NOTE Kemp occasionally corrects his own mistakes. This page will be a continuing testament to all mistakes and lies presented in his book.
Arthur Kemp has also recently responded to the extensive evidence presented in this site. A full critique of his response will incrementally appear in the Against Kemp’s Slander page, which includes evidence of new lies and mistakes found in Arthur Kemp’s response
Below are a few concrete examples of Arthur Kemp’s lies and bloopers. His book is available online.
I had previously posted (see below) that the kore statue used by Arthur Kemp with the insinuation that it represented a "Nordic" type in Ancient Greece was nothing of the kind. Thankfully, the experts of the Munich Glyptothek have recreated the appearance of this kore as part of their work on recreating Ancient Greek polychromy which was present in an exhibition titled "Πολύχρωμοι Θεοί - Χρώματα στα αρχαία γλυπτά" (Multi-colored Gods - Colors in ancient sculptures) in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Below you can see the faded original used by Kemp as a "Nordic" as well as the reconstruction of the Munich experts.
[1] Article about the exhibition via e-politismos.gr
Arthur Kemp, like his Nordicist intellectual forebears (e.g., turn of the century Nordicist, Ludwig Woltmann) has a propensity of discovering the presence of “Nordics” among the famous personalities of Europe.
One of the most hilarious such invented “Nordics” is Napoleon Bonaparte, the dark-haired, short-statured brachycephalic Corsican who, on account of his military and political genius, could not possibly escape mandatory Nordicization.
Bottom Left: Napoleon as King, by Appiani, 1805
Center: Napoleon at Arcole, Gros, 1796
Bottom Right: “Enhanced” picture used in March of the Titans and described by Arthur Kemp as “a Nordic racial type, born on the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean. Like all but the most extreme Nordics, his hair darkened as he got older."
(clickable image)
This time, Arthur Kemp has used the writings of Spanish geneticist Antonio Arnaiz-Villena to support his theory that Greeks mixed with Sub-Saharan slaves. This is what world-leading geneticists Neil Risch from Stanford U., Alberto Piazza from the University of Torino and L. L. Cavalli-Sforza also from Stanford had to say on the interpretations of Arnaiz-Villena based on the HLA-DRB1 marker [1]:
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Even a cursory look at the paper’s diagrams and trees immediately indicates that the authors make some extraordinary claims. They used a single genetic marker, HLA DRB1, for their analysis to construct a genealogical tree and map of 28 populations from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Japan. Using results from the analysis of a single marker, particularly one likely to have undergone selection, for the purpose of reconstructing genealogies is unreliable and unacceptable practice in population genetics.
The limitations are made evident by the authors’ extraordinary observations that Greeks are very similar to Ethiopians and east Africans but very distant from other south Europeans; and that the Japanese are nearly identical to west and south Africans. It is surprising that the authors were not puzzled by these anomalous results, which contradict history, geography, anthropology and all prior population-genetic studies of these groups. Surely the ordinary process of refereeing would have saved the field from this dispute.
Not only doesn’t Arthur Kemp take the criticism of these scientists to consideration, but he doesn’t even bother to see who the people who wrote this study are and what they represent.
The fact that the study was co-written by a number of “Macedonian” [2] authors and is used as anti-Greek propaganda by nationalist sites from the Former Yugoslavia of Macedonia obviously flew right over Mr. Kemp’s head. But not, Arthur Kemp proudly uses sources from the FYRO Macedonia neglecting that these are likely to play this study for political interest as they do.
But let’s even ignore the fact that this study is written by FYROM scientists and used for propaganda purposes. Who is Arnaiz-Villena and what does he believe in?
In his own words, Arnaiz-Villena is “forced to admit the existence of Negro pharaohs and the origin of the Egyptians among the black Africans of the Upper Nile".
Does supposed white nationalist Arthur Kemp who thinks that Egypt was a Nordic Desert Empire take seriously the “scientific work” of an individual who believes in black Egyptians and black pharaohs?"
I guess if he wants to attack Greeks, he’ll disregard all the evidence against this study being politically motivated, he’ll disregard the expert opinion of top scientists criticizing the use of the HLA-DRB1 locus, he’ll disregard the fact that it’s written by an Afrocentric sympathizer all in the interest of proving his theory which he can’t prove in any other way because it just isn’t true.
