Abstract
Moravian Racial Types Prof. V. Suk contributes remarks on the value of selective study in the anthropometric investigation of a population as a means of distinguishing ancestral types, to a study of groups of people in Moravian Wallachia by Dr. K. Augusta which has been published by the Faculty of Sciences of the Masaryk University. Two groups were investigated in a population which has long lived in isolation in conditions which do not invite immigration. The traditional mode of life is agriculture, woodcraft, or herding pursued in woodland clearings. The people here specifically called “Valaques”, according to recent heory based on linguistic evidence, are partly of Slovak, partly of Rumanian origin. The principal results of Dr. Augusta's anthropometric examination go to show that they are of mixed origin. Taking the two groups together, they show a medium stature (165.9 cm. and 167.1 cm.); they are brachy-cephalic (85.2 and 85.8); while the mean circumference of the head increases proportionately with increase in growth of stature. The face is mesoprosopic and the nose lepto to mesorrhine (69.7 and 70). In pigmentation the eyes most frequently are grey or greenish, while the hair is light brown, next in frequency coming dark brown, and then blond, which, however, is rare, showing only 1.0 and 2.7 per cent. ‘Pure’ types are rare and the most common by far is the ‘mixed light brown’. In the valley of Dinotitza, where the selective method of Prof. Suk was employed and not the statistical method on which the figures above were based, a considerable percentage was found of a type differing from the remainder of the population, darker, taller and more pronouncedly brachy-ceplmlic, showing all the marks of a Dinaric origin. This confirms the view that the population of this part of Wallachia is of a different somatic origin from the rest of the population. Its derivation must be sought in Rumania.
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Research Items. Nature 133, 332–333 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/133332a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/133332a0
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