Brittany

[Ankou]

My friends are not a good source... sorry.

[Ankou]

Originally Posted by Agrippa

Can you tell me how important fish and sea food is in Brittany for the local cuisine or if there are larger differences concerning the traditional food and what being more typical for the region, I mean nutrition traditioanlly relying heavily on grains, potatoes, meat, seafood-fish etc.

In fact nobody ate fish except friday until the thirties. Traditional Breton kitchen is very simple and not really gastronomical : pig especially bacon, soups, pan cakes, pastry (milk and eggs). It's tourism which brings the consumption of seafood, for a long time fishing was mainly an export activity.

Why this question ?

[Agrippa]

Originally Posted by Youenn

In fact nobody ate fish except friday until the thirties. Traditional Breton kitchen is very simple and not really gastronomical : pig especially bacon, soups, pan cakes, pastry (milk and eggs). It's tourism which brings the consumption of seafood, for a long time fishing was mainly an export activity.

Why this question ?

Because my theory is that Alpinisation is the result of unfavourable living conditions, and adaptation to deficiency. Now the more progressive types survived usually much better along large rivers, coastal areas and in herders, whereas sedentary farmers seem to have, especially if hunger, plagues, stable conditions and social suppression dominated, to begin to degenerate-reduce to a certain degree, at least stopping progressive developments and losing physical potential and the versatile character classic Europids had like through Alpinisation and Baltisation.

An important reason beside others seem to have been, like suggested, malnutrition, which hit progressive variants which being high-investment individuals, much harder than reduced ones. Especially the lack of proteins, vitamins and mineral nutrients, with one of the most important being iodine. Iodine deficiency, struma/goitre and Cretinism were particularly common in isolated, poor farmer areas in the Alps, very common in parts of Switzerland f.e., especially those in which Alpinisation was very strong.
So I just wondered, because Bretons seem to have a visible and relatively strong tendency for Alpinisation, if they used to eat a lot of fish and seafood, probably meat in general too, which would have been a contradiction for my theory. But this seems to be apparantly not the case. With more meat, but fish and seafood in particular, they could have kept a higher standard, Alpinisation would have been weakened after my theory, but if there nutrition was mostly based on grains and potatatos and limited access to meat, finally proteins, vitamins and mineral nutrients, while at the same time living as typical sedentary farmers with all the typical influences, including social negative selection and hunger and diseases especially during the "Little Ice Age", they just fit into the picture of Alpinisation/reduction/pyknomorphisation in Europe and beyond...

If overstretching the argument, one could say that most Atlanto-Nordid and Cromagnoid variants being the few survivors of the unfavourable conditions in the common people and in the coastal people-fishermen and social elite with tradition in particular.

Seafood is brainfood and together with fish an excellent base in theory, especially if combined with protein rich animal products and vegetables. A nourishment based mainly on grains and potatoes seem to have obvious negative effects in Europe and beyond. F.e. poor Maya farmers after the collapse of their civilisation were totally infantile and reduced, which being not comparable with normal Alpinids though, being much more extreme in every respect.

Recently I read articles and books about Anatolia and Western Iran, its really interesting to see how different the independent herder people were in comparison to the poor sedentary farmers in the past there...

Human competition (individually and group), diseases, nutrition and subsistence pattern, as well as the associated factors and social systems being the main factors for human evolution since the Neolithicum, climatic factors being rather secondary...

To make the picture complete, one would have just to know whether struma/goiter were more common there as well...

[Alcide]

We Bretons are the élite of France : we got the highest IQ in the country and the best results in graduating from high school.

Actually, that is not because we're more intelligent than French or whatever, it's just we are not overfloated with immigrants consequently ours results are better.

[Ankou]

Originally Posted by Alcide

We Bretons are the élite of France : we got the highest IQ in the country and the best results in graduating from high school.

The country ? Rather the state.

[Carnyx]

Youenn, does Jean-François Abgrall look Breton in your opinion? He's not born in Brittany but near Paris (there are many Bretons in Paris). I don't know about his direct origins but he reminds me of a guy who is a Breton from Finistère and has the same eyebrows as Loick Peyron.




And there is also Stéphane Peyron from the clanPeyron (brother of the two well known navigators)




Check his ascendance here :
http://www.geneastar.org/fr/frame.ph...ane%26n=peyron

The three brothers :
http://www.geneastar.org/fr/class.php3?letter=P

There are rather good Breton names in their tree.

[Ankou]

Originally Posted by Duchemin

Youenn, does Jean-François Abgrall look Breton in your opinion?

In my opinion, he is mixed (+Occitan ?).

[Visigodo]

Very interesting thread Youenn. Thanks for the effort.

