Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Some Nepalese Racial Types

This post will highlight some of the interesting racial types of Nepal. Nepal is a country that is very interesting racially, and seems to have a wide variety of phenotypes. Racially, Nepalese are generally Caucasians, but we are starting to head into the territory of Caucasians shading into Asians here. I don't know much about the prehistory of Nepal, but I suppose it may be similar to the prehistory of India and possibly Tibet.

These photos show Indian types from Nepal. There are also more Asiatic types, but I don't have any photos of them right now.

Although at one time, there were 60 different racial types classified in India, no one wants to do this kind of research now, because Hitler pretty much ruined classical racial studies forever. Anyway, I'm hoping Joe Stickler can stop by here and shed some light on some of these Indian types from Nepal here.

Let's take a look:


I find this Nepalese woman very interesting looking. She's holding her cow by its head, and she's laughing or crying or laughing and crying both. I don't know what's going on in this pic, but I hope she's not crying because they are going to kill the cow. If she's Hindu, they don't kill cows anyway.

My first thought when I saw her was that she looked like she could be a Spaniard. Or possibly an Italian. Looking again, I think she might be a North Indian Punjabi type. Many of these types can look very European. An Indian anthropologist, back when it was OK to do such things, went through and classified Indians into 60 different racial types. Some of the ones in the Northwest had names that seemed to imply a Nordic European affiliation.


This is very much a classical Indian type from Nepal. I don't know where Dravidian begins and Indian ends, so I'm not even going to begin to classify her. For many Indians, the Dravidian name is not very explanatory, and anyway, it's not PC. You are supposed to say "South Indian" instead.


This fellow is a "Bugpuri" from Nepal. I don't even know what a Bugpuri is, but the text on the photo said that's what the guy is. To me, this fellow seems to have retained a lot of primitive features and he actually appears somewhat Australoid in phenotype.

But maybe I am hallucinating. Before 8,000 years ago, everyone in India looked Australoid. They may have looked Veddoid, like the Veddas. After that, they transitioned from Australoid to Caucasoid. Indian skulls from 24,000 years ago look like Aborigines.


This is an interesting phenotype, also from Nepal - in this case, Southern Nepal. Southern Nepal has a lot more Indian types than the rest of the country. I'm going to say that these girls look "Dravidian", but I could be wrong. I'm just guessing here. Note the wavy hair. This is typical of the Veddoid type. It is a very primitive type of hair. Caucasians, Aborigines and Veddoids all have this hair type.

Joe Stickler, a Sri Lankan British commenter with an awesome knowledge of Indian racial types, describes it as, "a primitive yet simple and basic hair type without the extreme overspecialized hair texture adaptation of Mongoloids and Negroids." It's interesting that the Negroids have a more progressive hair type than we poor Caucasians. White Power takes another blow!

Stickler also notes about the Veddoids: "Where did the Veddoids come from? They must have, in antiquity (40,000 - 60,000 +), adapted themselves to hot, moist and humid Indo-tropical forested regions, they were adapted to forested conditions and were hunters and gatherers. These adaptations would especially explain the diminution in their physical features but not the hair specifically.

Veddoids, as representatives of the earliest population strata before the arrival and/or evolution of more modern standardized types (admixture), would have been very diverse looking, i.e., the Veddoids were diverse. The skin colors, hair textures, facial features, stature, etc. were all quite diverse, although what would have united these grades as a whole was their primitiveness."



These are very much classical Indian types here. Some look more North Indian, others look more South Indian. It's pretty typical for Indians to have features of both, so the North Indian - South Indian distinction is a bit silly. These Indian types are once again from the south of Nepal.


Once again, we have a highly unclassifiable Indian type from Nepal. This is also a very common phenotype in India, especially in the center of the country around Andra Pradesh.


These are actually probably more typical Nepalese racial types. The woman has a somewhat Indid appearance, as does the daughter on the left, but all have a marked Asiatic component too, especially noticeable in the eyes. It's quite clear in the daughter on the right, who could easily be a Filipino or other SE Asian, though she has a rather distinctive phenotype that does not fit well in comparison with other types.

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