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Thread ID: 7006 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-05-30
2003-05-30 19:04 | User Profile
Eastern Slavs: Anthropology and Ethnic History, Chapter II, "Modern Eastern Slavonic Peoples by V. Ye. Deryabin, p. 31 par. 3 - p 32 par. 3.
My comments in square brackets.
Russians
The Russian anthropological expedition obtained more detailed data on the Great Russians. This expedition was organized by the Ethnographic Institute of the Academy of Sciences and lasted 5 years, from 1955 to 1959. V. V. Bunak [1965, 1965a, 19656), the premier domestic Soviet anthropologist led the expedition. The anthropologists studied more than 100 groups of Russians, living on the territory of Russia where in the Russian people formed, from the 14th to the 17th century.
What place, anthropologically speaking, do the Great Russians occupy among the peoples of Europe? Until the Russian Anthropological Expedition, opinions on the subject, especially among foreign anthropologists, varied greatly. Thus, some anthropologists believed that Russians have predominanantly blonde hair and eye pigmentation-others thought the opposite. Some voiced the opinion that beard growth was heavily developed among Russians, but the opposite was claimed as well. Finally, it was commonly supposed that Russians have a high incidence of concave nasal bridges.
To answer these questions, V. V. [Viktor Valerievich] Bunak collected anthropological literature on several dozen European groups and extrapolated the minimums and maximums and means of various indices used by physical anthropologists, in these populations. But when this data was obtained for Russians, it became obvious that their standard deviation for these indices is approximately two times narrower than that of the European population as a whole. In other words, Russians were found to be of rather homogenous physical composition, regardless of the fact that the territory they occupy is vast.
When various anthropometric indices of the Russians are compared to those of the populations of Europe, Russians occupy a central position. This is evidenced in the body length, the dimensions and form of the head, the height and length of the face and their respective indices. In other words, based on many anthropometric traits, Russians are "the most typical Europeans."
However, some Russian anthropometric traits were markedly deviant from the Central European mean. For example, the noses of the Russians, are large, both in terms of height [this is important because low-bridged, low-rooted noses are characteristic of Mongoloids] and width. This is also true for lip thickness. In eye and hair pigmentation, Russians as a whole are considerably lighter than the Central European mean. Thus, pure light eyes (grey, gray-blue, blue and light blue) are found in 45% of all Russians, whereas the mean for other areas of Europe is only 35%. On the other hand, dark eyes (hazel and light brown) are found in only 5% of Russians, while Europeans, on average possess 45% of the aforementioned. On average, Russians have 14% of dark hair, whereas Europeans have 45%. Beard groeth is less developed in Russians than the European mean. However, these distinctions in facial hair growth markedly decrease, and perhaps even disappear with age. It is possible that the growth of facial hair increases with age in Russians. The opinion that Russians are "beaky nosed" was not confirmed. Far more common (75%) are straight-profiled noses. In fact, this number is actually somewhat higher than the Central European average (70%). Concave profiled noses are found in a similarly small number of individuals in both Russian (9%) and in Central Europe (10%). There is data showing that in some groups of Pomeranian Germans, for example, concave noses are far more common than among Russians.
We know now that during the Mesolithic and Neolithic, there was an intrusion from Asia of a small, but obvious Mongoloid component into the forest areas of Eastern Europe. We also know that the various nomadic steppe populations often displayed obvious signs of considerable Mongoloid admixture. Has this affected the main anthropological composition of the Russian people?
One of the characteristic traits of the Mongoloid race in Eurasia is the epicanthus [internal eyefold]. Among various Mongoloid populations of Eurasia, this feature occurs in 70%-to -95% of all cases. In a sample of more than 8500 Russian men, the epicanthus was observed in only twelve instances [0.14%; in contrast Lapps have a a 2% incidence of the epicanthic eyefold-roughly 20 times more than Russians, and Karelians have a ~0.5% incidence of epicanthus, roughly ~4 times more than Russians] , and only in a weak form. It should be noted that 9 of those instances were observed in ethnic Russians of the Northeastern zone [mostly descended from Russianized Ugro-Finns with a Slavic component; Sub-uralolappinoid by race. It is reasonable to suppose that among these Russians alone the incidence of the epicanthus is simmilar to that of the Karelians], of the Vyatka and Kama river basins. Thus, the incidence of the epicanthus in the vast majority of Russians is extremely rare. It should also be noted that the epicanthus is sporadically found in Central Europe, for example among Germans (Cheboksarov, 1941a).
Thus the racial composition of the Russians is that of typical Europids, in most traits occupying a Central position among the peoples of Europe and being distinguished by considerably lighter hair and eye pigmentation, as well as weaker facial hair growth and higher nasal indices.
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Conclusions: