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| English soccer stars David Beckham and Wayne Rooney |
Here's a nice comparison photo of the two most famous English soccer players of the century, David Beckham and Wayne Rooney. Both are from working class backgrounds, but I think most people would agree that Beckham's facial features look more aristocratic than Rooney's. My impression is the sheer difference in facial width between Beckham and Rooney triggers class markers in our heads.
By the way, Beckham seems to agree that even if he wasn't to the manor born, he was to the manor destined, marrying the former Posh Spice and putting a lot of effort into dressing in a classy manner more befitting an old-fashioned sportsman than a modern footballer.
So, why do we associated elongated features with higher class? (Beckham isn't extremely tall -- he's around 5'11", but whether through slenderness or good posture or a good tailor, he seems taller.)
I don't think ethnicity is the answer here. Obviously, Rooney looks like an 1885 Punch cartoon involving bogs and potatoes, but plenty of guys with Irish last names have been leading men in Hollywood. (My vague impression is that the Irish have been disproportionately represented as leading men, although not necessarily as leading ladies. To pick just one example, former James Bond Pierce Brosnan is Irish Catholic working class. I wouldn't bet against the proposition that Irish American men are above average in looks.)
But why would narrow faces be associated with higher class? Is it just a visual cliche, or nurture (better diet?), or did the upper classes somehow breed for elongation? And, if so, why?
credit where credit is due Steve...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/wayne-rooney-has-a-carrot-in-his-trousers-and-a-spud-for-a-face-28558172.html
I think the extra width on the side lobes are related to violence...brawling.
ReplyDeleteThe Aristocracy was bred from Christianity and trying to be 'Good people' and 'Good Examples' for the lower classes. So over time you just simply bred out that side frontal lob width and the corresponding brawler type personality.
High-foreheads tend to correspond to good personality traits---generosity, open-mindedness, compassion etc etc (I made those three up but you get the point)
But to keep all the facial features in symmetry and ratios correct, the other features had to be elongated to match the high forehead.
You don't want a high forehead and tiny itty bitty features, that would not be attractive :)
Faces that are wider than they are long often look chubby at best. And that's not something that the upper classes want to be associated with right now.
ReplyDeleteIn the old classification Beckham is Nordic and Rooney is Alpine.
ReplyDeleteSo, since 1066 the English ruling class tended to be Norman (i.e., Frenchified Vikings)?
ReplyDeleteMy dad was about as Alpine geographically as you could get: his father was from a little town just north of the Alps and his mother from Zermatt at the base of the Matterhorn.
ReplyDeleteMy father looked a fair amount like Robert De Niro. Wikipedia says of De Niro: "His father was of Italian and Irish descent, and his mother was of English, German, French, and Dutch ancestry." So, if you averaged out De Niro's ancestry, it might center a little north of the Alps too.
Well, there's Retzius' old dolichocephalic / brachycephalic division. See here:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolichocephalic#Use_in_human_anthropology
This article cites a recent paper for there being a "relatively high genetic component" of head shape.
Social scientists do a lot of research using college students as subjects, but I've long felt they should use entertainment industry professionals to more quickly get to the heart of stereotypes. I'd love to get three veteran Hollywood casting agents together to look at pictures of people and decide whether they looked right to play various occupations and social levels.
ReplyDeleteWhile Rooney may have a Celtic name, Beckham is 1/4 "Scots-Irish". Not that is shows in his looks.
ReplyDeleteIsn't Rooney Corded Nordic? (it may be cordid)
ReplyDeleteHe's not Alpine.
Long narrow faces are more feminine and beautiful. In short, the rich guys got the hotter chicks.
ReplyDeleteSFG...
ReplyDelete2 KEY Things..
Brawler type personality does not mean Warrior. It just means Bar Idiot which pretty much sums up Wayne Rooney.
I know for a fact that high-foreheads were preferred for mates...this was a big deal in those phrenology magazines in the 1800s and early 1900s before the science was labeled politically incorrect.
In fact, I've added high-forehead into a list a things I look for in a man :) hmm...
Let me just add..when it comes to mate searching...
ReplyDeleteSmooth high-forehads, you don't want the weird super high-foreheads that have a hump in them...they almost appear to bulge out...That's not good. Some blacks, white porn stars, and just overall crazies have high-foreheads with the bulge.
If you look at Stormy Daniels...see that bulge...that's bad. Avoid.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2291621/The-face-porn--make-Adult-movie-stars-brave-camera-shiny-skin-pimples--incredible-transformations.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
I have a white male friend who has an insanely sloping forehead to the point where you look at it and go "Woah? Where's the frontal lobe?"
ReplyDeleteHe married a mixed race African chick.
If you look at mixed race African people like that news broadcaster Steve always tries to say looks white...they all have 'mound' head as I like the call it. The top of the forehead is shaped in a mound. I've seen this forehead a lot in the 'whites' in Latin America.
I think once black is mixed with white you permanently lose the European forehead, and mound head becomes the default.
Here you go...mound head
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/Soledad_O'Brien.jpg/220px-Soledad_O'Brien.jpg&imgrefurl=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soledad_O'Brien&h=246&w=176&sz=1&tbnid=bX_jKbWz1qXsQM:&tbnh=186&tbnw=133&zoom=1&usg=__nGajkb3SDlJj2Nv6GCgCgC2Lx6s=&docid=0_44HoUuTDAj_M&itg=1&hl=en&sa=X&ei=o2BAUYirDMS_qgHk1oDYCg&sqi=2&ved=0CIcBEPwdMAw
Aha! The picture on drudge report is good to analyze...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/190809/5-things-you-should-know-about-george-p-bush/
George P. Bush, George Bush, and George Bush Sr.
George Bush Sr. has the best forehead of them all--so he's the most intelligent.
George Bush lost a bit with his head...not has good as his father.
Then you have George P. Bush...and he has 'The Bulge' in the upper half of his forehead, followed by a gap, then a slope. So that's interesting. If he was a woman he'd be more with the porn stars.
Here...last paragraph
ReplyDeleteYou have to figure out what type of high-forehead you're dealing with
I have no doubt that the phrenologists were on to something big
http://books.google.com/books?id=g4MAAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA118&lpg=PA118&dq=phrenology+high+forehead&source=bl&ots=cVCB4ikKOJ&sig=hqL936VgxD1Aa8CEo1qAtC151XE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eV5AUerCO4OCrgHFp4HgCQ&ved=0CFYQ6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&q=phrenology%20high%20forehead&f=false
Nordicism.
ReplyDeleteThe European aristocracy, from Cape Finisterre to the Ural Mountains, tends to be nordic above the average of their non-aristocratic compatriots.
But to hear them speak removes all doubt of a lower class upbringing.
ReplyDeleteWhat a strange post. Were you drinking a lot of diet soda - or something stronger when you wrote this?
ReplyDeleteUh, Rooney is 5'9". Beckham does not just "seem taller", he is taller.
The 1885 Punch cartoon thing was funny, though...
Here is a funny cartoon of Edmund Burke eating potatoes and drinking Irish whiskey.
Rooney's hairline obscures the forehead issue. If anything, I think he has a higher forehead.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to get three veteran Hollywood casting agents together to look at pictures of people and decide whether they looked right to play various occupations and social levels.
You'd have a good shot at dialing in Hollywood's prejudices, anyway.
