Dinaric race
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In physical anthropology, the Dinaric race (or Adriatic race or Epirotic race) is one of the subcategories of the Europid (White; Caucasian) race into which it was divided by anthropologists in the early 20th century. The continued validity of these categories is disputed.
The concept of a Dinaric race originated with Joseph Deniker, but became most closely associated with the writings of Hans F.K. Günther and Carleton Coon. The name derives from the Dinaric Alps (the western part of the Balkan Peninsula) which was supposed to be its principal habitat.
Its characteristics were defined as tall, mostly mesomorph bodily build, with relatively long legs and short trunk and a medium arm span. The overall anatomy of the head was said to be brachycephalic to hyperbrachycephalic (Cranial index: 81-86) whereby the condition is caused by both rather high breadth of the head and a medium length of the neurocranium, whose back part is often somewhat flattened (planoccipital). The vertical height of the cranium is high. Eyes are set relatively close and the surrounding tissue defines them as wide open. The iris is most often brown, with a significant percentage of light pigmentation in the Dinaric population. The nose is large, narrow and convex. The face is long and orthognathic, with a prominent chin, and also wide. The form of the forehead is variable, but not rarely it is bulbous. The hair color is usually dark brown, with black haired and blond individuals in minority, blondness being the characteristic of the more Central European, morphologically similar Noric race (a race intermediate between Nordic and Dinaric races).
The skin is lacking the rosy color characteristic for Northern Europe as well as the relatively brunet pigmentation characteristic for the southernmost Europe and on a geographical plane it is of medium pigmentation and often it is variable.
Several theories were postulated regarding the genesis of the Dinaric race and most of them agreed that this race was autochthonous to its present habitat from the Neolithic. It was claimed by both Günther and Coon that the Bell-Beaker people of the European Bronze Age were at least partially Dinaric. However Coon also argued, in The Origin of Races (1962), that the Dinaric and other such categories "are not races but simply the visible expressions of the genetic variability of the intermarrying groups to which they belong." 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 are to be found today in the mountainous areas of the western Balkans ( Albania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, most of northwestern Bulgaria, and northwestern Republic of Macedonia). Northern Italy is mostly a Dinaric area as well as western Greece, Romania, eastern Ukraine, southeastern German-speaking areas, and parts of southern Poland and southeastern France. Most are speakers of Finnic and eastern Slavic languages.
