Small Mediterraneans

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Shorter-faced than the Large Mediterraneans. The musculature is less marked and the look is of a more gracile type. They overlap with Atlanto-Mediterranenas in most features, representing a reduced or smaller version of them.

The Mediterranenan race may be divided in two branches: a larger, taller and longer headed one; with more marked browridges together with a longer nose and upper facial portion. And a smaller one, more gracile, less bony, shorter nosed and shorter. The latter (left) branch was called by Coon “Small Mediterraneans”. They include the Mediterraneans from Arabia as well as some Iberians and other subtypes. Earnst Hooton interpreted them to be reduced derivatives of either Atlanto Mediterraneans or Irana-Afghans. If true, then in Europe the Small Mediterraneans may be limited to the former explanation.

One of the two main divisions of the Mediterranean race.

In Asia this race is important in Arabia, losing territory to Irano-Afghan and Alpine forms farther East and North.

In Europe Small Meds are Neolithic-derived, and their highest concentration is in the Iberian peninsula, the Isles in the Mediterranean and then most other southern European countries; to the North in this continent these types lose territory to Alpines and Atlanto-Meds.

Small Mediterraneans

Anthropological Morphologies Online Resources

By Carleotn Coon:

“Short stature, about 160 cm.; skull length 183-187 mm. male mean; vault height 132-137 mm. mean; cranial index means 73-75; browridges and bone development weak, face short, nose leptorrhine to mesorrhine. Type already met in Portugal and Palestine in Late Mesolithic. Represents the paedomorphic or sexually undifferentiated Mediterranean form, and often carries a slight negroid tendency.”

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By Earnst Hooton:

“ The brunet, long-headed, delicate and gracile type that is ordinarily thought of under the name Mediterranean, I propose to call Classic Mediterranean. There can be little doubt that it is a reduced, refined, smaller-boned derivative of either or both of the massive dolichocephals - Upper Palaeolithic [meaning Atlanto-Mediterranean] and Iranian Plateau. As both J.R. de la H. Marett and Carleton Coon argue, there has been an evolutionary tendency toward a fineing down, almost an effeminization, of early forms of man discernible in many modern races, both in general body build and particularly in skeletal structure. Marett ascribes it to calcium economy (in a brilliant book at which it is the fashion for cautious and unoriginal scientists to sniff but which contains more strimulating ideas and provocative therories, more suggestions for research on the relation of nutrition to human evolution, than are encompassed in any other half-dozen books on physical anthropology written in the last half-century).

There are two variants of the Classic Mediterranean type - straight-nosed and hook-nosed. The former is the more primitive and the more widely distributed. It extended in prehistoric times along both shores of the Mediterranean, into central, western, and northern Europe and down into the Horn of Africa. Its area of characterization and source of dissemination cannot have been far from the traditional Garden of Eden - Mesopotamia, which archaeologists include in “the Fertile Crescent.” There is not much doubt that the eastward extension of straight-nosed Mediterraneans of the Classic type provided the White basis of the early populations in southeastern Asia and Indonesia. They probably were the main carriers of the Aryan language into India at a much later date.

The expansion of the aquiline or hook-nosed Mediterranean type seems to have been somewhat more limited and probably later than that of the straight-nosed variant. In historical times, it was carried into North Africa and Spain principally by the Arabs, but other Semitic-speaking and non-Semitic peoples of prehistoric times may well have possessed this variation. Some of this type may have reached India, but nasal convexity there seems largely the result of infusions of the Iranian Plateau type. “

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“Classic Mediterranean

(Reduced derivatives of the Upper Palaeolithic [meaning Atlanto Mediterranean] and Iranian Plateau subraces)

Two subtypes:

Characters:

(a) Skeleton: gracile, skull smooth with small brow-ridges and mastoids

(b) Beard and body hair: sparse

(d) Nose form: in the Upper Palaeolithic derivative, straight with medium thick tip, elevated or horizontal; in the Iran Plateau derivative, very thin, high-bridged, often aquiline nose, always convex, with thin, depressed tip and recurved alae

(e) Stature: usually under 166 cm.

(f) Body build: usually slender

Distribution: the hook-nosed type particularly in Arabia and the Near East among Arabs and Jews; the straight-nosed type there and in the whole Mediterranean basin and sporadically in eastern, central, and northwestern Europe. “

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By Bertil Lundman:

“ The true West-Mediterranean race (the Ibero-Insular race of Deniker) in southwestern Europe is low-skulled and longskulled (dolichocephalic), dark, short-statured, and gracile in body form (See Figure 3). This race has a narrow face and is low in the frequency of blood type gene q. “

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“The Arabid race (i.e., the Bedouins, et al.) is distinguished from the West-Mediterranean race almost only by a nevertheless unusually large number of small, but very characteristic facial traits (See Figure 10). These include the almond eyes, the "Semitic smile" (conditioned by unusually deep Fossa canina), etc. This race had in earlier times a broader-formed Syrid subrace, which was found among the farmers of the "Fertile Crescent." It is now only typical of the Jews.”

Spain Pablo Aimar from Argentina

Penélope Cruz from Spain Spain Spain

Italy Crete

Portugal