(*) The fact that Arthur Kemp is the most popular white nationalist historical author on the Web speaks volumes about the current state of white nationalist historical “scholarship"
[1] Nature 415, 115 (10 January 2002); doi:10.1038/415115b
[2] Greece and the FYRO Macedonia have been in disagreement over the use of the ethnonym of Macedonia. In short, the nationalist “Macedonians” of the FYROM want to “liberate” the Greek province of Macedonia, and annex it to their own state to create the Greater Macedonia. With this goal in mind, they systematically deny the Greekness of the population of Greek Macedonia. See, e.g., the map in the United Macedonians site which includes both the present-day state of FYROM and Greek Macedonia as one state.
Even though we should be cautious about generalizations based on single-locus studies, a recent article examining the HLA-DRB1 locus has shown that Greeks and "Macedonians", as well as other Balkan populations all cluster together and are separate from Africans, pace Kemp.
Tissue Antigens, Volume 64 Issue 4 Page 486 - October 2004
High-resolution typing of HLA-DRB1 locus in the Macedonian population
A. Petlichkovski et al.
Abstract: The Macedonian population is of special interest for HLA anthropological study in the light of unanswered questions regarding its origin and relationship with other populations, especially the neighbouring Balkanians. Two studies have been performed to examine HLA molecular polymorphism in the Macedonian population, so far. The present study is the first to be performed in Macedonia using high-resolution sequence-based method for direct HLA typing. The study included 158 unrelated healthy volunteers of Macedonian origin and nationality, having a Christian Orthodox religion. After the simultaneous amplification of exon-2 on both HLA-DRB1 alleles, DNA sequencing was used for genotype assignment. In the 158 samples analysed, all 316 alleles were typed and a total of 29 different DRB1 alleles were detected, with DRB1*1601 being the most frequent allele (14.9%), followed by DRB1*1104 (13.9%). A phylogenetic tree constructed on the basis of the high-resolution data deriving from other populations revealed the clustering of Macedonians together with other Balkan populations (Greeks, Croats, Turks and Romanians) and Sardinians, close to another "European" cluster consisting of the Italian, French, Danish, Polish and Spanish populations. The included African populations grouped on the opposite side of the tree.
Link
As an example, Figure 1.5 illustrates the arbitrariness of different possible population groupings based upon DNA sequence diversity at an HLA locus. Often an objective way to choose between different interpretations is not obvious (though objective methods are discussed later in this book), and in its absence, simple assertion often fills the vacuum.
Figure 1.5: Grouping populations – take your pick. Relationships between populations based on DNA sequence diversity data at the HLA-DRB1 locus, displayed as a correspondence analysis plot (similar to principal components analysis; see Chapter 6) in which clustered populations are genetically similar. (a) Populations, with names indicated; (b, c, d) Three alternative groupings of the populations (there are others). The grouping chosen by Arnaiz-Villena et al. (2001) is (d) (adduced as support for a sub-Saharan origin for the Greeks) but is essentially arbitrary. Why is it preferred to alternative groupings shown in (b) and (c)? If the population origins were unknown when the groupings were made, would it affect the outcome? Note that this locus is generally regarded as being under strong selection. Adapted from Arnaiz-Villena et al. (2001).[Q1]
"The Spartans themselves kept their society strictly divided into three classes: by blood. At the top were the Spartans themselves, nearly all Nordic, ruled by their king."
J. Lawrence Angel, Social Biology of Greek Culture Growth, American Anthropologist, 1946
"But the invaders’ destructiveness cleared away rigid sections of Mycenaean social structure leaving room for new traits. After emigrations of Aeolians and Achaeans, Ionians and the more adventurous of the Dorians, the invaders were quickly absorbed ethnically, either by adopting local landowners into their tribes as in the Peloponnese, or by greater strength of the local society as apparently in Attica. After Submycenaean heterogeneity and local diversity in physical type a parallel process of absorption occurs during the Geometric phase of fusion and culture growth. Fusion was promoted by close linguistic similarity of invaded and conquered, by the Dinaroid-Alpine central trend of the invaders like that of both earlier and later northern intruders, and by persistence, especially among the females of the Mycenaean racial blend”
Thus, according to Angel, the Spartans were of “Dinaroid-Alpine” central trend, not “all Nordic” as Kemp alleges. Kemp also does not know that the Spartans were not “ruled by their king", but that they had two kings, a senate and a popular assembly. Of course, this is to be expected, because Kemp is an excellent promoter of Nordic feel-goodism, and a poor historian.