I was checking at my library to see what material had about the anthropology the Brteton people and without a doubt the best work is: "Armoricains et Bretons. Etude anthropologique". By Giot P. There is also some good information in the chapter "Frankreich" in "Rassengeschichte der Menschheit" 2. Lieferung and in the work "Anthropologie de la population française" by Henri V. Vallois and in "Les races de l'Europe" work made by Marc-R. Sauter.

I have translated from Sauter the following text tha hope can be interesting for you but if you really want to know well the racial composition of you people try to find Giot's work.

Here we go:


The "noyan breton". - If the Breton group must has kept, because his geographical situation (Finish terrae, Finistère) his language, culture and his pshicological particularities that the historians explains, that originality doesn't transpose itself, as with the Basques, in the anthropological domain. A recent survey, due to the laudable activity of P.R. Giot (1951), rejuvenates the data that we have on the Breton population and permits to bring some retouchings to the picture brushed by Vallois. We will pull some numbers of it. It is about a few 5.700 draftees of the departments of Finistère, Morbihan and the Côtes-du-Nord, examined in 1946-1947.

The average cephalic index of the Bretons is of 82; the Brachycephaly moderate of the" Breton core" is confirmed therefore. It is the department of Finistère that is the less brachycephalic (81,4), Morbihan giving a cephalic index of 82,9 (Côtes-du-Nord, 82,3). The group of the cantons where the size is also the lowest deal the indication of the more brachycephalyc (85,7), while the mesocephale index is more pronounced (79,1) at Brest. One can see how coincide on the whole the more brachycephalics with those with small sizes and the more mesocephalics with the highest sizes. Finistère is especially rich in cantons where the averages prove the existence of a strong core of high stature (168-169) with less cephalic index (79-81) (III card).



A technical imperfection that the author signals himself had the effect to give, about the facial shape of the Bretons, an improper idea; The index is medium (84), mesoprosope, to the limit of the euryprosope, is notoriously too low. The Bretons are certainly meso to leptoprosopes. The nose is leptorrine. Giot raised the degree of pigmentation of his draftees summarily. On the whole set, it is the category of light eyes, medium pigmented hair (21,5%) that comes in head, the complex eyes and dark hair is after with 19,5% . Of the first category, said Giot,: "However this complex group of brown hair and blue eyes (green or gray) is one of the characteristics of Brittany… It is… an autonomous genetic unit… " He thinks that " it is the result of one process of depigmentation, by way of mutation, that happen with the brachycephals in this Breton region as we must think that we are dealing with the most northern regions that reached the western Alpines".

Trying to classify the Bretons in the classic racial settings, Giot said: "The anthropology of Brittany is always dominated by the opposition between a High Brittany, in majority populated of alpine brachycephals, with large face and with relatively small stature, and a Low Brittany (no traced precisely on the linguistic limits, surely), especially populated by the mesocephalics men on the coasts, with narrow face and with size nearly tall. But in the inside these types we can see a lot of transitions between the true Atlanto-Mediterranean and the Alpine ". The true Mediterranean are rare. The Nordic element is also weak; Vallois give a bit importance to the Nordic component than doesn't make it Giot ".



It is necessary to speak shortly about a local, near to the alpine race, who had the grant to excite the imaginations. It is about the Bigoudenns (inhabitants of Pont-L'Abbé, small port to the south of Quimper, in Finistère). Some people believe - and this belief is tenacious - a Mongolian origin to those Bretons, on the faith of their particular facies; as this typical face is actually only present at the women, it is a lot simpler to assign it, as the more serious anthropologists say (Vallois, Giot), the hairdressing (drawn behind) and to the “Coiffé à bandeau” gives to the cheekbones an aspect recalling the one of the Mongols. Giot, without believing in an Asian racial feature, doesn't exclude however "something" of genetic origin, a "localized variation, whose conservation can be encouraged by some prejudices that the relations and the miscellanies of the Bigoudenns would have slowed down with their neighbours ". (1949).
We would have there, according to him, something to bring closer to another character, pathological one, that is especially revealed at the Bigoudenn women: the congenital dislocation of the hip”.

Finally I add some information about the Nordid influences that can be found in Britanny and some nice pictures of Breton types:

[Agrippa]

"The anthropology of Brittany is always dominated by the opposition between a High Brittany, in majority populated of alpine brachycephals, with large face and with relatively small stature, and a Low Brittany (no traced precisely on the linguistic limits, surely), especially populated by the mesocephalics men on the coasts, with narrow face and with size nearly tall.

