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The Dinaric race, also known as the Adriatic race, were psuedoscientific terms used by certain physical anthropologists in the early to mid-20th century[1][2][3] to describe the perceived predominant phenotype of the contemporary ethnic groups of southeast Europe. According to the discredited theories of physical anthropologist Carleton Coon, the Dinaric race was most commonly found among the populations in the Balkans and Carpathians, such as Montenegrins, Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats, Ghegs, Slovaks, Romanians, Hungarians, Western Ukrainians, and Southern Poles.[4]Additionally, in Northern Europe, the South Germans are also identified[by whom?] as having Dinaric characteristics.[5]

History

The notion of a Dinaric race originated with racial anthropologist Joseph Deniker in the late 19th century, but became most closely associated with the writings of Carleton S. Coon and Nazi eugenicist Hans F. K. Günther. The term was derived from the Dinaric Alps (the western part of Southeastern Europe) which was supposed to be the principal habitat of the race. [citation needed]

Origin and distribution

Joseph Deniker's map of European races (1899) identified "Dinarics" as the dominant group in parts of central Europe, Northern Italy and the northwestern Balkans.

Several pseudoscientific theories were advanced regarding the genesis of the Dinaric race. Most[which?] researchers agreed that this race was autochthonous to its present habitat from the Neolithic period. Both Günther and Coon claimed that the Bell-Beaker people of the European Bronze Age were at least partially Dinaric.[citation needed]

Coon also argued, however, in The Origin of Races (1962), that the Dinaric and some other categories "are not races but simply the visible expressions of the genetic variability of the intermarrying groups to which they belong."

He referred to the creation of this distinctive phenotype from the mixing of earlier separate groups as "dinaricisation". In his view Dinarics were a specific type that arose from ancient mixes of the Mediterranean race and Alpine race.

According to the Dinaric model, Dinarics were to be found mainly in the mountainous areas of southeastern Europe: Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Austria, part of northwestern Bulgaria, and northwestern Northern Macedonia. Northern and eastern Italy was considered mostly a Dinaric area as well as western Greece, Romania, Moldova, western Ukraine, southeastern German-speaking areas, and parts of southeastern France.[citation needed]

"Noric" subtype

The Noric race (German: Norische Rasse) was a racial category proposed by the anthropologist Victor Lebzelter. The "Noric race" was supposed to be a sub-type of the Dinaric race more Nordic in appearance than standard Dinaric peoples.[6] The term derived from Noricum, a province of the Roman Empire roughly equivalent to southern Austria and northern Slovenia. The term is not to be confused with Nordic. [7]


See also

Citations

  1. ^ Anne Maxwell (2010). Picture Imperfect: Photography and Eugenics, 1870–1940. Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 978-1-84519-415-4.[permanent dead link]
  2. ^ Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban (2006). Race and Racism: An Introduction. Rowman Altamira. pp. 132–. ISBN 978-0-7591-0795-3.
  3. ^ Coon 1939.
  4. ^ Carleton, Steven Coons (1939-01-01). The Races of Europe. Dalcassian Publishing Company.
  5. ^ Bartulin, Nevenko (2013-11-14). The Racial Idea in the Independent State of Croatia: Origins and Theory. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-26282-9. Germans were predominantly Nordic , while the southern Germans belonged to the Alpine and Dinaric races
  6. ^ Renato Biasutti on Caucasoid Subraces Archived May 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ Lynn, R. Personality and National Character: International Series of Monographs in Experimental Psychology. Elsevier. p. 162. ISBN 9781483186771.

Cited sources

External links

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