Montesquieu made similar observations and suspected a connection between climate and the character of a people. I think there is a grain of truth in his claim that a temperate climate is ideal for cultural and intellectual productivity.
via Dienekes
Bronze Age Pervert
I will add to this later, but for now, I have noticed in this tropical heat body hair is just not good. If you will consider the picture I posted on the other page of the tropical/jungle Aryan, you will see he is hairless. This is appropriate for a warm climate. That Scandinavians are generally hairless proved they evolved in a tropical environment.
Fatale claimed in sbox that some of the men here only shave off body hair out of vanity to show off muscles and what what but in fact it's a social necessity. I say social because it seems that smelling bad in this country is considered one of the worst low-class offenses, and so much of the upper middle, upper class, and those who want to copy their habits, will shave off much body hair. I've found this to be a necessity as I'm literally sweating the whole time I walk on the street whether during the day or night. Two to three showers a day and shaving off body hair is a necessity then. Now, as for the many, they are becoming fat and disgusting, and aren't bothering with this, a fetid mass of grossards. Shame on you Fatale! No wonder you dumped your fiance, if he didn't shave.
Now as for what Roland says above, I still deny that those cold-weather adaptations give any real advantage in survival or reproduction; the whole Darwinian natural selection tale is a ridiculous just-so story...if having a broad nose would kill you in cold weather, then all such beings would die before the narrow nose was evolved, which takes countless generations. Apply this also to giraffes and their necks and many other examples. No, the will to live in the cold developed first, and these features came spontaneously, as Schopenhauer claims. But none of this counters the point that the home of mankind is in the tropics. Not, however, in Nigeria, but in a different kind of tropical weather, with summers around 90F and winters around 70F, with lithe, supple, tan, muscular bodies frolicking in pools with orchids, in aromatic evergreen forests, riding dolphins on raids between islands ...
I don't know about the hair density or covering of Nordics, but I do know that hair coverage is not necessarily any more relevant to climate adaptation than skin thickness. Part of the reason Negroes appear dark is the thickness of their skin, which compounds the visual effect of the melanin. Contrast this with Nordics, whose thin skin Coon noted as a key trait. From a simple perspective, this sounds like Negroes are cold adapted and Nordics are not. From a more nuanced perspective, this merely confirms the broader adaptation theory of race. Thin skin and sparse hair covering allow for more endogenous synthesis of vitamin D in environments with weak sunlight exposure. Thick skin and abundant hair coverage protect against UV radiation in environments with strong sunlight exposure.
BAP is right, though. Just writing this I felt like I was telling a just-so story. However, at least some of the theories have been worked out through genetic analysis.
Voltaire vs. Chamberlain
As inventors of art, the Aryans were chaste, temperate, and law-abiding (Voltaire 1963: 1.65). They lived in a state of paradise—naked and without luxury. They subsisted on fruit rather than cadavers. Paragons of morality and specimens of physical perfection, the Aryans embodied prelapsarian innocence and sobriety. Their gentleness, respect for animal life, and deep religiosity incarnated the virtues of “Christianity” far more than anything found in the civilized West. Unlike the Saracens, Tartars, Arabs, and the Jews, who lived by piracy, the Aryans found nourishment in a religion (Voltaire 1963: 1.229, 231; 1.60; 1.234) that was based upon universal reason (Voltaire 1963: 1.237).
Chamberlain claimed that the Rig Veda portrays the Aryans as joyous, spirited, and ambitious people. They drank, hunted, and robbed. Yet they also questioned the great riddle of existence, seeking to discover the Self in all phenomena, and all phenomena in the Self (Chamberlain 1968: 1.214). He contrasted Aryan religion, viewed as cosmic in scope, to a rigidly national faith of the Jews (Chamberlain 1968: 1.434). Chamberlain read in the Rig Veda (x.129.7) how the Aryans questioned the origin of the world and continually aspired toward uplifting their soul to God (Chamberlain 1968: 1.229–30). From this hymn, Chamberlain concluded that Aryan moral speculation did not narrow itself to questions of good and evil, as did that of the Jews (Chamberlain 1968: 2.109). Rather, the Aryan was motivated in all matters by the will.