red hair in the illiad

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Originally Posted by Watchman

Isn't that usually attributed to the Vandals ?

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no and it is not logical either. the vandals did not subjugate the atlas mountains, they conquered the cities. they probably had very little genetic impact on the berber populations.

I don't think Greeks had red hair. Most of them had it because of Celtic influence.

Don't pull that whole, different than classical times card. I'm 80% Greek (20% Russian, which I used to think was half of me :inquisitive:), no red hair.

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Originally Posted by Patriarch of Constantinople

Don't pull that whole, different than classical times card. I'm 80% Greek (20% Russian, which I used to think was half of me :inquisitive:), no red hair.

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so becuase you dont have red hair - no ancient greeks did?

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Originally Posted by KARTLOS

so becuase you dont have red hair - no ancient greeks did?

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It means that it's highly improbable that Greeks have had red hair.

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Originally Posted by Patriarch of Constantinople

It means that it's highly improbable that Greeks have had red hair.

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do you honestly believe that or are you joking?

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Originally Posted by KARTLOS

do you honestly believe that or are you joking?

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I believe that, the only way I think Greeks had red hair was Celtic influence.

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Originally Posted by KARTLOS

do you honestly believe that or are you joking?

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And as you have to had said to me once,

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i can only asume this is because you find the idea uncomfortable.

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In the 4th Century AD, the Jewish physician Adamantios, described what he called the "true Greek" – or where the “Hellenic race has been kept pure” as follows:

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"Wherever the Hellenic and Ionic race has been kept pure, we see proper tall men of fairly broad and straight build, neatly made, of fairly light skin and blond"

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Originally Posted by Patriarch of Constantinople

It means that it's highly improbable that Greeks have had red hair.

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your logic is fairly shocking

just because you dont have red hair and are of greek descent no ancient greeks could have had red hair??

nobody is suggesting that all greeks were red heads, so why is it impossible for you to believe that one or two were??

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Originally Posted by KARTLOS

your logic is fairly shocking

just because you dont have red hair and are of greek descent no ancient greeks could have had red hair??

nobody is suggesting that all greeks were red heads, so why is it impossible for you to believe that one or two were??

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Hmmmmmmmm, maybe because I haven't seen one piece of viable evidence suggesting that Greeks had red hair.

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Originally Posted by Patriarch of Constantinople

In the 4th Century AD, the Jewish physician Adamantios, described what he called the "true Greek" – or where the “Hellenic race has been kept pure” as follows:

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this quote provides suport for my proposistion that the ethnic composistion of "greeks" has changed considerably since classical times

i.e that for example blondeness was clearlly more common then

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Originally Posted by Patriarch of Constantinople

In the 4th Century AD, the Jewish physician Adamantios, described what he called the "true Greek" – or where the “Hellenic race has been kept pure” as follows:

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Hmm, C4 AD is over 1,500 years after Mycenaean times. A lot can happen in that amount of time. Red hair is described in the Iliad, written about C8 BC, and Homer didn't seem to have a problem with it. What's the problem? Maybe it was a metaphor, or a certain shade of brunette that 'looks' red. That's how modern Greeks normally explain away these inconvenient details. Quite amusing really. Personally, I think the red hair meant Menelaus was from Liverpool; the Mycenaeans were Scousers! :laugh4:

According to Wiki: "Red is an uncommon hair color among humans, found mainly in Northern and Western European populations (and descendants of these populations), although it occurs in low frequencies throughout other parts of Europe and Asia."

So i think its possible that some Greeks could have had red hair without any more complicated theories.
Here is the full article:

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

GAH!! If they can have blond hair, they can have red hair. Red hair is a hybrid of blondness.

GAH!

While red hair is very rare in Greece you will find some people that have it, 2 cousins of mine have dark redish hair. In fact ive seen Turks/Lebanese/Iraqis etc with redish hair.

Here is something to read on the subject...

http://dienekes.angeltowns.net/pictures/composites/
http://dienekes.angeltowns.net/articles/hellenes/

There is every possibility that different hair colours existed. The description 'red' is automatically associated with 'ginger' these days, however it could just as easily have been used to describe shades of brown. Many tribes around the Altai were described as having red hair and green eyes, most notably Chingis Khan and his immediate family. The Chinese were describing brown. I know some Scandinavians who are dark haired, so nations cannot be lumped into a category such as hair colour, populations moved too much

........Orda



edit: typo

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Originally Posted by Cataphract_Of_The_City

Here is something to read on the subject...

http://dienekes.angeltowns.net/pictures/composites/
http://dienekes.angeltowns.net/articles/hellenes/

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he seems to use fairly old sources from the 60's and 70's. classing people as nordic, alpinid etc is fairly outdated now

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Originally Posted by Orda Khan

I know some Scandinavians who are dark haired, so nations cannot be lumped into a category such as hair colour, populations moved to much

........Orda

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Just by eyeballing the crowds here, I'd say most Scandinavians are dark-haired. Or some shade of brown anyway. Blond hair is a recessive trait after all.

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Originally Posted by Watchman

Just by eyeballing the crowds here, I'd say most Scandinavians are dark-haired. Or some shade of brown anyway. Blond hair is a recessive trait after all.

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finland is not a good example of a scandinavian country in terms of ethnicity, hence the fact that the majority of the population speak a language completely unrelated to sweish/norwegian/danish.

Well, duh. Not that language was too good a mark of ethnicity though, some of our south-western coastal areas are almost entirely Swedish-speaking, as are many of the islands. Simple migration across the Baltic has done its part in that over the millenia as well of course, but trading and cultural links doubtless even more.

I've been to Scandianvia proper though. Can't exactly say a wide proliferation of blondes made a strong impression - it's not all that common over there either, just relatively more common than in most other places.

Well again we are at square one. If we are talking genetics then we should talk about genetics.If about ethnicity then about ethnicity. If we are talking about the genetic inheritance of population of Finland then genetically closest populations according to reacent studies are Germans and Dutch. So i dont see a point what does the language of Finnish population which is a Finno Ugrig one has to do with their genetics, which determines things like haircolour.
There is simply no such a homogenetic groups of people in novadays Europe left that could be stereotyped so grously.
You can divide people easily becouse of their language,but from Genetics its lot harder.Becouse of a simple reason that homogenetic "Nations" doesnt exist anymore and im not quite sure when ever there even have been something which could have been called that since human populations need genetic mixing.

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Originally Posted by Kagemusha

since human populations need genetic mixing.

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im sorry but that is simply not true (im speaking as a phd biologist)

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Originally Posted by KARTLOS

im sorry but that is simply not true (im speaking as a phd biologist)

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So inbreeding doesnt have negative effects on human populations? Care to show some proof?

Here is an article about effects of inbreeding:

http://www.as.wvu.edu/~kgarbutt/Quan...ing_Humans.htm

And one about Mithocondrial DNA studies and how that proofs that the talk about European "races" does really belong into world of 30`s.

http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_wtd020876.html

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Originally Posted by Kagemusha

So inbreeding doesnt have negative effects on human populations? Care to show some proof?

Here is an article about effects of inbreeding:

http://www.as.wvu.edu/~kgarbutt/Quan...ing_Humans.htm

And one about Mithocondrial DNA studies and how that proofs that the talk about European "races" does really belong into world of 30`s.

http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_wtd020876.html

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look i agree with the majority of your previous post and of course inbreeding has a negative effect.

i perhaps misunderstood the first comment i responded to and read into it too much. when you said human "populations need genetic mixing" i understood you to be suggesting that large scale mixing was necessary.

the truth is that a population does not need to be massive to avoid interbreeding. the genetic problems associated in interbreeding tend to occur when the gene pool is severely restricted by nature such as on an island, or by human choice as in the case of european royal families and eurpoean jews of a few hundered years ago. it would be hard to suggest that the population of any modern european state is in need of genetic mixing from an outside source. (with the exception of perhaps iceland).

IIRC Finland is actually a pretty popular place among heredity researchers. Many regions were for a long time rather isolated with little population movement in and out so there's a lot of peculiar minor hereditary diseases going around, and on top of that fairly accurate and well-preserved Church records on births, marriages and so on stretch back to around Late Middle Ages. Detailed and massive databases on population health going back at least fifty years don't hurt either.

'Course, as the country is no longer an agrarian backwood the geneticists are now in a bit of a hurry to gather the data before them backwater peculiarities disappear from the gene pool the normal way.

just a quick note on dna ancestry studies - it is a fairly recent field and each new study tends to contradict the last. there are some general trends - for example most eveidence points towards an african origin for homo sapiens. ( even then there is not much consensus on the dates)

therefore it is best to take all such studies with a degree of caution as it is always gonig to be difficult to extrapolate past events from modern dna evidence.

Ah, why am I not surprised to see that it is Hannibal speaking?

Anyway, back to the point. If what he said were true, then Peter Crouch is obviously not English. Why? Because I know for a fact that there is at least one person not 6'7" in England, with Churchill being 5'6". Therefore if the statement is true, one of them must not be English, and all English males up to 3200 years before now must have been of an identical height and hair colour.

Oh, and by the way, just as an example, there was a Scandinavian known as Erik the RED due to his hair colour. Using Hannibal's logic I therefore must deduce that all Scandinavians must have red hair, wear wigs or dye their hair.

EDIT: oh, and by the way, it is impossible to be 20% Russian. You can be close, but not 20%.

A fairly famous Scandinavian to boot. :medievalcheers: