Some anthropological characteristics of ancient (according to fine art sources) and modern Greeks

Abstract

Introduction. Greek sculpture and vase painting, despite the comprehensive study of specialists in many fields of science, can represent a source of information for historical and biological anthropology. The vase painting and sculpture of the ancient Greeks has been studied in the context of ethnic and biological continuity with the modern Greek population.

Materials and methods. A total of 1020 vases (2379 people) and 174 reliefs (300 people) were studied. Two characteristics were studied – the development of tertiary hair growth (beard growth) and the nature of the head hair of ancient and modern Greeks. The material was collected from online sources and relevant literature, and processed according to anthropological methods. The composite portrait according to F. Galton method in digital format has been used to visualize morphological variability.

Results and discussion. Modern Greeks (the middle total type of the population) are characterized by straight or lightly wavy head hair (middle score 1.41) and most often above middle or heavy beard growth (middle score 3.38). The proportion of straight and wavy hair in all vase painting samples is approximately the same, with wavy hair significantly predominant. The middle scores for hair nature and beard growth based on relief funeral images of ancient Greeks in our samples turned out to be significantly higher than for modern Greeks and amounted to: for nature of the hair – 2,62 points for classical time and 2,81 points for late classical and hellenistic times, for beard growth – 4,38 points and 4,30 points, respectively.

Conclusion. Despite the change in artistic forms of conveying morphological features during the transition from archaic to classical times, in Greek vase painting and sculpture the representation of the heavy beard growth and the wavy nature of head hair was preserved, which, according to the authors, may be a real reflection of the typical morphological characteristics of the group. © 2024. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license

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