Irish last names and being Irish are separate things altogether and you know it. Flynn was a British mutt. Claiming Irishness on his part back then is just like white southerners claiming Cherokee blood today- sometimes true, but only slightly so and more often than not, not. Read the article I posted again- Myers claims the Rooney look is pure Irish, instantly recognizable as such, and the Peter Crouch look similarly English (your example of Beckham not being far off). This goes back to what is meant by 'Irish"; Kevin means Irish Irish, what Greg Cochran calls "green Irish"- no Norman blood. So, you should limit examples- either supporting or not- to actors who fit that profile...
ReplyDeleteAnother example is Sen. Webb and David Bowie.
I think Atlantid + Faelid (google image them) suits David Beckham best. Wayne Rooney appears Borreby with a Brunn influence which makes him resemble shrek in many ways.
ReplyDeleteThere is a tradition in English popular culture of upper-class men being represented as willowy ectomorphs, although this probably doesn't go back much further than the image of the dandy in the 18th century.
ReplyDeleteThere's also still the notion that posh upper-class people have somehow distinctive facial features, often thought to include a long 'horsey' face or a weak chin. Neither of those seems to be true but there are nonetheless certain kinds of face which you rare see ouside upper-class or upper-middle-class circles, and conversely Rooney-lookalikes who are uncommon outside the poorer working class. Wealthy old-money types tend have good complexions too.
Very narrow faces are sometimes labelled 'rat-featured' and aren't associated with the upper class.
Blog post: "did the upper classes somehow breed for elongation?"
ReplyDeleteIts the same process that the slaves became black. The slaves had to be outside all day in the sun picking cotton and would get sunburned. Those who had slightly darker skin would have an advantage. By the time of the Civil War they had become completely dark. When they were freed and didn't have to work in outside all day, the selection pressure was relaxed and today they have become much lighter.
The same process can be seen today in strawberry-pickers, who are turning brown.
As your back teeth go your face widens and you look grimmer. Even when you still have molars, if they are ground down. Beckham doesn't have British teeth.
ReplyDeleteBrit teeth ain't classy-lookin'.
remember that a lot of the "Irish" (especially educated classes) were actually "Anglo-Irish" (ie English immigrants post-1300).
ReplyDeleteseems like a pretty clear Celt-Viking split to me (esp as Rooney is from Liverpool and Beckham from Essex).
Cro-Magnid (Rooney) vs. Nordid (Beckham) is a central racial dynamic among Northern- and Central-Europeans, which few people much think about today.
ReplyDelete"Why do we associate elongated features with higher class?"
Nordids have so often been conquerors, and so have set up shop as nobilities across the entirety of Europe. In subsequent centuries after a conquest, there was likely something at work akin to what Steve often says about the slow 'Whitening' of the Latin-American elite -- even when Cro-Magnids or other European types rose to power, they married lighter/'elongated' people.
So it's about the influence of subrace on our historical-memory (Nordids as "the people on top").
Note: Neither ethnicity nor nationality determine subrace. In principle, an Irishman (or Englishman, or German..) can be of any of the subraces of Europe.
ReplyDeleteSee here for one estimate of subracial composition by nation.
Within any nation or ethnicity in Europe, Nordids or the "Nordish" tend to be overrepresented in the gentile aristocracy/upper-class.
Interesting question.
ReplyDeleteDavid Beckham actually hails from a modest, working class background (his dad worked for the gas board), and as social status goes there isn't any difference with Rooney's background.
Of course, as you say, Rooney is really an Irishman transplanted into England, and his head and face shape are typically Irish and differ from types that are typically English. As for long features being associated with 'nobility' or whatever I must say I'm clueless, perhaps this is just a misconeption developed in the public mind by Hollywood, kids' picture books etc in that it shapes our 'archetypyal' idea of what a noble 'should look like'. I'm not really into the subject, and haven't done any research, but the way to go is to study painted portraits of nobles from all European nations, and make conclusions from that, if it is myth or reality.
As it happens, long faces and long heads predominate amongst Anglo-Saxons, and this is good as any distinguishing marker for this ethny. The Irish represent a mixed picture. English type long heads are commonly found there, but there is a dsitinct and persistant strain of short, square, round heads there also, pergaps there were two stocks that contributed to ancient Ireland.
A good diagnostic for Irish ethnicity is a 'hard' rather blunt face with thin lips.
I would stereotype David Beckham as sleeping with, having children with or marrying high-status women, or at least a middle class English one.
ReplyDeleteHe doesn't just have elongated features, but lighter features. Like blonde hair and light eyes.
I would stereotype Wayne Rooney as touching and having babies with lower class British women. He seems to have darker hair too.
Many modern football players are dominated by lower class men, and their women but the footballs teams who talk about/focus on diversity/equality/etc are more dominated by the elite.
Middle class people go whichever place but usually the more classy and controlled lower-middle class types, as opposed to say the lowest of them all, the underclass, who is quite criminal.
I believe that Errol Flynn wasn't Irish at all.
ReplyDeleteHe was of German descent, being the son of a colonist of Papua New Guinea, of all places.
Upper class people behave with best self control or almost lack of anger outbreak. English people lack of aggressive outbreak in comarison to Irish. Low testoterone might explain it for the physical feature and personality.
ReplyDeleteI think we associate a chubby face with that of a child. The guy on the right looks childlike and the balding helps make the face even more bowling ballish. He has a George Costanza look.
ReplyDeleteRooney's nickname amongst opposition fans is "Shrek."
ReplyDeleteSome cross-cultural comparisons would be interesting too. Do the Chinese think lean faces look aristocratic? Do Egyptians? Uruguayans? Could this be a cultural hangover from the irruption of the Europeans from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century, or is it tied to something deeper (like WHR in judging feminine beauty)?
ReplyDeleteThe problem is yet again you take the Hollywood gestalt as reality. By this logic those same casting directors could tell us who is an Optimate Roman senator based on how posh their accent is. Your comment to this article gets alot closer to the truth than any casting director could. Long face= French=Norman elite post 1066. But that didn't take a casting director to figure out. A clever RNC official having deigned this basically won GWB a second term by creating the French looking John Kerry meme. Of course David Beckham and John Kerry share very few facial features because Beckham doesn't look aristocratic he looks Nordic.
ReplyDeleteDon't you think it's mostly a difference in BMI? People who identify with the upper classes want to be thinner. I bet Rooney has more body fat than Beckham.
ReplyDeleteRe the BMI idea: take a look at how thin Tom Brady has become, now that he's married to a supermodel and into fashion, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe rookie Tom Brady looks kind of like Rooney:
ReplyDeletehttp://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/000/634/768/TOM-BRADY-PIC-1_original.jpg?1354541577
and the current Tom Brady looks more like Beckham:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bMHhoaHxr2g/TIkHaxOg27I/AAAAAAAACOY/s8XiMWlA8yA/s1600/Tom+Brady+talks+about+Super+Bowl+XXXVI+the+Saints+and+Drew+Bledsoe.jpg
The rookie Tom Brady looks kind of like Rooney:
ReplyDeletehttp://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/000/634/768/TOM-BRADY-PIC-1_original.jpg?1354541577
and the current Tom Brady looks more like Beckham:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_bMHhoaHxr2g/TIkHaxOg27I/AAAAAAAACOY/s8XiMWlA8yA/s1600/Tom+Brady+talks+about+Super+Bowl+XXXVI+the+Saints+and+Drew+Bledsoe.jpg
You've asked about this before and I think it is a great question.
ReplyDeleteI think the belief in polarity is often wrong-headed, for example that women are attracted to the most masculine characteristics and vice-versa. There was a post at Mangan's discussing a study that undermined the women-love-masculinity paradigm and posited that BMI was by far the largest predictor of health (robustness) and what women were attracted to.
My outrageous idea is that this polarity is true of men, but far less true of women.
In other words, it doesn't really exist or isn't nearly as important as it's been made out to be.
Instead, there is an objective ideal that tends to move us into a feminine direction, though tall.
In any event, it might help if you post more pictures of tall, slender men for us to analyze :)
rooney is also going bald, and had a hair replacement procedure a few years ago.
ReplyDeletea full head of hair at middle age is a stereotypical trait of the upper class. they don't always have that but they seem to have it a lot more often than the proles.
Weston A Price did research on nutrition and dental health in the 1920s and 1930s I think, mostly on indigenous groups. He found that substituting white sugar, white flour, and jam in for the more traditional nourishing foods led to narrower faces, crowded teeth and more cavities.
ReplyDeleteHis book book was called Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. You can read it online here: http://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/pricetoc.html
Not just the English ruling class, Steve. Much of the Irish aristocracy was Anglo- or Cambro-Norman. Here is a (very) partial list of typical Irish names of Norman origin: Baldwin, Barrett, Barry, Brannagh, Burke (or de Burgh), Butler, Chambers, Cogan, Costello, Cruise, Cusack, Day, Dillon, Fagan, Fanning, anything beginning with Fitz, Furlong, Griffin, Griffith, Hackett, Jordan, Joyce, Keating, Lawless, Logan, Lynch, MacHale, Morrissey, Nugent, Plunkett, Power, Quilter, Redmond, Roche, Rossiter, Savage, Stapleton, Tobin, Tyrrell, Walsh and White. And, of course, Grace.
ReplyDeleteThe founder of the Grace clan was Odo, Comte de Champagne, who came with his brother-in-law, William the Conqueror, to England in 1066. Odo’s grandson, William, was styled Crassus or, in the Old French, le Gros or le Gras, meaning fat. Hence Grace.
Isn't this just dolichocephalic versus brachycephalic?
ReplyDeleteNorthern Europeans like Max Von Sydow have long thin heads while Ernest Borgnine have have shorter ones. The "High IQ Hot Spot" in Europe is in the north so it's not surprising that thin faces are seen as the faces of superior people.
Albertosaurus
Rooney looks a lot like Auberon Waugh. Wouldn't that be aristocratic?
ReplyDeleteMaybe the hat looked a KKK hood.
ReplyDeleteWarrior aristocrats - Prince Harry has seen action in Afghanistan twice now, his uncle Prince Andrew flew helicopters in the Falklands war. His dad qualified as a carrier pilot. His paternal grandad Prince Philip saw action as a Royal Navy officer in WW2. His maternal grandfather Lord Spencer was in a tank unit in WW2.
ReplyDeleteYou get the picture.
"But why would narrow faces be associated with higher class?"
ReplyDeleteBecause it reaches up higher. I guess it's like a wolf looks more regal than a pug or bulldog.
On the other hand, cats have wide and 'short' faces, but they look very aristocratic.
Maybe tall faces correlates with tall stature.
But I must say the squat-faced Ed Harris seemed nobler than the long-faced Scott Glenn in THE RIGHT STUFF.
And lots of hillbillies have long gaunt faces... like the toothless fella in DELIVERANCE.
I don't know Steve, I think you have everything ass-backwards here.
ReplyDeleteThere may be Irish leading men in hollywood but from what I see they ain't very Irish as in Gaelic. Liam Neeson? Brendan Gleeson? Fassbender? not very Irish. Colin Farrell, Gabriel Byrne and Pierce Brosnan are from the Pale, again not very Irish(Farrell's self-portrayal as a common Irishman is particularly laughable, he is from a rich family and attended the Irish version of Andover).
I think a subtext to Beckham-mania in the late 90s was the death of Princess Diana. She looked a lot like him and I think that the veneration of him may have come as a substitute for venerating her. It's like those mothers whose response to losing a child is to have another one.
If it wasn't for his looks Beckham would not be famous. He is a very good player but a first rank second rank one. I have come to the conclusion that Latins and Celts, two closely related groups are simply better at football than the Northern European Germans and Slavs. We have a creativity and guile the Northerners simply don't. The best players Britain and Ireland have produced are Giggs and Bale(Welsh), Dalglish and Best(Scottish and Ulster Scot), Scholes and Rooney(Scholes was eligable to play for Ireland and came close to doing so). The Anglo-Saxons just don't cut it. A German Messi is simply inconcievable. Had Rooney been a 7/10 instead of a 10/10 player, he'd be playing for Ireland too.
I have said here before that the Irish in Britain tend to be from the underclass. In HBD terms Ireland is like Mexico. The upper crust comes from The Vikings, Normans and English who settled the coast. The best of the Celts marry into it and absorb its outlook and ways. The going never seems to get tough for them so they stay put. Below that quarter is perhaps half the country who are fully capable first worlders who are mostly Gaelic Irish. These folks have the means to go to America or the rest of the Anglo-sphere when the going gets tough and that's what they do. The bottom quarter could only get as far as Britain so that's as far as they went. I don't think this is conscious to people, I've never heard of this kind of analysis of Irish society, but I think I'm right about it.
Rooney looks tougher and more physically intimidating. Like someone who might start a bar fight or attack you for looking at him wrong.
ReplyDeleteBeckham looks less aggressive and kinder.
There could be benefits to appearing less aggressive and kinder. People may be more inclined to support you. Also perhaps better deception or camouflage of ruthlessness. You look less aggressive and kinder, so you can get away with more ruthlessness.
Funny. When Nazis ran things in Germany, they forced Jews to wear yellow stars to identify themselves as parasitic leeches. Now, 'progressive' officials in Wisconsin want white kids to wear 'white bracelets' to confess to their 'white privilege'. And the media run by Jews have no problem with this. Btw, why 'white privilege'? It seems more like white achievement. Whites didn't achieve so much because they were privileged but became more privileged because they achieved so much more than other peoples. But not only more privileged but more generous, conscientious, and magnanimous than any other people on Earth. To be sure, 'white privilege' doesn't really mean much when it comes to most white folks whose ancestors were farmers, factory workers, soldiers, clerks, and etc. I mean how many white people are really privileged? Now, Obama hung around rich kids and smoked dope and got into elite institutions cuz he was black and was groomed to be president. THAT is privilege.
ReplyDeleteThe fathead doesn't necessarily look lowerclass. He looks monk-ish. Like Porky Pig as the friar in the cartoon where skinny headed Daffy was Robin Hood.
ReplyDeleteBeckham is quarter Jewish. His other origins are standard South-East english. The south-east of England has more Norman influence than most other parts of Britain. Given their warrior scando-origins, these Normans were likely taller than their Anglo-Saxon neighbours.
ReplyDeleteRooney is of Irish background, and has typical Irish features... large head and jaw. Have a look at Morrissey for a more appealing example of Irish blood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEfDe4fvfFA
ReplyDeleteThe opening scene of IVAN THE TERRIBLE pt 2 has to be the biggest collection of long-heads ever.
PS. Coneheads don't look too regal.
I think it's amusing to see the way Rooney's assigned ethnicity shifts back and forth from English to Irish depending on whether people are praising him or criticizing him.
