ANCIENT ROMANS

Nordicists like to claim ancient cultures for Northern Europe, and

attribute their decline to the absorption of slaves. To accomplish
this they offer selective evidence and conjecture, while
overstressing the significance of blondism. In the case of Rome,
the data, as well as Roman statuary, shows that the producers of
that culture were subracially mixed, with Alpine and Dinaric
elements predominating, and that slavery must have had a
negligible impact. Also, the culture's igniting spark came from the
Etruscans, who were Mediterranean.

Anthropology
"...the movements from the north introduced Nordics of two varieties; the classic
Hallstatt type, and the Keltic Iron Age type which was later to form the basic racial
element among the Roman patricians.

"...Keltic Iron Age type, which was a mixture of Nordic with Dinaric elements. ...
mesocephalic and low-vaulted, with a prominent nose. ... On the whole, the Kelts were a
mixed group in race as in culture; their ancestry includes both long heads of some central
European Nordic type, which was in turn a combination of several Mediterranean sub-
types, and brachycephals from the region in southwestern Germany in which the
Dinarics of Early Bronze Age introduction had blended with earlier round heads of
Mesolithic origin.

"The early Romans, judging from the busts of their descendants in the days of Augustus,
and of descriptions, were not very tall, as a rule, but were often of heavy body build.
Their skulls were flattish on top, and rounded on the sides, like those of the Kelts. The
facial features included the well-known "Roman" nose, which may have been partly
derived from an Etruscan source. On the whole, the well-known sculptures of Caesar,
Augustus, and others, although not reliable from the standpoint of accurate
measurement, indicate that a mesocephalic to brachycephalic head form was admired.
Their facial type is not native to the Mediterranean basin, but is more at home in the
north [of the Alps]. Nevertheless, the Romans considered the Kelts who invaded Italy
tall and blond; hence the blondism of the Romans, including rufosity, must have been in
the minority."
Examples of modern representatives of the Keltic Nordic type, showing its many non-
Nordic accretions:

(Coon, 1939)

***
"...all anthropological evidence indicates that the Hellenes were a compost of ethnic
strains (Angel), as were the Kelts (Powell; Coon), and that the Italici were
predominantly Alpine (Whatmough; Sergi). ... Like the Latin flavi or the Greek xanthos,
[the Sanskrit] hari is a generalized color term with a variety of alternate
meanings. Xanthos, which our [Nordicist] translates, with equal certitude, as 'blond' was
used, by the Greeks of antiquity, to designate 'any hair color short of jet black, and the
color was in all probability not lighter than auburn' (Wace; similarlyKeiter)."
(Gregor, 1961)

***
"It is often supposed that blondness is an indication of Nordid ancestry. Taken by itself,
it is nothing of the kind."
(Baker, 1974)
***
"The universality of some degree of blondism among whites and near whites everywhere
makes it unlikely that it was ever confined to a single race or group of races within the
White family. ... [In Italy] blondism is everywhere correlated with a relatively high [i.e.
Alpo-Dinaric] cephalic index."
(Coon, 1939)

***
"The Mediterranean's hair is usually black or dark brown, while his whiskers may reveal
a few strands of red or even blond. Blond hair may be seen, but it is the exception. Its
presence does not require some invasion of Goths or Scyths or the miscegenation of
Crusaders. One of the characteristics of the Mediterranean race is a minority tendency
toward blondism. This is seen much more frequently in the eyes, since blond hair, which
appears in infants, usually darkens as the hair coarsens with age."
(Coon, 1951)
 Statuary
The Romans' round-headed Alpo-Dinaric character can be seen in the busts of illustrious
(and typical) figures below. Even the few who may look superficially Nordic from the
front invariably turn out, when viewed in profile, to have the short head and convex nose
that exemplifies Dinarics.

Cicero Nero Augustus

Julius Caesar

Tiberius Cato the Elder Marcus Aurelius (two views)

Pompey Galba Domitian Otho

 Caligula Vespasian Nerva

Slavery
"The proportion of blacks in the population of Roman Italy is, however, most unlikely to
have been as high as in eighteenth century Britain (where the number of blacks has been
estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000), even when one allows for exaggeration in the
British figures and also subtracts from these figures a considerable number of so-called
blacks whom no Roman would perceive as falling within the category Aethiops."
(Thompson, 1989)
***
"The average recorded age at death for the slaves of the city of Rome was extraordinarily
low: seventeen and a half years (17.2 for males; 17.9 for females)."
(Harper, 1972)
***
"However, one piece of negative evidence...provides an intriguing hint that conventional
estimates of slaves making up as much as 40 percent of Italy's population by the late first
century B.C. may be far too high. An analysis of the genetic makeup of Italy's modern
population argues that the various distinctive genetic combinations currently found in
different regions within the peninsula by and large track the linguistic distribution that
resulted from the migrations of the Iron Age. No data indicate the subsequent large-scale
infusion of new genetic material into the populations of these regions except in the case
of southern Italy and eastern Sicily, which is explained by the well-documented Greek
migrations there. ... But if a population of 3 million slaves, representing as much as 40
percent of Italy's inhabitants in the first century B.C., was successfully reproducing
itself, it would surely have left its mark on the genetic makeup of contemporary Italians.
That it did not argues strongly for a very low rate of natural reproduction among Italy's
slaves, which in turn is difficult to reconcile with the hypothesis that the number of
slaves ever grew large enough to comprise 40 percent of the Italian population."
(Rosenstein, 2004)
 Etruscans
"...the Romans, who were only villagers during the rise of the Etruscan civilization, were
in close contact with the Etruscans, their language, their ideas, their religion, and their
civilization; the Etruscans were the single most important influence on Roman culture in
its transition to civilization."
(Hooker, 1996)
***
"In Etruria lie the origins of Roman numerals and the Latin alphabet, tile roofs,
aqueducts and basilicas, as well as portrait statues, giant sailing ships, and concepts of
city planning."
(Turfa, 2002)
***
"The Romans adopted many Etruscan customs over the years. They used the Etruscan
alphabet, which the Etruscans had borrowed from the Greeks. The symbol of the
Etruscan king's right to execute his subjects was a bundle of rods and an axe:
the fasces (from which Mussolini created the Fascisti in the 20th century). The Romans
even adopted the Etruscan toga. The vault and the arch were Etruscan in origin as were
gladiatorial contests.

"Etruscan power and influence over the city of Rome was indeed strong and thanks to
their trading interests, the city began to grow. By the mid-6th century, temples and public
buildings could be found throughout the city. The Capitoline Hill became the religious
center of the city and the Forum, formerly a cemetery, became a public meeting place,
thus serving a similar role as the agora had at Athens."
(Kreis, 2001)
***
Depictions of Etruscans, showing their Classic Mediterranean character: