>
> Don't be silly. Obviously we're talking about generalizations. Since I am
> ethnic German from the southwest, and thereby look roughly French, except
> for my nose, I am aware that there are very broad exceptions.
>
So, you can't actually tell... but you can guess... and, then, assuming you're right, you gain what knowledge?
>
> Are you actually going to deny that physical appearance in Europe closely
> correlates with physical area in which one's ancestors lived? The people
> around me tend to have big wide faces and eyes and are obviously Slavs with
> a heavy Asian component. Not all of them, but most. My roommate doesn't, I
> woner why that is -- hey, her grandfather was French. People in Scandinavia
> tend to be taller and blond. People in Italy tend to be shorter and darker,
> unless you are in the northern, German-speaking part of Italy. French people
> tend to be short too. I wonder if this is because the Romans were short.
> Hmmm.
>
Yeah, folks look different yet what we know from all studies of these things is that there's more variation within groups believed to have common ascribed physiological characteristics than there is between groups and the purported boundaries of such groups are determined by ascribed characteristics and nation... two things that vary rather dramatically over time, eh? - rather than physiological differences.
But more than that, really? Slavs with a heavy Asian component? Which Asia is that? Turkey, do they make the cut? Or are the Turks more Greek, or Arab? Is Ukraine Asian or European? Do you mean Iran, or Kazakhstan, or Mongolia, or Myanmar to stand in for Asia? Hell, because of colonialism and orientalism we even call "India" a subcontinent - do all of those Indian folks look alike? Which French are you talking about, the folks from Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyon, Paris? Italians, you talking about folks from Corsica, Palermo, Rome, Naples, Venice or Milan. Surely, height, skin tone, nose and face shape, size of the lips, butt and eyebrow ridges and kind of hair must be straightforwardly genetic since each of those nations has been in-breeding in isolation for millenia...
There are no coherent geographic, cultural, and biological categories here. It is possible to say that folks who's people - assuming you can coherently and straightforwardly trace these things - were, in 1492, in equatorial climes tended to be darker and folks towards the poles tended to be lighter... but that's about it. Certainly, given the differentiations you make among Europeans, you'd not claim that all sub-Saharan Africans have the same skin-tone and look alike as a result? Surely, given the differentiations you've made among Europeans - as differentiated a homogeneous "white" group as there ever was - you're not going to claim that east Asians all look alike, despite sharing epiCANTHal folds.
BTW, people in sub-Saharan Africa tend to have dark skin. People in Japan
> tend to have epithelial folds. It's true. I'm not making this up.
>