Angela
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I disagree for a part.
common stereotypes are not scientific types which themselves cannot be confused with true well achieved "races", even if the concept of "race" could be discussed even for animals.
In my conception types are tries to construct an ideal phenotype which could correspond to some elementary subpopulation in a global mixed one, subpopulation supposed to have lived independantly some times before to took part in the mix, and whose the input could be weighted more or less precisely. It's a risky sport but not without interest. It is based upon states, but not global states concerning a whole pop, where the means don't give too much clues sometimes concerning the making of the mix; that said it requires some other pops less mixed where a type dominates more so that the global mean is closer to the type means. I avow the results are often disappointing, and the "scientists" who competed on the field in past have been more often rather bad! But the metrics method of comparing global means of measures without a bit of typology can confuse us very well and pass over precious details, among them the features rarely accutely reflected by the battery of measures taken.
the nose, as the mouth, more than the mouth, mirrors the mixings very well, so it's very rare to have a "pure type" nose (the more numerous the alleles in cause, the less unity in the pop). That said, among 'europoids' there are some clear tendancies, even if never completely homogenous.
That said, in this thread, we are doing cherry picking, even the ones who are opposed to it as a rule. Chamberlain and others may not be taken as model for their population. And I think there is not everytime ONE gene for say "convex" nose, or "concave" nose or "winding" nose or "beaky nose" or any other case, to take only one aspect. some convex nose can be the homozygotic result of an allele, other convex noses can be the result of an heterozygotic association; sure they are not exactly the same noses, but they will be classified generally as "convex noses". But in nose we have the bones association, the cartilages one, the flesh one, without to speak of the connexion glabella/superior nose bridge.
Some crossings of basic types can produce at the idividual level close enough results spite they are not formed by the very same basic types.
&: this plurifactors construction of the nose makes that every pop shows diverse variants of features, even brothers and sisters what doesn't exclude that some forms prevail in certain pops.
Completely agree with your bolded comment. This thread is more for fun than anything else. In particular, the thought of Hitler looking at the nose of Chamberlain during negotiations for "appeasement" appealed to my ironic and sometimes sardonic sense of humor, as did Oswald Mosley's nose given his speeches.
I do, however, still maintain that upper class Brits tend, more often than lower class ones, to have aquiline, or Greek, or Roman, etc. noses. As I've said before I don't know why. Perhaps influence from France after the Norman conquest, or going all the way back to the first Beakers who arrived?
I'm not saying physical anthropology has no input which should be considered, and didn't mean to insult the whole field or those interested in it. Sorry if that's how it came across.
However, it has always struck me as beyond ludicrous how Nazi "doctors" and "scientists" were going around with their measuring tools to find out who was "Aryan" or not (not too successful, as more than one Jewish child made it into the Hitler Youth), especially given the looks of some of their own leaders.
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Goebels never struck me as "Aryan" looking, and he was a poor physical specimen to boot, with his club foot, given the pronouncements of the Nazi party. Other children with those handicaps were often gassed. I guess even in Nazi Germany personal contacts mattered. To compensate he married a much larger, very blonde, very German looking woman who was a complete Nazi fanatic, and who killed all their children, before killing herself, so they wouldn't have to live in a world without Hitler and "National Socialism".
The other ludicrous situation was that they had to make all Italians "Aryans" too, and I'm sure there were more than a few who wouldn't have passed the head and facial measurement tests.
It was all a perversion of science, and a complete disgrace, and tainted this sort of work, unfairly, to be sure. Their legal system as well, where their judiciary approved all sorts of horrors permitted by rules from the party, was a disgrace.