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Ancestry is More Than Skin Deep

10/25/2015

5 Comments

 
       When you look at a person, you can get an idea of where they're from by the look of their skin, their eyes, even of their hair. But what happens when their skin is gone, could you still? From the skulls that are in the media, it seems safe to say that all male skulls are the same along with female skulls. Now, if you remember from my blog titled “Week 5” (http://anthropologicalconcepts.weebly.com/blog/week-5), the appearance of the skull can have lots to do how your outer face can look like. In this weeks blog I will discuss how each ethnicity or ancestry's have very different skulls. “The groups are African, European, Asian, and Oceanic. This is an imperfect classification system, but it is useful in the broad base of assigning identity to an individual.” I will be using terms that might be unfamiliar to you, so below I have included a photo marked with the areas I will address.
Picture
       Below we have a photo of an African skull. African refers to individuals descendant from Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa. From the side the noticable African acestry is marked by a long crainal shape, and moderate to strong prognathism. Also from the side, they have a flat anterior nasal spine and a “Quonset-hut like nasal root morphology, which means that it is almost semi circular in cross section.” From the front you can see they have rectangular orbits and a wide inter-orbiral distance, along with a broad nasal aperture. In addition to these that you can see from the side and from the front, there is one that you can notice from both views; the brow ridges. They have a “mild to moderate development of the brow ridges with a moderate glabella.” 
Picture
       Next we have European (image below). European refers to individuals descendant from the European continent, the Indian subcontinent, North Africa, and the Middle East. For European ancesty they have a rounded cranial shape. You can immediately notice that they have a prominent nose from how far their nasal root is (this type of nasal root is usually called “steepled.”). Other features of the nose is their nasal aperture is narrow, and the anterior nasal spine is prominent along with the chin. The front shows they have angular orbits, and a narrow inter-orbital distance. For the brow ridges and glabella, they would have moderate to strong brow ridges, but with a depressed glabella.
Picture
       With the Asian skull (image below), which refers to individuals descendant from Central or East Asia, First Nation Americans, Inuits and some groups in East Russia, it looks very similar to the European because of the rounded cranial shape, but they could not be more different. The face is wider and the major difference, I think, is in the nose. Unlike the European steepled nose, Asian ancesty has a tented nasal root, with a flat anterior nasal spine, and a moderate nasal aperture. For the eyes, they are classified as having a round orbital shape with a moderate inter-orbital distance. And unlike both the African and European ancestry, the Asian ancestry has a “faint or absent brow ridges and a moderately prominent glabella.”
Picture
       Lastly we have a skull of Oceanic ancestry (image below). Oceanic refers to individuals descendant from First Nation inhabitants of the South Pacific Islands, New Zealand, and Australia. This skull looks nothing like the other ones, so it could not be mistaken for African, European, or Asian ancesty. They have a high and short cranial shape with a mild to moderate. The nasal root looks similar to that of European as it is steepled, but the anterior nasal spine is flat, like the African, and a moderate nasal aperture, like the Asian. Now with the eyes, they have a rectangular orbit shape with a wide inter-orbital distance. And unlike the skulls I addressed earlier, those of Oceanic ancestry will most likely have a well-developed brow ridges with a prominent glabella, and finally, “a rocker bottom jaw with a rounded mandibular margin.”
Picture
       Now that you have seen how much ancestry can take effect with, not only on how our families does things, but also how we look, is it not silly to have believed that the only difference lies in if we are male or female. I have to admit, I was amoung the silly. It is lucky that physical/forensic anthropologists have made the distinctions because who knows how much we have traveled to difference places, and if a skeleton with Asian ancestry is found in Africa, it can be assumed that they were a tourist or the like. 
       Please 
feel free to comment on what you thought of the blog, or other physical anthropological subjects you would like me to cover. 
5 Comments
anna
11/23/2017 06:27:49 pm

Thanks. Very interesting to see the different skulls. We can easily forget that these differences exist when always handling the same skull.

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Ed Kuijper
1/20/2018 05:00:28 am

When you observing en study the shapes of the head of people around you, you will see that there a lot of differences. A few times i have seen people in a crowd which had brow ridges and sloping forheads like a neanderthal. Once i saw a man that had a forehead like homo erectus. One example is the famous boxer Nicolai Valuev

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Baboon
6/29/2018 01:25:50 am

Valuev suffers from acromegaly.

