Which countries/ethnicities/nationalities look out of place for their location?

[Odelia]

1. Turkey. Some blonde and Baltic looking types exist here a lot, and as well as the Mongoloid types.
2. Iraq and Syria. Such hot climates, but non-Arab types indigenous there can be light as fuck, which is pretty strange for a mostly arid climate in the region.
3. Israel. As above, but then again the Jews there have mixed European ancestry.
4. France. Mostly atlantid types, even though the country is more to the south of Europe where you'd expect more Antonio Banderas types.
5. Iran. They have Indian features, even though they're lighter. And I know you'll say Iran is diverse (which it is) and you'll prove it with blonde Iranians, but they look more like light Pakistanis than their Semitic neighbours.
6. Afghanistan. Why are they generally brown? Maybe the sun is stronger there, but they have a complexion similar to Egyptians and Saudis (though lacking Semitic features). Afghanistan is more in latitude with fucking Southern Europe and the Middle East, and people there (discounting the Irano-Nords) are coloured like chocolate cookies. Odd.
7. Netherlands and Germany are way too blonde for their location. I agree with that.

[Mingle]

(2) Iran. Despite being so far east, Iranians are, as a whole, considerably lighter-complexioned than Iraqis, Gulf Arabs and South Asians. Thus, their location does seem to be rather anomalous.

Does anyone else have any ideas?

1. Arabs came to Iraq only a few centuries ago. The native people of Iraq were Assyrians, and they aren't really darker than Persians.

2. Iranians don't border proper South Asians, they border Baloch people who are different to what you view as typical South Asian. Yes, they're darker than most Iranians, but there's also a big desert separating Balochistan (including the Iranian part) from the rest of the country.

3. Iranians don't only border those two nations. They also border Azeris, Kurds, and Armenians.

4. Coastal (Gulf) Iranians are Sub-Saharan admixed, so not that light. But they don't have a proper land border with Arabia anyways. It makes more sense to compare Iranians to Armenians and Azeris than to Arabs.

[Mingle]

That is my point - Khomeini is pretty commonplace for Iran but substantially lighter than average for Pakistan (at least once you exclude its higher castes and Iranic ethnic groups).

Why would you exclude the Iranic groups when they're the groups Iran borders (and the subject of the thread is geography)? Last I checked, Iran didn't border Punjab.

[Mingle]

Not as such, but even The Lawspeaker, who generally isn't interested in anthropology, says that South Dutch are on the whole darker and less Scandinavian-like than are Frisians.

Makes sense, there's also a fairly significant genetic divide in the country.

[Tooting Carmen]

Why would you exclude the Iranic groups when they're the groups Iran borders (and the subject of the thread is geography)? Last I checked, Iran didn't border Punjab.

Yeah but don't even Balochis in Pakistan still have more Indid influence than their counterparts in Iran?

[Cristiano viejo]

3) Southern Spaniards. You would not guess they are located right near Morocco even though there is some overlap.

There is no any overlap with Moroccans.

[noricum]

Nuristanis

[Lioncourt]

I find there is a noticeable divide between Greeks and South Slavs - the former definitely resemble South Italians and Iberians more than they do their neighbours.

I also find Romanians on the whole to be quite dark (and no, I don't mean Gypsies either), despite being geographically not that far South.

Georgraphic distance between Greeks and Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians and even Serbs is large. They aren't neighbors by any means. Belgrade is closer to Munich than it is to Athens, for example. Neighbors are: Greeks from northern part of the country with Bulgarians and Macedonians. Greeks are a very large group of people, so are South Slavs, at the ends of their respective spectra there is an overlap (Macedonia/Thrace). This is also consistent with genetics, Bulgarian/Macedonian cluster ends where the Greek starts, with small intersection.

Romanians genetically are closest to Bulgarians, and for the biggest part descend from ancient Balkan populations.

[Septentrion]

My two nominations are:

(1) The UK. Despite the fact that most of the country has a more northerly latitude than the Netherlands and Germany, the British are, as a whole, noticeably darker-haired than the Germans and the Dutch. This goes against the usual pattern that the further north you go, the more blondes there are.

(2) Iran. Despite being so far east, Iranians are, as a whole, considerably lighter-complexioned than Iraqis, Gulf Arabs and South Asians. Thus, their location does seem to be rather anomalous.

Does anyone else have any ideas?

I think you exaggerated with the United Kingdom! They are not that dark - haired for one, secondly they have more red hair than everyone except for Ireland, thirdly they are paler in skin tone than all the other Europeans. So they do look pretty Northern European.

(1) The Saamis of northern parts of Scandinavia, Finland and Russia. They look very different from their Northern European neighbors.

[Veslan]

Kalmyks. They are mostly pure Mongoloids but they live in geographical Europe on the northwestern bank of the Caspian Sea in Russia.