This seems to support my thesis again, with the coastal people being more Nordid-Atlantomediterranid, the further away one comes, the stronger the Alpinisation was. However, one has to consider migrations and patterns of settling unrelated to selective pressures, but the "blond Alpine" category makes even more sense if going after that, because even light variants became mixed and finally Alpinised under the conditions described above. Alpinids practically never migrated or conquered lands as a whole, but rather infiltreated areas, that way they always mixed and only the important set of traits for Alpinisation survived, whereas some peculiarities of the most typical Westalpinids practically disappeared. A group of people came or came up by chance which had Alpinoid traits, they mixed with the others and over time the more important traits of the Alpinoid combination won by a victory of births for various reasons under rather unfavourable living conditions, one sided social structures and the absense of positive selective pressure for higher and more versatile physical performance. Alpinids are not just a climatic adaptation like f.e. Nordid, Dalofaelid or Mediterranid, but more (others being socially selected too obviously) like the others the result of a process inside of a diversified and socially stratified population. Thats another reason why one can find almost exclusively Nordid or Mediterranid areas, but hardly something bigger than a village or smaller isolated area which is just Alpinid.

[Visigodo]

Originally Posted by Agrippa

This seems to support my thesis again, with the coastal people being more Nordid-Atlantomediterranid, the further away one comes, the stronger the Alpinisation was. However, one has to consider migrations and patterns of settling unrelated to selective pressures, but the "blond Alpine" category makes even more sense if going after that, because even light variants became mixed and finally Alpinised under the conditions described above. Alpinids practically never migrated or conquered lands as a whole, but rather infiltreated areas, that way they always mixed and only the important set of traits for Alpinisation survived, whereas some peculiarities of the most typical Westalpinids practically disappeared. A group of people came or came up by chance which had Alpinoid traits, they mixed with the others and over time the more important traits of the Alpinoid combination won by a victory of births for various reasons under rather unfavourable living conditions, one sided social structures and the absense of positive selective pressure for higher and more versatile physical performance. Alpinids are not just a climatic adaptation like f.e. Nordid, Dalofaelid or Mediterranid, but more (others being socially selected too obviously) like the others the result of a process inside of a diversified and socially stratified population. Thats another reason why one can find almost exclusively Nordid or Mediterranid areas, but hardly something bigger than a village or smaller isolated area which is just Alpinid.

I was thinking about your theory also, curiously Hoyos Sainz on having studied the racial composition of Galice observes also the same phenomenon in which the Nordid typology tends to prevail on the coasts and the Alpine one in interior zones.

He wrote:

"There are in Galice two preponderant racial types; one supposed Celtic or racially Alpine, which necessarily in the Peninsula is connected with the so called Cantabrian area; general basic type that is domineering the region in the province of Lugo, and the whole properly Cantabrian coast of la Coruña, and persisting in evident majority, in the high lands, up to Orense and Pontevedra. He is the Galician with round head and smoothed behind, of broad face, fundamentally in the cheekbones, but with narrow and thin nose, which establishes cranial and facial disharmony; man and woman they have massive complexion, wide thoracic perimeter and good corporal weight.

In contrast with the Alpine type it is possible to see clearly, and is easily separable, for the indexes and for the module or size of the head, verifying this difference for the modular relations and confirmed at the first works I have made another racial type of Galice, the second type, leptorrine, dolichocephalic, with narrow and thin nose, thin and tall, rosy and fair, especially in the beard, light eyes, greenish very common, eyes ripped in the external edge; type that abounds in all the coastal villas of the Atlantic littoral, and dominates in the province of Pontevedra, and even it continues till Orense, though this province is not racially so clear as the other three, undoubtedly because intrusions or contacts that already we have indicated that arrive from the Castilians lands (Mediterranean influences)".

[Yago]

Originally Posted by Visigodo

I was thinking about your theory also, curiously Hoyos Sainz on having studied the racial composition of Galice observes also the same phenomenon in which the Nordid typology tends to prevail on the coasts and the Alpine one in interior zones.

Strange, because what I`ve seen in the coastal areas of Pontevedra is a predominance of Atlanto-Mediterranean types, and those in the Nordid direction would be more like Nordo-「Atlanto-]Mediterraneans. If this points to a higher number of Nordid elements in the area compared to other areas, it still does not point to a predominant Nordid type in the area over other elements.

