April 20, 2003

Hair Color of the Proto-Slavs?

Colour and Race

John Beddoe

The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 35. (Jul. - Dec., 1905), p 226.

Of these, the most important and interesting is the case of the Czechs in Bohemia and Moravia. Here we have a region with masses and blotches of dark hue, yet surrounded north, south, west, and east by lighter-coloured tracts.

...

That this is no new thing: Ibn Fozlan, an Arabian traveller, noted nearly 1,000 years ago, the black hair of the Bohemians. This peculiarity would hardly have struck a southron's eye, had it not been in contrast to the hair of their neighbours. And in a medieval German publication, wherein four nations are potrayed as female figures, while Germania is blond and Italia is dark, Sclavinia is represented as distinctly swarthier than Gallia. The Czechs being as it were the vanguard of Slav invasion, would very naturally be present to the mind of the artist, as the nearest and most familiar representatives of a Slavonic race.

Posted by Dienekes at April 20, 2003 12:56 AM | PermaLink
Comments

I think they ware pontid (dark pigmented)with some dinaric admixture(bohemian are brachicephalic), actualy they ware dacians(thracians) adopted the slavonic language.the same case with the bulgarians in which population the east baltic and neo-danubian elements are less than 1%,despite the slavic language.

Posted by: george at June 22, 2003 09:53 AM

You obviously haven't been any attention to the olympic squads marching in at the opening of the Olympic Games. If you did, you would have noticed that there are more blond Slavs per squad than there are Blond Germans or English. So you know where you can take your superiority garbage, right? Right!
Amused!

Posted by: Ted Lebar at June 23, 2003 04:17 PM

Hair color distribution varies greatly in Slavic-speaking nations. It varies from predominatly brunet in the Balkans, through intermediate in Central Europe to a maximum occurrence of blondism in e.g., Poland and parts of Russia.

Posted by: Dienekes at June 23, 2003 08:59 PM

Definitely Slavic people like most of the other europeans are not identify with one race.
But I definitely think that the Proto-Slaves would be of the same type like most ot the baltics are today.
Nordic-alpin would be dominant. Osteuropids (Eickstedt) are more of the Finno-Ugrians and came later by assimilation. Pontic or just Mediterranean Race would come with the assimilation of Iranian/Scythian Tribes.

Posted by: Thor at June 27, 2003 08:35 AM

Bulgarian are predominantly pontid (east mediterraneans)in race at least from the neolithic .That means they are descended from the native thracians which ware incorporated in the East Roman empire(Bizantium)and slavinisized in the middle ages thrue the church - slavonic language as a state and liturgian language in the medieval bulgarian kingdom.

Posted by: George Bachvarov at September 24, 2003 10:57 AM

"...you would have noticed that there are more blond Slavs per squad than there are Blond Germans or English..."

In fact, Czechs aren't as Slavic as everyone says. I think, that Czechs are closer to original agrarians (b.t. A around 43%) and also to Celts (they partially came into being in Bohemia).

Look at any table of "Beer consumtion per capita" and you'll see, who is CELT.

Posted by: Yawn at December 29, 2003 10:15 AM

I dont know where Beddoe gets his info from but its not true.

I have visited most parts of Germany and the Czech Republic and I cant say that the Czechs are darkerhaired than the Germans on average. Even if the Czechs are darker in haircolour than the Germans, which I doubt strongly, the difference would be negligable.

I have been researching slavic people/nations for the last years and I noticed that the Eastern Slavs are the blondest on average.

I have made a ranking on slavic speaking nations and haircolour. From blondest to darkesthaired :

1. Russia
2. Ukraine
3. Belarus, Poland, Czech Rep, Slovakia (difference between these 4 nations are negligable)
4. Slovenia, Croatia (differences negligable)
5. Serbia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Macedonia (differences negligable)

one thing that caught my eye was that Ukrainians are blonder than Poles and Belarussians despite of the fact that the Ukraine is situated more southern than Poland and Belarus

Posted by: 1juice at March 25, 2004 02:36 PM

I wonder if the Vikings or more properly the Varangians-have something to do with the relatively large number of blondes in Russland and the Ukraine. They did after all settle in boththose areas. Any thoughts?

Posted by: Francis Potter at April 5, 2004 08:45 PM
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