Height, cephalic index and pigmentation of former USSR nations.

[Lucas]

Below is a metrical comparison of ethnic groups who inhabited former USSR (body length, cephalic index, facial index, % of concave noses, % of convex noses, eye pigmentation and hair pigmentation).

For the last two lower values mean less pigmentation.

Data used: Bunak, 1965, M.V. Vitov, 1964, 1997, K.Yu. Mark, 1975, G.F. Debets, 1941, N.N. Cheboksarov, 1946, K.Yu. Mark, 1960, G F. Debets, 1933, P. I. Zenkevich, 1941, M. S. Akimova, 1974, T. I. Alekseeva, 1955, T. V. Trofimova, 1949, V. D. Dyachenko, 1965, R. Ya. Denisova, 1958, V.P. Alekseev, 1994, M.V. Vitov et al., 1959, T. Tot, 1974.

Anthropological expedition started in 1955 and ended in 1959 when people were on average 10 cm shorter than today.

The original table included Swedes and Hungarians, but those studies were done outside USSR and the numbers didn't align with the rest of the table, thus I removed them.

It was from Deryabin study taken?

[Lucas]

Below is a metrical comparison of ethnic groups who inhabited former USSR (body length, cephalic index, facial index, % of concave noses, % of convex noses, eye pigmentation and hair pigmentation).

For the last two lower values mean less pigmentation.

Data used: Bunak, 1965, M.V. Vitov, 1964, 1997, K.Yu. Mark, 1975, G.F. Debets, 1941, N.N. Cheboksarov, 1946, K.Yu. Mark, 1960, G F. Debets, 1933, P. I. Zenkevich, 1941, M. S. Akimova, 1974, T. I. Alekseeva, 1955, T. V. Trofimova, 1949, V. D. Dyachenko, 1965, R. Ya. Denisova, 1958, V.P. Alekseev, 1994, M.V. Vitov et al., 1959, T. Tot, 1974.

Anthropological expedition started in 1955 and ended in 1959 when people were on average 10 cm shorter than today.

The original table included Swedes and Hungarians, but those studies were done outside USSR and the numbers didn't align with the rest of the table, thus I removed them.

But you must take into account that numbers on nasal and facial index aren't comparable to papers form other European countries. Russian anthropologists used so called nasal / facial height measured from the brow line not nasion, so it means all nasal and facial indices are higher then there would be when measured from nasion (on average about 3 points higher for facial index and 5 for nasal).

[Komintasavalta]

Here's a plot of average eye color compared to average hair color. The clustering and lines to nearest neigbors are based on a matrix of z-scores of the full table:



Erzya were more light-eyed and light-haired than Moksha, which matches the results of Karin Mark (even though I don't know if the data for Erzya and Moksha was taken from Mark).

The group "White Sea - Baltic type (Vepsians and Karelians)" had lighter hair color than Estonians. I'm wondering if it's because it didn't consist of all Karelians and Vepsians, but only those of Беломоро-балтийская раса? Or does it consist of all Karelians and Vepsians, but you just included their characteristic type next to their name?

Russian anthropologists used so called nasal / facial height measured from the brow line not nasion, so it means all nasal and facial indices are higher then there would be when measured from nasion (on average about 3 points higher for facial index and 5 for nasal).

Doesn't it make nasal index lower though, because nasal index is width divided by height.

[Russki]

Erzya were more light-eyed and light-haired than Moksha, which matches the results of Karin Mark (even though I don't know if the data for Erzya and Moksha was taken from Mark).

Any theory how did it happen?

Autosomal admixture of Erzya and Moksha is pretty much the same.

[Russki]

[Komintasavalta]

Any theory how did it happen?

Autosomal admixture of Erzya and Moksha is pretty much the same.

