XP's Europe-wide pigmentation study

[XenophobicPrussian]

Well, the deed is finally done.

Months in the making, I present my own Europe-wide hair pigmentation study. Can't remember when I started it exactly, shortly after The Blade released his England pigmentation study which inspired me. Took so long because I was only working on it one day a week, and I did actually take it seriously, even went back to re-do some countries I cared less about because I kind of rushed them more than countries I cared more about when I first started. Decided to make my own because

a) there's no solid numbers on actual blondism anywhere, blonde hair is so rare in most of Europe people just consider anything lighter than the average as blonde

b) most studies that span multiple ethnicites or are Europe-wide compile various nation/ethnicity specific studies done by various different anthropologists, this is extremely flawed because each anthropologist has their own definitions of hair colour and methodology regardless of what terms they use or if they use the Fischer-Saller scale(which is also extremely flawed anyway), see: (same exact Fischer scale numbers, two completely different results for Norway/Denmark vs Sweden with 2 different people, and obviously anyone with half a brain knows Sweden is not actually near 20% blonder than Denmark/Norway)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...72497318303387(scroll down to Table 2: Hair Color prevelence in Europe, these are all different professionally done studies and look how different the results are, way outside margin of error numbers), you need the same person to do all ethnicities

c) there is a study like this done, the one by former Apricity user ToeKneeHwin, but I'm fairly certain he didn't account for lighting in photos, which is extremely important, as hair colour can look completely different depending on the lighting in the background, and one needs to be able to distinguish actual hair colour from sun/lighting reflection. There's also the issue with there isn't much info about it, like sample size, etc. It's a good study and the differences between populations are likely correct but I wanted more proper numbers, and actual blondism numbers.

Most of you here probably know me, and know I have my certain views on various different European groups, which therefore might make me not the best candidate to do something like this because of bias. I mean, there's literally nothing I can say other than believe these numbers and my methodology if you want, don't believe them if you want. The main motivation for doing this was to know for myself, me releasing these numbers or even revealing I did this autistic shit is just an extra and because I knew a few people here are really interested in pigmentation differences. I'll be honest and say really the main reason I did this was because I was curious about southern/central Germanic population pigmentation as it compares to NE Slav pigmentation and latitude, that's really about it. No point to prove, just wanted to find out for myself. I can't find actually find out if I lie to myself. Subconscious bias is a thing but that's for low IQ/impulse control people. If I was going to fake or massage numbers I certainly would've gone with something more straight forward like Finland being the lightest and fucking S. Italians not being lighter than Iberians.

Also, apologies to the people who knew this was coming for the delays, and apologies to the Portuguese, Macedonians, Moldovans, etc. for not doing your countries. Portugal I wanted to do but it was just undoable because apparently like the Swiss, French and Belgians, Portuguese athletes don't exist anymore and have been completely taken over by foreigners(specifically Brazilians/Africans, mostly Balkanites in the case of the Swiss), it would've been a sample size of like 40 which is meaningless. The rest I just didn't care enough to do, just use neighbouring country numbers to determine your's.

One more thing, remember that differences between populations are the main point of pigmentation studies, not total %, which is subjective, while differences, if done properly using the same criteria for everyone, is not subjective. Any questions, comments, concerns welcome, positive or negative, I'll try to address them.

Anyway, onto the study

Few random thoughts/comments:

Spoiler!

- Nation with the most males that dye their hair is Italy per capita, and by far, second would be Germany and third I can't exactly remember but I think Hungary.
- Yes, I have Scandinavians slightly lighter than Finns. I'm not the first one to do so either. Perhaps Eastern Finns were oversampled, unlikely however.
- Yes, your eyes aren't deceiving you, that's Turks having more medium/light hair than Greeks. Given the difference is small and Greeks are blonder still, most likely an issue with low Greek sample size, but could also be Turkey having more northern Balkanite descended people, as well as groups north of the Caucasus like Circassians.
- I'm not sure whether to believe it or not, but Southern Italy turned out lighter than Iberia(yet at the same time, way more Med). Keep in mind somewhere around half the samples were from the Naples area, and then some more from Apulia, both of which are significantly more northern shifted than what most people think S. Italians to be, Sicilians and Calabrians. You also have things to factor in like much more recent Norman admixture, etc.
- Another weird one, Albania lighter than Serbia/Bulgaria. Most likely an issue of Gypsies, as Albania doesn't have a significant population of them afaik, while Serbia/Bulgaria near the 10% mark for gypsy population.
- Blonde hair rate doesn't always correlate with medium-light hair %, which is weird.
- Like ToeKneeHwin and some anthropologists, I did find Germanics to be oddly far lighter than Balto-Slavs especially when correcting for latitude. Balto-Slavs have kind of an Ireland effect going on, northern genetically but not particularly light, although to a far lesser extent than Ireland. That being said, I found Czechia to be lighter than Austria unlike most studies.
- N. Italy and S. Italy are surprisingly not far off in pigmentation, but reasonably far off in phenotype.
- Austria-N. Italy seems to be the largest pigmentation gap in Europe, despite Slovenia-N. Italy being the largest genetic one. Ukraine-Romania is probably after that.
- Big regional differences in England and Ukraine. Differences are East to West in England, not north/south, same with Scotland. Southern Ukraine is a lot darker than the north, northern Ukrainians might be the blondest east Slavs although I'd bet more on northern Russians.
- Main regional difference in the Netherlands is north of the Rhine and south of the Rhine, not North/South, central Dutch and north are pretty close in terms of hair colour. You can tell the Rhine was a barrier to geneflow between different populations for a long time in the Netherlands.
- Was gunna do Germany regional results and France, but I'm too exhausted to do anymore, and France would be way too hard to get enough samples, too many African footballers. It's a shame, really. I might eventually do Germany regional but not anytime soon, I would guess S. Germany is slightly lighter than Flanders based on Virchow's study of kids.
- The people who believe the usual number of 1/10 Irish people are red haired, please can someone point out to me the redheads in this massive crowd of Irish people?


Maybe this magical majority blonde population in northern Europe I have yet to see?

(Pskov, Russia, area called even blonder than Scandinavia/Finland by a few old anthropologists)
- I wonder what drugs Peter Frost was on when he did his pigmentation study(i.e Bosnians lighter than S. English, yikes)

Methodology:

Spoiler!

The study is done on only male footballers, based on one photo each, except when determining between dark blonde and light brown, then I google the name and look at multiple photos. Dark blonde should still look pretty much fully yellow normal blonde all over with full outdoor lighting in the sun, but can look medium/light brown in certain lighting and indoors, light brown will still be mostly clearly brown with some lighting reflections and no clear yellow covering the whole head of hair. All colours are based on photos with similar lighting from the same source websites, if the lone photo had obvious outlying lighting, was horrible quality, or the person had wet/gelled hair, I also googled for multiple photos, regardless of initial obvious colour. For a dark blonde person to be counted as blonde, he must have full blonde/yellow looking hair in direct lighting, outdoors, in a majority of photos, doesn't count for indoor photos. If someone has still has "dirty blonde" looking hair outdoors rather than regular blonde in extreme lighting, that person has light brown hair.

Excluded people with foreign surnames as best I could, no Italian/Iberian included in France, no ievs, aevs, Ahkmedovs, obvious Turkic, Armenian, Georgian names in Russia, except where I didn't know the difference(Slovenian vs other Balkan for example), with some exceptions like ethnicities that were in said country for a long time already(German names in Czechia/Hungary, Ukrainian names in Russia, Irish in England, etc). I made no attempt to take gypsies out in eastern Europe, they have the same exact surnames and if I just went "looks like a gypsy" and took him out it would take out a lot of native dark and Med types. I did actually take out S. Indian looking ones(was a couple or so in Romania) but most modern gypsies look like Kurds, which absolutely do overlap with southern Euro phenotypes. There's no way I would be able to tell. I also personally wanted the +gypsy minority numbers, they've been there for almost 1k yrs and you can't correlate anything about a country without them.

Had to be born in the country(luckily for me the sources I was using states it right there so I didn't have to look every name up). Greek surname but born in Australia? Not included.

Red is only pure red, reddish brown included in overall medium/light or light depending on how light it is, strawberry blonde is included in blonde. Absolutely ridiculous to include strawberry blondes as red haired when it's like 80% blonde and 20% red(examples of strawberry blondes: Paddy Holohan).