As far as angled forehead, this exists in all people. Many European people don't have it, but some have it a little and a few have it to a large degree.
It's same in Indian people, some do and some don't.
It's the same in people in Indonesia and even Asia and Mongolia and Russia.

The point is that these variances exist in all populations.

Here is Brad Pitt.
https://media.gq.com/photos/5a56383d9cbcef7d67c18108/master/w_800/brad-pitt-grooming-legend-2014.jpg

He basically has no slant to his forehead.
Neither does Matt Damon.
http://cdn.collider.com/wp-content/uploads/bourne-ultimatum-matt-damon.jpg

But there are other people who do.
Like Johy Depp who has a minor one.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/5a/7e/b3/5a7eb3c7e1f329a16363bb0424ceaa6c--heres-johnny-johnny-depp.jpg

And like Liam Neeson who has a very intense one.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RC1QNmF2Yao/UElKMGbpQBI/AAAAAAAA460/Xv9Q6hH3WCI/s1600/liam%2Bneeson%2Breprises%2Bbryan%2Bmills%2Brole%2Bin%2BTAKEN2.jpg

Though it's the same in any other race, people with varying slanted heads. Indian, Arab, Asian etc.
For now I will choose Asians.
Look at this Asian man, basically only small slant.
https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/smart-casual-asian-man-headphone-260nw-612647567.jpg

Then another one with moderate slant.
https://thumb7.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/3175751/557911714/stock-photo-close-up-profile-view-of-japanese-man-isolated-against-white-background-557911714.jpg

Then this other Asian men with a very heavy slant.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/62/15/7c/62157c7b54c4f53f4499004b109f5eec--mohawk-hairstyles-hairstyles-for-guys.jpg

The point is that it exists in all groups, black men also.

The person who made this page is just an ignorant fool, someone who lives inside and reads 19th century racial theories basically.

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Steven lin
10/5/2018 09:03:10 pm

Neanderthals were wiped out and only Homo sapiens survived, which reproduce and last until today, creating all of us.

Reply
Baboon
6/29/2018 12:32:24 am

The problem with you page here is that you are basing entire people on single skulls. Also you even made mistakes within the skulls just on here.
The 3 skull examples show that the Caucasian one has the largest nasal spin, the African one second (even though you claimed it was flat), and the Asian one is actually the flattest in these 3 skulls.

Secondly the nasal opening in these examples shows the Caucasian one to be slightly wider than the Asian one, but the Caucasian one to be narrower at the top.

This Asian skull is not typical of Japanese or east Asian, who have very wide skulls, usually globular in shape. The skull you used here is more akin in proportions to a Caucasian skull actually.

Also it's well known that east Asians skulls have larger eye sockets and in Japan especially the nose opening on the skull isn't anything like that, same in Korea as well.

That skull used looks more like some small headed Vietnamese persons skulls. Typically used by Caucasian people like yourself writing a little page like this to want to make yourself feel superior.

Here is an actual Japanese skull from a wrecked Japanese warship. They have very large eye sockets and narrower nasal openings than your little skull here.

http://i.imgur.com/p2KgW.jpg

Here is a Japanese human.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/95/e8/ff/95e8ff6f86445d2c0323237db026fef8.jpg


Here is another.
https://c8.alamy.com/comp/EJFFX7/keita-sogabe-sagamihara-march-22-2015-football-soccer-2015-j3-league-EJFFX7.jpg

There are hordes with far smaller noses than western people, and I would know because I have actually been to Japan.

You see you are ignorant of something called genetic variation, you also want to push 19th century ideas of race. Basically trying to pick features you like and choose people within your race and claim these features are traits of your race (ignoring the 70% of white people that don't even have the features) and then picking specific examples from another race to try to argue that they are inferior, while ignoring the large percentage of people in that other race who also have the features you like.

Look right here at some German skulls from WW2.
http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/.a/6a00d834516a2569e2017c318437e9970b-800wi

They don't have any of the features your cherry picked skull on here has, that's because hordes of European people don't. You are picking features which are not intrinsic to white people at all, but just exist sometimes within the white race (in say 20-30% of people) and these same features exist in many other groups in the world also in similar or even greater percentages.

Your problem is you want to define things which vary greatly naturally. And how you want to define it as a single state is biased in wanting to make youself feel superior.
This post would do well on stormfront, that's for sure.
But you are not very smart and haven't been outside or to other countries clearly.

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    A recently made anthropologist who has been set loose to study the humans of the then, today, what's to come, and beyond. 

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