ReplyDeleteSteve,is this post a joke? Did you have a few drinks with some Irish friend and he dared you to bring out the waspy Irish haters with a goofy post like this? (The Punch cartoon from 1847 was...funny? Really? Answer:No,it was not funny. You are living in 2013.) Anyway you pick a footballer like Rooney,who is a perfectly nice looking man,tho not handsome. He would be the Ward Bond type in the movies. Athletes in general are not very good-looking,the rarities like Beck & Brady make a fortune out of that.From this pic--who would look so good standing next to Beckham- you deduce all kinds of goofy theories to satiate the ego of the anglophile. OK,you are a god,so who am I to doubt you? But still,the "Errol Flynn was not a 100% Irish dammit" stuff is a bit much. Beckham is a good looking guy. There are ugly Englishmen too. Many of them read this blog;tho per capita more Irishmen read you.(BUT THEY ARE NO DOUBT VIKING NORMAN NORDIC IRISH!!!!)
ReplyDeleteI think ethnicity is definitely the answer. The Norman conquerors were tall with long faces, the Irish are shorter with broad faces. Long face implies Norman descent implies high social status (eg JRR Tolkien). Broad face implies Irish descent (eg actor Colm Meaney & Senator Jim Webb show the classic features) and low social status.
ReplyDeleteMost working class native English are mostly a Saxon/pre-Saxon mix, don't look much like Rooney & co, but they're also generally shorter and rounder-faced than our upper classes.
As a member of the narrow-faced tribe this is a subject I take an interest in.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I've noticed is that many people have narrow faces when young, but it gets wider as they older. Perhaps these people belong in a separate category of their own. Both my grandfathers had narrow faces all their lives though.
As a narrow-faced guy who wears glasses, one problem I'm up against is that the frame makers don't make frames any more for men with narrow faces. I sometimes end up buying womens frames, which are basically the same as mens frames but with a narrower bridge. And the current fad for glasses to be wide from side to side but narrow from top to bottom does not work for me. I need 'John Lennon glasses', to mention another famous narrow-faced man.
Steve Sailer:
ReplyDelete"So, since 1066 the English ruling class tended to be Norman (i.e., Frenchified Vikings)?"
Yup. When I was in the army reserve I found it was very noticeable that the British officer class had a distinct 'Norman' appearance. And I still tend to cringe in the presence of Norman-looking women with posh accents, probably a sense of inferiority inherited from my Northern Irish mother.
Elongated skulls seem like a pastoralist thing, and rounder skulls an agriculturalist thing.
ReplyDeleteIn Europe the hunter-gatherers were wiped out by farmers, and they were in turn taken over by the Indo-Europeans, who were mostly pastoralist and somewhat agriculturalist.
Rooney may have a Celtic name, but he looks more like a hardscrabble farmer type than a warrior / cattle rustling type like Beckham. Rooney is the older European farmer, and Beckham the (agro-)pastoralist who took over.
We need to look at all places where there are local differences between elongated vs. boxy faces. Just the NW European point doesn't get us far.
Here are pics of the three main ethnic groups in Rwanda:
http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=14930
The Tutsi pastoralists have elongated faces and narrower noses with prounced nasal bridges. The Hutu farmers have rounder faces, broader noses, and no nasal bridge. The Twa hunter-gatherers look similar to the Hutus.
Slavs are split between the northern farmers of the plains and the southern pastoralists of the mountainous Balkans. Google image search "polish men" and "bosnian men" or "serbian men," and you'll see that again the farmers have rounder faces and less pronounced nasal bridges than the farmers.
Same thing in South Asia: google "kerala faces" (farmer) and "pakistani faces" (pastoralist).
Same thing, not quite as extreme, comparing Egyptians (more farmer stock) to Arabians (more pastoralist stock). Egyptians have rounder faces, not so pronounced nasal bridges, somewhat wide at the bottom of the nose.
Not so clear in East Asia, with the Han farmers vs. the Mongolian or Manchurian pastoralists.
I always associated round faces with Scandinavians, especially Norwegians and Icelandic people (maybe because of admixture with natives?). A google search for "Scandinavia high cheekbones" seems to confirm I'm not alone.
ReplyDeleteHow would this mesh with the "Normans as Viking upper class" theory? Is it perhaps a different type of face roundness?
The black, or "negroid" forehea, is not high in proportion to the face, but the hairline is. Apparently, in the wisdom of advertisers, it was decided that, Beyonce, a black or mixed race person with naturally black, kinky hair, should be the icon for long, silk, blond hair color. The company was probably broadening its market by including more blacks & mestizos as customers. As part of turning this black woman into a blond, and more or less white looking one, they actually created a fake hairline. This was netting that fitted closer to the top of her forehead, and I guess the hair was woven onto it. Even without the lighter color, she already looked more Caucasoid. The lady was also compelled to submit to regular hair/scalp inspections by l'Oreal compay, to see that all that fake hair was not falling out, because it does destroy the natural hair over time, preventing further growth. That particular kind of hairline--and it does look different from high hairlines on Europeans--really is a phenotype marker for sub-Saharan Africans. It's one reason why even quite dark Indians and Arabs don't really look "black."
ReplyDeleteThere may be Irish leading men in hollywood but from what I see they ain't very Irish as in Gaelic. Liam Neeson? Brendan Gleeson? Fassbender? not very Irish. Colin Farrell, Gabriel Byrne and Pierce Brosnan are from the Pale, again not very Irish
ReplyDeleteThe cartoon bigotry of the commenters here really cracks me up. So Ronney (born in Liverpool) is truly Irish (at least for the purposes of insulting him) while Brosnan from County Louth is basically an Englishman?
People have a really remarkable ability to tell themselves lies which they find pleasing.
How does that map onto present-day perceptions of class differences? The pastoralists who invaded the areas where they live among farmers have usually been on top socially and politically. A daring cattle rustler had an easier time making it into the warrior/military elite, while the hardscrabble farmer was more trapped in the laboring peasant class.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there's any deep mechanistic link between skull shape and personality traits -- probably just the pleiotropic effects of genes whose main job (visible to selection) are on personality.
If so, then our perceptions are the outcome of learning through real-world experience -- people with more bold, ambitious, and vengeful personalities tend to have more elongated skulls, compared to others.
I wouldn't lump Rooney in with bold, daring, ambitious, vengeful. As others have said, he looks more like a two-bit punk who'd try to start some shit in a bar, and then forget all about it afterward no matter whether he won or lost. No drive toward a larger goal. Beckham looks more like a man with a plan.
We'd have to test, somehow, whether infants and children (with little experience) had the same perceptions here as adults do...
"Some cross-cultural comparisons would be interesting too. Do the Chinese think lean faces look aristocratic? Do Egyptians? Uruguayans? Could this be a cultural hangover from the irruption of the Europeans from the Renaissance to the Twentieth Century, or is it tied to something deeper (like WHR in judging feminine beauty)?"
ReplyDeleteEarly in the 20th c., a Persian from a rich family came to America and married a wealthy socialite. He wrote back to his family that he was amused to the women found him handsome. He was about averge in coloring for a Persian (sort of medium olive), and had a gaunt face, alittle like Omar Sharif. In Persia, handsome meant fair, pink cheeks, and somewhat cherubic, for lack of a better word. Long eyelashes, and convergent black eyebrows. And a mole or two. This was the look of the Ottoman Turks, and it is whar handsome meant in Iran 100 years ago.
Much of the Irish aristocracy was Anglo- or Cambro-Norman. Here is a (very) partial list of typical Irish names of Norman origin:
ReplyDeleteNever mind that list - for your initial statement to be true you should be coming up with a list of Irish nobility of Anglo origin. That would be a short list. In fact the list of English aristocracy who are not of Norman ancestry would be very short as well.
Unless you're trying to say that the Anglo-Normans are English, but the Hiberno-Normans are not Irish. And that would be just silly.
Lots of Soviet Cosmonaut fatheads
ReplyDeleteMy mother was born in the antipodes in 1937. She was Elle Macpherson tall which in her time was endlessly embarrassing, No modelling contract for her. Her family came from a Kentish village and they had a French surname. Maybe Norman genes caused of her misfortune? Something I've thought about recently.
ReplyDeleteSomeone mentioned Shrek. Princess Fiona has a tall thin Anglo-Celtic regal look when not transformed by her enchanchment into a Rooney-esque ogress.
I've noticed that many English rock stars have insanely thick hair well into old age. Jagger, Ron Wood, Bill Wyman, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, Roger Waters. Maybe it was the drugs. Like the joke about never seeing a street bum with no hair. Maybe a Celtic hair gene that goes with the heavy Gallagher brother eyebrows?Scandinavians are commonly balding much like Sting.
BMI was by far the largest predictor of health (robustness) and what women were attracted to.
ReplyDeleteWomen are attracted to fat men? Ha ha.
This kind of reminds me of that "Cheers" episode where Cliff starts collecting potatoes that are shaped like former Presidents. Norm had to step in and tell him to pull it back a little. Pull it on back, buddy, pull it on back.
ReplyDeleteEven more than leading men, upper class villains are always narrow-faced (and lower class villains typically wide-faced)
ReplyDeleteUh, Rooney is 5'9".
ReplyDeleteI thought he was much shorter, more like 4'11".
I'm dubious that Beckham's looks are likely to owe anything to Norman ancestry. A mere handful of them came over during and after the conquest, and they fairly famously resisted interbreeding with their Anglo-Saxon untertanen. Still do, actually - the upper classes resist mingling their genes with those of the lower orders pretty tenaciously.
ReplyDelete"Beckham" is a resoundingly Anglo-Saxon name. I'd be surprised if he had any ancestors who crossed paths, still less genes, with the Normans.
Interestingly, his long-time team-mate and friend for both Manchester United and England, Gary Neville, has a full-on Norman surname (although one gained from working for Normans rather than being descended from them, I am guessing). He and his brother Phil have certainly got long faces, but approximately 0% of Beckham's looks. (Their father is called Neville Neville, by the way.)
Rooney is actually a reasonably intelligent guy, for a footballer. He expresses himself quite articulately in interviews - more so than Beckham, IMO. Beckham is a likeable man but has very little in the way of an intellect.
ReplyDeleteWe have a new pope.
ReplyDelete"There's also still the notion that posh upper-class people have somehow distinctive facial features, often thought to include a long 'horsey' face or a weak chin."
ReplyDeleteI give you the wealthy wife of David Cameron vs the equally wealthy (but self-made as a barrister) wife of Tony Blair.
http://amandamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/SamCam2.jpg
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2012/6/20/1340187555956/Cherie-Blair-008.jpg
If you look at English cartoons of 1885 or earlier, you'll see John Bull represented as a very broad-faced farmer. But farming was a lower-class thing then.
http://www.metaltype.co.uk/photos/images/265.jpg
Gay politics:
ReplyDeleteThey smile at you sweetly and ask:
"Do you think I'm so noble, wonderful, beautiful, spiritual, sane and saintly, and lovable in so many ways?"
If you answer 'no', the gay freaks out and screams:
"You are sick, demented, phobic, delirious, rabid, odious, noxious, toxic, virulent, and hateful, and you should be banned from the public square and from taking part in public discourse!!!"
Steve Sailer said...
ReplyDeleteSo, since 1066 the English ruling class tended to be Norman (i.e., Frenchified Vikings)?
Yes. Exactly. And corresponding there are not a lot of Norman last names in the USA. The Darcy's mostly didn't bother to emigrate.
Though I don't know how that correlates to facial width.
Irishman's assessment of English footballing ability vs Scottish/Welsh/Irish is pretty biased to the latter. He has basically listed all the talented players to have emerged from the England has produced exceptional footballers - in the last 30 years, Hoddle, Gascoigne, Beardsley, Robson to name four off the top of my head.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that some outstanding footballers have come from "the fringe"... but Irishman has basically listed all of them. There are no others. The national sides of Ireland, Scotland and Wales have been brutally poor for decades, while England have been OK to good, so there's no case for "the Celts" (who of course aren't Celts at all, but that's a separate argument) having any innate superiority. In fact the Scottish, Welsh and Irish teams have a large proportion of English ringers and have done for a long time.
It's a reach claiming Scholes and I think you know it. Born and bred in England, looks English, sounds English, English name... The average RoI footballer probably has more English ancestry than Scholes has Irish.
Paul Fussell addressed this issue years ago in Class . I don't think he spent too much time on the issue, but he did a very funny drawing comparing the angles of an elite face and a prole face.
ReplyDeleteHe was very gay, and this topic is very gay. I'm having an image of HBD guys, wine in hand, admiring Beckham's long face (and tan, and hairdo) while Babe Ruth, hangs out, unnoticed, talking to the bartender.
The Norman conquerors were tall with long faces, the Irish are shorter with broad faces.
ReplyDeleteI've visited Ireland a few times and I've never found the Irish to have broader than average faces. As far as height goes, perhaps they're a bit shorter than Americans - but then so are the English.
A lot of people here are very attached to their pre (and mis) conceptions.
"Women are attracted to fat men? Ha ha."
ReplyDeleteApproximately a 12% bmi on a man was found to be ideal by the women in the study.
My impression is that Irish-Americans have done better at being leading men in movies than any other group.
ReplyDelete"My impression is that Irish-Americans have done better at being leading men in movies than any other group."
ReplyDeleteI worked with a rather vain but convivial Jewish lady from NYC, who, recalled that she and her mother used to talk about how good looking the Irish cops there were. I think she's right, at least before the booze gets to them. They didn't used to age well. Maybe better now, what with diets, no smoking, Alocholics Anonymous. This lady was generally into the darker, med type; however, she didn't think Greeks were especially good looking, although she loved Greek dancing and culture. She had married a Serb and said they were some of the best looking around (the men, not the women). But I'll never forget her comment about the Irish cops. Who wouldda thunk it.
btw, while Rooney may be an Irish type (one among many), I see this squat type more commonly among central Europeans. Salt of the earth is how I think of them. Also, an apple shaped body is a marker among meditteranians as they age, moreso than slender.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete"BMI was by far the largest predictor of health (robustness) and what women were attracted to."
Women are attracted to fat men? Ha ha.
No. BMI was the best predictor. Low BMI -> attractive. High BMI -> unattractive. Making BMI a good predictor. The authors should have stated that BMI and attractiveness were inversely correlated, but I'm guessing they thought that'd be obv.
I don't think having the full caveman brow is determinant upon whether a man prefers to dress up. Least of all an Irishman; I suppose you'll discount abundant photo evidence of O. Wilde for obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteOTOH if you are Tony Soprano some class markers are more useful than others...
It's the hair. The balding/buzz cut style is very lower class. Take a look at typical BNP members for example.
ReplyDelete"I think it's amusing to see the way Rooney's assigned ethnicity shifts back and forth from English to Irish depending on whether people are praising him or criticizing him."
ReplyDeleteclassic combined group behavior. andy murray is british when he wins, scottish when he loses.
africans are "our guy!" when they win the big game, "stupid blacks" when they blow it and lose the big game.
combined group dynamics are that you pull in winners and push out losers. this is not possible in homogeneous groups. in that case all you can do is bicker, maybe about who the coach should have been instead of the one they hired, or that the baseball players from hokkaido suck and they should have sent mainly players from tokyo instead to represent japan in the baseball classic.