Maybe it's that Moksha are more mixed with Russians, because Erzya usually have slightly higher Mongoloid ancestry than Moksha. For example here I did min-max scaling for PC2 in G25, so that the smallest value became 0 and the largest value became 100:

$ curl  -Lso mas 'https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1wZr-UOve0KUKo_Qbgeo27m-CQncZWb8y'
$ sed 1d mas|awk -F, 'NR==FNR{if(NR==1||$3<=min)min=$3;if(NR==1||$3>=max)max=$3;n[NR]=$1;a[NR]=$3;next}END{for(i in a)print(a[i]-min)/(max-min),n[i]}'|sort -n|awk '{printf"%.1f %s\n",100*(1-$1),$2}'|egrep 'Erzya|Moksha|Karelian|Komi|Veps|Russian|Mishar'
21.9 Komi
20.9 Tatar_Mishar
19.9 Russian_Leshukonsky
16.8 Russian_Pinezhsky
16.7 Russian_Pinega
15.3 Vepsian
14.6 Russian_Krasnoborsky
14.5 Karelian
13.7 Erzya
12.9 Russian_Kostroma
12.7 Moksha
9.9 Russian_Yaroslavl
9.9 Russian_Tver
9.2 Russian_Ryazan
8.3 Russian_Kursk
8.1 Russian_Orel
7.9 Russian_Kaluga
7.7 Russian_Pskov
7.3 Russian_Voronez
7.3 Russian_Belgorod
6.9 Russian_Smolensk

[Russki]

Maybe it's that Moksha are more mixed with Russians, because Erzya usually have slightly higher Mongoloid ancestry than Moksha. For example here I did min-max scaling for PC2 in G25, so that the smallest value became 0 and the largest value became 100:

$ curl  -Lso mas 'https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=1wZr-UOve0KUKo_Qbgeo27m-CQncZWb8y'
$ sed 1d mas|awk -F, 'NR==FNR{if(NR==1||$3<=min)min=$3;if(NR==1||$3>=max)max=$3;n[NR]=$1;a[NR]=$3;next}END{for(i in a)print(a[i]-min)/(max-min),n[i]}'|sort -n|awk '{printf"%.1f %s\n",100*(1-$1),$2}'|egrep 'Erzya|Moksha|Karelian|Komi|Veps|Russian|Mishar'
21.9 Komi
20.9 Tatar_Mishar
19.9 Russian_Leshukonsky
16.8 Russian_Pinezhsky
16.7 Russian_Pinega
15.3 Vepsian
14.6 Russian_Krasnoborsky
14.5 Karelian
13.7 Erzya
12.9 Russian_Kostroma
12.7 Moksha
9.9 Russian_Yaroslavl
9.9 Russian_Tver
9.2 Russian_Ryazan
8.3 Russian_Kursk
8.1 Russian_Orel
7.9 Russian_Kaluga
7.7 Russian_Pskov
7.3 Russian_Voronez
7.3 Russian_Belgorod
6.9 Russian_Smolensk

Mixing with Russians would explain lower Mongoloid admixture of Moksha, but it wouldn't explain why they're darker than both Russians and Erzya.

One anthropologist assumed that Moksha may have higher Southern European ancestry, but it's not showing in admixture.

But he also noted that Moksha are more Uralic-influenced than Erzya - flatter faces, higher diameter of cheekbones, which is the total opposite of admixture patterns you found.

Erzya on the left, Moksha on the right.

[Komintasavalta]

Mixing with Russians would explain lower Mongoloid admixture of Moksha, but it wouldn't explain why they're darker than both Russians and Erzya.

In the set of data that was collected by Karin Mark and published by Leiu Heapost in 2008, the average eye color is listed as .53 for Erzya, .62 for Russians from the Middle Volga region, and .71 for Moksha (https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Publicati...8-b9b3010eabad). The average hair color is listed as 3.11, 3.25, and 3.18, respectively. So Moksha are lighter than Russians from the Middle Volga region based on hair color, even though they're darker based on eye color.

↓ In my Eurasian ADMIXTURE run with two components, Erzya had on average 8.8% of the Mongoloid component but Moksha had 7.7%. However I used the same Erzya and Moksha samples from Jeong et al. 2019 that are used in G25 (with the prefix MOE).

2.1 (1.9-2.4) Russian_Smolensk (n=2)
2.4 (2.3-2.5) Russian_Pskov (n=2)
2.9 (2.4-3.4) Russian_Kaluga (n=2)
3.0 (2.4-3.6) Russian_Belgorod (n=2)
3.0 (1.7-5.4) Estonian (n=10)
3.9 (3.9-3.9) Russian_Kursk (n=1)
5.9 (4.7-7.2) Russian_Ryazan (n=4)
7.7 (4.2-10.2) Finnish (n=8)
7.7 (5.8-10.5) Moksha (n=7)
8.8 (5.3-9.7) Erzya (n=6)
8.9 (5.8-11.9) Karelian (n=15)
9.6 (8.4-11.2) Russian_Archangelsk_Krasnoborsky (n=6)
9.7 (7.0-11.7) Russian_Vologda (n=3)
10.7 (8.7-12.5) Veps (n=10)
13.2 (12.5-14.5) Russian_Archangelsk_Pinezhsky (n=5)
15.6 (12.3-19.4) Tatar_Mishar (n=10)
15.7 (14.1-16.8) Russian_Archangelsk_Leshukonsky (n=5)
21.6 (20.2-23.9) Tatar_Kazan (n=13)
23.5 (14.4-27.8) Chuvash (n=16)
28.6 (26.2-30.0) Bashkir_North (n=6)
28.7 (25.6-31.0) Udmurt (n=10)
31.3 (28.9-33.6) Bashkir_Central (n=4)
45.7 (40.3-49.5) Bashkir_South (n=6)

However in Mark and Heapost 2014, Moksha are listed as having a higher index of Mongoloidness than Erzya
(https://antropologia-fizyczna.pl/sta...logia-fizyczna):

[Russki]

In the set of data that was collected by Karin Mark and published by Leiu Heapost in 2008, the average eye color is listed as .53 for Erzya, .62 for Russians from the Middle Volga region, and .71 for Moksha (https://www.etis.ee/Portal/Publicati...8-b9b3010eabad). The average hair color is listed as 3.11, 3.25, and 3.18, respectively. So Moksha are lighter than Russians from the Middle Volga region based on hair color, even though they're darker based on eye color.

In the present table both Erzya and Moksha are darker than every group of Russians.

I'm going to disagree with Karin Mark, he also put Estonians blonder than Swedes which is just as unrealistic.

[Komintasavalta]

In the present table both Erzya and Moksha are darker than every group of Russians.

I'm going to disagree with Karin Mark, he also put Estonians blonder than Swedes which is just as unrealistic.

Mark's dataset only included the Swedish-speaking population of Finland, which is not the same thing as Swedes. They have a lot of German ancestry, and some of them like the Mannerheim family probably even have Jewish ancestry. For subjective attributes like eye color, I think Mark's dataset is more reliable than your table, because Mark collected all of her data herself, but your table combines data from different sources.

Based on my small-scale surveys of hundreds of athletes, I have found both Estonians and Finns to be lighter-eyed than Swedes (https://www.theapricity.com/forum/sh...46#post6966146). I haven't looked at the hair color of Finns, but I also found Estonians to be slightly more light-haired than Swedes. And I found that among hockey players who I estimated to be ethnic Finns or Finland-Swedes, players whose place of birth was in the Eastern Finnish dialect area were more light-eyed than players whose place of birth was in the Western Finnish dialect area, but players who had a Swedish-sounding name were darker than either of them. Surnames that end in "-nen" are more common among Eastern Finns than Western Finns, but among hockey players who I estimated to be ethnic Finns, I also found players whose surname ended in "-nen" to be more light-eyed than other players.

Heapost 2008 also said: "It could be added that, according to Juhan Aul, the Swedes who used to live in Estonia before World War II were also somewhat darker-coloured than Estonians [1, 2]."

The sources were these:

1. Aul J. (1936) Anthropologische Forschungen in Eesti. Tartu Ülikooli Zooloogia-Instituudi ja -Muuseumi tööd. Nr. 19, Tartu
2. Ауль Ю. (1964) Антропология эстонцев. TRÜ Toim., 158.