[1] John Boardman, Greek Art, London : Thames and Hudson, 1996
Most modern day Whites are to the greatest part, either direct or part descendants of a great wave of White peoples who swept into Europe from about 5000 BC till around 500 BC - these peoples, Nordic in terms of the White racial sub-groupings, had their original heartland in the region known today as central and southern Russia (hence Whites are often today called Caucasians - after the Caucasus mountains which are situated in the southern reaches of that country).The first scientist to propose the term Caucasian was Joseph Blumenbach who wrote in his “On the Natural Variety of Mankind", 1795:
"Caucasian variety. I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because in neighbourhood and especially its southern slope produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; and ... in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the original forms of mankind"Not only is Arthur Kemp ignorant about the origin of the term Caucasian, but he also associates it with “Nordic Indo-Europeans". The Georgians, from whom Blumenbach was inspired to coin the term “Caucasian” are not Indo-European, but speak a language of the Caucasian family. In the next topic, we will see that Europeans were NOT descended from people originating in the Russian steppes.
Most modern day Whites are to the greatest part, either direct or part descendants of a great wave of White peoples who swept into Europe from about 5000 BC till around 500 BC - these peoples, Nordic in terms of the White racial sub-groupings, had their original heartland in the region known today as central and southern Russia (hence Whites are often today called Caucasians - after the Caucasus mountains which are situated in the southern reaches of that country).The origin of Indo-European languages among the population of the Eurasian steppe who practiced burials in mounds (kurgans) is one of the theories about the origins of IE languages.
Regardless of the correctness or not of this theory, it is certain that the populations of Northern Europe are not physically descended from the Kurgan folk. A series of articles on the physical anthropology of the first Indo-Europeans in northern Europe appeared in Volume #8 of the Journal of Indo-European studies; the following excerpt illustrates quite clearly that Indo-European speaking Northern Europeans are not descended from the Kurgan folk
Roland Menk, A Synopsis of the Physical Anthropology of the Corded Ware Complex on the Background of the Expansion the Kurgan Cultures, Journal of Indo-European Studies, V. 8 361ff
p.389:
From the point of view of physical anthropology, the modalities can be outlined as follows. On the basis of the arguments presented up to here, Indo-Europeanization of northern Europe (i.e., of the Corded Ware culture s.str) cannot have taken place by a direct invasion of whatever extent of South-Eurasian Kurgan people. As demonstrated by Schwindetzky (in this volume) there are virtually no individuals within the whole sample of German Corded-Ware people that would fit, statistically, into the South-Ukrainian Kurgan populations.
In 411 BC, forty years after Pericles had enacted his law limiting citizenship to those of biological Athenian descent only, the law was turned on its head and citizenship of Athens was given to tens of thousands of foreigners who had entered Athens, particularly from the Middle East, with the argument being used that the city state had to make up the huge population losses suffered as a result of the Persian and inter-Grecian wars.First of all, there is no evidence that citizenship was awarded to “thousands of foreigners” after the relaxation of citizenship laws. Arthur Kemp forgets to mention that Pericles’ law awarded citizenship only to people who were descended from an Athenian father and mother, while the earlier legislation (which was later re-instated) required descent only from the father. There is also no reason to believe that Pericles’ motives were racial in nature. It probably aimed at reducing the number of citizens who enjoyed many benefits and were a burden for the public finances.
Irrespective of these objections, it is entirely inaccurate that there was a significant number of “Middle-Eastern” foreigners in Athens at the time. The foreigners who lived in Athens were drawn mainly from neighboring Greek city-states. In fact, the Hungarian scholar Gyorgy Nemeth [1], compiling information from [2] relates that literally all such people (until 400BC) whose identity is known from literature, tombstones, navy rolls and a variety of other sources were from the Delian League (hence Greeks), or from Greek city-states close to Athens (Megara, Corinth), while the most distant point of origin was Syracuse in Sicily. This point must be made clear:
There is not a single reference to a foreign resident in Athens from the beginning of time to 400BC who was originally from the Middle East.
[1] Nemeth, G., 2001, Metics in Athens, Acta Ant. Hung. 41, 2001, 331-348
[2] The Foreign Residents of Athens: An Annex to the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names: Attica, by Michael J. Osborne and Sean G. Byrne (British Academy)
"the Roman historian Manilius counted the Greeks as amongst the dark nations of the world, referring to the Greeks as part of the “colorate gentes” (Astronomica, iv, 719.)"Current scholarly opinion holds that coloratus means not swarthy but tanned. Indeed, coloratus is the passive participle of the verb coloro and means “someone who has acquired color". Indeed, Manilius speaks of the “colored faces of the Greeks” who frequent the gymnasium and the palaestra, implying that these “colored faces” were the result of exercise in the open air and not “race mixing” as Kemp wrongly implies:
perque coloratas subtilis Graecia gentes gymnasium praefert vultu fortisque palaestras
Finally, I refer the reader to the review of John V. Day’s “Indo-European Origins: the Anthropological Evidence” in JIES V. 30 where the reviewer also corrects John V. Day’s mistaken attribution of coloratus in the description of the British Silures to “swarthiness” and supports the interpretation found here.
