sense to name these similarities, whether you call that leptodolichomorph, Element X or Aurignacoid, after the first appearance of the most basic traits of this Europid form variation, is your cup of tea, but I prefer to stick to what good anthropologists used for it...


A type is just an individual who is typical or specific for a given population in a given set of quantitative traits. Like I said, because of crossing over linkage for most biometric traits is weak. In a brachycephalic, concave nosed population, most blondes will be brachycehalic and concave-nosed. In a different population blondism will tend to associate with a different set of features and so on.

Exactly. Thats why I count traits and look for basic principles which being repeated, which go beyond those single traits and their weak correlation. The most impressive correlation comes up for climatic rules, progressive-infantile-primitive and proportional variants - like that I call Aurignacoid and Cromagnoid, because they are common sets of traits which appear under different circumstances in certain spectra of habitats. The links for a trait like pigmentation, so variable in Europids in particular, is much weaker than for a complete set of traits which can't be all explained by convergent evolution and chance alone, but rather are what I described for the progressive Europid spectrum, basically one form which adapts only superficially or in other details, but keeps the core trait combination from Northern Europe to Ethiopia, from Britain and Iberia to Northern India and in ancient times even Mongolia.


Obviously it would be beneficial to know the answers to all the problems I marked in bold. However, like I said before there are obvious limits to living-skeletal comparisons. The less data we've got and the older it is, the harder it becomes to draw any certain conclusions.

No objections, but there is a lot to achieve if being open minded and using all available material and methods equally if useful, f.e. typological concepts even in a historical perspective vs. genetic ones = like calibration.


Like I said. Nordic is essentailly the set of typical or specific Scandinavian traits. To track it back, one would have to look into the origin of proto-Germanics, proto-Indoeuropean etc. And here there is no gross consensus. Definitely there has been a strong input from the original Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers (in comparison to mainland), and a strong drift as well.

I strongly doubt that a typical Baltid or Alpinoid is less "Upper Palaeolithic" than a Nordid and I rather assume the opposite, yet thats again, open to debate.

However, you still insinst on "Scandinavian" traits and what we talk is rather theoretical in many ways, yet if you would have the job to look at the Scandinavians for coming up with a sound typological concept, would you put these two:
Per Ravn Omdal (SW-Norway, Alpinid)
http://img682.imageshack.us/img682/9512/118592308300001spoftt17.jpg

Christian Olsson (Swede, Nordid)
http://www.gefleif.se/forsta_sidan/emmachristian.jpg

in one sample? What do you get then? Definitely not the elements involved, but just a population mix.


I believe that is the modern consensus - R1b an I1a European UPs, and R1a Eurasian, Corded-Ware ppl (possibly PIEs).

Well, some challenge that, say R1b might have been introduced rather recently and possibly even by Indoeuropeans too, but I dont buy that for now. Whats for sure is, that R1a and R1b were both among the primary IE haplogroups in various parts of Central to Eastern Europe, we need to know more, a higher resoluation and more comparative studies being done, a better, "calibrated" time frame for the mutation rates and spread etc.

Actually most haplogroups might have been wider spread and somewhat when the IE-expansion took place, yet it seems to be clear, that R1a expanded with IE dramatically and was the main element, at least for the Northern and Eastern flank from Germany to Mongolia.

In any case, its not as sure as I myself thought, that R1b and I1a are really that old in Europe. But thats something for the specialists on haplogroups, I can't solve that, but just know that the last words aren ot spoken yet.


His reasoning still followed from modern population study --> to study of cranial data --> an back to modern population data.

Well, it depends how you do that and for what population, how carefully etc., whether it makes sense or not.


This gracilisation is a part of an early variation spectrum, innate to most huma populations. Perhaps this similarity is due to a common more recent heritage of Horner proto-Caucasoids, Middle Eastern and European Caucasoids.

Yes, thats the reason, the common source and similar development from then one for the basic physical trait combionation. Yet its important that while the majority of Europids share these traits, a large part doesnt - namely Cromagnoids and there derivates, they partly show very different traits, still clearly inside of the Europid spectrum, but still different. Thats why these two main groups of classic Europid variation are present and should be named.

Everything else can be discussed.


I agree. Isolation, selection and drift in small populations can result in significant inbreeding and homogenisation. But if you agree that crossing-over and recombination exists and types (average trends, typical sets of traits) change in time, and differ across populuations, then we have same understanding of evolutionary fundamentals. And it seems to me you agree on this one... or am I mistaken?

Of course I do, I already wrote that in my "Racial Typology" thread.

If you look at this graph I made, you might get an impression:
http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/4624/races2.th.jpg (http://img691.imageshack.us/i/races2.jpg/)

The graphic options were limited, so I preferred to make up the most important gradients.

For the spectrum in Europe one could make up a spectrum for various basic traits:
Warm to cold: Mediterranid - Nordid - Dalofaelid - Westbaltid - Baltid - Ostbaltid - Lappid - Westsibirid

etc...

As you can see, the most typical form (like Skandonordid in the narrower sense) is the representative for the strongest and most typical realisation of the respective trend (Nordisation), while Nordatlantid and "Anglo-Saxon" deviate in different directions (in the Mediterranid and Dalofaelid one respectively).

The typical modern Cromagnid is Dalofaelid, "Anglo-Saxon" deviates towards Nordid and Westbaltid is the link to the Osteuropids.

That way its of secondary importance whether this gradients and intermediate or deviating forms came up by mixture, incomplete evolution or deviating regional trends. But by using the most basic 6-type scheme, you get a lot of the living variation in Europe today and can relate this to ancient remains as well - cautious of course, like you said, but still its oftentimes possible, useful and at least worth to try to get a more complete picture, until the basic questions mentioned can be answered better, with higher probabilities and in a more complete manner.

[Jarl]

No, it doesnt have to mean it. It can mean that the selective advantages were big once, produced different variants, but they are weak now or the time was to short to lead to another harmonisation.

We can't say it for sure, but there are again probabilities and those probabilities come up from the fact, that a variation is to strong for being neutral. F.e. even relatively clear cut racial forms and subpopulations have still a variation inside of them, thats just natural and this natural variation can be somewhat stronger or weaker, depending on what I said above.

I think it might be difficult to separate products of selection from artefacts of drift and neutral evolution, particularly in traits that do not confer any immediate advantage to survival, as in most cases both processes are responsible for the ultimate result. And then humans are complex – even if some of their traits are unfavourable, there might be others which will balance the negative selection out, or they can make up for it through their socio-economic status, intellect and cunningness. In terms of simple biometrical dimensions, I think most of variation is today lost/shaped through drift, not seletion.



But if you have lets say 15 percent of the individuals having an CI of 90 and 20 having one about 74, its very clear that we deal with two different elements just united in one population at this time, most likely not for too long. Because such extremes usually won't be reached by gendrift alone, which is a rather weaker factor in Europe anyway. Now if you isolate these respective elements you might be able to connect them to other from outside this population - then this case is relatively clear...

Yes, that’s true, although it is difficult to find such evidently heterogenic populations. Meiotic recombination quickly breaks the linkage between some groups of genes to the extent that after several generations we have a new product with a new mean, new variance, and traits (assuming random mating) given by normal distribution. But even in such a situation we can sometimes relate and trace back the origin of some traits to ancestral populations if we have a living reference (like unmixed descendants of one of the populations), or some credible skeletal material. However if both are missing or scarce, it becomes gradually more and more difficult.



Nasal shape for sure was under significant selective pressures, not for small details, but the general form, from a functional (breathing, blood circulation), indirect (constitutional, growth type, craniofacial proportions etc.) and signal (social dominance, sexual attractiveness, etc.).

So it seems. Agreed.


By the way, even some originally neutral traits which appeared by chance might have become a selective impetus due to sexual and social selection processes. F.e. by becoming a specific standard for a group of people, this trait became preferred and was therefore advantageous to the carrier, even without having any functional use otherwise. That way you can explain differences too, thats what one might call "tribal distinction" or differentiations.

Apparently, that could have been the case with blue or green eyes and hair colour.


Actually it worked similar for some animals too, for having better clues to the other's status and group membership etc.

In any case, the extreme differences f.e. between Nordid and Osteuropid are in no way and most details NOT explainable by neutral factors, but can be put into a bigger context of selective regimes working for both independently and very different source populations forming the starting point.


Aleksiejew discerned between the West Baltic and East Baltic / White Sea race-formation nuclei. Higher degree of West European UP ancestry in proto-Germanics can account for some of these differences. Scandinavian crania are among the most similar ones to European Paleolithic and Mesolithic. It also sticks to what early anthropologists wrote – that North Germany and Scandinavia is characterised by the biggest crania in Europe, aside from West Ireland, and Northern Scotland.

There was an article with some good sources on this by Dienekes:

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2005/12/questionable-contribution-of-neolithic.html

One diagram is missing, but I think I posted it in the “Aurignacid vs Cromagnid” thread. You can find it here too: http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/tag/add-new-tag



I dont know whether what I describe with Aurignacoid and Cromagnoid were seperate populations and races at any point in history, but I think its very likely considering the differences, that regional variants of the respective kinds lived rather isolated. Now what I do know is, that its rather unlikely they stayed seperate once larger, interconnected populations in the Europid spectrum came into existence, so latest from Mesolithic times on.

Yet some variants and types are still at this or that end of the Europid basic craniofacial variation (before Dinarisation and the derivates Baltisation and Alpinisation came up) present in Europids and this mostly due to selective processes.

If you want to put it that way and to connect it to your examples, its like an established set of physical variants as some sort of genetic tool shop, present in most larger populations, but most tools being used only here and there, exactly were needed. F.e. the potential depigmentation or darker pigmentation, so a wide mutative spectrum for skin, hair and eye color coloration seems to be something typically Europid.

To me the single Aurignacoid crania found in Europe reflect the influence of the Middle East, where exactly the same crania have been found in Upper Paleolithic and were connected to the Natufians. There is an evident gradation:

Skhul V – Predmost / Early Natufians – Brno / Combe Capelle / Late Natufians – Capsians / Neolithic Meds

Let us remember we are talking about people who lived up to 40, 000 years ago. There were iterative periods of warming and glaciation in Europe. There might have been numerous influxes of Eurasian tundra hunters and Middle Eastern hunter-gatherers. The proto-Negroid Grimaldi crania are the best proof of that. What does it tell me?

That at least since 40,000 years ago, Europe was subjected to migrations and influence from different source populations. Gracilisation indeed may have come via the Middle East. However, I would not call gracile Europid individuals “Aurignacoids” coz its misleading… well, unless they were prognathic, wide nosed and semi-Negroid. Coon’s Aurignacoid was called Loessian in Europe and was by majority of scholars regarded as the ancestral type of the Neolithic Meds, which seems plausible as they both are characterised by a set of protomorphic features which connect them to Negroids/Australoids.




I know that, yet you can't generalise on that. F.e. if you find the Bell Beaker skulls of a clear Dinaroid type and specific headlength and then, in an Unetice group close to the areas where they appeared, 10 out of 100 in a burial ground show that very same pattern and other 10 an intermediate one - Unetice/Aunjetitzer were pred. Nordoid or at least Nordoid-Mediterranid, you can draw your own conclusions based on probabilities. Its at least much more logical to assume the Bell Beakers brought that element than to think of it being something which came up by neutral drift in a homogenous population.

Well, the Australids are in some respects very different and Weddids something rather unique in various traits which neither fit into Europid, Mongoloid or Australoid actually. But rather "something mostly reduced in between".

One might speculate that both stem partly from some early proto-morphic population. One of the first that left Africa. Australoids were obviously more isolated and less subjected to mixing hence probably what you call “reduction” in Veddids.

With the Bell-Beakers, there seems to be some controversy. It appears to me there is no general consensus on whether they were immigrants or autochtonic. Though most voices are in favour of immigration from the East. Gimbutas, Anthony and Mallory argue that Bell-Beaker culture marked the spread of early Celto-Italics.



If there would be nothing in between, it would be complete bs. indeed, yet, like with my example for a logical chain of evidences from Corded/Kurgan to proven Indoeuropean people in history, you can do the same for Nordoids at least from Mesolithic, latest Neolithic times on. Not before, but afterwards, and these Protonordoids show so great similarities to other leptodolichomorphs, that it makes sense to name these similarities, whether you call that leptodolichomorph, Element X or Aurignacoid, after the first appearance of the most basic traits of this Europid form variation, is your cup of tea, but I prefer to stick to what good anthropologists used for it...

Indeed. From the diagrams and the study on Dienekes blog and here:

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/tag/add-new-tag/

….it seems clearly that modern Scandinavian crania are very close Danish Neolithic, and also not far away from European UP and French Mesolithic. On the other hand Danish Neolithic seems to be weakly linked to some Med series. So it seems that some form of gracilisation took place. But obviously that signifies what I said before – that gracilisation took place in North Easter Africa first. However, if you look at the Natufians, which in form are almost identical to Combe-Capelle, or Somalis, then they are different to Europids and have significant links with Sub-saharan, and affiliations to Niger-Congo populations and Bantus.

That is in short, the reason for which I think Coon was biased. He put too much emphasis on his Neanderthal-hybrid and Med-Nord dual evolution model. In some chapters, this tendency to overestimate and overstress the similarities, in spite of scarcity of data, is striking.


Exactly. Thats why I count traits and look for basic principles which being repeated, which go beyond those single traits and their weak correlation. The most impressive correlation comes up for climatic rules, progressive-infantile-primitive and proportional variants - like that I call Aurignacoid and Cromagnoid, because they are common sets of traits which appear under different circumstances in certain spectra of habitats. The links for a trait like pigmentation, so variable in Europids in particular, is much weaker than for a complete set of traits which can't be all explained by convergent evolution and chance alone, but rather are what I described for the progressive Europid spectrum, basically one form which adapts only superficially or in other details, but keeps the core trait combination from Northern Europe to Ethiopia, from Britain and Iberia to Northern India and in ancient times even Mongolia.

I guess that’s the consequence of proximity to North-East Africa, urheimat of AMHs, and to Middle East source of Neolithic Revolution – two gracilisation nuclei, which, one could argue, ultimately linked the robust Cro-Magnon-like Europe and North-Western Africa to the East, forming the “Caucasian”horizon. As for Mongolia and India I would ascribe this to later influxes of steppe PIEs from West Eurasia: Indo-Aryans and Tocharians. Its quite certain that India was initially inhabited by short stocky Dravidians with strong Veddid element. While the Altai mountains were primarily inhabited by proto-Altaic peoples, with rather Mongoliform traits.


I strongly doubt that a typical Baltid or Alpinoid is less "Upper Palaeolithic" than a Nordid and I rather assume the opposite, yet thats again, open to debate.

However, you still insinst on "Scandinavian" traits and what we talk is rather theoretical in many ways, yet if you would have the job to look at the Scandinavians for coming up with a sound typological concept, would you put these two:

Well… both these individuals are taken from rather two opposite extremes. They are not really your standard Scandinavian you would normally get. They rather exemplify the “tails” (in the normal distribution) of variation. Definitely the first one falls into the sphere where Scandinavian variation overlaps with that of East European. However, there is also a difference in age. Older men look more robust and rugged, and have a tendency to grow fat. The younger fellow certainly recapitulates the Scandinavian or North-West European trend better.

As to which one of them is more UP… Neither strikes me as the typical hunter-gatherer. I think borealisation and infantilisation is a recent phenomenon too. Additionally leptoprosopic does not have to mean gracile:

http://withmalice.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/christian_olsson.jpg

These features give a rather robust, bony impression. One would have to look at the dimensions.



Yes, thats the reason, the common source and similar development from then one for the basic physical trait combionation. Yet its important that while the majority of Europids share these traits, a large part doesnt - namely Cromagnoids and there derivates, they partly show very different traits, still clearly inside of the Europid spectrum, but still different. Thats why these two main groups of classic Europid variation are present and should be named.

Everything else can be discussed.


Right. Some trends can be traced back. True. We agree on the origin of gracilisation. The thing is that Europids are a unity, a blend of several populations of the past. Now you never get back your original Cro-Magnids and Natufians. And there are no clear-cut criteria where you could say “this degree of gracilisation defines the individual to be more Cro-Magnid than something else” etc. And another issue is this “something else” – the second typological variant. Putting this into typology European populations can be regarded as a blend of differnt UPs and Neolithic Meds. This dichotomy is the reasoning that underlies main theories of PIE-origin, like by Renfrew or Cavalli Sfroza, or UPC theory. Consequently, this "second element", opposed to UP Cro-Magnon-like forms, should be pretty much the Aurignacoid Natufians and Meds, and not Nordids which are a modern product and, arguably and in a simplistic way, a blend of the two former elements, recapitulating the variation in a spectrum (Faelids, Nordids etc.).

[Agrippa]

I think it might be difficult to separate products of selection from artefacts of drift and neutral evolution, particularly in traits that do not confer any immediate advantage to survival, as in most cases both processes are responsible for the ultimate result. And then humans are complex – even if some of their traits are unfavourable, there might be others which will balance the negative selection out, or they can make up for it through their socio-economic status, intellect and cunningness. In terms of simple biometrical dimensions, I think most of variation is today lost/shaped through drift, not seletion.

Well, for most racial traits there are possible explanations and the historical and current distribution speaks for such explanations as well, so I can't prove it, nobody can prove it with 99,99 percent certainty, but its about probabilities and those are good enough.


Yes, that’s true, although it is difficult to find such evidently heterogenic populations. Meiotic recombination quickly breaks the linkage between some groups of genes to the extent that after several generations we have a new product with a new mean, new variance, and traits (assuming random mating) given by normal distribution. But even in such a situation we can sometimes relate and trace back the origin of some traits to ancestral populations if we have a living reference (like unmixed descendants of one of the populations), or some credible skeletal material. However if both are missing or scarce, it becomes gradually more and more difficult.

I dont assume that. Looking at f.e. Nordid upper class people in various parts of Germany and certain, very specific lower class subcultures being also more Nordid, so certain subcultures in the sense of substructures of society being more Nordoid than average, I can assure you that there is a certain trend at work. But it depends of course, there is no general rule for that, though homogamy seems to be the standard for many traits - even for many of racial importance, without too much of other sociocultural interventions - like that of "black man being cool" and the like, and even then, some share specific details quite often, so not chosing random even in such extreme cases usually...


Apparently, that could have been the case with blue or green eyes and hair colour.

Yes, a combination of "human made" selective factors.


that North Germany and Scandinavia is characterised by the biggest crania in Europe, aside from West Ireland, and Northern Scotland.

I think that a combination of selective factors helped to preserve larger crania than in various other parts of Europid habitat. Among these being higher level individual and group selection, longer period before lower level farmer existence, shorter period of really sedentary and urban way of life, higher energy input on average, lower temperatures etc.

This has more to do with the conditions in which these people lived, since similar sized crania can be found in many populations, they just seem to have been not that advantage, having had a harder time to compete there (saving? self-domestication?).


Özdogan (1997) points out that the Neolithic communities of the Central Anatolian plateau form a distinct entity which differs from the south-eastern Anatolian, Levantine and Mesopotamian contemporaneous cultures in settlement pattern, architecture, lithic technology, bone tools, and other archaeological aspects. There is no simple corollary between specific cultural-archaeological entities and biological populations. However, in the case of the above analyses, the population of Çatahöyük differed biologically from the populations of the Near East and southeast Anatolia and were similar to the SKC and Nea Neikomediea cultures. Indeed in a previous publication (Pinhasi 2003), it was demonstrated that the Squared Mahalanobis Distance between Çatalhöyük and Çayönü is twice to three times the average distance between the former and any of the Early Neolithic southeast or central European Early Neolithic populations. The above analysis therefore confirms the archaeological observations made by Özdogan (1997) and reaffirms in this specific case a correspondence between cultural boundaries that define a prehistoric culture and its biological basis.

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/tag/add-new-tag/

Thats very, very important. Because if the Proto-Indoeuropeans or lets say their Neolithic part, element, came from Anatolia, they were most likely related to Çatalhöyük and these show much greater similarities to Europeans than other cultural groups of Anatolia.

Even more important, they had very progressive and rather robust leptodolichomorphs among them, which could be called robust/Atlanto-Mediterranid or Atlanto-Pontid, so many individual finds form a bridge to the Proto-Nordoid and Pontid populations later.

So if talking about Near Eastern influences, it doesnt have to mean Armenoid (which was rare to non-existent then) or Orientalid (especially Arabid-Semitic expanded much later on a bigger scale)...


This would seem to support a population ‘boundry’, between the expanding Natufians (later Belbasi/Beldibi) with their moderate affinities to sub Saharan Africans, and the indigenous Eurasian people of Anatolia.

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/tag/add-new-tag/

Thats crucial again, the Aurignacoids which marched into Western Eurasia were by themselves or because of mixture with Cromagnoids more progressive already, the foreign and more primitive elements made it not at all or just in low numbers into Europe, where they disappeared very soon and the Proto-Mediterranoid people (more progressive Aurignacoids) of Mesolithic and Neolithic West Eurasians were the ancestors of both Nordid and Mediterranid people in Europe, the other mentioned leptodolichomorphs and most Taurids too.


With the Bell-Beakers, there seems to be some controversy. It appears to me there is no general consensus on whether they were immigrants or autochtonic. Though most voices are in favour of immigration from the East. Gimbutas, Anthony and Mallory argue that Bell-Beaker culture marked the spread of early Celto-Italics.

I'm not sure whether they came from the East or West (Iberia to be exact), but they were in any case a new, foreign element in much of what is today Germany and they were rather no Indoeuropeans, but became "Indoeuropeanised" so to say, namely by the Corded people already living there on the longer run.


that gracilisation

Cromagnoid vs. Aurignacoid is not the same as robust vs. gracile.

Again that was proven by various studies f.e. on LBK skulls. If one defines "robust" with "broadfaced" things are simple, but otherwise not and this simplification is in fact absurd, as some of the most gracile boned individuals of infantile-reduced character in Europe are actually broadfaced.


As for Mongolia and India I would ascribe this to later influxes of steppe PIEs from West Eurasia: Indo-Aryans and Tocharians.

In India at least the Europid waves came before the Aryans, the Aryans were just a new and more successful "coordinator" so to say, but probably millions of Europids, Indids formed out of Proto-Mediterranoid settlers from the Near East, Neolithic colonisers, were already present and probably even the bearers of the Indus Civilisation, as well as the original Dravidians.


Its quite certain that India was initially inhabited by short stocky Dravidians with strong Veddid element. While the Altai mountains were primarily inhabited by proto-Altaic peoples, with rather Mongoliform traits.

Its possible that the Dravidians are just the Indus Civilisation upper class and warriors, farmer settlers, which moved south, the Aryans in their back. Rather unlikely they were the aboriginals, because many Dravidians today are predominantely Europid and in India the distribution of races goes more along climatic-regional traits than ethnic ones.

F.e. most fertile river deltas, grasslands and coastal areas are Europid, regardless of language, whereas most jungle areas, tropical and unfavourable lands are, again regardless language, more non-Europid.


Definitely the first one falls into the sphere where Scandinavian variation overlaps with that of East European.

Central European rather, he is mostly Alpinoid.


Older men look more robust and rugged, and have a tendency to grow fat.

I know that and am now fatter than in my 20's already, yet thats not the reason for this guys appearance, just look at his forehead, the short arms etc.


These features give a rather robust, bony impression. One would have to look at the dimensions.

Indeed, but many Atlantomediterranids, Iranids and Nordindids are robust too, just Gracilmediterranids, Arabids and Gracilmediterranids are significantly more gracile in comparison.

Iranid/Irano-Afghan variants attached below, anything but gracile, more robust than many Nordid proper actually. Could make up similar samples of Atlantomediterranid and Nordindid variants...


Consequently, this "second element", opposed to UP Cro-Magnon-like forms, should be pretty much the Aurignacoid Natufians and Meds, and not Nordids which are a modern product and, arguably and in a simplistic way, a blend of the two former elements, recapitulating the variation in a spectrum (Faelids, Nordids etc.).

The leptomorphic element with progressive and somewhat Proto-Nordoid or robust Mediterranid features can be traced back latest to the Mesolithic times. With the beginning of the warm period, there started this shift away from Cromagnid, going towards leptodolichomorphy/Aurignacoid, which became much faster and more intensive with the Neolithic revolution.

Yet again, we dont deal with primitive Natufians in the majority of cases, but with already progressive, fully developed Europid leptodolichomorphs.

So if Nordids are as a type, not just by regional variants, just a blend of Cromagnid and Proto-Mediterranoid, we deal with a variant which got the pigmentation and some details, individual forms appearing here and there, from the Cromagnid, but everything else if looking at the anatomy from the Proto-Mediterranoid.

I personally think that the bulk of the Nordoids comes from a combination of Mesolithic Proto-Nordoids, which had Cromagnoid influences for sure, and leptodolichomorphic newcomers, the progressive Neolithic type.

So such a mixture took place for sure, whether it was constitutive or not for the Nordid type, I dont know for sure, whats sure is, that the Cromagnoid as well as the Aurignacoid form variants being present in and outside Europe, already before the Neolithic times.

That gracilisation and leptodolichomorphy is not the same, that among the Neolithics there was a progressive leptodolichomorphic element, which was the real ancestor of Mediterranids and probably at least a certain part of Nordoids. One could look at things that way: Both rather primitive and very progressive elements entered Europe as Neolithic settlers, inside of Europe, the situation was similar.
Yet in this Neolithic societies, the primitive and foreign elements were bred out, rather fast and became weaker from the LBK to the Corded to the Unetice - until we deal with highly progressive Nordoid and Mediterranid variants, which formed small populations which were often above the current average of most modern Europeans with their progressive traits and harmonisation.

[Ariets]

Agrippa can you actually name one modern anthropologists that agree's with your wet theories?

[Jarl]

Give me some time, Agrippa. I broadly agree. The only major point is the contribution of the proto-Meds to the European populations, including Nordic ones. I tend to look at living populations variation and the truth is Nordic means are relatively robust. Genetics also suggests that by ancestry most of Europeans descend from the hunter-gatherer populations. Consequently, I think the Upper Paleolithic contribution was greater than proto-Med.


In addition, as you said yourself, European Meds came from Asia Minor, and perhaps also through Armenia/Georgia. By the time their genes reached the North, they were far from the semi-Negroid Natufian like model and have been mixing with robust European UPs for generations.


And it is vital here to stress that what we call the Aurignacian type (or Loessian, or proto-Med), exemplified by Predmost, Brno, Combe-Capelle, Dolne Vestonice, is very similar not only to the Natufians, but also to early protomorphic, gracile East African crania from Ethiopia. I might give you exact names tomorrow, if you are interested.


Consequently, I agree that some extreme Orientalid-like individuals from the Nordic spectrum might resemble these proto-Meds more closely in terms of certain biometric measurements, however overall, vast majority of Nordic forms will be a far cry from both the Aurignacoid=Natufian standard and the Cro-Magnon. They will resemble more the gracilised forms of the Meso (Bruniqel, Laugerie Basse, Muge, Magdalenian crania) and Neolithic.


Just look at the diagrams:

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/brace-4.jpg

http://tinypic.com/eg3539.jpg

Europeans are a far far cry from the Aurignacoid-Natufian standard, which was called "proto-Med" by old anthropologists. Their UP affiliations are clear by their proximity to the Canary Island Guanches, Basques and Cro-Magnon 1.


If we split Europeans, and look at Danes and Norwegians:

http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/8514/cv7it.jpg

On the cannonical variate 1, they fall right into the same values as Cro-Magnon 1, Taforalt-Afalou and very close to European Paleolithic, while proto-Meds or Natufians fall half-way in-between them and Niger-Congos and Banuts.


So I can't agree with this:


So if Nordids are as a type, not just by regional variants, just a blend of Cromagnid and Proto-Mediterranoid, we deal with a variant which got the pigmentation and some details, individual forms appearing here and there, from the Cromagnid, but everything else if looking at the anatomy from the Proto-Mediterranoid.

To me the study clearly demnostrates that Danes and Norwegians clearly have considerably more from Cro-Magnons and other European UP-forms, than from Proto-Meds and Natufians.

[Agrippa]

Agrippa can you actually name one modern anthropologists that agree's with your wet theories?

There are various authors and some anthropologists which worked to the 1990's on typological approaches. Then, mostly for political reasons, the typological approach was abandoned, yet the new methods still point to the same relations described.


In addition, as you said yourself, European Meds came from Asia Minor

I said the Neolithic Proto-Mediterranids came from Asia minor. I'm not sure for all Mediterranids being descendents of those, since like I said, similar leptodolichomorphic variants were already present in Europe and why should they all became Nordoid and depigmented? So Mediterranid as well as Nordid and Dinarid variants could be either the result of mixture with Neolithics, of Neolithics or local developments, I'm not sure yet and look mostly for genetics to solve that puzzle.

Those coming from Asia minor in earlier times, even Palaeolithic as first sapiens waves over Central Asia or directly Asia minor - well, those you didnt mean I guess.


By the time their genes reached the North, they were far from the semi-Negroid Natufian like model and have been mixing with robust European UPs for generations.

Thats correct. But they weren't like Natufians, at least a a large portion, from the start, that was my point.


Consequently, I agree that some extreme Orientalid-like individuals from the Nordic spectrum might resemble these proto-Meds more closely in terms of certain biometric measurements, however overall, vast majority of Nordic forms will be a far cry from both the Aurignacoid=Natufian standard and the Cro-Magnon. They will resemble more the gracilised forms of the Meso (Bruniqel, Laugerie Basse, Muge, Magdalenian crania) and Neolithic.

Those primitive, lets call them "Natufoid" variants among early Neolithics largely disappeared in all region, including the Near East. So in Europe mixture might have been a greater factor than in the Near East, but the primary factor seems to be selective pressures and mechanisms, eliminating their primitive traits largely.


Europeans are a far far cry from the Aurignacoid-Natufian standard, which was called "proto-Med" by old anthropologists. Their UP affiliations are clear by their proximity to the Canary Island Guanches, Basques and Cro-Magnon 1.

Well, but Proto-Mediterranoid included more forms, some being already more progressive.


To me the study clearly demnostrates that Danes and Norwegians clearly have considerably more from Cro-Magnons and other European UP-forms, than from Proto-Meds and Natufians.

Yet those Natufians are everything else but typical. The very robust-protomorphic Aurignacoids/Capellids being a minority element in Mesopotamia and the Indus culture, yet they are not like Natufians in important characteristics and the Natufians being a real "special case", somewhat different to foreign not just from Europeans, but Near Easterners too.

If we look at those Neolithics which were really important on the long run, especially for South Eastern Europe and probably Eastern Europe, we deal with similar variants like that of Çatalhöyük.

So I would completely agree for Natufians, yet they are not too much closer to robust Mediterranid than to Nordid, and they are not the primary Neolithic element which penetrated Europe so to say.

Fig. 2 is very strange, I wonder about the traits and method used, because just look were Iceland is, going after this Marocco is closer to Iceland than Denmark or Norway...

Middle East close to Norway, Somalia closer to Island than Norway, Finn/Sami one sample, really, that seems to be rather worthless...

Such results are a good reason to have at least as much doubts in such trials as in sound typological concepts, because they use small samples, often with aberrant traits, compare them with a huge statistical apparatus and coming to conclusions from this poor material which go against any common sense and general knowledge of the issue.

One would have to read the whole study behind such results, yet its worthless for a racial comparison it seems.

[Jarl]

Well. I would not say its worthelss, but rather quite insightful. I agree that the Neolithic Meds which moved into Europe were no exactly like the Natufians, however the Natufians were almost the same as Upper Paleolithic Aurignacoids (if by this we mean the proto-Meds of the Combe Capelle, Brno and similar types). We can argue that Neolithic Meds stem from the Aurignacoid proto-Meds, but we can't really call them Aurignacids.

Still though, if you look at the diagrams. Modern Europeans fall closer to UP-forms (Guanches and Basques). Even modern Meds do, albeit less.

[Ariets]

There are various authors and some anthropologists which worked to the 1990's on typological approaches. Then, mostly for political reasons, the typological approach was abandoned, yet the new methods still point to the same relations described.

Like who? Arthur Kemp? Give me names please.

[Agrippa]

Well. I would not say its worthelss, but rather quite insightful. I agree that the Neolithic Meds which moved into Europe were no exactly like the Natufians, however the Natufians were almost the same as Upper Paleolithic Aurignacoids (if by this we mean the proto-Meds of the Combe Capelle, Brno and similar types). We can argue that Neolithic Meds stem from the Aurignacoid proto-Meds, but we can't really call them Aurignacids.

Still though, if you look at the diagrams. Modern Europeans fall closer to UP-forms (Guanches and Basques). Even modern Meds do, albeit less.

Even most prehistoric Mediterranoids did, Natufians in the narrower sense very really an aberration with their frequency of protomorphic traits at that time.

One could call the skulls resembling the leptodolichomorphic Upper Palaeolithics AurignacOID, exactly because the later variants, even in Mesolithic times mostly, latest Neolithic ones, were more progressive. Only the original skulls of that time and spectrum (Combe Capelle, Brünn etc.) being AurignacID.

If you say Nordid and Mediterranid, both are far away from the primitive Natufid standards and that Mediterranids being more gracile means little, since that can be an independent trend among the Neolithic farmers. So this is too, no definitive argument for either origin of the Nordid type. Though again, I personally assume that there were already Mesolithic Proto-Nordoids and that the mixture with the Ice Age hunter-gatherers of rather Cromagnoid type were an important influence - but again not just for the North, but other areas too.

Like Lothar put it, there were Brünn (Aurignacid) and Cro Magnon (Cromagnid) both in the North and the South, leading to the two extremes of proportional variants which being more concentrated in certain parts of Northern or Southern European/North Africa respectively (f.e. the Guanches and some Berber groups):
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3435&stc=1&d=1261476227


Like who? Arthur Kemp? Give me names please.

Similar discussions and typological concepts being used, material I have taken from for the physical aspects, among others from:

Kurt Gerhardt (1953)
Egon Frhr. von Eickstedt (1934, 1962)
Bertil Lundman (1967)
Ilse Schwidetzky (1974)
Georg Kenntner (1973)
John R. Baker (1974)
Adelheid Bach (1978)
Wolfram Bernhard, Anneliese Kandler-Palsson (1986)
Lothar Kilian (1988)
Ernst F. Jung (1993)
Rainer Knussmann (1996)
Andreas Vonderach (2008)

and many more.

I dont say they all agreed in every detail, nor that all of them were professional anthropologists (some were historians and archaeologists) but I rather made a fusion of various facts they gathered and used some basic concepts being repeated in their works.

[Jarl]

Though again, I personally assume that there were already Mesolithic Proto-Nordoids and that the mixture with the Ice Age hunter-gatherers of rather Cromagnoid type were an important influence - but again not just for the North, but other areas too.

Like Lothar put it, there were Brünn (Aurignacid) and Cro Magnon (Cromagnid) both in the North and the South, leading to the two extremes of proportional variants which being more concentrated in certain parts of Northern or Southern European/North Africa respectively (f.e. the Guanches and some Berber groups):
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3435&stc=1&d=1261476227

Yes. I think it is reasonable to assume gracilisation in the direction of modern forms, begun before the revolution. Like you said, there are UP skulls which, though still archaic in many ways, are gracile. Combe Capelle is perhaps a more semi-Australoid, protomorphic one, but the younger Cheddar Man is not. Perhaps gracilisation within this stock was partly a result of a new selection caused by different, warmer climate and the switch to an agricultural lifestyle, and partly of steady "gracile" gene flow from the ME, rather than one massive demic expansion of farmers. So it would seem from the frequency of Paleolithic markers in Europe. That might explain why Euros are more on the UP-side, than ME side. It is difficult to estimate the genetic impact of Neolithic. From this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Europe#Genetics_of_the_Neolithic it it would seem the Neolithic ancestry is shared by about 20% Europeans, in total. And vast majority of this falls into Southern Europe, chiefly Greece, Bulgaria, Italy and Spain.


I will try to find the book where they wrote about Combe-Capelle, Ethiopian skulls and Meds, and post some info here ;)

[Agrippa]

I can very much agree on this and would describe either the Neolithisation, as the further Nordisation and Mediterranisation of Europe after the last Ice Age something like a torch relay. The torch being given on from to the other, with the cultural techniques and some genetic traits of adapative qualities, yet from one step to the next, the overall genetic input, the "neutral markers" and real ancestry from the one who actually ignited the torch becomes lower and lower, until they are close to non existent further away from the starting point, while the culture and probably some genetically determiend traits still made it.

The only thing I want to question is again the use of gracile, as many of those variants were not gracile and leptodolichomorphy and being gracile is not the same. Whether a variant is gracile or not depends, like you said yourself, not just on the narrow-long face, even on the contrary, there are clear markers for that.

Usually larger variants are also more gracile on the skull, the thickness of the bones, their specific form, muscle markers etc. all are clear indicators for gracile vs. robust, being leptomorphic by body type or leptodolichomorphic on the skull doesnt mean that.

Some authors used this as it would be interchangeable, but its not. Just because in some reasons we see robust Cromagnoids (eurydolichomorph) and gracile Aurignacoids (leptodolichomorph), this doesnt mean its a general pattern.

F.e. for the Nordoid skulls from Eastern Europe:
Yamnaya (Pit-grave = Ockergrabkultur), Kurgan Culture:

Male, hypermorph, mesokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas11.jpg

Male, mäßig hypermorph, dolicho-mesokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas12.jpg

Female, mäßig hypermorph, dolicho-mesokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas13.jpg

Male, relatively narrow faced, dolichokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas21.jpg

Male, mäßig hypermorph, dolichokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas22.jpg

Male, hypermorph, subdolichokran with "uralid" (mongoloid-mongoliform) admixture:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas23.jpg

Female, europid, skull artificially deformed:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas31.jpg

Male, hypermorph, meso-dolichokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas32.jpg

Male, narrow faced, dolichokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas33.jpg

Reconstruction of a Yamnaya-man:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnaya1.jpg

A lot of them, though having a high face, are very robust and thats as clear in the samples of the LBK people from Germany and later Corded Ware (called "stenodolichomorphs" by some authors = "strong dolichomorphs", because of their very robust characteristics.

The same pattern can be seen in some Iranoid prehistoric and even historic groups.

[Agrippa]

Usually larger variants are also more gracile on the skull

Thats false of course, I wrote the text very fast, so there are some mistakes in it, this being the most obvious one, because bigger-larger variants are more robust on the skull, smaller ones more gracile - inside of the same general spectrum.

[Jarl]

There have been several Kenyan specimens of proto-Caucasoids from Paleolithic, which very closely resemble Combe-Capelle. They lack strong prognathism, and more typical Negroid robusticity. They could be the first pre-cursors of the Aurignacian, or Proto-Med race.

Gambles Cave:

http://carnby.altervista.org/troe/02-09.htm



The remains of six Upper Aurignacian men have been discovered in the two colonies named. Five of these were exhumed by Leakey at Gamble’s Cave, Elementitia,54 and the sixth is the famous Oldoway skull discovered by Reck in 1914.55 Two of the Gamble’s Cave specimens, and Oldoway, which are all masculine, consist of nearly complete skulls and long bones. The others from Gamble’s Cave are too fragmentary to be of much value.

In general, these specimens belong in the purely sapiens category, as represented by Galley Hill, Kanjera, Grimaldi, Combe Capelle, and Afalou #28. At the same time, however, they differ from all named in one important respect-they are extremely tall, with statures of 177, 179, and 180 cm., which even exceeds the Crô-Magnon and later Afalou figures, but the great stature is unaccompanied by the broad shoulders and bodily bulk of the hybrid Europeans and North Africans. The long bones are very slender, and the hands and feet small and narrow.

The same principle of attenuation applies to the faces. In all of them, and especially in Oldoway, the faces are extremely narrow, and very long, especially in the upper segments. The browridges are weak, the zygomatic arches feebly developed, the mandibles light and slender, with narrow bigonial diameters, and weak, although positive, chins. The orbits are high and narrow, and the noses likewise. The Gamble’s Cave skulls are leptorrhine, leptene and leptoprosopic; Oldoway is mesorrhine, and hyperleptoprosopic. The two Gamble’s Cave skulls are orthognathous, but Oldoway possesses considerable alveolar prognathism.


Gambles Cave fossils were dated back to Late Paleolithic, more recently. However, similar discoveries at Naivasha (also by Leaky), yielded another specimen which is apparently much older. Consequently, there is strong evidence supportin East African origin of certain proto-Caucasoid features, and of proto-Med or Aurignacoid race in particular.

[Agrippa]

Its quite obvious to me that the ancestors of most Mongoloids and Australoids (& related) have to come to Eurasia and beyond from an early wave, which might have been distinct from the later one, which finally formed the Proto-Europoid people in the Near East-Central Asia.

The later waves from East Africa might have brought new, progressive trends not just to the Europids, but also certain non-Europid Eurasian populations, probably they are responsible for the appearance of some Proto-Mongoloid groups and Neomelanesids in South East Asia too.

Because its just astonishing how primitive the first wave modern Homo sapiens were, which we can still look at, almost as some kind of "living fossils" in the form of the Australid and Palaemelanesid race, some Australoid and Negritid remains here and there in Southern and South Eastern Asia, even in the Americas, yet all other Eurasians are significantly more progressive and seem to have been so from the start.

If comparing Combe Capelle or Bruenn with the Pintubi skull:
http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/8186/bindaeuro1.th.jpg (http://img683.imageshack.us/i/bindaeuro1.jpg/)
Extremely primitive Pintubi left, modern-progressive Europid skull right

http://canovanograms.tripod.com/pintubi1/

Combe Capelle vs. Oberkassel (Cromagnoid vs. Aurignacoid after Knussmann 1996):
http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/4227/oberkassellcombecapelletc8.th.jpg (http://img508.imageshack.us/i/oberkassellcombecapelletc8.jpg/)

Its quite obvious, that though the Combe Capelle skull has primitive traits, even in comparison to Cro Magnon (the old) which is significantly more progressive, the overall impression and traits in detail are much more progressive than that of Pintubi, yet most living Australid individuals (!), not talking about Palaemelanesid skulls, even though being a more than 30.000 years old (!) skull of an unspecialised form in Europe.

So I'd assume, though we can't exclude local developments (like a more robust skull because of one sided selection = also plausible, but even then not all primitive traits can't be explained by that) of the Australids or mixture with older strata, this is rather not the best explanation for this pattern, since this traits can be found among Southern and South Eastern Asians too, as well as Indianids here and there, that we deal with different waves of modern humans which had different levels most likely already when leaving Africa.

This means to me that the Proto-Europoids came mostly from a later and more progressive wave of modern humans, which came from East Africa, which also entered most other areas of Eurasia, but weren't always as successful, often mixing with the older inhabitants (like in the case of Proto-Mongoloids in SEA, Weddoids and Melanesids f.e.).

Obviously there wasnt just one wave of moderns out of Africa and some marched back as well I have to add.

The classic Europid traits seem to have evolved rather in the area between the Near East and Central Asia already, entered Europe then, where they further specialised to the racial variants we can find today.

Its however totally unclear whether the Central Asian Europids or those which were on the European continent for a longer time developed more Cromagnoid traits or not, especially if considering the fact that in North Africa and Asia we find Cromagnoids as well - to this day. I think it would be plausible for a certain stage at least, considering the fact they seem to be the better form for a colder climate, yet its not proven yet and a lot of speculation. We just know that at a certain stage, Cromagnoid features were more common in Europe than in the warm period-Neolithic times, most likely related to what I already said in other posts.

[Jarl]

Its quite obvious to me that the ancestors of most Mongoloids and Australoids (& related) have to come to Eurasia and beyond from an early wave, which might have been distinct from the later one, which finally formed the Proto-Europoid people in the Near East-Central Asia.

The later waves from East Africa might have brought new, progressive trends not just to the Europids, but also certain non-Europid Eurasian populations, probably they are responsible for the appearance of some Proto-Mongoloid groups and Neomelanesids in South East Asia too.

That is exactly my impression too. These first waves had to be Australoid-like in form, and perhaps their only remaining relics are the Ainus, Veddas and Aborigines. It is interesting to note that early Paleolithic skulls of Homo sapiens from China are proto-Mongoloid in form, but also Cro-Magnon like and... Australoid!

However, I would not necessarily lump Australoids with Asian Negrittos into a single wave. To me it seems well possible they represented two consecutive waves, that could have subsequently interbreed for centuries. If you compare Melanesians to some other South-East Asians insular Abroigines they might seem similar. But if you compare Murrayans or Carpentarians to Andamanese Negrittos, then they differ considerably.

From genetic studies and affinities between Caucasoids and Mongoloids, it seems that there had to be some Eurasian Cro-Magnon-Mongoloid continuum. Cro-Magnon fossils are found in Central Asia. And semi-Mongoloid, or even Mongoloid skulls (Chancelade) are found in Europe. These hunter-gatherers of the Northern tundras probably formed a string of considerably interbreeding population.


I guess it was not until the later migrants, who had to resemble more the gracilised Aurignacoids, expanded from North-East Africa, and in an altered form from Middle East and Asia Minor into Europe, that Maghrebians an Europeans diverged greatly from this Cro-Magnon / proto-Monogolid spectrum into the direction of the modern Caucasoid race...

[Agrippa]

That is exactly my impression too. These first waves had to be Australoid-like in form, and perhaps their only remaining relics are the Ainus, Veddas and Aborigines. It is interesting to note that early Paleolithic skulls of Homo sapiens from China are proto-Mongoloid in form, but also Cro-Magnon like and... Australoid!

However, I would not necessarily lump Australoids with Asian Negrittos into a single wave. To me it seems well possible they represented two consecutive waves, that could have subsequently interbreed for centuries. If you compare Melanesians to some other South-East Asians insular Abroigines they might seem similar. But if you compare Murrayans or Carpentarians to Andamanese Negrittos, then they differ considerably.

From genetic studies and affinities between Caucasoids and Mongoloids, it seems that there had to be some Eurasian Cro-Magnon-Mongoloid continuum. Cro-Magnon fossils are found in Central Asia. And semi-Mongoloid, or even Mongoloid skulls (Chancelade) are found in Europe. These hunter-gatherers of the Northern tundras probably formed a string of considerably interbreeding population.


I guess it was not until the later migrants, who had to resemble more the gracilised Aurignacoids, expanded from North-East Africa, and in an altered form from Middle East and Asia Minor into Europe, that Maghrebians an Europeans diverged greatly from this Cro-Magnon / proto-Monogolid spectrum into the direction of the modern Caucasoid race...

Yes, those are all valuable points I considered as well. As for the Negritids in special, they are a tricky case. Some authors say this, others that, good arguments are present for many explanations from the fields of prehistory-archaeology, ethnology, physical anthropology and genetic studies, yet I haven't heard something really conclusive.

But I personally think right now, that they are a local specialised form. If they had more recent relations to the Negrids of Africa is hard to tell, since we have to consider the fact, that there are also Palaemelanesids which look quite similar to those!

V. Eickstedt told in his great work about the races of the world an interesting story about various scholars which confused a very "Kafrid/Bantuid-looking" Palaemelanesid at first look with a real African Negrid. They were even absolutely sure, even an expert for Africa which travelled to South Eastern Africa on various occasions!

So there can be a certain phenotypical overlap between Melanesids and Negrids of Africa obviously, thats why I think its a possibility that this Negritids are just a reduced variant of these Proto-Negroid forms from the Australo-Melanesid spectrum of SEA/Melanesia - until a closer and more recent relation being revealed by new studies of course.

In the Indian/South Asian context they are furthest away from the Europids and some put them into the position of the "autochthonous" people there, though again this conclusions might be not without criticism now and in the future, as its not for sure that a similar people by racial and genetic features ever lived in greater numbers in India.

[Jarl]

Yes, those are all valuable points I considered as well. As for the Negritids in special, they are a tricky case. Some authors say this, others that, good arguments are present for many explanations from the fields of prehistory-archaeology, ethnology, physical anthropology and genetic studies, yet I haven't heard something really conclusive.

But I personally think right now, that they are a local specialised form. If they had more recent relations to the Negrids of Africa is hard to tell, since we have to consider the fact, that there are also Palaemelanesids which look quite similar to those!

There is an excellent online resource on Andamanese Negrittos and all South-East Asian Aboriginee tribes here:

http://www.andaman.org/

Some good info on Paleoindians and Pericu Indians too. Apparently genetically, Negrittos seem to be

http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter6/text6.htm

Negrito's in Arabia:

http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter47/text47.htm

http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/reprints/windschuttle-gillin/windschuttle-gillin.htm


It seems they are quite distinct from Australian Aborigines. The article mentions that there were two schools of thought. One assumed Veddoids developed independently. Genetically however, Andamanese are related to Veddas. This should not be a surprise. Even if they represent two disctinct waves of settlers, they would have interbred for centuries by now. Ainus too are related to the Japanese, but they represent a much different racial type. And indeed comparing Andamanese to Australians:

http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter6/text6.htm

Reveals they are distinct ("Other indicators of relationships"). It also seems that Negrittos represent an early migration wave:


... The early colonization of the Andaman archipelago by bearers of the M2 lineage supports the growing evidence of an early movement of humans through southern Asia and indicates that phenotypic similarities with African groups are convergent. It also suggests that early human migrants were capable of reaching all the islands of southern Asia and, therefore, Near Oceania, by the late Pleistocene. Such dispersal is consistent with the scattered distribution of negrito populations. All lines of evidence - social, cultural, historical, archaeological, linguistic, phenotypic, and genetic - support the conclusion that the Andaman islanders have been isolated for a substantial period of time. It is not currently possible to distinguish between two or more founding events and a single colonization followed by extensive population subdivision; a more detailed mtDNA phylogeny of south and southeast Asia may permit future work to differentiate between these two hypotheses. Whichever turns out to be correct, the implications for understanding the population dynamics of prehistory are profound. These findings illustrate the importance of sampling human biodiversity prior to significant modern admixture and extirpations and show that sequences derived from aDNA can have a significant role in the interpretation of contemporary human genetic distribution.

This together with some Negritto relics from Europe and Arabia suggests to me that Andamanese traits are not entirely a result of convergent evolution, like proposed by Aleksiejew.



V. Eickstedt told in his great work about the races of the world an interesting story about various scholars which confused a very "Kafrid/Bantuid-looking" Palaemelanesid at first look with a real African Negrid. They were even absolutely sure, even an expert for Africa which travelled to South Eastern Africa on various occasions!

So there can be a certain phenotypical overlap between Melanesids and Negrids of Africa obviously, thats why I think its a possibility that this Negritids are just a reduced variant of these Proto-Negroid forms from the Australo-Melanesid spectrum of SEA/Melanesia - until a closer and more recent relation being revealed by new studies of course.

Im quite certain there had to be a close genetic relation between these two, now weakened by centuries of drift and influxes from Monogloid populations. Phenotypical similarity is too striking. The problem is most of these populations are little, insular hunter-gatherering communities which are very prone to drift. Y-DNA and mtDNA studies of these small populations should be always taken with a pinch of salt. Theres the similar case with the Ainus.


In the Indian/South Asian context they are furthest away from the Europids and some put them into the position of the "autochthonous" people there, though again this conclusions might be not without criticism now and in the future, as its not for sure that a similar people by racial and genetic features ever lived in greater numbers in India.

To me, most certainly the Andamanese Negrittos present a much different type to the more proto-morphic Australian Aborigines. From the article it seems to me that the now extinct Australian "Pygmies" and Tasmanians represented the later migration waves with higher affinicty to the Negrittos.

[Jarl]

Its quite obvious, that though the Combe Capelle skull has primitive traits, even in comparison to Cro Magnon (the old) which is significantly more progressive, the overall impression and traits in detail are much more progressive than that of Pintubi, yet most living Australid individuals (!), not talking about Palaemelanesid skulls, even though being a more than 30.000 years old (!) skull of an unspecialised form in Europe.

Yes! Cro-Magnon skull in many ways resembles more the modern orthognathic Europid skull, while Combe-Capelle resembles the slightly Neandethal-like Predmost and Skhul. Remarkably, these proto-morphic "Australoid" like features were common in the proto-Meds for long millenia, up till the Neolithic. It seems to me that Cro-Magnons represented a more Northerly, Eurasian specialty.


So I'd assume, though we can't exclude local developments (like a more robust skull because of one sided selection = also plausible, but even then not all primitive traits can't be explained by that) of the Australids or mixture with older strata, this is rather not the best explanation for this pattern, since this traits can be found among Southern and South Eastern Asians too, as well as Indianids here and there, that we deal with different waves of modern humans which had different levels most likely already when leaving Africa.

Australids to me have been largely isolated. This could alone explain their more archaic character. However, the multi-origin theory has not been yet entirely rejected. Even if most Y-DNA is recent African in origin, it can still form a superficial layer and genomes may hide older sections. Perhpas there has been some input from Asian archaic sapiens into the Australian genepool. And subsequently it became better preserved and fixed due to drift and isolation, while largely replaced on the Asian continent.


This means to me that the Proto-Europoids came mostly from a later and more progressive wave of modern humans, which came from East Africa, which also entered most other areas of Eurasia, but weren't always as successful, often mixing with the older inhabitants (like in the case of Proto-Mongoloids in SEA, Weddoids and Melanesids f.e.).

Obviously there wasnt just one wave of moderns out of Africa and some marched back as well I have to add.

Yes. Definitely this process started early. Influences from East Africa date back to Paleolithic in Europe. When these proto-Europids reached Asia? To me it seems that to a large extent this was during the more recent PIE expansions.


The classic Europid traits seem to have evolved rather in the area between the Near East and Central Asia already, entered Europe then, where they further specialised to the racial variants we can find today.

Yes. To me this is basically the secondary nucleus where protomorphic, Austrloid-like populations had to evolve into this Paleo-Europid and Paleo-Asiaitic, proto-Caucasoid/Mongoloid spectrum. This is presumably where the Cro-Magnon type originated from.


Its however totally unclear whether the Central Asian Europids or those which were on the European continent for a longer time developed more Cromagnoid traits or not, especially if considering the fact that in North Africa and Asia we find Cromagnoids as well - to this day. I think it would be plausible for a certain stage at least, considering the fact they seem to be the better form for a colder climate, yet its not proven yet and a lot of speculation. We just know that at a certain stage, Cromagnoid features were more common in Europe than in the warm period-Neolithic times, most likely related to what I already said in other posts.

That is it. In literature I have come across a wide range of wild speculation on the origin of Cro-Magnons. Some early studies pointed to the fact their bones were long and they were tall. This is ridiculous. It is very clear that Cro-Magnons largely differed in stature and it is not correct to generalise they all presente a tall an slender type. They could not have represented a Southern-adaptation coz by far they were most common in Eurasian forest-tundras, unlike the proto-Med Aurignacoids.

To me it is quite obvioud that Maghrebian Cro-Magnons of the Mechta-Afalou type represent a more recen incursion of Atlantinean cultures from Western Europe.

[Northern_Paladin]

Coon wasn't up to date on a lot of things. But I'm sure it's safe to say Northern Europe is generally associated with Nordid. As for what country is most Nordid...I would say Sweden or Denmark, to an extent it is debatable.

[Jarl]

Id say Friesland :P

[Jarl]

Yes. Definitely this process started early. Influences from East Africa date back to Paleolithic in Europe. When these proto-Europids reached Asia? To me it seems that to a large extent this was during the more recent PIE expansions.

I meant of course Europids! I don't think that original Dravidian inhabitants of India did not differ from the Middle Easterners or Europeans. It would be interesting to see some early Neolithic Indian series, before the Indo-Aryan invasion.

[Jarl]

http://withmalice.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/christian_olsson.jpg

Btw. This Olsson fellow looks almost like a clone of Kevin Bacon:

http://img2.allposters.com/images/MMPH/249131.jpg

[Agrippa]

From the article it seems to me that the now extinct Australian "Pygmies" and Tasmanians represented the later migration waves with higher affinicty to the Negrittos.

The Tasmanids were somewhat special and between Australid proper and Palaemelanesids with traits on their own. Melanesid influences being present in parts of Australia and the aboriginal people of New Zealand might also have been somewhere in between, before the Polynesid settlers came.


I meant of course Europids! I don't think that original Dravidian inhabitants of India did not differ from the Middle Easterners or Europeans. It would be interesting to see some early Neolithic Indian series, before the Indo-Aryan invasion.

Those of the Indus culture (Harappa and Mohenjo Daro) were mostly Europid and very similar to what we can find in Mesopotamia and even Europe at the same time.

The dominant element can be said to be Proto-Mediterranoidin the widest meaning of the term, progressive Aurignacoids , mostly ranging from robust to gracile forms, like in moderns. Its most likely the dominant element was Nordindid, yet some said they could have passed as Atlantomediterranid or Nordid.

Then we find Cromagnoid skulls and more primitive Aurignacoid ones, like that of Combe Capelle, with a large cranial volume.

These are the Europid forms, those which can be find in Mesopotamia too.

Then there was a Weddoid element with somewhat Australoid traits.

Some artefacts, anthropologists analysed:
The so called "Priest King" is obviously Europid and resembles modern Nordindid variants the most:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Mohenjo-daro_Priesterk%C3%B6nig.jpeg

The "Dancing Girl" on the other hand might show Weddoid traits/influences:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9d/Dancing_girl_mohenjodaro.jpg

So going by the material we have, they were Europid settlers, most likely related to those from the Near East, Mesopotamia, which largely overtook the place, yet mixed occassionally with the much fewer aboriginals of mostly Indo-Weddoid and Weddoid racial type.

I would assume that Proto-Mediterranoids -> Europids which became Indids later, were already present for much longer there, but the Neolithic colonisation seems to have been significant. At least the founders and inhabitants of the Indus civilisation were related to the Near East and mostly rather progressive, leptodolichomorphic Europids.


Btw. This Olsson fellow looks almost like a clone of Kevin Bacon:

Primarily the eye region, secondarily the chin-jaw area, which are the most Nordid traits of Bacon, who is otherwise a rather atypical mixture...

[Pallantides]

Chris Crocker is a typical Nordid both in apperance and behavior.
http://socialitelife.celebuzz.com/images/2007/10/chris_crocker_103007_06.jpg
http://collegecandy.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/20/chriscrocker.jpg
http://mavrixonline.com/mavrixonline/photos/blog_chris_crocker_dog04-thumb.jpg

[Jarl]

Yes... very gracile...

[Pallantides]

Lawl you can't deny his Nordidness:p
He is a disturbed Nordid!

[Jarlsson]

A little silly Off Top question.. I notice that when I cut my hair (cropped) for instance, I seem to appear more Trønder'ish (CM influenced) than if I have more hair. Is this just me thinking, or have anyone else noticed someting about this generally? Again i'm not that learned in the arts of Phys Anthropology either.. :p

PS! I kinda feel like that erm.. Nordid at the pictures above, writing this post:p. Anthropological fashion ftw! :D

[Jarl]

A little silly Off Top question.. I notice that when I cut my hair (cropped) for instance, I seem to appear more Trønder'ish (CM influenced) than if I have more hair. Is this just me thinking, or have anyone else noticed someting about this generally? Again i'm not that learned in the arts of Phys Anthropology either.. :p

I got the same thing, son. The first day I shaved my head bald, was the first day I saw a half-neanderthal :D

[Pallantides]

This guy looks extremly Nordid.
http://s803.photobucket.com/albums/yy312/imuza33/olof2.jpg

[Jarl]

No. He looks gay.

[Ariets]

lol, I was about to say that if he's textbook Nordid, then Nordids are queers per definition

[Pallantides]

No. He looks gay.

...and Nordid, what else could he be classified as?
gay is not a racial classification.

[Agrippa]

This guy looks extremly Nordid.
http://s803.photobucket.com/albums/yy312/imuza33/olof2.jpg

He is rather Nordid indeed, but being a more typical example of an extreme Leptosomic = Asthenic = (even sick or anorexic?) than an extreme Nordid.

His forehead f.e. is to high and broad, face too - he might have a Borreby influence actually.

In this thread about Western Swedes are more typical Nordid phenotypes
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showpost.php?p=164494&postcount=27

though not all of them are 100percent neither, if morphing them together they would produce on average something as typical as the morphs I made and posted here too:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showpost.php?p=147774&postcount=27

The average in a morph eliminates the individual deviations from such a predominantely Nordid sample.

[safinator]

Another good representation of a Nordid IMO.

Axel Brorson


https://models.com/newfaces/i/2010/02/052.jpg
https://models.com/newfaces/i/2010/02/062.jpg
https://models.com/newfaces/i/2010/02/042.jpg
http://s1.postimage.org/rwlxfsqne/3643_polaroid_2903_l.jpg
http://s1.postimage.org/rwlz3c356/3643_polaroid_2904_l.jpg

[Mordid]

http://cs10845.vkontakte.ru/u13800995/128956506/x_1a3a4f6c.jpg
http://cs10845.vkontakte.ru/u13800995/128956506/x_3ff28819.jpg

[Agrippa]

Another good representation of a Nordid IMO.

Axel Brorson


https://models.com/newfaces/i/2010/02/052.jpg
https://models.com/newfaces/i/2010/02/062.jpg
https://models.com/newfaces/i/2010/02/042.jpg
http://s1.postimage.org/rwlxfsqne/3643_polaroid_2903_l.jpg
http://s1.postimage.org/rwlz3c356/3643_polaroid_2904_l.jpg

He shows Cromagnid influences though, quite clearly so actually.

So totally Nordeuropid, but finally rather Nordid with Dalofaelid I'd say.

Pred. Nordid Germans:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15604&stc=1&d=1316713253

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15605&stc=1&d=1316713287

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15606&stc=1&d=1316713310

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15607&stc=1&d=1316713380

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15608&stc=1&d=1316713431

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15609&stc=1&d=1316713573

[safinator]

He shows Cromagnid influences though, quite clearly so actually.

So totally Nordeuropid, but finally rather Nordid with Dalofaelid I'd say.
Which one is predominant in your opinion?

[Saruman]

Which one is predominant in your opinion?

Nordid is but with obvious Dalofaelid. So he might fit "Troender" type.

[Agrippa]

Which one is predominant in your opinion?

Probably Nordid, but almost 50:50.

Just compare him with the pred. Nordid Germans I added in my last post.

Or these pred. Nordid English:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15610&stc=1&d=1316713732

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15611&stc=1&d=1316713754

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15612&stc=1&d=1316713779

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15613&stc=1&d=1316713823

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15614&stc=1&d=1316713898

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15615&stc=1&d=1316713986

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15616&stc=1&d=1316713989

Highly progressive Nordid peak type:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15617&stc=1&d=1316714031

A new morph I made from a larger Nordid sample:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=15618&stc=1&d=1316714141


Nordid is but with obvious Dalofaelid. So he might fit "Troender" type.

I think he is not harmonised in such a direction, but simply intermediate in an individual manner.

[safinator]

Julian Kaupper

https://models.com/newfaces/i/2011/09/DSC_0030.jpg
https://models.com/newfaces/i/2011/09/DSC_0035.jpg
https://models.com/newfaces/i/2011/09/DSC_0039.jpg
https://models.com/newfaces/i/2011/09/DSC_0052.jpg
https://models.com/newfaces/i/2011/09/DSC_0113.jpg
https://models.com/newfaces/i/2011/09/DSC_0126.jpg
https://models.com/newfaces/i/2011/09/DSC_0125.jpg

[Pallantides]

http://i.imgur.com/eosdU.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Oyl9h.jpg

[Agrippa]

Kauper has Cromagnoid/Baltoid influences. His midface is reduced, nose shortened and smaller, eyes wider set, forehead broader and rounded and so on.

[safinator]

http://i.imgur.com/Oyl9h.jpg

Ubermensch

[Mordid]

Nordid from Belarus
http://i058.radikal.ru/0912/4f/c8423efb48ee.jpg
http://s61.radikal.ru/i171/0912/65/e960f09e7a03.jpg
http://s003.radikal.ru/i203/1001/b1/606315957a93.jpg
Are Nordid common in Belarusia?

[safinator]

Nordid from Belarus
http://i058.radikal.ru/0912/4f/c8423efb48ee.jpg
http://s61.radikal.ru/i171/0912/65/e960f09e7a03.jpg
http://s003.radikal.ru/i203/1001/b1/606315957a93.jpg
Are Nordid common in Belarusia?
Eugeniy Savchenko

http://b.imagehost.org/0978/13_7.jpg
http://b.imagehost.org/0351/19.jpg
http://b.imagehost.org/0968/15_10.jpg
http://b.imagehost.org/0781/17.jpg
http://b.imagehost.org/0079/20_7.jpg

[Agrippa]

Are Nordid common in Belarusia?

Yes, but most of the time mixed with Osteuropid.

[Mordid]

Nordid from Poland
http://h.imagehost.org/0585/p15.jpg
http://h.imagehost.org/0891/p17.jpg
http://j.imagehost.org/0867/p6.jpg
http://j.imagehost.org/0676/pole31.jpg
http://j.imagehost.org/0306/pole2.jpg

[Artek]

Nordid from Poland
http://h.imagehost.org/0585/p15.jpg
http://h.imagehost.org/0891/p17.jpg
http://j.imagehost.org/0867/p6.jpg
http://j.imagehost.org/0676/pole31.jpg
http://j.imagehost.org/0306/pole2.jpg
Only first guy is Nordid(Eastnordid).

I've got a question. It was mentioned that there is a small brunet minority that is anthropologically Nordid, but aberrant pigmentation does not necessarily indicate non-Nordid admixture. Is this statement true?

http://img600.imageshack.us/img600/7830/sahyerytyuzsdwe.jpg


My hair are generally quite lighter than on this photo, rather dark brown in normal lightning and going almost medium brown at some specific conditions.
FI 93, CI 72 .

[Mordid]

Nordid from Holland
http://i076.radikal.ru/0905/27/0cd672fec72d.jpg
http://s001.radikal.ru/i195/1001/80/03109143ec3d.jpg
http://s43.radikal.ru/i100/1006/35/1d3bd99298bc.jpg
http://i072.radikal.ru/1007/7c/fe8f3ab26d55.jpg

[Pallantides]

http://i.imgur.com/Cd2k4.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/7JNFu.jpg

[Agrippa]

That's a good example for a pred. Nordid girl. Do you know her name and origins?

[Pallantides]

That's a good example for a pred. Nordid girl. Do you know her name and origins?


Her name is Andrea L.(full surname is not listed) she is a model assigned to Team Models AS, which is a Norwegian model agency.
http://i.imgur.com/H0c2W.jpg

[Davy Jones's Locker]

Are these Scandinavians of the Nordid type?


Kajsa Bergqvist

http://weman.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/300px-kajsa_bergqvist.jpg


Thomas Braaten

http://www.altaif.no/fotball/media/bilder/_FRI8692.jpg


Joachim Johansson

http://www.all-pictures.org/celebrities/d/161132-1/Joachim+Johansson+e1.jpg


Varg Vikernes

http://pub.tv2.no/multimedia/TV2/archive/00726/Johnny_Syversen___S_726318i.jpg


Erik Edman

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/DTiNptcysr8/0.jpg

[Mordid]

^Yes

[Mordid]

Nordid from Holland
http://s43.radikal.ru/i100/1006/35/1d3bd99298bc.jpg

I think he's Nordid of Keltic variety.

[safinator]

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/4900/img4939large.jpg
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/7478/img4935large.jpg
http://img828.imageshack.us/img828/6477/img4942large.jpg
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/5859/img4940large.jpg
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/62/img4556large.jpg
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/9038/img4937large.jpg

[Agrippa]

Jakob Bertelsen is pred. Nordid and quite progressive, but he shows Cromagnoid influences.

[Pallantides]

M-QbTGRuwmw

[Lorene]

M-QbTGRuwmw

what does this have to do with the thread? :confused:

[Pallantides]

what does this have to do with the thread? :confused:

She is a Nordic type.

[Lorene]

She is a Nordic type.

and 'I think you posted this with other intentions;) you posted a girl acting stupidly just because she has such a phenotype, but one could put the same with one similar to yours, in general you behalve emotionally childish to try to prove your point of view.

Human feelings, wow always predictable.

[Pallantides]

and 'I think you posted this with other intentions;) you posted a girl acting stupidly just because she has such a phenotype, but one could put the same with one similar to yours, in general you behalve emotionally childish to try to prove your point of view.

Human feelings, wow always predictable.

Lol what, I think it's you who are getting all childish and emotional here.

[Agrippa]

M-QbTGRuwmw

"Nordeby" rather.

Pred. Nordid Russians:

[Redar14]

"Nordeby" rather.

Pred. Nordid Russians:


http://i75.photobucket.com/albums/i308/Nicola_Canadian/RUSOLD/rus_soldat.jpg
This russian soldier was good example of nordid type.

[Gunslinger]

http://i.imgur.com/sk4dA.jpg

[Redar14]

Margus Vaher, estonian singer

http://f.postimees.ee/f/2009/07/13/206862t9h8452.jpg
http://www.pokkerikool.com/static/artiklid/sisu_283.jpg
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/3740710/Margus+Vaher++4.jpg

[Redar14]

Kristine Opolais - latvian singer
http://www.emsdettenervolkszeitung.de/storage/scl/mdhl/artikelbilder/nachrichten/kultur/2479486_m3t1w564h376q75v27911_xio-fcmsimage-20110522164833-006000-4dd9224175d2f.4113558.jpg
http://www.opera.lv/fl/opolais42.jpg
http://www.seenandheard-international.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Kristine-Opolais011CMarco-Borggreve-small.jpg

For me she is amazing looking woman. :)

[Padre Organtino]

The Estonian guy looks a bit crom-influenced to me.

[Redar14]

Nordid from Poland
http://h.imagehost.org/0891/p17.jpg


Mordid was the craziest person on this forum. :D:D:D:D:D

[Agrippa]

Margus Vaher, estonian singer

http://f.postimees.ee/f/2009/07/13/206862t9h8452.jpg
http://www.pokkerikool.com/static/artiklid/sisu_283.jpg
http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/3740710/Margus+Vaher++4.jpg

He would fit perfectly into the Corded Ware variation, even those from Western Germany, while being a good example for the more archaic Corded variants. Just look at his forehead and the region of the glabella-nasal root, really extreme, but something the more robust-archaic Corded skulls had quite often.


Kristine Opolais

She seems to have Osteuropid influences though.


The Estonian guy looks a bit crom-influenced to me.

That's the misconception of "broad faced robust Cromagnid" vs. "narrow faced gracile Aurignacid".

Very robust Aurignacid variants existed, some of them being on the bones taller and more robust than their Cromagnid counterparts of the same time, especially the Corded extremes and in the late Neolithic, beginning Bronze Age. And he would fit into that bill perfectly.

[Redar14]

http://s.ohtuleht.ee/multimedia/images/000204/x-4eb8b9eb-ba65-4882-a55f-008b82ebf1f5.jpg
http://f2.pmo.ee/f/2011/03/06/531651t9hab6f.png
Rl1ML2pxTbM

[safinator]

http://i.models.com/i/db/2009/2/4584/4584-800w.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_HlQ460KIArE/TIRwHqN9kII/AAAAAAAAP-k/bQesUKtMkiU/s1600/lassecasting1.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2495/3728907089_b5e653ec53_o.jpg

[Agrippa]

Nordeuropid and progressive, but really significant Dalofaelid influences, minor Eastbaltid possible too.

[hajduk]

http://h.imagehost.org/0891/p17.jpg
Mordid was the craziest person on this forum. :D:D:D:D:D
Count him as two nordids, his head is twice wider than the average nordid :D

[Gunslinger]

She has Dinarid/Norid tendency and minor Baltid influence though

http://i.imgur.com/1sImn.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/BXCCI.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/lchsV.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Cz2Q4.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/MFqaB.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/u2rrx.jpg

[Libertas]

http://s.ohtuleht.ee/multimedia/images/000204/x-4eb8b9eb-ba65-4882-a55f-008b82ebf1f5.jpg
http://f2.pmo.ee/f/2011/03/06/531651t9hab6f.png
Rl1ML2pxTbM

God! Is he related to Lurch in the "Adams Family"?

[Gunslinger]

Norid tendency

http://i.imgur.com/oDkej.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/yRJhK.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/DRy65.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/WRG3n.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/zS8Xi.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/j27My.jpg

[Saruman]

and minor Baltid influence though


More than minor.

[Mordid]

Norid/Dinaroid in Russia? I didn't know they're exist there. They are not as strong as Poles, I guess.

[Gunslinger]

More than minor.

Upturned nose. What else ?

[Gunslinger]

Norid/Dinaroid in Russia? I didn't know they're exist there. They are not as strong as Poles, I guess.

why do you care so much about it ?

[Mordid]

Because Nero said they don't exist.

[Gunslinger]

i think they are rather Nordids. There's just a tendency to Norid

[Mordid]

Why do you fucking care about it, you stoopid Russki self hating East Baltid?

[Saruman]

why do you care so much about it ?

Probably forehead shape, chin shape, jaw and possibly lips.

[Gunslinger]

Why do you fucking care about it, you stoopid Russki self hating East Baltid?

Just fuck off. Looks like you have nothing better to do.

[Mordid]

Just fuck off. Looks like you have nothing better to do.
Save that wodka for later, man.

[Gunslinger]

Probably forehead shape, chin shape, jaw and possibly lips.

I don't think so.
Maybe you can show us a better example of Nordid woman?

[safinator]

http://s6.postimage.org/o0mmpw0cv/Screen_shot_2011_10_06_at_2_08_03_PM.png
http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/3884/bertholdbymariarita6.jpg
http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/6792/roundsixteen7.jpg
http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/VLOV+QingQing+Wu+Runway+Spring+2012+Mercedes+NgC54 DZt3MSl.jpg
http://s4.postimage.org/3vvrbbwto/00530h.jpg
http://s3.postimage.org/rc93o8zhe/Yohji_SS12_Det75.jpg
http://s03.imageupper.com/1/6/U2876743952213932_1.jpg
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/4463/photomiddef3431374.jpg

[Redar14]

http://www.skene.pl/media/picture/4471/pic/111018085711.jpg
http://www.skene.pl/media/picture/4471/pic/111018085732.jpg
http://www.skene.pl/media/picture/4471/pic/111018085649.jpg
http://static.goldenline.pl/user_photo/164/user_1434276_d2ed53_huge.jpg

[Artek]

Is she Nordid?
Yes, pretty much

[Anthropologique]

Coon is openly biased! I mean read this ("The Mediterranean Race in East Africa"):



WTF???



...!!!



Somalis are hyperleptoprosopic - FI means over 95:



Yet Coon's Nordics are the same, in spite of the fact the mean FIs of Nordic countries reveal a strikingly different image. Coon seems to have intentionally exaggerated the Scandinavian trend to leptoprospy for the purpose of his Nord-Med theory. Also, if you look at the absolute dimensions, Scandinavians are way more robust than Southerners.

It's well known that Coon was embarrassingly racist and an extreme (actually serial) stereotyper. Moreover, his methodologies were pathetically lacking. Coon became a comical footnote in biological anthropology long ago.

[Redar14]

Yes, pretty much

I'm not sure, she could pass as Corded.

[Dr. van Winkle]

Is she Nordid?

Indeed, she is an excellent female specimen of the Corded type.

I have seen somewhat similar faces in northeastern Germany, possibly Wendish ancestry is a factor for this phenomenon to consider, although the racial influence of the Corded Ware culture extended much further west.