Narrower, elongated faces are also part of what differs anatomically between Caucasians and others
ReplyDeleteThe perfect example of the narrow faced Slavic type with a narrow and high nasal bridge is the Serbian tennis player Djokovic
ReplyDeleteEveryone has zeroed in on faces to the detriment of the discussion, but elongation, or gracility, affects limbs and digits, too.
ReplyDeleteI think this was more what Steve had in mind, especially since he posited that ethnicity had little to do with the favorable esteem in which gracility is held.
I hereby cede my reproductive duties to my tall, long-faced, follicaly-gifted betters. I will observe for amusement until I expire.
ReplyDeleteYou might be on to something regarding working class being more masculine, however Rooney might look more masculine because of his receeding hairline, but he is also considerably more athletic than Beckham ever was. I get the impression that Rooney was something of a prodigy like LeBron James in the U.K., ( Who also had a receding hairline at a young age, btw. ) He was playing professionally and doing well at 18 years old. He was already a celebrity in Britain before his 20th birthday.Beckham is a lot skinnier, taller, but far less explosive a runner. Cristiano Ronaldo who is Portuguese, is like a cross between them, Beckham's height ( but taller ) but Rooney's athletic ablility.
ReplyDeleteRooney has legs like an NFL RB/WR. He is built like an Irish Reggie Bush (short, but fast). Beckham looks more aristocratic in both posture and in the face but he also wants to cultivate that image, he wants to look like a Calvin Klein model, Rooney is pure working class and proud of it, no desire to look "posh" as the Brits say. Rooney also seems very emotional on the field, saw him score an amazing goal once and he still seemed mad despite making a goal that 90 percent of pros could never make, and he was thrown out of a game against Portugal in a World Cup quarter final for shoving an opposing player, which may have cost his team a chance to win. Maybe masculinity is coorelated with poorer emotional judgement? Beckham also has a surprisingly high pitched almost effeminate voice for a pro athlete, kind of like retired NFL QB Jeff Garcia ( Who Terrell Owens implied was gay after he left the 49ers, despite the fact that Garcia married a Playboy playmate )
This is a stupid discussion anyway. Beckham is part Jewish. He's definitely not some kind of Aryan superman or whatever.
ReplyDelete"Londoner said...
ReplyDeleteIrishman's assessment of English footballing ability vs Scottish/Welsh/Irish is pretty biased to the latter. He has basically listed all the talented players to have emerged from the England has produced exceptional footballers - in the last 30 years, Hoddle, Gascoigne, Beardsley, Robson to name four off the top of my head.
It's true that some outstanding footballers have come from "the fringe"... but Irishman has basically listed all of them. There are no others. The national sides of Ireland, Scotland and Wales have been brutally poor for decades, while England have been OK to good, so there's no case for "the Celts" (who of course aren't Celts at all, but that's a separate argument) having any innate superiority. In fact the Scottish, Welsh and Irish teams have a large proportion of English ringers and have done for a long time.
It's a reach claiming Scholes and I think you know it. Born and bred in England, looks English, sounds English, English name... The average RoI footballer probably has more English ancestry than Scholes has Irish."
Of course the Irish, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish teams are useless compared to England. England has the best league in the world whereas only in Ireland and Wales, perhaps also Northern Ireland, football is not the first sport and they do not have professional leagues. Never-mind that our populations are a tenth or less of England's.
My Point was not that all Latins/Celts are better than Germanic/Slavs, but that the Bell curve of football talent for Latins and Celts is noticeably to the right of Northern Europeans. England produces some excellent players, the four you name are quite good but not one of them is in the same class as Giggs, Bale, Dalglish and Best(, Scholes and Rooney. There has never been an Anglo-Saxon or ethnic German Messi, Ronaldo or Pele and there never will be.
Paul Scholes is eligible to play for Ireland. My source on that is Jack Charlton. I heard him talk in an interview about trying to talk Scholes into declaring for Ireland when he was a teenager. To be eligible he would need at least one Irish grandparent.
P.S. You are right that Celts are not "Celts" per se, but whatever we came from Western and Southern Europe.
Anon at 3:25: I immediately thought of Fussell as well when reading this post. I did a quick google search, and found the 'prole' image here: http://thriftstorepreppy.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/avoid-prole-jacket-gape/
ReplyDeleteThe blog poster at that link doesn't provide the corresponding upper-class drawing, but instead substitutes a caricature of William F Buckley, which is a more than adequate substitution.
Fussell found the long-thin face vs broad face class dichotomy to be obvious.
That blog post, BTW, is not about facial features, but rather prole gape, i.e. the fact that you can easily distinguish the well-fitted suits of upper-middle and upper class men by the way they cling to the back of the shirt collar, as opposed to the gaps you see in the badly-fitted suits worn by the lower classes. I've found this to be a very telling criterion in my own observations.
I notice the same inclination towards those of narrower and longer faces in Bollywood.
ReplyDeleteMuch of Bollywood comes from the northwestern Punjabi,Pushtun and Sindhi ethnic groups and they tend to be more Mediterranean Caucasoid than the rest of India.
South Indians though darker than North Indians have an easier time in Bollywood due to the somewhat oval faces.
Northeast Indians such Bengalis and Biharis cant quite cut it as their faces are considerably rounder due to the Munda(probably a proto Mongol ethnic group) blood.
Coming back to Pushtuns, the long faced Pushtuns loathe marrying into the broad faced Hazaras(descendents of Mongols) even though the latter were once the ruling class.Those Soviet cosmonaut fat heads probably got their genes from the source.
Longer faces and tall,elegant forms seem to be the norm among the upper classes from Japan to Africa.
Much of the savagery of the sexual violence against the tall Tutsi women by the Hutu militias owed to the reputation of Tutsi women being snooty about their gracile figures and Ethiopian type features.
I think mens fashions such as suits were created more in mind for the lean and tall types rather than more compact and broader working stiffs.
OTOH I find that aristocratic types look rather silly in jeans,sweatshirts etc.
Has anybody mentioned Beckham's ( partial ) Jewish ancestry ? ( maternal grandfather )
ReplyDeleteI think his missus Posh has a similar background
Mind you traditional working class England is one place where Jews assimilated into the proletarian gentile environment ( think Amy Whinehouse )
Re: Scholes - "qualified for Ireland" != Irish, as you're no doubt aware. He's also qualified to play for England, but the old one-drop rule clearly applies - any hint of non-English (and especially Irish) ancestry, anywhere, at any time, and that's it - 100% Irish.
ReplyDeleteI mean, it's like me claiming a genius footballer called Fintan O'Halloran from Co. Kerry as English on the basis of e.g. one English-born grandmother. No one would takesuch a claim seriously, but ethnic ownership of sportsmen in our little set of islands is clearly an asymmetrical war.
Also, Giggs is a quarter black African - so let's apply these ancestry rules consistently!
There has been an English Messi and his name is Jimmy Greaves. Check his stats if you're in any doubt - any compare the mudbaths and thugs of defenders he achieved them against to the billiard tables and protective refereeing that Messi and his contemporaries enjoy.
But because he's English he is disregarded. Had e.g. Steven Gerrard or even Beckham himself (who I agree was proficient but no genius) been Welsh/Scottish/Irish then I've little doubt that they'd be added to the lists of footballers that the fringe produces but England never could.
What I will say is the best English talents have routinely been stifled by the dinosaurs that administer the game in England and manage its club sides and national team. Gifted individuals have rarely been trusted, and usually passed over in favour of willing triers and hard runners.
Lastly - watch out for Wilshere. He could be something exceptional.
This is a stupid discussion anyway. Beckham is part Jewish. He's definitely not some kind of Aryan superman or whatever.
ReplyDeleteAnd his tattoos are more primitive tribesman than civilized man. So much for aristocracy.
He doesn't just have elongated features, but lighter features. Like blonde hair and light eyes.
ReplyDeleteI would stereotype Wayne Rooney as touching and having babies with lower class British women. He seems to have darker hair too.
Are you guys looking at the same picture that I am? Rooney's blonder and more nordic looking. Beckham's the better-looking one with darker coloring.
Steve, it's amazing to sit in a casting session with an old-time casting director and a room full of Hollywood liberals and watch how quickly political correctness goes straight out the window as candidates get winnowed out with phrases like "too Jew-y (said by another Jew)," "he's so faggy looking he can't open his mouth without a c**k falling out," "looks like he might cut someone," etc. etc.
It's obvious that casting is quite the gauntlet, just judging from the vast gulf that separates the blacks I grew up with in my old neighborhood from the blacks I see on TV. Might as well be different species. I suspect that the "market penetration" of blacks for casting purposes is about an order of magnitude (or maybe 80/20? :) ) deeper than it is for whites.
Did you have a few drinks with some Irish friend and he dared you to bring out the waspy Irish haters with a goofy post like this?
Hey, don't blame us Irish-haters for this shit. You don't see me calling the pink-skinned blonde guy "the less Nordic one."
So between his ridiculously upper class name and his El Greco painting elongated features, have we in the rise of Benedict Cumberbatch achieved peak long-faced aristocrat?
ReplyDeleteSimon in London wrote:
ReplyDelete"I think ethnicity is definitely the answer. The Norman conquerors were tall with long faces, the Irish are shorter with broad faces. Long face implies Norman descent implies high social status"
It is about subrace, is what you mean, I think.
Nordids as conquerors/aristocracy comes from far more instances than the Normans, even just taking English history alone. Correct me if I'm wrong -- 1066 was a three-way struggle, Saxon vs. Viking vs. Norman. All three groups were heavily Nordid (and certainly nearly-totally 'Nordish') to begin with. ("Nordish" is an umbrella term encompassing Nordids and similar European types). A greater number of the marginal people of Britain in the days of the conquests were Cro-Magnid. In a larger sense, this is true of all European history from the Neolithic, if not earlier.
To clarify the CM vs Nordid split, via Dr. Coon:
(1) Cro-Magnids -- heavy features, darker coloring
(1a) Alpines are a specialized subtype of the Cro-Magnid type
(2) Nordids -- lighter features, lighter coloring.
The Cro-Magnid "Upper-Paleolithic survivors" (with heavy features, lots of hair,...who look like Rooney, in a word) have probably not been dominant on Albion since before the rise of the Megalith cultures, the "Stonehenge" culture, which was apparently Mediterranid or "North-Atlantid" at its core. All the natives of Britain were, of course, "politically"-marginal after the Saxon Conquest (more Nordish/Nordids) once again.
Intra-European racial dynamics are seldom studied anymore by anyone, but remain relevant, as Steve's OP suggests. I recommend again SNPA and the Racial Compact for further study.
The aristocracies are essentially examples of the "partly inbred families" you are so interested in. And it is interesting to look at the physical differences in classes because they surely do exist.
ReplyDeleteThe British nobility, as several have pointed out, have a large French Norman genetic component that probably results in longer heads and aquiline features. Such "noble" faces were certainly more prized among the nobility as good looking faces. In's interesting that Winston Churchill (grandson of a Duke) in his youth was quite aristocratic looking, but as he grew older began to acquire the "bulldog" look that won him so many working-class votes.
Churchill as upper-class twit: http://theboulevardiers.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Winston-Churchill-1896-freerepublic.com_.jpg
And a lot of the aristocratic look is achieved by body language and facial expression. The bored, heavy-lidded look for instance.
Part of the original Duke of Wellington's appeal was apparently his "noble" visage. This according to much contemporary writing by both men and women:
http://todayinirishhistory.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/lord_arthur_wellesley_the_duke_of_wellington.jpg
EE's lukin' kinder Frenchie says I.
The lower-classes had their own idea of a sexy beast, and it was a fellow who could lift a lot of weight and punch his way into the love and respect of his fellows. A guy like that will be thick and heavily muscled; resulting in an impressively wide neck and jaw line. Like a human pit bull:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-W7yb7UHoEMM/TgGCwgQJ2TI/AAAAAAAAAeI/5sT-cngO2Dw/s1600/Bob%2BHoskins%2B%25286%2529.jpg
When the German nobility was still widely admired and still actually played a major part in running things, there were a lot of caricatures of the two "types" of German aristocrat; the heavy, bull-necked brute and the effete, wasp-waisted, fine-featured cavalry officer. Both with monocles and dueling scars.
So our idea of what's "noble" looking is probably from the British experience. But I'll bet that every European country has a slightly different gene pool for each social caste. Not as obvious as in places like India or Vietnam, but still noticeable.
Long narrow faces indicate less testosterone and less testosterone indicates K genotype. As rushton noted, the upper class is more K selected and this explains the rise and fall of civilizations. K genotypes build civilizations that are rich enough to support everyone, even low IQ r genotypes who then rapidly outbreed the K genotypes who created the civilization in the first place, causing the civilization to crumble. Once it crumbles, there's no more safety net, and thus there is intense natural selection, this favors K genotypes, who upon re-emerging, rebuild civilization. And then once civilization is built, natural selection gets turned off (because it's uncivilized) and only sexual selection directs evolution, causing r genotypes to thrive (since they by definition have high birth rates) and civilization once again crumbles because r genotypes lack the IQ to sustain it.
ReplyDeleteagnostic:
ReplyDelete(1) The agriculturalist/pastoralist scheme you've outlined seems too simplistic. In the present day, of course, hunter-gatherers are numerically insignificant and only inhabit marginal zones undesirable for food production, but "affluent" (or "complex") and populous hunter-gatherers retained importance into historical times in ecozones with high biological, esp. marine, productivity (e.g., American Pacific Northwest and Jomon Japan).
* Jomon skull at left, Yayoi skull at right
* Side view
In general, the Yayoi (who invaded Japan from the mainland around 2,300 years ago, introducing iron technology, horses, and wet-rice agriculture, and catalyzing state formation) were taller, narrower-faced, higher-foreheaded, brachycephalic, and more gracile. The Jomon were typically shorter, with much more pronounced facial topography (brow-ridges, noses), wider-set eyes with rectangular orbits, mesocephaly, and longer limbs (overall more Ainu-like).
But the Yayoi were practitioners of wet-rice agriculture.
Perhaps they had a scheme of class differentiation akin to that of Koguryeo (whose language has been argued by Christopher Beckwith – not without criticism – to be one of the extinct continental relatives of Japonic): In Koguryeo, the hereditary warrior aristocracy did not work in the fields but devoted itself to training for combat, pursuing periodic raiding of neighbors and extracting regular tributes in order to supplement the deficient resources that could be acquired from its own mountainous terrain. (Hong, 2006)
Interestingly, physical anthropologist C. Loring Brace has suggested a strong component of "Ainu" ancestry in the samurai, which he sees reflected in the non-typically Japanese, even "pseudo-Caucasoid" features of samurai-admixed nobility, idealized Kabuki actors, etc. (If true, this should probably more properly be called emishi, and could have been integrated relatively early on – cf. boyar intermarriage with Tatars and others in Russia – from which we get Rachmaninoff – or Moctezuma's descendants in the Spanish aristocracy.) This characteristic look – what John Randal Baker references as "a peculiar type called 'Jakonid' (probably Europid [meaning Jomon-like]-Mongolid hybrids of indeterminate ancestry, but possibly Sinids influenced by unusual hormonal balance" – is at any rate not "pure" Jomon but a hybrid conglomerate seemingly molded by sexual selection.