[Visigodo]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

Strange, because what I`ve seen in the coastal areas of Pontevedra is a predominance of Atlanto-Mediterranean types, and those in the Nordid direction would be more like Nordo-「Atlanto-]Mediterraneans. If this points to a higher number of Nordid elements in the area compared to other areas, it still does not point to a predominant Nordid type in the area over other elements.[/font]

I have never visited Pontevedra but I have crossed the province of Lugo and partially La Coruña when I did the “Camino de Santiago” a few years ago (The hard way from Roncesvalles, then was not fashionable, much better times), also I have been in La Coruña (city). The impression that gave to me the villages of Lugo is that there is a strong Alpine local component, but also Mediterranean, Cromagnon and in minor % Nordid though mixed types giving the impression of Atlantids types (dark hair, blue or green eyes, pale skin etc.) more that real Nordids. I found some villages with blond brachycephals. In La Coruña the proportion of Nordids (real Nordids) and Atlantids was undoubtedly higher. Anyway in the “History of Spain ” of Menendez Pidal, Hoyos in a chapter dedicated to the Spanish anthropology returns to repeat the affirmation about the anthropologic Galician duality:

The not Cantabrian Galice is the littoral Atlantic, that presents contrast with the brachycephals from Lugo, on having a dolychocephaly of Nordid origin, owed undoubtedly to the Suabians and to the Norman incursions, which there give to them the high stature, fair men with thin body and extremities, with high and narrow face, which separates the littorals from the Castilian intrusion of Orense, having a completely different facial constitution.


Anyhow Bañuelos speaks that in Galicia exist several types: Alpinids, Cromagnids, fair dolichocephals together with fair brachycephals (I saw them in some villages of Lugo) together with a great quantity of Mediterranids. Perhaps Galaico can give us his opinion.

I add partially the chapter from where I took the information about Galicia.

[Visigodo]

I realize that the files about Brittany do not work properly so I add again.

[pls]

I knew that some Alans, settled in Bretagne, I was glad I found this passage on wiki confirming this notions

Flavius Aëtius settled large numbers of Alans in and around Armorica in order to quell unrest. The Breton name Alan (rather than the French Alain) and several towns with names related to 'Alan', such as Alanville are popularly taken as evidence that a contingent settled in Brittany.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alans


its a far fetched and un realistic theory, but its just what i thought when I read about the pseudo-mongoloid appearance of the 'Bigoudenns'.

[Agrippa]

The Alans had at best minor admixture, the base of their group was as or more Europid than the average European of today. At best they brought single individuals with stronger Mongoloid traits if having influence at all.

Like with Alpinisation one would have to assume a selective pressure preferring certain traits for the spread of it. Migration alone can't explain it. Furthermore certain almost pseudo-Mongoloid/somewhat Mongoliform traits, though practically never reaching the level of Lappids, can occur in the most extreme and very infantilised Alpinids.
But from what I saw of Bretons so far that doesnt seem to be present on a significant level and not strong for sure.

The Alans should have brought more Nordoid and Pontid elements rather by the way.

[Ankou]

Very interesting post Visigodo.
Where do you find this document ?

[Visigodo]

Originally Posted by Youenn

Very interesting post Visigodo.
Where do you find this document ?

Is from one book we sold years ago in C.E.D.A.D.E. It is a beautiful book about the Vikings in Brittany: "Les Vikings en Bretagne" by Bruno Renoult. EDICIONES NOTHUNG. 1985. Sponsored by C.E.D.A.D.E.

[Ankou]

Västra kvadranten är mest invecklad: Utom Bretagne och några starkare nordinslag i ett par bördigare trakter i norr (Loire-dalen m.m.) en verklig trasmatta av övervägande mediterrana (av olika primitivitet) och alpina områden, ännu på 1800-talet ofta med häpnadsväckande skarpa gränser. Bretagne har utom detta även rätt mycket nordatlantin ras, åtm. övervägande genom invasionen av brittiska kelter, som flydde för anglosaxarna.

The western quadrant is the most intricate: With the exception of Bretagne and a few stronger nordid elements in a number of more fertile northern parts (Loire-valley)it is a real rag-rug of predominantly mediterranid (of different primitivity) and alpinid regions, even in the nineteenth century with astonishingly sharp borders. Bretagne has beside these quite much north-atlantid elements, atleast predomintantly through the invasion of British Kelts, who fled the Anglo-Saxons.

http://forum.skadi.net/showthread.ph...story+brittany

[Señor Malo]

Originally Posted by Alcide

We Bretons are the élite of France : we got the highest IQ in the country and the best results in graduating from high school.

Well, I must admit that whenI was in Brittany and in Normandy I felt much more confident when crossing streets by the pedestrian way than in other french location.
So I coud really say that Brittany and Normandy are the Elite of France from the driving civility point of view at least

[Galaico]

Originally Posted by Visigodo

Perhaps Galaico can give us his opinion.

My answer comes a little bit late , but anyway...

For what I've seen, Galicia has a considerable Alpinid population, especially in the interior rural areas, not only in Lugo and Orense, but also in interior Coruña and Pontevedra. Anyway the Galician Alpinid though not tall, its not either too short and doesn't look infantilised, it would be similar to a light and refined Berid.

In the coastal areas, the population changes significantly, Atlanto-Mediterranids (usually of the West Pyrenaic type) and Nordids (mostly Alpinid mixed Sub-Nordids), are more numerous than in the interior areas.