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| black man | Apr 3 2007, 09:31 PM |
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Liaison
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Obviously, average Koreans have lower metric values than average Mongols. In particular, the head length and breadth are similar to those of Han and Japanese. But on the other hand, relatively high percentages of Koreans are metrically similar to average Mongols concerning e.g. bizygomatic breadth of the face when one takes a look at more detailed statistics (see study mentioned at the bottom of this post). I don't think that it has anything to do with climatic differences between Korea and Mongolia but rather with the establishment of a particular, hybridised average phenotype. Hybridisation theory would also explain why certain soft tissue characteristics common to East Siberians are also often found among southern Koreans but less in Japanese and Han, I think. (Sorry, I did not find any academic support for the latter observation, yet. It is a personal one.) Another question would be whether Korean head has changed shape during time. As for the Japanese head, e.g. Suzuki wrote that it did: according to the data he compared, medieval Japanese were significantly more prognathic and dolichocephalic than present-day Japanese...Now imagine what could have occured after the hypothetic split between "proto-Mongols" and "proto-Koreans", a morphological predecessor for present-day Mongols being traced back to neolithic people of what is now northern Mongolia who were already significantly different from present-day Koreans. Maybe hybridisation, maybe change of social selection criteria concerning attractivity, maybe isolation, maybe change of head shape due to change of nutrition or a combination of several changes. update: check out A Study on Anthropometric Measurement of Head and Face of Chinese by Jin et al. (also more details about the heads of Chinese Koreans) |
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