(2) As you may already know, early indications are that the Tutsi do have exogenous, non-Bantu origins. Dramatically different Hutu/Tutsi lactase persistence rates already hinted as much.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I read that a U.S. journalist of Ethiopian (Amhara?) ethnicity reporting on Hutu militias in the Congo was scrutinized with great suspicion by his informants since his features struck them as "Tutsi".
(3) If you frequent "classify me" forums, perhaps you know of the posting career of "Agrippa", this online devotee of Egon von Eickstedt who's persistently advanced a notion of "progressive" somatic traits that are trans-racially epitomized in "tall, leptomorphic herder-warriors".
One the cases he's fond of bringing up are the Yi/Lolo, with aristocratic Black Bones and their White Bone agricultural serfs (plus freshly-captured slaves – they raided Han Chinese settlements in Sichuan into the 1940s). On the Black Bones: "Here was a blood-proud caste of nobility … who fought, rode, herded horses, and ruled a stratum of underlings and slaves" (Wiens, 1954). Note that they're not milk-drinkers.
Black Bone/White Bone comparison
I mean, it's like me claiming a genius footballer called Fintan O'Halloran from Co. Kerry as English on the basis of e.g. one English-born grandmother. No one would takesuch a claim seriously
ReplyDeleteUh huh. So what say you to the person claiming Beckham can play for Israel? You know, his first name is David ...
Londoner said...
ReplyDelete"Had e.g. Steven Gerrard or even Beckham himself (who I agree was proficient but no genius) been Welsh/Scottish/Irish then I've little doubt that they'd be added to the lists of footballers that the fringe produces but England never could. "
Steven Gerrard does qualify to play for Ireland indeed, his cousin Anthony Gerrard played for Ireland underage. Fail.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete>>The Norman conquerors were tall with long faces, the Irish are shorter with broad faces. <<
anon:
"I've visited Ireland a few times and I've never found the Irish to have broader than average faces. As far as height goes, perhaps they're a bit shorter than Americans - but then so are the English.
A lot of people here are very attached to their pre (and mis) conceptions."
(a)I am Northern Irish.
(b) I didn't say the Irish were shorter than the English. I said the Normans were taller than the native Irish (or native English). The Normans look(ed) a lot like the west-coast Norwegians I saw when I visited Norway on holiday.
The upper-class Parisian French also tend to have a similar tall lanky look with long Charles de Gaulle faces, BTW. Whereas Breton French seemed noticeably rounder-faced to me.
Round faces seem common (but definitely not universal) in Ireland, Northern Ireland and west-coast Scotland, whereas east-coast Scots seem to have narrower faces and a lankier look, also.
These are all places I know pretty well.
" irishman said...
ReplyDeleteLondoner said...
"Had e.g. Steven Gerrard or even Beckham himself (who I agree was proficient but no genius) been Welsh/Scottish/Irish then I've little doubt that they'd be added to the lists of footballers that the fringe produces but England never could. "
Steven Gerrard does qualify to play for Ireland indeed, his cousin Anthony Gerrard played for Ireland underage. Fail."
In this great Londoner vs Irishman debate, I think I'm going to have to come down on the Irishman side - the Celts do seem to produce more talented footballers per capita than the Anglo-Saxons or Germanics - though the actual Germans seem to have compensated for this relative lack of individual talent by successfully applying Stormtroop Tactics to the football field. The English 'Saxon shield wall' default approach to sport seems peculiarly ill-suited to football. OTOH, when it comes to *inventing* games in the first place, the English are clearly unsurpassed! :)
Testing testing:
ReplyDeleteChurchill as upper class twit.
faces. In's interesting that Winston Churchill (grandson of a Duke) in his youth was quite aristocratic looking, but as he grew older began to acquire the "bulldog" look that won him so many working-class votes."
ReplyDeleteChurchill comes from a long line of Anglo Saxons relatively untouched by Norman French heritage.
Slightly OT: it is interesting to note that the THe Hundred Years War between England and France was really a family squabble between different groups of the Anglo French ruling classes in England and France.
Churchills ancestor the Duke of Marlborough, defeated the French using a clever ruse during the War of Spanish Succession.
Churchill however was an avid Francophile and he hated the Germans with such a passion that he joked about euthanizing them at the end of WWII and made it a point of urinating in the Rhine.
Churchill seemed to have the average English profile as youth but his face suffered the ravages caused by excessive drink ,the same effected the Irish and their descendents(look what happened to Ted Kennedys face).
ReplyDeleteSame thing in South Asia: google "kerala faces" (farmer) and "pakistani faces" (pastoralist)."
Not so fast- both Kerala and Pakistan are quite diverse and cant simply be ascribed to the false pastoralist vs farmer dichotomy.
Punjabis consitute the bulk of Pakistan and they are overwhelmingly farmers and indeed they are famous for it.
Pastoralists in Pakistan come from same or related stock.
People of Kerala have a considerable degree of Arab,Roman,Northwest Indian and Persian blood. And many of them can pass off as Pakistanis.
And most of the pastoralists in Kerala are the Chenchu and Irula who are of the Negroid and occasionally Australoid or Negrito type-hardly what you had in mind!
And his tattoos are more primitive tribesman than civilized man. So much for aristocracy."
ReplyDeleteHave you read any of Theodore Dalrymple's column .Over his 3 decade long career, he has painstakingly highlighted how the upper classes in England are destroying the country by emulating the lower classes rather than elevating them.
So Mrs Thatcher a grocer's daughter went out of her way to cultivate a "posh" accent while Tony Blair who comes from high society(though adopted) affected a lower class patois and outlook.
Thatcher went masculine,
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28_0gXLKLbk
@agnostic: The former Archbishop of my church was a Tutsi, but got fired. My church, the Anglican Mission in the Americas, was operated out of Rwanda, but that got kind of disrupted by all the choppin' and genocidin' which went on there a while back.
ReplyDeleteThe entire House of Bishops there resigned a while back in a snit fit, and the new one, mostly Hutu, cut us loose for being rich and White, or something.
Ecclesiastical politics can get pretty nasty, but when combined with ethnopolitics can be just astonishing.
We're trying to get a new Archbishop out of Ghana, a country my pastor assures me you are unlikely to get murdered in (for Africa), but the Snake Department is holding up his visa, so that he can't come over here and lay hands on people.
As somebody who is a bit of a White racist and definitely a White Nationalist, I find it absolutely hilarious that, the last time I met a strange Negro in a men's room, I addressed him as Your Grace, he being my Archbishop at that time.
I love the look of a full-looking face, and not a coarse-jaw. A coarse-jaw belongs to the former slender faced class only by a shortened forehead is it much unlike a Beckham.
ReplyDeleteI would like to add that Borreby which Mr. Rooney appears to be (at least a large percentage) is a Germanic phenotype. In particular, Scandinavian as Denmark is the nation with the largest Borreby population. Rooney may have gotten some of his Borreby features via the Vikings who settled in Ireland.
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