Alpinids

[Goswin_van_Eyck]

This old post needs some revision, new formulations and updating, but is in general what the main tenets concerns still valid:

If we assure ourselves of a native European Upper Paleolithic orgin
of the Alpine race and a preliminary survey of platicephalic
brachycephals has done far of contradicting such a proposition, and
blondism is a speciation of/and endemic to the Europid racial family,
and when we acknowledge that the UP/Mesolithic groups and their
immediate, albeit reduced and brachymorphic relations, whereby I have
to reissue the fact that the Ofnet type of alpinoid brachycephals
precede the high-vaulted, perhaps darker pigmentated Mugem type which
alongside the southern slopes of the Alpine mountain chain entered
Central Europe and makes up today still an markant and erring
component in this region as well in the Balkan, where in former
Yugoslavia and Albania the type evolved to a semi-Dinaric(?) type,
the undersized Kthela type with a triangular face and slight
occipital flattening, and must have emerged independantly and local
("bodemständig") in Southern Germany, escarping in a horseshoe model
to the northwest and reaching up Scotland where in Aveline's Hole the
same platicephalic roundheads are found with a maximum cranial mean
of 80,3, which in the flesh constitues a subbrachycephaly of 82,55,
while in northeastern direction proto-Lapponic hunter-gatherers
developed,- allow incipient blondism, but often combine dark and
lighter shades of chestnut brown with blue and light-mixed eyes,
while a brunet appearance in many cases still is endowed in partial
depigmentation, most of all the skin and lightbrown hues of the iris,
and like Coon correctly appraised the problem of blondism, that"the
universality of some degree of blondism among whites and near whites
everywhere makes it unlikely that it was ever confined to a single
race or group of races within the White family", so the main
preoccuppation and pathetic Schwärmerei among the modern Nordicist
ranks with their unlaudable pastiche of racial nomenclatura full of "-
ishes" and negligence of discerning races and subraces from mere
Gautypen and bi-trihybrid population characteristics, the hazardous
convulsive breaking points in what complies in defining North
European races, falls dramatically apart.
Nowhere becomes this better illustrated than in West Norway in the
Sognefjord districts, where I inclined to believe that the Alpine
race in its purest, boreal, depigmentated form exist:

<< The mean cephalic index in this district is between 81 and 82,
while the mean cranial index for men and women is 77.7. Such a
considerable difference can hardly be interpreted otherwise than that
the cephalic index has increased in the course of the last century.
In none of the other districts investigated in Sogn is the pigmented
brachycephalic type so prominent as in Sogndal-Hafslo, and nowhere is
the head height so low as in Sogndal. A striking feature of the
pigmentation is the redistribution of racial characters encountered
in both Sogndal-Hafslo and in Brekke, expressed by the combination of
pure blue eyes with dark brown hair.

The population in Brekke has a higher mean stature than in
Sogndal-Hafslo, the breadth and height of the head is greater but the
length shorter. The cephalic index is therefore several units higher.
The face is larger, both higher and broader, the same is true of the
nose. The pigmentation of the eyes is lighter, light brown and
greenish eyes occur less frequently and dark brown eyes as a rare e
But how shall we explain that in Sogndal-Hafslo, which lies like an
island between the inner and middle regions of Sogn with their
populations of predominantly Nordic type, we find a population whose
physical traits exhibit more pronounced indications of Alpine mixture
than any other part of Sogn? The answer to this can only be an
assumption.
When one travels in along the Sognefjord on a summer day and
reaches Sogndal, one is captivated by the beautiful scenery, the
open, fruitful fields around the protected shores without any
threatening, overhanging mountains. It is obvious that this landscape
must have seemed attractive to the wandering people who came sailing
into the fjord to find a place to settle, and that this locality must
have been settled very early, before the settlement from east, so
that when the latter began on a larger scale, probably during the
great migrations, the Sogndal district was already occupied. It is
reasonable to assume that the settlement of Sogndal, by people of a
predominantly Alpine type, was a branch of the settlement which took
place in England and Scotland from the south in the beginning of the
Bronze Age and which has left marked traces in other parts of the
west coast of Norway. Through mixture with peoples of predomiriantly
Nordic type who settled in the neighboring districts at a later date,
and with peoples of predominantly East Baltic type who had settled in
the outer coastal districts, the present population of Sogndal-Hafslo
could have obtained its physical characteristics according to this
assumption.>>


An alternative take on the origin of the Sogn Alpines consist in
enabling a Mesolithic introduction from the British Isles and
Denmark, using the North Sea Continent, emerged when about 10000-9000
before our era the water of the ocean was tied up in immense
glaciers, as stepping stone to colonize the coastal strips of Norway;
about –6000 a second wave came by from Germany; these in the first
place longheaded settlers would surely have contained the small-
statured but capacious in head size Ofnet brachycephals and the
Scandinavian Alpine stock grew from this, maintaining most of the
morphological and metrical features of their hunting and fishing
predecessors.
The Sogn Alpines have a rhombic vault form with pronounced tubera
parietalia and narrow forehead; their head lenght attaines a general
mean of 193mm, the breath is considerable too with 155mm. Alpinids
make also up for the population of Hordaland indicated by the great
presence of brownish and light-mixed eyes, mesorhinity, weak
brachycephaly and medium tallness; H.F.K. Gü nther rightly suspected
that the whole Norwegian westcoast was under a predominance of
Alpinids, mainly encroached within tracts of Nordics and slightly
influenced by streaks of East Baltics, what I dare to contest in
relying on Kossinna's data involving strong contigents of Nordic-
Borreby strains which at least harks back to the Steinkisten period;
the Alpine territory really starts in the north near Haugesund,
reaches through Stavanger coastways to Kristiansand in the east,
behind Stavanger it turns back into the mountains.The Sogn type
reminds the French-Belgian Furfooz type, who was hypobrachycephalic,
short ovoid with a broad extension midways of the head, rounded
backhead that slips straight down to the neck, on the other hand most
Neolithic Alpinids in Scandinavia belong eitherway to the Grenelle or
Borreby type, the former has a globular backhead and good developed
browridges; the cranial indices of both are interchangeable, but
Grenelle is oftenest associated with full brachycephaly; Furfooz and
Borreby contain also low mesocephalic elements, as seen in the
Belgian forrestal hills of the Ardennes and the situation of Traena,
off shore of North Norway in the Middle Ages, preservation of this
condition seems reflected in the hypobrachy-mesocephaly of the people
of Sogn and Fjordane.
Furthermore, but under caution, I tend to unlock the process of
excrescence of brachymorphism in the Middle Ages and peaking in the
19th century, after which unraveled a retraction of this course
whereby the head lenght increased in every race, also in another
dimension, namely the average head underwent a reduction in size,
this touched the Nordic race as well, but it manifested perhaps more
intrusively in Alpinesn following their constitution, but despite
that small and medium-sizeness, they would in time overtake this
prescription, so that France supposedly the Alpine country by pre-
eminence, show meaningful associations with the Alpine component in
Scandinavia(measurements will duely follow soon).

Anthropometrics:

DANES:

Stature: 178cm
Head lenght: 198.9
Head breadth: 156.2
Bizygomatic breadth: 141.5
Face height: 129.6
Lenght-breadth index: 78.7
Facial index: 91.8
% light eyes: 72.4
% light hair: 30.5


NORWEGIANS:

Stature: 172.4cm
Head lenght: 192.6
Head breadth: 152.1
Bizygomatic breadth: 137.3
Face height: 122.2
Lenght-breadth index: 79
Facial index: 89.1
% light eyes: 63.7
% light hair: 49.9


NORTHERN NORWEGIANS:

Stature: 172cm
Head lenght: 191.4
Head breadth: 153.3
Bizygomatic breadth: 139.1
Facial height: 121.9
Lenght-breadth: 80.2
Facial index: 87.7
% light eyes: 58.6
% light hair: 37.7


QUANES:

Stature: 167.3
Head lenght: 188.9
Head breadth: 155.3
Bizygomatic breadth: 139.6
Facial height: 118
Lenght-breadth index: 82.3
Facial index: 85
% light eyes: 43.7
% light hair: 35


FRENCH:

Stature: 169.9cm
Head lenght: 191.7
Head breadth: 154.9
Bizygomatic breadth: 141.9
Facial height: 123.9
Lenght-breadth index: 80.8
Facial index: 87.2
% light eyes: 43.5
% light hair: 21


These measures make it clear that the Alpinid denomination of France
is untenable, in various aspects the Alpine element, whether in pure
form or in solution ascribes to a medium-sized, broad-faced yet in
combination with a relatively high face height hafted to a
hypobrachycephalic to mesocephalic head of considerable
largeness(346.6mm, which ranks them among the Germanic peoples of the
Low Countries, Low Germany, West Scandinavia…)and partial blondism,
while darkbrown and swarthy shades of pigmentation are rare, the
majority of the French possess chestnut hues of hair, which would
imply in the philosophy of the McCollough and Coon School of
Anthropology that a strong Borreby element must have permeated the
population; with exception of North and Northeastern France which has
been heavyly influenced and contained strongholds of the
Seine-Oise-Marne culture and Bell Beakers, the objection to this
assumption is maintained by the fact that the central and eastern
parts of the country are made up by the Atlanto-mediterrenean, Dinarid
and Carpathid races, the latter explains the presence of pronounced,
but leptorhine convex noses in the <<French Alpine>> and the
ortho-hipsicephalic indices related to this taxon in Savoie, the
medium to small sizes of the <<Central European Alpine>> must be
explained according the combination of a short head lenght(a classic
Dinaric feature) with a broad lateral extension of the head(typical
but not exclusively attribute of the Alpine skull), these races only
account for the orthocephalic main indices(LHI 72-74), since the
Alpinids are considered(in the West) as platicephalic. The
brachycephalisation in France from the early Middle Ages didn't work
out into an alpinisation of the French inhabitants, since it was
accompied with an attenuation of the robusticity of the face, the
reduction of the maxillae and a frank leptoprosopy, thus much more in
a Taurid sense; no wonder that Coon called on an affinity with the
Tajiks, who he in following Hamy and Quatrefagnes regards as Alpines,
while today they're classified as Turanids(Vallois) or a locally
brachycephalized subrace(Lundman); the Central European Alpine of
Coon, when devoid of Lappomorphic tendencies, corresponds imo to the
Carpathid blend of Lundman, while the depigmentated large-headed
Alpine of North France, Guyenne, Gascogne, Béarn and the Basque
regions has more to do with the Furfooz race which resembles uncannyly
the Sogne brachycephals, which characteristics by Coon and SNPA are
re-interpretetated as Borreby traits, while dealing with the most
low-vaulted zones of Europe!

The fact that the Scandinavian Alpinis are taller has a correlation
with some zoological rules, whereby mamals advacing to the polar
region are subject to an increase in height, though in principles the
Alpine prototype was small-set, Furfooz was just 153cm tall, not
uncommon though in post-Magdalenian period, albeit that the Capellid-
Bruenn races were undersized too; the cold Magdelenian period had
indeed reduced indiscriminantly and with drastic measures the
statures of the Europids...the partial blondism of some Alpines could
also be explained involving geographics and latitude; the Asians are
tawnier than the Europids, because Asia lies higher than Europe,
hence more intensively exposed to UV rays, though Sibirids and some
Central Asians are moderately fair(shite pinkish skins!) and the hair
pigmentation runs into the dzarker tones chestnut brown range(not
dull brown thus, but with a strange metallic shimmering)..therefore
the Alpines in highland Europe tend to bercome somewhat darker than
most other UP derivatives like the the Quanes type, while Alpines
like the Sogne type or in the Low Countries is dark-mixted as PA's on
the sea front...

Btw, Borrebies, Sogne, Furfooz, Quanes, etc.sharing a common origin
is once more underlined by the fact that bar specialisation and
drift, they're have a comparible skull model: roundish ovoid or
rhomboid with prominent parietal bosses, more or less round backhead
which suddenly drops straight in the neck, but with no noticeable
occipital flattening as in the Taurids...lambdoid flattening however does regularly occur within Borreby.


The greatest error in writing a racial history of Europe was the
exagerration of the distribution and role of the Alpine race, which
like a devil in disguise gleefully reveals itself in local centers of
brachycephalization..
The combination of globular or shortheadedness, shrunken body
proportions and, small statures and finally a brunet complexion are
in most textbook the criteria on which the Alpine race is determined.
In previous articles I have gone down to the specifics on which
Alpines can be recognized and distinguished from more southerly and
mountain dwelling races in Europe.
Suffice to say that the Alpine skull is capacious(Vallois states that
it attains 1450cc, but can reach up to 1600cc!), at least of medium
lenght but broad, globular or broken up like in Borreby and
platicephalic(low to moderate vaulted; the Scandinavian Alpine has a
LHI of ca.70), the body is stocky, pykno-mesomorphic but more gracile
forms are as common, the stature is medium(ca.165cm); both Coon and
Biasutti agree that the complexion runs from blond to brunet, but
formost the intermediary pigments are the rule.
The brachycephalics of the Belgian province Luxemburg should probably
be considered as exponents of the Alpine race in its truest form; the
means for head lenght and breadth are 186mm and 157mm, still
profoundly large-headed(L+B) and 3-4 units smaller than the Belgian
mean(190/1mm+160mm), which is more of Borreby inspiration; btw, is it
mere coincidence, elicit by precipitancy and overworking,,or repeats
the Luxemburger average head lenght not the same as in the Ibero-
Insular and Danubian groups, races who emerged during the Neolithic
period and represent a more linear, slender body build in association
with small stature(smaller than the modern Alpine who is 165cm tall,
while the Ibero-Insular falls down on 160cm and the Danubians were
as moderate as the Alpines and reach as well minima like 153cm) ;
the Alpine maintained its bulkier built, but grew more pyknomorphic,
but all three miss the bony eminencies, muscularity and coarse
lateral built of the Cromagnoid races.
Alpines, Danubians and Ibero-insulars evolve paedomorphic traits.
The face height of the Alpine ranges from 120-122mm, the breadth is
large, 140mm; anthropometrically these measures overlap or approach
the means of the Borreby-derived population of Jaeder and Fehmarn, in
this respect the face is higher than the Danubian(116mm) whom is by
10units narrower(130mm) and the Ibero-Insular has too a rather short
face, which appears the opposite by its narrow breadth, although
it's
by its facial index leptoprosopic, 89.23, while Alpines and Borreby
alike are mesoprosopic.
The Ibero-Insular has a straight-bridged nose, as has Alpines and
Borreby; these two have, though, noses which are short, broad(yet
coverting to leptorhinity) and assume a thick, elevated tip, but
according to Biasutti the norm is a short, rather high-rooted nose
with a straight bridge, while the retroussé type characterizes the
East Baltic race. The snub nose is common possession of the Upper
Palaeolithic races; since I have proven on Körös and the
Linearband
the nativity to Europe of these cultures and the mixed composition,
containing Nordic, Mediterrenean and Cromagnid elements, all
experiencing a make-over process of physical, i.e. postcranial and
constitutional gracilization, and since the Danubian dolichoid type
doesn't rule out an appraisement in either a Nordic as a
Mediterrenean sense, by which it should be conceived as a primitive,
mixomorphic type, the possessing certain qualities midway these two
races, flowing morphologically into each other, but consitute a
decissive, morphological and biological unit. The sparse Cromagnid
component reflects an interstadial condition during the racial
evolution and formative process in which nevertheles the group
confirms to a single, close-knitted and panmictic breeding stock, far
more than absorption and cross-breeding with residual mesolithic
locals. Finally, we don't know much about the ratios of certain
taxons in these early neolithic entities, personally, after a friend of mine in
our backstream conversations reminded me that the reasonable uptilted
hindpart of the Borreby's head is comparable to the Pontic race(inclusive lambdoid flattening?) and Kossinna
hints on some Danubian influence on the formation of Borreby in the
upswept occiput, I urge a more reversed admixture, Borreby and Plau
predate the Danubians and must from the end of the mesolithic till
far into the Bronze Age had a maximum territorial extension from the
Atlantic over the North European Plain into both Scandinavia and the
Danubian-Balkanic tract and underway altered incoming gracilized
races and participating in their further development, another
possibility takes them as an endemic element to these entities. Since
mesocephaly is integral to the Borreby race, it wouldn't have
worked
yet as brachycephalization agent, then again the skull shapes are
strikingly different, ovoid for the Borreby, ellipsoid for the
Danubians with flattened parientals.
Danubians, being meso- to platyrhinic, the nose takes a small,
concave and blunted form, a snubbed nose type not unlike EB and
Alpines.
In Central and Eastern Europe, where the Danubians and columns of
native European first farmers originated, snub-nosed are
indiscriminantly associated with both brachycephalic and
mesocephalic, high-vaulted and either blond or more brunet races: so
whatever happened to the descendants of the Danubian main type?
Schaginhaufen's revelation on the blond brachycephals in
Switzerland,
only 6% of the population, and often mesorhine and mesoprosopic, but
predominantly leptorhine aand leptoprosopic, of medium body height,
with rounded occiput, slightly receding forehead that appears high
and full, could be the leading representation of the danubian in its
present-day form in the Celtic-Germanic countries, with due reserve,
while the Danubian head breadth could under impetus of the
brachycephalization broaden up to 3-4 units and shorten similarly in
lenght, and still attain a cephalic index in the mesocephalic range.
The situation of the Auvergne, Central France, supports the
implication of increased local "alpinoid" brachycephalisation
out
of , in Coon's sense, Mediterranid stocks, with deceiving
properties
like a mesene upper face, relatively broad nose, small stature,
brunet complexion and paedomorphism.
The Auvergne includes the departments of Allier, Cantal, Haute-Loire
and Puy-de-Dôme, one-time teritory of the Celtic tribe of the
Avernii.
Vallois devices it with Brittany to create a large area going from
the Atlantic seaboard into the Massif Central, anthropologically
gathering a population marked by medium tall brachycephals with
chestnut hair and light eyes.
France was for instance in the Iron Age predominantly dolichomorphic,
the Beaumes Chaude type nearly disappears and is replaced by the
Genay type, which Vallois holds for Proto-mediterrenean and
corresponds with the Danubian. The Auvergne is no exception to this
rule and burial mounds only contained dolichoid finds. Only in the
Parisian Basin, Brittany and the Languedoc are brachycephals present
and their proportion in the population is constantly feeble.
Even in the Middle Ages, the Auvergne couldn't have been a
concentration of Alpines and it hadn't been strongly touched by
the
trend of brachycephalisation, which in France seemingly occured with
a gradual leptoprosopy and reduction of the maxillae.
Bouchereau's material reveal short(179.5mm) and narrow(141.8mm)
skulls, resulting in a Cr.I of 79, highly mesocranial and orthocranial
(LHI 72.9), the face is narrow, 126mm, broad-nosed, N.I.48.1 and
mesene, 52.4.
The study further indicate that in recent times the average head
became rounder and broader(l= 176.3mm,b= 145.5) and attains a
subbrachycephalic mean of 82.5, while still orthocranial, the basion-
bregmatic height reduced from 131 to 128.4.
The body lenght increased as well from general medium height in 1880
(164-165.9cm) to fairly tall heights above 170cm today. The eyes are
rather mixed than light, which is more frequent in Brittany, and in
equivalence with dark eyes. Leptoprosopy and leptorhinity are common.
It illustrates that the problem of brachycephaly and the Alpine race
are two distinct study objects and not to be intertwined.