Genetic admixture analysis of German individuals:

http://i41.tinypic.com/2lbzux2.jpg

Genetic admixture analysis of British individuals:

http://i42.tinypic.com/34rd43o.png

Note the Eastern European component that is present not only in Germans, but the Brits as well.

Coon believed that high-skulled Corded racial types spread to Britain during the Bronze Age, who then were mixing with the lower skulled earlier inhabitants:


The consideration of the Bell Beaker problem leads naturally to that of the Bronze Age in the British Isles, where the Beaker people found their most important and most lasting home. Coming down the Rhine and out into the North Sea, they invaded the whole eastern coast of England and of Scotland, and also the shore of the Channel.

The Beaker invasion of Britain was not a simple affair. Not only did the newcomers land in many places, but they brought with them somewhat different traditions. Although most of them brought zoned beakers and battle axes, in consequence of their blending with the Corded people in the Rhinelands, others, with the older type of bell beakers and with stone wrist-guards of Spanish inspiration, seem to have entered unaffected by Corded influence.
...
The Beaker people did not exterminate the Long Barrow people, who continued for a while to build their characteristic earth-covered vaults, in some of which Beaker pots have actually been found. The remains of the newcomers, however, are always buried singly under round barrows, of a type which the Corded people contributed to the Zoned Beaker complex.

In comparison with the Continent, Great Britain contains a great plenty of Beaker skeletal material. The invasions which reached this island brought the wholesale migration of a large population. Over two hundred and sixty crania from England alone have been preserved and studied.
...
The Bronze Age people of England, as represented by this Beaker series, were clearly heterogeneous. The three ancestral elements which met in the Rhinelands may be distinguished easily. All three were tall, and the mean stature of the whole group was about 174 cm. The Corded element, however, was the tallest, and the Borreby element, about 170 cm., the shortest.
...
The dolichocephalic crania, forming the least numerous of the three elements, are of pure Corded type, and furnish an opportunity to study this form in greater numbers than elsewhere. The vault is very long, and extremely high, with a breadth-height ratio of 105, and extremely long faces, with deep, narrow mandibles.
http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/chapter-V8.htm

[Artek]

I'm not sure, she could pass as Corded.
Corded is rather within Nordid type range, Redar ;D

[Mordid]

http://www.skene.pl/media/picture/4471/pic/111018085711.jpg
http://www.skene.pl/media/picture/4471/pic/111018085732.jpg
http://www.skene.pl/media/picture/4471/pic/111018085649.jpg
http://static.goldenline.pl/user_photo/164/user_1434276_d2ed53_huge.jpg
She shows rather Ost-Europid tendency, especially forehead, nasal shape and other details.

[leisitox]

Mordid you know that is difficult to get an individual with such characteristics like her.
I pass her as pred. haltsttat nordid :D, let her pass. She is polish though.

[Sylvanus]

Is she Nordid?

Yes, she is pred. Nordid with Corded-Mediterranid influence on the forehead. The bulbous nose-tip is Alpinid trait, the Nordids have thiner nose-tip.



Indeed, she is an excellent female specimen of the Corded type.

The Corded-Mediterranid is a so early Mediterranid type from the late Neolithic, don't mix with the very late Nordid type since the Halstatt. The Corded's origin is disputed, they would come from the Balkan too or the Middle-East. The steppe origin is one of the more theories.

[safinator]

http://firstoption.dk/intranet/files/models/original/1427/1427_12215_ORIG.jpghttp://firstoption.dk/intranet/files/models/original/1427/1427_12204_ORIG.jpg

[freki]

http://firstoption.dk/intranet/files/models/original/1427/1427_12215_ORIG.jpghttp://firstoption.dk/intranet/files/models/original/1427/1427_12204_ORIG.jpg

Looks more Nordid-Atlantid than a skandonordid.

[freki]

http://www.all-pictures.org/celebrities/d/166572-1/Jeremy+Dufour+e3.jpg

Another Nordid-atlantid guy.

[safinator]

Looks more Nordid-Atlantid than a skandonordid.
He's Corded Nordid.

[Osprey]

Pardon my ignorance, but is the Sharp and Well Defined Jawline among Nordic Males due to the admixture of Cro-Magnids or Atlantids?
As unmixed Halstatt and Keltic Nordics have weak jaws....

[Artek]

Pardon my ignorance, but is the Sharp and Well Defined Jawline among Nordic Males due to the admixture of Cro-Magnids or Atlantids?
As unmixed Halstatt and Keltic Nordics have weak jaws....
IF we come to the jaw strenght it's rather something like (from the weakest to the strongest) "keltic"<eastnordid<hallstatt generally speaking.
Especially well-defined jawline is often present due to Cro-Magnid admix.
Atlantid is just Nordid-Mediterranean mix with intermediate skin and rather brown eyes and hair. Not so different from Nordid or other robust Mediterranean types

[safinator]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Marcel_Lenz_2011_1.jpg

[Artek]

pred.Nordid with slight Dalofaelid

[safinator]

http://www.fcinter.fi/dyn/players/57.jpg

[Artek]

rather Corded/Eastnordid with Cromagnoid

[Mordid]

http://i.wp.pl/a/f/jpeg/19603/milosc99.jpeg
http://www.zeberka.pl/img/el/1444_1.jpg
http://www.nowiny24.pl/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=NW&Date=20101025&Category=IMPREZY13&ArtNo=504249817&Ref=AR&border=0&MaxW=280
http://i.wp.pl/a/f/film/027/62/29/0102962.jpg
http://s.v3.tvp.pl/images/7/f/4/uid_7f45cab54231b28cf4b9eca032d78ce11299439822826_ width_450_play_0_pos_3_gs_0.jpg
http://republika.pl/blog_xr_4108961/5617538/tr/zdjecia_serialu_2084030.jpg

[Hurrem sultana]

http://www.all-pictures.org/celebrities/d/166572-1/Jeremy+Dufour+e3.jpg

Another Nordid-atlantid guy.
i usually do not like blonde guys but he was cuuute:eek:

[Dilberth]

i usually do not like blonde guys

You must hate living in Sweden

[Hurrem sultana]

You must hate living in Sweden

not all swedes are blonde though

[freki]

i usually do not like blonde guys but he was cuuute:eek:

He didn't have blond hair...just regular brown.

[+Suomut+]

He didn't have blond hair...just regular brown.It's kind of hard to tell with him wearing a hat. ;) It's probably somewhere in the dark-blond to light-brown pigmentation range. I have no doubt that he had blonde hair as a child, and him having (apparently) blue irises makes that all the more likely. :)

[safinator]

http://imageserve.us/images/zPTAm.jpg

[safinator]

http://imageserve.us/images/knsZP.jpg
http://imageserve.us/images/Lb1oB.jpghttp://imageserve.us/images/QPa8.jpg

[Dr. Bambo]

Even most prehistoric Mediterranoids did, Natufians in the narrower sense very really an aberration with their frequency of protomorphic traits at that time.

One could call the skulls resembling the leptodolichomorphic Upper Palaeolithics AurignacOID, exactly because the later variants, even in Mesolithic times mostly, latest Neolithic ones, were more progressive. Only the original skulls of that time and spectrum (Combe Capelle, Brünn etc.) being AurignacID.

If you say Nordid and Mediterranid, both are far away from the primitive Natufid standards and that Mediterranids being more gracile means little, since that can be an independent trend among the Neolithic farmers. So this is too, no definitive argument for either origin of the Nordid type. Though again, I personally assume that there were already Mesolithic Proto-Nordoids and that the mixture with the Ice Age hunter-gatherers of rather Cromagnoid type were an important influence - but again not just for the North, but other areas too.

Like Lothar put it, there were Brünn (Aurignacid) and Cro Magnon (Cromagnid) both in the North and the South, leading to the two extremes of proportional variants which being more concentrated in certain parts of Northern or Southern European/North Africa respectively (f.e. the Guanches and some Berber groups):
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=3435&stc=1&d=1261476227



Similar discussions and typological concepts being used, material I have taken from for the physical aspects, among others from:

Kurt Gerhardt (1953)
Egon Frhr. von Eickstedt (1934, 1962)
Bertil Lundman (1967)
Ilse Schwidetzky (1974)
Georg Kenntner (1973)
John R. Baker (1974)
Adelheid Bach (1978)
Wolfram Bernhard, Anneliese Kandler-Palsson (1986)
Lothar Kilian (1988)
Ernst F. Jung (1993)
Rainer Knussmann (1996)
Andreas Vonderach (2008)

and many more.

I dont say they all agreed in every detail, nor that all of them were professional anthropologists (some were historians and archaeologists) but I rather made a fusion of various facts they gathered and used some basic concepts being repeated in their works.

[Dr. Bambo]

nice collection!


I can very much agree on this and would describe either the Neolithisation, as the further Nordisation and Mediterranisation of Europe after the last Ice Age something like a torch relay. The torch being given on from to the other, with the cultural techniques and some genetic traits of adapative qualities, yet from one step to the next, the overall genetic input, the "neutral markers" and real ancestry from the one who actually ignited the torch becomes lower and lower, until they are close to non existent further away from the starting point, while the culture and probably some genetically determiend traits still made it.

The only thing I want to question is again the use of gracile, as many of those variants were not gracile and leptodolichomorphy and being gracile is not the same. Whether a variant is gracile or not depends, like you said yourself, not just on the narrow-long face, even on the contrary, there are clear markers for that.

Usually larger variants are also more gracile on the skull, the thickness of the bones, their specific form, muscle markers etc. all are clear indicators for gracile vs. robust, being leptomorphic by body type or leptodolichomorphic on the skull doesnt mean that.

Some authors used this as it would be interchangeable, but its not. Just because in some reasons we see robust Cromagnoids (eurydolichomorph) and gracile Aurignacoids (leptodolichomorph), this doesnt mean its a general pattern.

F.e. for the Nordoid skulls from Eastern Europe:
Yamnaya (Pit-grave = Ockergrabkultur), Kurgan Culture:

Male, hypermorph, mesokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas11.jpg

Male, mäßig hypermorph, dolicho-mesokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas12.jpg

Female, mäßig hypermorph, dolicho-mesokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas13.jpg

Male, relatively narrow faced, dolichokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas21.jpg

Male, mäßig hypermorph, dolichokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas22.jpg

Male, hypermorph, subdolichokran with "uralid" (mongoloid-mongoliform) admixture:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas23.jpg

Female, europid, skull artificially deformed:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas31.jpg

Male, hypermorph, meso-dolichokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas32.jpg

Male, narrow faced, dolichokran, europid:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnayas33.jpg

Reconstruction of a Yamnaya-man:
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f161/11aaabbb11/yamnaya1.jpg

A lot of them, though having a high face, are very robust and thats as clear in the samples of the LBK people from Germany and later Corded Ware (called "stenodolichomorphs" by some authors = "strong dolichomorphs", because of their very robust characteristics.

The same pattern can be seen in some Iranoid prehistoric and even historic groups.

[Norb]

bump