South Slavs in the light of biophysical anthropology

A contribution towards brachycephalization and dinarization

Petar, Vlahović

Glasnik Antropološkog društva Jugoslavije

36

5

12

0351-1480

http://scindeks.ceon.rs/article.aspx?query=ISSID%26and%263552&page=0&sor...

2001-2021/11/05/08:20:52

South Slavs belong to a great Slavic tree from which they separated north of the great Carpathian arc and then, in the 5th and 6th century AD, settled in many parts of the Balkan Peninsula. At that time, they differed in their anthropological appearance from other ethnic communities (Illyrians, Thracians, Greeks, Celts and others) whom they met in the Balkans. The chroniclers of antiquity claimed that the Slavs, arriving in the Balkans, were tall, dolichocephalic, light of skin and hair color ('blond'), wide-faced, with prominent cheek-bones (zygionic), and with broad and strong lower jaw. In the Middle Ages, after the Turkish penetration into the Balkans, anthropological characteristics of South Slavs gradually change. Hair becomes darker, eyes also, body is more slim, with average height or tall, head becomes brachycephalic, face elongated, and the nose becomes more prominent, the 'eagle-nose'. Scientists believe that these alterations happened because of the influence of the environment, also because of mixed marriages and gradual slavization of the more ancient populations of the Balkans. These processes were accompanied by very slow gracilization and gradual Dinarization of the contemporary Southern-Slavic population. The aforementioned processes led, through gracilization and Dinarization, to the creation of the well-known Dinaric variety of the white race, the variety formed mainly in the Balkan Peninsula on the previously Illyrian territory, but at the time after the disappearance of the Illyrians. This is confirmed by osteological remains, by art, and by other sources that tell us about the South Slavic peoples of the Balkans.