From the second source (http://dspace.ut.ee/handle/10062/41630?show=full):

> У восточных финских народов волосы еще более темные. В большинстве районов у мордвы, например, преобладают темно-русые волосы (Марк, 1960), у марийцев 80,8% темноволосых (Бунак, 1924), у вотяков, т. е. удмуртов 75% (Sahm, 1929) и т. д.
> У самых близких соседей эстонцев — у русских восточных окраин Эстонии — я мог отметить 37,6% белокурых, 25,3% светло-русых, 26,5% русых и 10,6% темно-русых и черных волос.
> Среди латышей в северной Латвии я нашел 60,9% светловолосых лиц, 24,4% с русыми и 14,7% с темно-русыми и черными волосами, То же самое мог здесь констатировать уже Г. Бакман
> (Васктащ 1925). По данным же М. Хеша (Hesch, 1933) волосы латышей заметно светлее: 59 % светловолосых..
> Среди литовцев М. Хеш (Hesch, 1933) нашел 67,2;% светловолосых.
> Сравнительно светловолосыми являются бывшие жители" острова Рухну: К- Хильден (Hildén, 1929) нашел здесь 79,0% светловолосых. Бывшие шведы Эстонии — как и шведы Финляндии — напротив, заметно более темноволосые: среди них только 65,6% светловолосых (Aul, 1937).
> Среди шведов.Швеции констатировано 72,7% светловолосых (в том числе 3,3% рыжеволосых) и 27,3% темноволосых (Limdborg and binders,.1926). В Норвегии X. Брин (Bryn und
> Schreiner, 1929) зарегистрировал 1,4% рыжих, 49,9% белокурых, 32,1% светло-русых и русых, 16,6% темно- и черно-русых волос.

Translation:

> The eastern Finnish peoples have even darker hair. In most areas, the Mordovians, for example, have dark blond hair (Mark, 1960), the Mari are 80.8% dark-haired (Bunak, 1924), among the Votyaks, i.e., the Udmurts, 75% (Sahm, 1929), etc.
> Among the closest neighbors of the Estonians - the Russian eastern outskirts of Estonia - I could note 37.6% blond, 25.3% light blond, 26.5% blond and 10.6% dark blond and black hair.
> Among Latvians in northern Latvia, I found 60.9% of fair-haired faces, 24.4% with fair-haired and 14.7% with dark-blond and black hair, G. Bakman could already state the same here (Vasktash 1925). According to M. Hesch (1933), the hair of Latvians is noticeably lighter: 59% are fair-haired.
> Among the Lithuanians M. Hesch (1933) found 67.2% light-haired.
> The former inhabitants of the Ruhnu Island are comparatively fair: K. Hilden (Hildén, 1929) found 79.0% fair-haired here. The former Swedes of Estonia, like the Swedes of Finland, on the contrary, are noticeably darker-haired: among them only 65.6% are fair-haired (Aul, 1937).
> Among Swedes, 72.7% are fair-haired (including 3.3% are red-haired) and 27.3% are dark-haired in Sweden (Limdborg and binders, 1926). In Norway, X. Bryn (Bryn und Schreiner, 1929) recorded 1.4% red, 49.9% white, 32.1% light blond and blond, 16.6% dark and black blond hair.

Löfgren 1937 ("Über die anthropologie der Bewohner von Uusimaa") found that in Uusimaa, which is the province of Finland around Helsinki, Swedish-speaking people were darker-haired than Finnish-speaking people (https://finnanthro.blogspot.com/2006...d-summary.html):

> L. Löfgren had created a rather large (219 pages) study on the anthropological qualities of the population of Nyland. The measurements had been performed between the years 1928 and 1932. They had studied 394 men, out of which 211 were Swedish speakers and 252 women, out of which 162 were Swedish speakers.
> ...
> However the Finnish speaking men and women of Nyland were more blond than their Swedish speaking countrymen.