I add that the limit of brachycephaly in the 1930's in an anthropological sense ("racial" phenotypes controlled on live people), on live, was between 84,9 and 85, hyperbrachycephaly after 90,0 ...
the criteria here are for 'brachycrania' on skeletons (brachy: more than 80) but it indicates nothing about types: for I know, the most of the true intermediate crossings between 'alpine' types and dolichocephalic types was between 78 & 80 for skeletons, 80 & 82 on live (78-80 nowadays) - so CI 80 is more ondicative of mesocephaly than brachycephaly - yet in Iron Age Brittany (Western Aremorica) the means FOR CRANIA was 83 (85 live) and more for so called 'alpine' people (newcomers from Parisian Bassin) and they were not pure nevertheless -
I put here a little post I did not long ago:
Brachycephaly, bones metrics and evocations of environmental conditions :
after a very too confident classical anthropology relying entirely or almost on cranial measures and funny interpretations, we know nowaday the domination of adaptative magic interpretations whose goal is to evacuate any worth of metrics. Science knows apparently the same mods as fashion trade...
some basic facts : Europe SEAMS having known a trend towards brachycephaly since the Middle Ages until the 1900's ; someones saw the origin of brachycephaly in highlands (poor for 'iode'), in Great Europe at least, others saw in this process a general trend without any selective charactere (and without any explication too!) - in the last years, the debrachycephalization seams linked to stature encrease, as brachycephalization seamed linked to a decrease of stature*
--*(Celts of La Tène Period : 1m67 (France Marne) to 1m 70 (Ireland), but Romans (nobility or not?): 1m62 – Germanic tribes of the Great Wanderings period : 1m72 to 1m74 – Bretons of Brittany and Frank or Norman riders from Normandy in the X°C., 1m70, Bretons of Brittain at the time 1m68 to 1m70 – French people around 1880 AC : 1m60-1m62, Swede Recrues same date : 1m68 only (1930 : France people : 1m65, Sweden 1m73)...
Others facts : in an homogenous population for metric measures that could evolve not by mutations but by modifications linked to environment, we can expect a « bell » form for the statistic curve : for, say, a Cephal-Index of 82 in a population, we may expect a curve summit between the 81 and 83 indexes, the curve going down almost regularly on the two sides of it – but when we compare curves obtained for different populations showing very different C-I means, we see that the summit of the curve is excentred to the lowest indexes in the more dolichocephalic populations, and to the highest indexes in the more brachycephalic ones, whatever the period and the evolution of the means. We can see some secondary summits corresponding apparently to other expressions of the crossings and maybe to some « homozygotic pure » indexes...
concerning environment+selection, Western Norway shows always more brachycephalic means than Eastern Norway, though it is in a sea coastal area. The context is mountainous but the population is as a whole living on the shores, so... ? As a whole too, the highest regions of Spain showed (in the XX°C.) the most dolichocephalic populations, the lowest the contrary ;
One can say the acquisition and the lost of brachycephaly can require some time, and it is sure ! And I add that the first apparition of a trend towards meso-brachycephaly in Europe is old enough, dating from the Offnet-Solutré findings (10000BC-8000BC), and the Mugem findings (fewer brachycephalic men and when?) -
concerning the increasing of brachycephalic between Antiquity and Middle-Ages, we have to rely on burying places studies : It is very hard to get a complete figure of Europe on this basis : I add that I am almost sure that the sepultures examined for barbarian Bronze Age or Iron Ages are for the most the sepultures of ruling castes, not the basic population ones : yet the Pompei population (near Napoli) of Roman times was sub-brachycephalic (big frequence of 'alpinid' types) and surely enough was more representative of the whole population of this country;
some scientists seam taking the modifications of means in a same place according to times as a genuine purely local evolution : this bias is found very often ; I read in an Eupedia thread (old enough) a linked old scholar's text that explained with a very striking certitude that the diverses tribes living at antique times in Venetia was showing no modification with time (!), at the exception of a « modest » 75 to a nowaday (1930's?) 85 C-I change explained as a normal common all-european brachycephalic phenomenon !!! Very easy indeed ! No use in searching some historical fact (emigration, colonization, invasion, plague...) to explain modification... when some historic facts can trouble this kind of idyllic picture some authors sweap them as a fly on the table corner... (too few invaders, indapted invaders, 100% endogamy for centuries and centuries...) -
When we look at the cranial evolution in France from Paleolithic to our era, we see different directions and different regional evolutions at different times : a seamingly genuine trend towards mesocephaly 74 >> 76 (everywhere in occident) and after brachycephaly >> + > 82 (in Alps for the most) among cromagnoids descendants, at the Mesolithic period and in Neolithic, the apparition of small light boned « mediterraneans » of more than a type more dolichocephalic (72) intruding among the previous population – in Brittany, stayed at the tail concerning brachycephalization, we see a set of different sub-dolichocephals taking one on another at Megalithic times, beginning the true brachycephalization by the wives mediation at the Eneolithic/Chalcolithic ages, the bulk of men-women brachycephalization taking place at the Iron Ages ; everytime, the propagation (in no mountains zones!!!) appears as coming from East (Parisian Bassin) ; no internal local brachycephalization here ; the rural folk of 1950's Brittany still showed cantons oppositions for C-I as for other phenotypical traits (running from 79 to 86, the most brachycephalic in the eastern « gallo(roman » cantons as a whole – GIOT) -