Actual medium might be split in my medium/light category because dark isn't only pure dark brunet or black hair imo, it doesn't include all shades between dark brunet and light brown. Example of the start of my dark hair/non-medium category:

(Felix Myhre)

(Casper Oyvann, ash dark brown, which is only really a colour visible in non-neutral lighting, is also considered dark in this study, even though it may not be pure dark)

Medium/light blonde, pure yellow, should look extremely light even in black and white photos(where as dark blondes won't necessarily look blonde in black and white photos ala Reinhard Heydrich or Otto Gunsche https://i.pinimg.com/236x/90/6b/19/9...30c6dfc50d.jpg https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/i...h-mxQM6nMUoNP7):




(Arild Ostbo)

(Vegard Bergan)

Start of blonde:




(hair is still fully yellow in a majority of outdoor pics)

Example of a photo I wasn't sure of that needed looking up(again, I google all potential light brown/blonde even if I thought it was one or the other):


(Onni Valakari)

Turned out to be light brown, looked like this in a majority of both outdoor/indoor pics(only looked blonde in like 2 out of 20+ pics), even dark brown when hair was wet(shouldn't happen to dark blondes). Another good example of someone who people who think is blonde but is actually light brown haired is Conor Mcgregor.



Example of a person I thought was gunna be dark blonde on the source page photo but ended up being brown haired:


(Jimmy Nirlo)

(again, vast majority of pics this colour, wasn't even hair dye in this case, some hair colours are just like that, and it's stupid to call it blonde if it only rarely shows up in certain lighting)
Example of pure red hair:


(Kristofer Hivju)

Most red hair numbers were under 1% so obviously it not showing up in some countries is the margin of error showing up.

Oh and, if you put a gun to my head and forced me to use the Fischer-Saller scale instead of my own, I'd tell you it'd depend on the lighting of the actual scales.


Here I'd only classify A-L and N as blonde.


Yet here I'd only classify it as A-G, so yeah, lighting, lighting, lighting. Very important if you're doing it via photos and not in person.

Sources:

Spoiler!

3 main sources

1) https://www.footballdatabase.eu/en/

2) https://www.sofascore.com/

3) https://fmdataba.com/

Source 3 was the best one, with the highest amount of available pictures. Didn't use it for all countries only because I found it later on. All teams unless specified otherwise, only players with pictures. Top players(used for some countries rather than teams) are located on the country page. If you decide to replicate my numbers and do a country using sources 1) and 2), disregard all obviously outside photos that aren't cropped to a white background, tried to do indoor only photos when I first started this but it just wasn't enough sample size so had to include outdoor, and realized indoor photos can have non-neutral lighting too. The main source, 3, is just all players with a picture from the leagues/teams mentioned below.

Sample size was mainly based on a combination of how much I cared about the results of a country and then availability. More leagues/etc being used the harder it was to find samples.

Sweden = 3), tier 1 league
N = 348
Switzerland(German/French only) = 3), tier 1, tier 2
N = 143
Ukraine = 3) tier 1
N = 555
Estonia = 1) tier 1
N = 153
Netherlands = 3) tier 1
N = 343
Serbia = 3) tier 1
N = 500
Ireland = 3), tier 1
N = 169
Norway = 1) tier 1
N = 255
England = 3) Championship League
N = 510
Italy = 3) Serie C
N = 1259
Poland = 3) tier 1
N = 669
France = 3) tier 2
N = 350
Germany = 3) tier 1
N = 409
Lithuania = 1), 3) top players from 3) because no teams available in 3), only players that play for non-Lithuanian teams to avoid repeats from 1)
N = 154
Finland = 3), tier 1
N = 259
Belgium(Flemish only) = 3) tier 1
N = 195
Austria(make sure to exclude Czech names too) = 3) tier 1
N = 316
Czech Republic = 1) tier 1
N = 200
Belarus = 1) tier 1
N = 290
Slovenia = 3) first 6 pages of top players
N = 226
Scotland = 3) tier 1
N = 280
Spain = 1) Liga 2
N = 317
Slovakia = 3) tier 1
N = 206
Latvia = 1), 3) top players, again non-Latvian teams only to avoid repeats, supplemented with https://www.estlatbl.com/en/participating-teams all Latvian teams
N = 199
Hungary = 3) top players first 6 pages
N = 222
Croatia = 2) tier 1
N = 188
Albania = 3) top players first 6 pages
N = 177
Greece = 2) tier 1
N = 153
Romania = 3) tier 1
N = 206
Bulgaria = 3) tier 1
N = 349
Russia = 3) teams = Arsenal Tula, CSKA Moscow, Lokomotiv Moscow, Spartak Moscow, Zenit St. Petersburg, Avangard Kursk, Chertanovo, Fakel Voronezh, Khimki, Nizniy Novgorod, Shinnik, Spartak M2, Tambov, Zenit 2
N = 311
Denmark = 3) tier 1
N = 330
Wales = 3) top players first 8 pages
N = 256
Iceland = 3) top players first 8 pages
N = 244
Morocco = 3) top players
N = 258
Turkey = 3) tier 1
N = 296

Example of Raw Data:(PM or post if you want any others, and if anyone wants to do more Italy regional numbers and is willing to do a tiny bit of work, have at it, as I have no plans to publish them, the labels should be fairly obvious, the less obvious ones being NWA = North-West Alps, SD = Sardinia, T = Tuscany, SC = South Central, Naples area, all of them except strictly Alpine areas and Sardinia have good N size, also don't try to guess what the other category initials stand for )

Spoiler!

Italy

Medium/Light Blonde = 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 7 0.5%

Blonde = 4 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 4 0 0 1 2 1 0 0 1 0 1 2 1 1 1 2 0 1 0 0 1 2 0 1 3 0 0 2 1 3 2 1 1 1 1 1 49 3.8%

Light = 6 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 2 2 0 2 1 1 3 1 1 6 0 0 2 3 1 1 1 2 0 2 2 3 3 2 3 0 2 0 0 2 2 0 1 3 0 1 3 1 3 2 3 1 2 1 2 89 7%

Medium/Light = 10 1 2 3 5 3 4 3 2 2 7 2 3 8 2 1 4 3 2 5 3 4 9 3 5 3 4 4 4 5 6 2 3 7 7 5 5 7 2 2 4 1 1 2 2 1 8 0 3 4 1 5 3 6 2 5 3 3 214 16.9%

Dark =

Red = 1 1 2 0.1%

M/AM/PG/P/DM = 8 7 5 7 8 2 3 5 16 16 4 9 3 11 1 5 8 8 3 5 10 8 6 13 4 9 6 8 22 5 14 4 4 4 7 5 10 10 6 8 5 9 4 3 5 10 5 5 6 4 8 3 10 3 11 5 3 12 408 32.4%

M/CA/MN = 1 2 4 0 1 2 0 1 5 6 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 1 2 0 2 1 1 0 3 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 2 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 2 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 52 4.1%

N = 27(N) 20(NW) 18(NW) 20(NEA) 28(T) 15(SD) 13(SE) 18(T) 28(SC) 29(S) 19(S) 23(SC) 18(NW) 28(NW) 13(C) 23(N) 23(C) 19(N) 18(NWA) 22(C) 23(NC) 24(SC) 21(T) 21(SE) 23(SE) 24(N) 29(N) 20(SD) 37(SC) 22(N) 23(T) 19(T) 18(T) 22(NE) 20(S) 21(N) 27(N) 33(N) 15(NC) 27(S) 20(N) 19(S) 13(C) 17(NC) 21(C) 22(S) 31(T) 11(S) 22(C) 21(C) 18(S) 16(NE) 22(S) 23(NE) 25(SE) 24(NE) 17(C) 26(C) 1259

W = 9 4 5 7 4 7 3 8 4 6 4 3 3 7 4 5 4 3 4 7 7 4 7 5 5 4 8 2 4 8 7 4 5 13 7 7 5 8 4 11 5 2 4 5 4 3 13 2 6 4 5 7 10 10 2 10 8 6 332 26.3%
(fmdataba Serie C)

Confidence rating for each category:

Spoiler!

Ranked in order =
Blonde
Light
Medium/Light
Medium/Light Blonde

I'm confident in all of them but put the most effort and had the most photos per person for blonde so, naturally that'll be the most accurate. Medium/Light hair and Medium/Light Blonde I've found is very dependent on lighting, but cases where hair colour didn't match the original photo weren't too common so it shouldn't mess up the numbers significantly.

Specific numbers I'm not confident about =
Norway medium/light hair(was one of the first countries I did and rushed it thinking I'd be able to do this quick, while I went back to re-do all other categories like blonde for Norway, I forgot to do medium/light and don't wanna re-do it now)
Croatia medium/light blonde hair(same reason)
Spain medium/light blonde hair(same reason)
Lithuania medium/light blonde hair(same reason)

and a little something extra.. Thought I may as well do certain phenotypes I was curious about while I'm tallying up hair colour. There's more numbers on this(other phenotype spectrums, including passing outside Europe, for example 2.7% of Finns pass better outside Europe or atleast among 50%+ Mongoloid groups in the European Ural areas), more on that later in a later thread as this will probably be more controversial.





Other XP autism:

https://www.theapricity.com/forum/sh...and-modern-HG)

that's gunna have to be a yikes from me dawg..

[farke1]

I have absolutely no idea how long it took you to compile all of this (and how you didn't go insane doing it), but great job. Was an interesting read.

[Lucas]

You really used only footballers?

I must tell you that according to Polish last big anthropometric survey (1956-1957) light spectrum (A-Q and red shades) for Poland is exactly 29.7% for men
https://antropologia-fizyczna.pl/sta...ci-polski-1965

Be honest you checked this website?

[Samnium]

However when you think darker for Calabria it's true only for S.Calabria. Cosentians are light on par with Apulians. All my calabrian family is quite fair in pigmentation (Type II) with some type III and also somewhat in hair color (although less than skin). There are also Atlantid looking people.

[Samnium]

To add to this Naples is not particuliarly more northern-shifted, actually Campania has results with really high MENA, at the same percentage that Sicilians.

[Lucas]

But usual bullshit about Czech lightness must be replicated again.

Here are statistic of Czech anthropologist (Tronicek) from 1968. Average hair color in regions using Fischer-Saller scale.

[XenophobicPrussian]

You really used only footballers?

I must tell you that according to Polish last big anthropometric survey (1956-1957) light spectrum (A-Q and red shades) for Poland is exactly 29.7% for men
https://antropologia-fizyczna.pl/sta...ci-polski-1965

Be honest you checked this website?

Except for Latvians, I supplemented with basketball players because there were so few Latvian footballers, and nope, you can count for yourself if you have the will power lol. https://fmdataba.com/19/l/37/ekstraklasa/best-players/(all teams near the bottom)

As for Czechs, you could try to do your own study for Poles vs Czechs, I'd even review the results for you because I'm curious about it myself, I'm not the first person who has claimed Czechs are lighter haired(Poles are lighter eyed). There's no point of posting those random Czech numbers by an anthropologist without posting Polish numbers from the exact same anthropologist.

[Supercomputer]

Appreciate the work. Numbers fit with ToeKneeHwin to a surprising degree: (More evidence he didn't just make it up like some claim)

Just like TNH

-Strong correlation of blondism with Germanicism
-Baltics noticeably darker than Scandinavia
-Ottoman part of Balkans darker than Spain (fits with genetics)
-Czechs Blonder than Poles, Austrians much blonder than Slovenians
-Small difference between East slavs (there are few geographic barriers in EE)
-High drop from Ukraine to Romania and Slovakia to Hungary

Light hair numbers correlate almost perfectly with his "blonde" numbers, Medium/Light hair correlates very well with his "light hair"

Except in few cases like Scots being lighter than English and Belgians being so close to Germans. Perhaps the former was because TNH counted red-blonds under reds while you under blond.

The only thing I find strange is Albania. If you ask me they are darker than Serbs. On the other hand Coon's map does show them lighter so who knows...

If you can give me the link for your Slovenian sample, I can distinguish Slo from Ex-Yugo

[Samnium]

However in my opinion Atlanto-Med is a very med phenotype, I don't know why you excluded from the med spectrum.

The intermediate is Atlantid not Atlanto-Med.

[Pansarkamrat]

Light hair is way higher in Sweden atleast if you only count with Swedes. Swedes are atleast 75% or 80% Blond and lightbrown haired.