The Greeks.......Anthropologically

[Truth Bearer]

The Greeks

The title of this section is The Greeks, and not Greece, since from the mythical days of the Argonauts to the present, neither the peninsula of Hellas nor Ionia and the Aegean Islands have been large enough to hold the far-wandering Hellenes. Greek is a language and a civilization, the Greeks a people; the Greeks are the descendants of all the peoples who have adopted and retained that language and that civilization from classical times to the present. Some of these converts to Hellenicism were inhabitants of Asia Minor, others of Thrace and Byzantium, others of the lands bordering the Black Sea, especially the Crimea.

Into the peninsula of Greece itself, many thousands of Slavs wandered as immigrants during the maximum South Slavic expansion; the Turks brought colonists, including many Albanians, and whole districts of Boeotia and Attica and of other parts of Greece are today Albanian speaking. Romance-speaking shepherds, the Vlachs, have also made the slopes of the Pindus their seasonal pastures. Since the World War many of the Greeks living in Thrace and Asia Minor have been sent to Greek soil to live, while Turks and other Moslems have been in turn repatriated. Despite these attempts at producing ethnic order, much Greek territory, especially in Macedonia, remains ethnically heterogeneous. Furthermore, the number of Greeks who live abroad, be it in Egypt, East Africa, or in the New World, is so great that the Greeks are still almost an international people. Many of the Greeks leave home to make their fortunes on less stony soil, but many of them also return.

It is inaccurate to say that the modern Greeks are different physically from the ancient Greeks; such a statement is based on an ignorance of the Greek ethnic character. In classical times the Greeks included many kinds of people living in different places, as they do today. If one refers to the inhabitants of Attica during the sixth century, or to the Spartans of Leonidas, then the changes in these localities have probably not been nearly as great as that between the Germans of Tacitus and the living South Germans, to cite but a single example.

Within the peninsula of Hellas, despite the mobility of the Greeks to and from their country, the internal mobility has not been sufficient to break down strong local differentiations in head form. The Epirotes, like their neighbors the Toscs, have an extremely high cephalic index mean, 88, and there seems to be a strongly brachycephalic zone running down the western slopes of the mountain core from Albania to the Gulf of Corinth, and perhaps beyond. [130] It is an extension of the same zone which extends all the way from the Alpine racial center in France, and more specifically, of the population studied in the region of Gjinokaster in southernmost Albania. The Greeks of Macedonia, again, who live in settlements interspersed with those of Bulgars and of Turks, possess the usual West Balkan brachycephaly, with mean cephalic indices of 86 for Christians, and 84.6 for Moslems. Greeks from the northern shore of Asia Minor have a mean of 87, while those from the Black Sea coast in Rumania, and members of the colony in the Crimea, are low brachycephals, with a mean of 82.

In Greece itself, most of the Peloponnesus, Attica, Euboea, and the Ionian Isles are characterized by a mean cephalic index of 81 to 82; this is also true of the Greeks who are found abroad, as in America. Aside from local groups in regions which, in classical times, were not truly Greece, the modern Greeks are for the most part low brachycephals. In Thessaly a provincial mean of 77 has been reported; and Greeks from the shore of the Sea of Marmora have a mean of 79. There are still, therefore, local groups of Greeks who are largely long-headed.

The stature mean for Greeks in general runs about 167 cm., and there seems to be little regional variation; those in Asia Minor and in the Crimea are a millimeter shorter, those measured in Boston a millimeter taller. The Greeks are as tall as most South Germans or northern Frenchmen; their stature is too elevated for the prevalence, in partial brachycephalization, of a strong, small Mediterranean strain. About half of them have brunet-white or light brown skin color, the rest the usual pinkish-white of central and northern Europe; over 80 per cent have dark brown hair, the rest have hair evenly divided between black and the lighter shades of brown. Pronounced blondism, although rare, is not unknown. The beard is rarely lighter than the head hair, in contrast to the condition found among Ghegs and Montenegrins; the implication is that the dark brown hair of the majority of Greeks is a pure brunet condition. Over 65 pa-cent of Greeks have pure brown eyes, and most of these are dark brown: pure lights are sporadic, but there is a 15 per cent incidence of light-mixed iris forms.

The pigment ratios given above apply to Greeks as a whole; there is evidence, however, of considerable regional variation. The Macedonian Greeks are much lighter, especially those that are Moslem, while the Greeks of the lonian islands are darker, as are, in all probability, most Peloponnesians.

For a more detailed study of the Greeks, we may examine the series measured in Boston, which, although without doubt subjected to selective forces, does not seem too much at variance from native Greek sample for our purposes. The men measured came from all parts of Greece, and from Asia Minor. Their mean stature, 168 cm., is moderately tall; their bodily proportions are for the most part intermediate; the shoulders arc broad, the trunk length moderate, as shown by a relative sitting height of 52.9; the relative span is 104.

Their heads, with a mean cephalic index of 82, are long for brachycephals (189 mm.), and of moderate breadth (154 mm.); the head height of 127 mm. is moderately high. The occiput protrudes but little in most of the group; 40 per cent have lambdoidal flattening, while some degree of occipital flattening occurs in over 50 per cent. It is pronounced, however. in only about 20 per cent. Their facial breadths are: minimum frontal, 107 mm., bizygomatic, 142 mm., and bigonial, 111 mm.; the great breadth of the jaw, as compared with that of the forehead, is a Greek specialty, and is strongly contrasted with the inverted triangle face form of Albanian Dinarics. The face height is 124.4 mm., the upper face height 75.6 mm.; the facial index, 87, is mesoprosopic, the upper facial index, 53, a little high in comparison with the foregoing. The noses are both long (58.8 mm.) and moderately broad (37 mm.); the nasal index of 63.2, leptorrhine.

The dimensions given above are for the most part quite variable; a number of distinct types are included, but the metrical character of the group as a whole indicates a blending of Dinarics and Alpines with Atlanto-Mediterraneans, which is confirmed by the observational data to follow.

The head hair is straight in slightly more than half the group, wavy in most of the rest, but curly hair is not unusual. It is usually medium to fine in texture. With at least half of adult male Greeks, it is thin on the head, and about one out of five of any adult group is bald. In old age baldness affects the majority. The beard development is as a rule thicker than in most European groups, and the body hair is often abundant. The eyebrows are often thick, and are concurrent in 75 per cent of the group; the browridges are usually of moderate development. The foreheads give, in most cases, an appearance of great width, and are seldom more than very slightly sloping. The nasal characters of the Greeks are variable, but there are definite trends which pervade the whole group. The root is, as a rule, moderately high, and medium to broad; narrow roots, usual among most northern Europeans and among Dinarics, are rare. The bridge is of medium to great height, almost never low; the breadth is as a rule medium to broad. The nasal profile is straight in about 45 per cent of the group, convex in about 30 per cent, and concave in but 10 per cent, while the rest are wavy or concavo-convex. The tip is as a rule thick, and elevated more often than it is depressed. The nasal wings, as a rule medium, are flaring more often than compressed. On the whole few Greek noses can qualify as Dinaric in the strict sense; more are typically Alpine, while a straight-profiled, consistently wide form is the commonest.

There is nothing remarkable about the lips and mouth region of the Greeks; both membranous and integumental lips thicknesses, are of usual European dimensions, and eversion is as a rule slight to medium. The lip seam, however, is usually visible, and is sometimes prominently elevated. A slight degree of facial prognathism is found in nearly half the group; alveolar prognathism is rare. Typically Greek features are full, curved temples, full cheeks, a laterally prominent malar region, and strongly everted gonial angles. In these facial characters well over half show an extreme development for Europeans.

Within the Greek group, heavy beards, heavy browridges, and concurrent eyebrows tend to associate themselves with an Alpine type; there is also a linkage between tall stature, in the 170 cm. class, cephalic indices of about 80, straight noses, dark brown hair, and dark brown eyes. This last set of associations clearly denotes the presence of a strong Atlanto-Mediterranean element. There are also strong connections between black hair, occipital flattening, and narrow facial features, which means Dinaric or Armenoid. That the small amount of blondism among the Greeks is mostly Nordic in origin is indicated by its linkage with external eyefolds, relative thinness of beard, and absence of eyebrow concurrency.

The Greeks, in short, are a blend of racial types, of which two are most important; the Atlanto-Mediterranean and the Alpine. Dinaricisrn here is present, but not all pervading; true Alpines are commoner than complete Dinarics. The Nordic element is weak, as it probably has been since the days of Homer. The racial type to which Socrates belonged is today the most important, while the Atlanto-Mediterranean, prominent in Greece since the Bronze Age, is still a major factor, it is my personal reaction to the living Greeks that their continuity with their ancestors of the ancient world is remarkable, rather than the opposite.

The living inhabitants of Crete differ considerably from the mainland Greeks. [131] They are taller, with a mean stature of 169 cm., and mesocephalic, with a mean cephalic index of 79. In some districts, as at Pedhiádha, the mean is actually on the upper border of dolichocephaly, at 77. The heads of the mesocephalic Cretans are as large as those of Nordics or Atlanto-Mediterraneans; a mean length of 193 mm., and a breadth of 149 mm., characterizes the group with an index mean of 77.

In facial and nasal dimensions, the Cretans resemble the Greeks. They are, however, somewhat blonder; only 35 per cent have pure brown eyes, while about 7 per cent have eyes that are light or predominantly light; the rest are mixed, with dark mixture in the great majority. About 25 per cent have black hair, and about 50 per cent dark brown; 10 per cent are light brown or blond, the rest medium brown. As among Albanians and not among most mainland Greeks, the beards are much lighter; 40 per cent have blond or light brown mustaches, with an equal number black or dark brown. About one-sixth have light brown to very brunet-white skin color.

One special group, the Sphakiots, living near the western end of the south side of the island, differ from the other Cretans in a number of characters; they are very tall, with a mean stature of 175 cm., and meso- to sub-brachycephalic, with a mean cephalic index of 81.6. They have especially large heads, with a mean length of 191 mm. and breadth ci 155 mm.; their faces are longer than the others, and equally broad or broader. Morphologically Dinaric types are common among them; they may be compared with Montenegrins and the northernmost Ghegs. According to the general assumption of authorities on Crete, the Sphakioti are the partial descendants of the Dorians who invaded the island at the end of the Minoan period. That some of them do resemble the traditional Spartan type is very likely. One can only derive them from the north, from the region in which the larger branch of the Dinaric race was formed.

The living Cretans are for the most part Atlanto-Mediterraneans, and there has been no post-Dorian migration into the island which could have brought such a type in large numbers. The only logical explanation of its presence in Crete, formed on the basis of available data, is that some this element existed in Crete in Minoan, probably for the most part Middle and Late Minoan, times; that migrations from the Greek mainland at the time of the Minoan collapse may have brought more.

The fact that a larger number of Cretans are blond than is the case with Greeks is a matter that requires ample data and some analysis to explain. One may attribute much of the blondism, perhaps, to the invasion that brought the Sphakiots, while some of it must be inherent in the Atlanto-Mediterranean race. But the arrival of the early Greek-speakers may have brought blondism other than that borne by the brachycephals, and Crete is an island; it is a principle of insular anthropology, well borne out by the British Isles, that when a numerous group invades an island it has a better chance for survival than in a continental area where there is a nearby mountainous or forest-covered hinterland, to which earlier types may retreat and from which they may reëmerge.

The important discovery about Crete, however, is the fact that its population is mostly Atlanto-Mediterranean; this race seems to be almost equally important in most of Greece. It has also appeared in the Dinaric area, and in Serbia; we shall see more of it in the eastern Balkans.


Notes:

130 A bibliography of works on the physical anthropology of the modern Greeks would include:

Apostolidès, BSAP, ser. 3, vol. 6, 1883, pp. 614-616.
Cucukala, G. J., AnthPr, vol. 8, 1930, pp. 12-136.
Hasluck, M. M., and Morant, G. M., Biometrika, vol. 21, 1929, pp. 325-334.
Hrdlicka, A., The Old Americans.
Koumaris,J., ACAP, 1931. Paris, 1931, pp. 218-221.
Neophytos, A. C., Anth, vol. 1, 1890, pp. 679-711; vol. 2, 1891, pp. 25-35.
Ornstein, ZFE, vol. 9, 1877, pp. (39)-(41); vol. 11, 1879, pp. (305)-(306).
Pittard, E., ASAG, vol. 1, 1914, pp. 7-36; BDAIP, vol. 25, 1915, pp. 447-454.
Schiff, F., ZFE, vol. 46, 1914, pp. 14-40.
Stephanos, C., DESM, ser. 4, 10, 1884, Article Grèce, p. 432.
Weisbach, A., MAGW, vol. 11, 1882, pp. 72-97.

Besides these published works reference has been made to a series of 113 Greeks measured in Boston in 1932, by Drs. B. Gardner, S. Kimball, M. Titiev, and Mr. E. Muller, as part of a graduate course in field methods, under the direction of the author.

131 Hawes, C. H., ARBS, vol. 14, 1909-10, pp. 258-280; RBAA, supplement, 1910.
Luschan, F. von, ZFE, vol. 45, 1913, pp. 21-393.
Rosinski, B., Kosmos, vol. 50, 1925, pp. 584-637.
Schiff, F., ZFE, vol. 46, 1914, pp. 8-13.

[preston]

I have this to state as far as our anthropological profile...

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[Truth Bearer]

The Greeks

(4) The Greeks The question of the origin of the Greeks has long been an apparently insoluble enigma. For centuries, before the development of archaeology as a scientific discipline, history began with Herodotus, and Homer was a small window permitting tantalizing glimpses into the most distant past. In recent years, however, great advances have been made toward the solution of this problem, by the linguistic and historical researches of Myres,19 and by the publication of skeletal material by Fürst and Koumaris.

The historical reconstruction may be briefly summarized as follows: During the Neolithic, Greece was culturally connected with North Africa and the rest of the Mediterranean basin. The one skull which is known is of normal Mediterranean racial type. In the early Metal Age, immigrants from the Cycladic islands, of Asia Minor origin, introduced copper to Greece, with the mother goddess cult, and settled on either side of the Isthmus of Corinth. In the meanwhile, Painted Pottery people of Danubian cultural origin carne down to Greece from the north, driven by Corded people. Thus, by 2000 B.C., there were, from the cultural standpoint, three elements in the Greek population: (a) local Neolithic Mediterranean; (b) Danubian from the north; (c) Cycladic people of eventual Asia Minor origin.

Between 2000 B.C. and the period of Homer, Greece was invaded three times more: (a) the Corded people (Myres calls them "Kurgan" people), who came from the north about 1900 B.C., and who, Myres thinks,20 may have brought the Indo-European basis of Hellenic speech; (b) by Minoans from Crete, who founded the "long genealogies"; dynasties of rulers at Thebes, Athens, Mycenae, and elsewhere. Most of these entered Greece about 1400 B.C., although some may have dated back to 1700 B.C.; (c) by "divineborn" foreigners, such as Atreus, Pelops, etc., who came from across the Aegean in ships, learned Greek, usurped thrones, and married the daughters of the kings of Minoan ancestry.

These foreigners, whom Myres likens to the Normans in English history, begat the heroes of the Trojan war. The war itself reflects the close relationship between these adventurers and Priam's Troy. In the wars, the Homeric heroes formed the nuclei of small groups of "companions"; these were homeless adventurers, refugees, and poor relatives, who had attached themselves to the heroes in a close personal bond. The bulk of the Greek army was composed of local conscripts from the various kingdoms of Greece, who were of a different ethnic origin and who, like Thersites, had no especial interest in destroying Troy.

The post-Homeric and Iron Age Dorians, long regarded as fresh invaders front the north were, according to Myres's reconstruction, but Greek speakers who had been isolated in the Mt. Olympus region by the warlike activities of the Thebans, and who had obtained iron from Asia Minor.

The Greeks of the great period of Athenian civilization were thus the product of much mixture from diverse ethnic sources, as the study of the origin of the Greek language also reveals.

The skeletal record can, in part, supplement the evidence of reconstructed history. Six skulls from Hagias Kosmas near Athens represent the period of amalgamation of Neolithic Mediterranean, Danubian, and Cycladic elements, between 2500 and 2200 B.C.21 Three are dolichocephalic, one mesocephalic, and two brachyceplialic. The faces of all are narrow, the noses leptorrhine, the orbits high. One may conclude that a Cretan type of Mediterranean and the Cypriote Dinaric form were loth present.

Twenty-five Mid-Helladic crania represent the period after the arrival of the Corded or "Kurgan" folk from the north, and during the seizure of power by the Minoan conquerors from Crete.22 Of these, twenty-three come from Asine, and two from Mycenae. Needless to say, the population of this time was very mixed. Only two skulls are brachycephalic; they are both male, and both associated with very short stature. One is of medium size, high-vaulted, and narrow-nosed and narrow-faced; the other extremely broad-faced and chamaerrhine. They seem to represent two different broad-headed types, both of which can probably be found in Greece today.

The long heads are not of uniform type; some, with large vaults and strong browridges, with deep nasion depressions, remind one of the larger varieties of Neolithic dolichocephals, of both Long Barrow and Corded types; and Fürst feels that a number of them are very similar to the Late Neolithic crania from Scandinavia, of about equal age. Needless to say, both Corded and Megalithic people were present in Denmark and Sweden at about this time.

The rest of the long-headed crania, which are probably more truly representative of the bulk of the Mid-Helladic population, are of the slightbrowed, high-nosed type familiar in Crete and Asia Minor during the same epoch. They, too, are short statured, while the few examples of the larger-headed variety are, as is expected, taller. It is impossible, with present data, to isolate front the main body of these crania a Danubian type, although the latter may well have been present.

Forty-one Late Helladic skulls, dated between 1500 and 1200 B.C., and coming likewise from Argolis, may include those of some of the "divineborn" invaders. Among these, one-fifth are brachycephalic, and apparently largely of the Cypriote Dinaric type. Of the long-headed skulls, a large number belongs now to the larger, more heavily marked varieties, and fewer to the smaller Mediterranean The similarity to the northern types, and especially to the Corded, is even stronger than before. This increase in a non-Minoan direction may perhaps be attributed to the arrival of the ancestors of Homer's heroes.

This survey carries it,, through the Bronze Age. The racial history of Greece in full classical time is not as well documented as that of the periods just studied. Until the inception of the slave trade23 in Athens and other centers of manufacture and export, there can, however, have been little population change. In Argolis, the Mediterranean racial element is the only one clearly shown in six proto-geometric and "Hellenic" crania.24 According to Koumaris's compilation of cranial indicies,25 mesocephaly reigned everywhere in Greece during the classical period, and into Hellenistic and Roman times. The mean index for Athens in the great period was 75.6, on 30 crania. This mesocephaly probably conceals the presence of a varied racial amalgam, with Mediterranean strains predominant. The Greek colonies in Asia Minor show much the same combination of types which we have seen in Greece itself.26 Mixture with Asiatics must have been masked by the essential racial similarity of the populations on either side of the Aegean.

Greek literature and Greek art furnish an abundance of evidence as to the pigmentation and the characteristic facial features of the ancient inhabitants of Hellas. The Olympian gods, ancestors of the semi-heroes, were for the most part blond, with ivory shins and golden hair. Athene was gray eyed. Poseidon, however, was black haired. These gods were little different if we may believe Homer, from their descendants the heroes, most of whom were white limbed and golden haired.27

Odysseus's herald Eurybates was dark skinned and curly haired; Achilles's son Neoptolemos, perhaps by a brunet mother, was rufous. The Spartans were said to be blond and in fifth-century Athens women bleached their hair with an herb which turned it golden yellow, in pursuance of a blond ideal. Vase painters of the sixth to fourth centuries were able to distinguish blond and brunet color by conventional glazes, and applied this distinction to representations of living models as well as of heroes.

Greek terminology included words for blue and brown eyes, and for green ones, the color of an olive leaf, as well; in skin color it recognized rosy vascularity, a pallid hue resembling cream cheese or the skin of unripe apples, a honey color, and a deep brunet. To Phoenician merchants and tanned sailors of other nationalities, they gave the name "phoinix," comparable to the color of a ripe date, or a bay horse. Thus within the Greek commonwealth as without it, all variations of pigmentation known to modern Europeans were probably to be found.

The Minoan convention of a high-rooted nose and a lithe body passed over into classical Greece as an artistic ideal, but the portrait busts of individuals show that it cannot have been common in life. Villains, comical characters, satyrs, centaurs, giants, and all unpleasant people and those not to be admired, are often shown in sculpture and in vase painting as broad-faced, snub-nosed, and heavily bearded. Socrates, who belonged to this type, was maliciously compared to a satyr. This type may still be found its Greece, and is an ordinary Alpine. In the early skeletal, remains it is represented by some of the brachycephalic crania.

On the whole, one is impressed, after looking at the portrait busts of Athenians, and the clay masks of Spartans, with their resemblance to present-day western Europeans. This resemblance becomes less marked in the art of the Byzantines, however, where modern near Eastern faces are more frequent; but the Byzantines lived mostly outside of Greece. As will be shown later (Chapter XI, section 14), the modern inhabitants of Greece itself differ surprisingly little from their classical predecessors.




Notes:

18 Our data on which is based the assumption that all Cretans were of short stature are not numerous. The Philistines, presumably Cretan relatives in Palestine, are thought to have been tall, while some of the Mycenaeans in Greece were of large stature.

19 Myres, J. L., op. cit., 1930.

20 In view of evidence to be presented later, it is more likely that the Danubians brought it (Chapter VI).

21 Koumaris, J., RA, vol. 44, 1934, pp. 248-251.

22 Fürst, C. M., LUA, N. F., vol. 26, #8, 1930; VHPA, vol. 4, 1930 pp. 3-14.

23 Zaborowski, S., ARSI for 1912, 1913, pp. 597-608.

24 Fürst, C.M., LUA, vol. 26, #8, 1930, pp. 92-95.

25 Koumaris .J., ACAP, 1931, pp. 218 seq.

26 Schumacher, O., ZFMA, vol. 25, 1926, pp. 435-463.
Zaborowski, S., BSAP ser. 4, vol. 3, 1881, pp. 234-238.

27 Myres has conclusively demonstrated that the much disputed word zanqós actually did mean "yellowish" or "sandy". Pp. 192-194.

[PhiliptheUniterchaeronea]

I basically do not know any Greeks that are 167cm. Most tower above that and in my neighbourhood being over 6 feet tall is very very common. Is that 167cm a measurement from ancient times?

[Orphic_Hymn]

Originally Posted by PhiliptheUniterchaeronea

I basically do not know any Greeks that are 167cm. Most tower above that and in muy neighbourhood over 6 feet tall is very very commone. Is that 167cm a measurement from ancient times?

I know one or two but since I'm 1.85 as are the vast majority of those I know are give or take about the same height, I'll agreee with you but it all depends on when these papers were written.
Population of the 50's or 30's since thats when the papers cited are dated have little to do when refering to height of today's population basically due to nutrition and everyday habbits/life, but we generally do get an idea on anthropologic factors.