I do not eliminate the way-of-living-environment aspect at all but I know it can not offer us all the keys of brachy-debrachycephalization ; by instance, a survey on the same(???) departements (cantons are parts of departments, these last ones being more unprecise for surveys) some 15 years later show a debrachycephalization more or less tiny in Brittany, Poitou, Anjou, Maine and Normandy (10 departements of a region that contains 16 but Brittany complete here) with a decrease of C-I running from 0,5 to 2,0 according to the places (someones can be suspected of strong immigration of other french people, others having a faster or slower life-level evolution due to economic orientations and rural emigration) – Here yet, debrachycephalization was associated to stature increase – so the last Middle Ages « mechanical » and not genetic part of brachycephalization until the industrial revolution in Europe could be seen like stature decrease as the result of (agricultural) sedentarization associated with « worst » feeding (less meat?), harder works in pre-adolescence times before the skeleton would have been formed, more short inbreeding... But do not forget that brachycephals was already numerous at bronze-Iron Ages in some parts of Europe, and that civil cemeteries of these periods showed certainly more level folks than the cheftains sepultures of previous times. Keep in mind too that even in an ancient population of 35 Frisian of Leeuwarden showing a mean C-I of 78,26 you find 1 indiviual with the C-I of 88, and 1 of 85 and 2 of 84 compared to 10 under 77 ! Poor bad feed brachycephals or mountain climbers ? In the same family you can find a dolicho and a brachy so : evident genetic background too.
So without any proof, how can we imagine brachycephaly could take place ? The adaptative aspect
can have two aspects : a personal during-life adaptation by plastical adaptative variability furnished by the genome, not genetically acquired and not transmittable to following generations and a collective genetic long term adaptation by selection keeping the most adapted genes : the ones that improve survival in some natural conditions and that are linked to some cranial features, either creating them or indirectly linked to them in the genome ; I see this evolution as acquired and dificult to loose, only by an other selective factor -
What is striking is that in Europe we see a kind of brachycephaly taking place pace by pace (result : 'alpine type') in West and an other type of brachycephalic coming on sight abruptly enough in West and East and Centre, at the Eneolithic-Chalcolithic time :
a Survey about Greece(PANAGIARIS 1993 according to DIENEKE) speaks about apparition of brachycephalic people at the bronze Ages in Greece (Pelopponese), Creta, and in eastern Saka-land (people came from Pamir-Ferghana), excluding a phenomenon by population isolation in Greece proper – some prototypes of a future dinaric type appeared too in central-northwestern Europe about 3000 BC : I am unaware of the precise place of very first apparition of types on this direction ; for some old scientists the first apparition of dinarid types in Anatolia—South-Caucasus is about the 2000 BC or a few centuries before, coming from the Balkans as they thought... I red too that the Kurgan culture of southern Russia showed a majority of dolichocephals, the most of high stature but not all of them (the smallest : some « danubian mediterraneans »?), and too some brachycephals, more on the dinaroid side ; these last types was found also very far, in light proportions, among steppic populations of south Siberia in a considered future I-E population. Whatever people can conclude of it, some of the present day populations of these areas show a majority of Y-R1a (as in ancient times) and Y-I2a1a + some Y-I2a2 not yet detected in ancient Y-DNA (but the story is not closed) : I say we have there an open door, not an answer...
I am still tempted to see in the territory of Cucuteni-Pripolje cultures the place where East Anatolian or Near-Eastern farmers or pastors (Y-G2 + some Y-J2?) mixed with Balkans-Carpathians « autochtones » (Y-I2...? + some Y-E1b « alpha » ?) developping a high standard culture (on material criteria) before getting in touch with steppic tribes (Y-R1a +???).
Whatsoever the conditions that gave birth to the so called « dinaric » phenotype : selection on a certain genetic basis or mixture on an as certain genetic basis, these conditions seam yet to me linked geographically to central-eastern Europe (from mesolithic times ? or is it the admixture with neolithic people ? I have no answer for now... but the metric surveys over the Carpathian Bassin are recent enough : Chalcolithic ? And a survey by R. PINHASI & M. PLUCIENNIK (2004) about mesolithic to neolithic sites in southern Europe and Near-East-Anatolia did not furnish C-I data, telling only that the Khirokitia (Creta) neolithic population showed a peculiar « short-headness and paedomorphic features » - first meso-brachycephals there, but when exactly ???