The Greek mainland, which was occupied by original Old European Mediterranean types, fell before an invasion of Indo-Europeans called the Mycenae - this tribe were the first to establish the basis upon which the classical Grecian age was to built, albeit only after yet another wave of Nordic invaders.Mycenae is the name of a city in the Peloponnese, not of imaginary Indo-Europeans. The inhabitants of the city were called Mykenaioi, usually transcribed in English as Mycenaeans. It is interested to note that J. Lawrence Angel’s analysis of the royal burials at Mycenae reveal that only about 1/3 belong to the Nordic-Iranian skeletal type. Hence, to label the Mycenaeans as “Nordics” is inaccurate, for Nordics were at most the minority element in the aristocracy itself.
Kemp continues:
Starting about 1100 BC, a new wave of Indo-European Nordics invaded Greece from the north: the DoricsJ. Lawrence Angel’s analysis of Greek skulls from the Geometric age (after 10th c. BC) notes a marked increase in Alpine-Dinaric skeletal types, with Nordic-Iranians comprising less than 5% of the total sample. Interestingly, the American anthropologist Roland Dixon also believed that the Spartans and Dorians were Alpines, on the evidence of their funerary masks. The Dorians descended from the Pindos mountains where even today the Greek Epirotes are distinguished by their brachycephalic skulls and slightly lighter pigmentation, without being assigned by any authorities to the Nordic race.
If Kemp has a hard time finding natural blonds in Greek art, he may perhaps try to find some among modern Greeks many of whom are much blonder than the examples he chooses. A case in point:
Indeed, there were some blonds then as there are some today. Kemp’s theory of displacement of the original Greeks has no basis on reality. Are we to conclude by the presence of individuals such as Greek model Katerina Georgiadou above (much blonder than anything found in Ancient Greek Art) that today there is a significant number of Nordics in Greece? Of course not, because the majority of Greeks looked then, as they do now like this:
Arthur Kemp writes that this mosaic from Pella, Macedonia is evidence that Greece received “Nordic Indo-European invaders". To begin with, as we have explained in this site on the Racial Type of the Ancient Hellenes the most prominent anthropologists do not attribute all instances of light hair to Nordics. Secondly, Kemp dates the mosaic to the 5th c. BC when in fact it belongs to the late 4th c. BC. Thirdly, Kemp completely ignores the fact that mosaic construction is limited by the colors available in nature and that by necessity, the artist must use the limited number of colors available to him to give the illusion of volume and texture with small elements. Hence, in all Greco-Roman mosaics, before the medieval invention of colored glass, we witness a limited palette of colors. Fourth, the mosaic depicts a mythological scene and hardly represents living Macedonians, let alone the “Indo-European invaders” of fifteen hundred years before in a different part of the country. Finally, the Macedonians were Greek, but they do not represent Greeks in general. Even today, it has been noted, e.g., by Coon in The Races of Europe, that Macedonians are lighter than southern Greeks. Arthur Kemp of course has to resort to this sort of game because he knows that the Greeks from the archaic age painted the God Zeus:
and that in the earlier Mycenaean age, there are no blonds to be found in Greek art, but rather a complete set of brunets such as these figures attached to Mycenaean (supposed “Nordic Indo-European") swords:
Or this Mycynaean female:
Above: Three pots, dating from the 5th Century BC, showing the racial types in Ancient Greece: One is clearly Semitic, another Black. These pots are on public display at the National Museum, Athens.
The truth:
6204: Small vase for perfumed oils in the shape of Herakles’ head from a particular production of Attic workshops at the end of the 6C BC. National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
Thus, according to the self-proclaimed historian of the white race, Herakles, the progenitor of the “Nordic” Dorians [according to Kemp, that is] is “clearly Semitic".
Interestingly, Hercules is described by Dicaearchus as dark [melanan], mixed-eyed [hupocharopon] and hook-nosed [grupon]. Much like his vase representation, that is, but not quite “Nordic” enough for the progenitor of the supposedly “Nordic” Dorians.
During the time of Pericles, Classical Greece reached the heights for which it is remembered today: it was at this time that the Olympic Games were established and held every four years at Olympus in honor of the god Zeus, lasting in that form until the year 394 AD.
Olympus has the highest peak of all Greek mountains, and was thought to be the abode of the Greek gods. It is in Northern Greece. The Olympic Games were held in Olympia, a town in the Peloponnese which is in Southern Greece.
Additionally, the Olympic Games were not established in the “time of Pericles". Pericles was born in 495BC and died in 429BC. The first Olympic Games were held in 776BC, that is 281 years before Pericles was even born.
Bigger Version of the mural
Arthur Kemp describes this mural from the Greek Island of Thera (Minoan age, c. 1650BC):
Wall painting of a blonde Nordic fisherman on Crete, circa 1,550 BC.Apart from misplacing this painting on Crete, rather than Thera, Arthur Kemp is lying. The man’s head is colored blue, not blonde, while two locks of hair are colored black. Thus, this man is clearly not a blonde. The excavator of Thera, Spyros Marinatos thinks that the blue color represents shaved stubble while two dark locks of hair have been allowed to grow.
http://www.artfromgreece.com/stories/mf04.html
The Spartans themselves kept their society strictly divided into three classes: by blood. At the top were the Spartans themselves, nearly all Nordic, ruled by their king.
The middle class comprised mainly of the original Greeks and some later descendants of other Indo-European invaders (such as the Dorians). This middle class tended to be less Nordic in appearance than the Spartans themselves.
The lowest class of Spartan society were the darkest in the society, called helots, who were mainly original Mediterranean racial types who had mixed with North African (Arabic, Nubian and Semitic) slaves imported into the region at an earlier date.
All of this is pure invention. The Spartan helots were mostly Messenian Greeks, obtained after the Spartans defeated their neighboring Messenians in the Archaic Age.
There exists no evidence whatsoever that non-European slaves had been imported to the Peloponnese at an earlier date. The Spartans could not important slaves from distant lands in their subsequent history, because (i) they did not undertake campaigns in distant lands, (ii) they did not engage in commercial activities with foreigners, (iii) their money was made of iron and was practically worthless outside Sparta.
There exists no evidence whatsoever that the Spartans and the other inhabitants of the Peloponnese were different from each other in terms of race.
The Old Oligarch is the anonymous author of a Constitution of the Athenians. He speaks disparagingly of the Athenians’ democratic constitution and must have been of noble Athenian ancestry, detesting as he does the Athenian democracy. He wrote his treatise sometime between 446 and 424BC, i.e., at the height of Athenian power of the Classical Age. According to him slaves and metics (free, non-citizen tradesmen) in Athens were indistinguishable from Athenian citizens:
If the law permitted a free man to strike a slave or freedman, he would often find that he had mistaken an Athenian for a slave and struck him, for, so far as clothing and general appearance are concerned, the common people [ho dEmos]look just the same as the slaves and metics. [Hughes, et. al. “The Old Oligarch", 1.10, trans. 1968, Harrow]
As the darker elements in Grecians society grew in number, so did the desire to mimic the original Nordic blonde haired type. The Greek writer Euripides for example wrote a tract on how hair could be dyed blonde.The reality is that a fragment of the Greek writer Euripides speaks disparagingly of Athenian women for tEs komEs ta xanthismata (dyeing their hair blonde). So, rather than giving instructions for dying one’s hair blonde, he disparages the brunette Athenian women for artifically changing their appearance.
The Iliad goes on to describe the goddess Athena as “bright eyed and blond".The Iliad never mentions Athena’s hair color.
And now I see all the rest of the bright eyed Acheans, whom I could well recognize and name
"Bright” in the English translation does not refer to eye color, but to intelligence and quickness of glance. The Achaeans are called “helikopes Achaioi” in the Homeric epics.
heli^k-ôps , ôpos, ho, hê, fem. heli^k-ôpis , idos, with rolling eyes, quick-glancing, as a mark of youth and spirits (not in Od.), helikôpes Achaioi Il.1.389 , al.; helikôpis kourê ib.98; numphê Hes.Th.298 , cf. Sapph.Supp.20a.5; parthenoi, Aphroditê, Pi.Pae.2.99,P.6.1.
Do you not see how fair I am myself, and tall? I come of a brave father, and a goddess mother bore meThe correct passage (Iliad 21.108-109) is:
ouch horaais hoios kai egô kalos te megas teThe adjectives used are kalos=beautiful and megas=great.
patros d’ eim’ agathoio, thea de me geinato mêtêr:
In spite of this, by the year 5000 BC, original Mediterranean Whites and some early Nordic tribes (together known as Ubaidians) established settlements in the Tigris and Euphrates river basin.The analysis of Sumerian crania has not shown the presence of Nordics. Sumerians belonged to the Mediterranean and the Eurafrican (mesorrhine, angular, thick-skulled) racial types with a minority of Armenoid racial elements.
Reference:
Report on the Human Remains Found at Kish. L. H. Dudley Buxton, D. Talbot Rice Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 61. (Jan. - Jun., 1931), pp. 57-119.
