# Humanities & Anthropology > Anthropology & Ethnography > Guess the Ethnicity >  Where could these women fit ???

## Tomenable

Where could these women fit in your opinion (which ethnic groups and regions?):

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## arvistro

In Latvia I would expect all of them but the last one to speak Russian.
The last one in Latvia I would find in photo from 30s and she would be of Latvian or Baltic German heritage.

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## arvistro

So, how far away was I?
When I say in Latvia speaks Russian I mean originally from region including (Polish, Belarussian, West Russian).
Second might be native Baltic, too. Looks like my Lettigalian grandma's youth pictures.

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## Hauteville

Poland is a good fit for them.

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## LeBrok

> Poland is a good fit for them.


True, I can name my friends from Poland looking like them.

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## Tomenable

Thanks for all responses! Here is the answer:

They are all South-Eastern Polish, from Grabowiec county, which is part of so called Cherven Grods. Cherven Grods (or Towns) are named after Cherven - most probably identical with modern Czermno, which is located between Grabowiec and Belz:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherven_Cities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czermn...in_Voivodeship

The population in that area is surely of mixed Polish and Polonized East Slavic / Ukrainian origins (read below).

http://s10.postimg.org/yh4isdfyh/Grabowiec_region.png



The region was disputed between Poland and Kievan Rus (later Ukraine) and the population there has a mixed West Slavic + East Slavic (or Polish + Ukrainian) origins. The third lady also has some Slovak admixture, because her surname is Horwatt / Horvath ("Croat" in English), which is the most common surname in Slovakia, and some part of her ancestors immigrated from that region.

Most common surname by country (Slovakia and Croatia have the same: "Horwat"):

http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/...y-europe_0.png



Today the region of Cherven Grods is divided between Poland and Ukraine. The western part is in Poland.

Here is the history of the area of Grabowiec:

800s - Slavic tribe of Lendians (also neighbouring Buzhans, Volhynians, and others)
From 879 to ca. 906 - probably part of Great Moravia or paying tribute to it
From ca. 906 to 950 - probably zone of influence of Magyars and / or of Kievan Rus
From ca. 950 to 970 - probably zone of influence of Czechs and / or of Poland
From 970 to 981 - incorporated directly to Poland no later than ca. 970
From 981 to 1018 - conquered by Kievan Rus from Poland in 981
From 1018 to 1031 - recovered by Poland under Boleslav I
From 1031 to 1054 - again in Kievan Rus (until its fragmentation)
From 1054 to 1069 - principalities of Rus (after fragmentation)
From 1069 to 1086 - recovered by Poland under Boleslav II
From 1086 to 1239 - again in principalities of Rus (until Mongol invasion)
From 1240 to 1340 - principalities of Rus (paying tribute to Golden Horde)
From 1340 to 1772 - conquered by Casimir the Great, back to Poland
From 1772 to 1918 - after the partitions, part of Austrian Galicia
From 1918 to present - after WW1 again part of Poland

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## Tomenable

> So, how far away was I?


IMO not too far when you claimed that they could be West Russian.

South-Eastern Poles have some Polonized East Slavic ancestry too.

*Here is the source of photos from the Opening Post ("Grabowiec's Biographical Dictionary"):*

http://grabowiec.com.pl/grabowiecki_...ograficzny.pdf

Photos from the OP are on pages 53; 133; 350; 457-458 (there are also more photos on other pages).

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## Angela

How different are they from the people of southwestern Poland? If they are, why?

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## arvistro

> IMO not too far when you claimed that they could be West Russian.
> 
> South-Eastern Poles have some Polonized East Slavic ancestry too.


And vice versa - Western Russians have some West Slavic genes too probably.

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## Tomenable

> How different are they from the people of southwestern Poland? If they are, why?


Hard quesion, I will try to find some info on this (southwestern = natives of Upper Silesia and western Małopolska).

Surely a bit different, but I think that among Poles north-south differences are probably stronger than east-west ones.

"Old school" pre-war anthropological maps seem to confirm that south-north differences were greater than west-east.

BTW - I'm not sure if those photos posted in the OP are "representative" or "typical" types from South-Eastern Poland.




> And vice versa - Western Russians have some West Slavic genes too probably.


Yes, many Polish peasants who settled in Western & Central Ukraine converted to Eastern Rites and became Ukrainized.

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## Tomenable

> Hard quesion, I will try to find some info on this (southwestern = natives of Upper Silesia and western Małopolska).
> 
> Surely a bit different, but I think that among Poles north-south differences are probably stronger than east-west ones.


Upper Silesians in my opinion have a high percentage of black-haired, dark-eyed individuals.

I think they share this with Southern Poles in general, but it might be more specifically South-Western:

*Michał Stawiński (musician):*



*Krzysztof Globisz (actor):
*



*Jadwiga Basińska (comedian):*



*Lech Majewski (film director):*



*Kazimierz Kutz (film director):*



*^ All those are native Upper Silesians.*

I think that Northern Poles - no matter north-eastern or north-western - have much fewer of such brunette types.

Kashubians tend to be much blonder than Upper Silesians, I think.

Surprisingly, differences in Y-DNA are small - there is no any regional Polish group with less than 50% R1a, IIRC.

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## Tomenable

*Angela,*

In the USA, you have Polish Silesians (from Opole region) in Texas. They came in 1854.

They established such settlements as Panna Maria (= Lady Mary), Cestochova, Saint Hedwig and more.

They came to Texas from this area: http://www.slask-texas.org/en/materi...ialy-mapy.html

https://www.youtube.com/user/slasktexas/videos



*One of Silesian-Texans speaks about the establishment of Panna Maria (in English):*

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## Angela

There were quite a few Polish-Americans in the town where my family settled, enough so that in addition to the Irish churches and Italian churches there was also a Polish church where some Masses on Sunday were said in Polish. There were Polish American girls in my Catholic girl's prep school. I don't remember the specific town names from which their families came, but I know some were north of Warsaw, and others up near the Lithuanian border. 

The reason I asked the question is that one of my dear friends is descended from a German speaking family which lived in Czechoslovakia (very close to the Polish border) from the Middle Ages until after the Second World War. She said they had a bit of Polish ancestry. I wondered if she had a common look for the area. In fact, I guess she does, because she looks remarkably like the picture of Jadwiga Basinka. Honestly, it's an extraordinary resemblance; practically the only difference is that her nose tip doesn't turn down that much. 

As far as dark-haired Poles are concerned, one of the first film femme-fatales was actually a dark haired Pole-Pola Negri.
http://theredlist.com/media/database...theredlist.jpg

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## Tomenable

> The reason I asked the question is that one of my dear friends is descended from a German speaking family which lived in Czechoslovakia (very close to the Polish border) from the Middle Ages until after the Second World War. She said they had a bit of Polish ancestry. I wondered if she had a common look for the area. In fact, I guess she does, because she looks remarkably like the picture of Jadwiga Basinka. Honestly, it's an extraordinary resemblance; practically the only difference is that her nose tip doesn't turn down that much.


Indeed, the "blonde Nordic German" stereotype is vastly overhyped. 

Such types are only quite common in Low German speaking populations (in the north of Deutschland).

Dialects of German spoken in Silesia and Czechoslovakia (Sudetenland) were Middle and High German.

Middle and High German speakers in southern regions are much darker types. Even one of the most prominent Nazi anthropologists - Hans Friedrich Karl Günther (also known as Race Pope - Rassenpapst - or Race Günther - Rassengünther), who was a Nordicist not a Germanicist (a difference was that Germanicists preached the supremacy of Germanic peoples, while Nordicists preached the supremacy of Nordic types regardless of what language they spoke) acknowledged the following in his book from 1933:

*"(...) Günther found the overwhelming majority of Germans racially mixed, just 6-8% pure Nordic and the East-Europid race, which he despised, common in the east and north due to medieval Germanisation of Slavs (Günther 1933: pp. 57 & 112)"

*So just 5-10 percent of Germans could be classified as pure Nordic - a ratio lower than among some Baltic and North Slavic groups.

By contrast among ethnic Swedes, as many as over 30% were classifed as pure Nordic, and another 1/3 as East Baltic:

*"(...) Swedish anthropologists like Nordenstreng adopted the East-Baltic, along with the Nordic, as the real races of Sweden ... (Kemilainen 1994: p. 402; Hildén 1928: pp. 220-21). Nordenstreng ... identified ... 31% ... of pure Nordics ... in Sweden ..., while Lundborg and Linders in 1926 said 36% of Swedes were East-Baltic (Kemilainen 1994: pp. 402-3)."

*Based on those stats, some members of the SS started to claim, that 90% - 95% of ethnic Germans were also subhumans:

*"(...) The more extreme SS men began to take Nordic supremacy to its logical conclusion that Non-Nordic Germans were inferior, and that five to ten percent of the population, its best selection, would ultimately rule the rest (Ackermann 1970: page 174). Would Nazi Germany eventually have instituted a truly anthropological race discrimination system ... ? The fate of Germany's brown-haired brachycephals might ultimately have depended on Heinrich Himmler's aptitude for factional manouvering within the Nazi party. (...)"
*
But other Nazis tried to find excuses and solutions to the problem of incorporating 90% of impure Germans into the master race:

*"(...) A prominent German anthropologist was accused of explaining away the numerous inconvenient Non-Nordic Germans by attributing head-shape to infants pillows (Huxley & Haddon 1935: p. 40). To absorb South Germans into an expanded Nordic race, Fritz Lenz questioned the validity of the Alpine race (Eickstedt 1934: p. 388; Lenz1936: p. 726)."

*Major Europoid anthropological types existed already before the emergence of most of modern ethno-linguistic families - quote:

*"In 1905, the Polish archaeologist Majewski warned of race mixture in Europe's oldest [oldest known by that time] graves, from 5,000-6,000 years ago, preceding modern European language families, but still accepted pure races tens of thousands of years ago and traced all members of each physical type from a single point of origin or nest (Majewski 1905: pp. 164-66). His German colleague Buschan accepted Virchow s thesis that [both] Slavs and Teutons were always racially mixed."
*
*Source:* http://www.friendsofsabbath.org/Furt...pe_McMahon.pdf

===============================

BTW - one of my ethnic Polish cousins is of East-Nordic (also known as Corded Nordic - named so after a commonly encountered shape of skulls found in burials of the Corded Ware culture) type. She looks like an intermediary between Elena Dementieva and Maria Sharapova:

http://www.theapricity.com/snpa/rg-eastnordic.htm

Elena Dementieva (left) and Maria Sharapova (right):



My natural blonde cousin (head shape and face length more like Dementieva, but most of facial traits more like Sharapova):



In my close family I noticed a large diversity of hair colours (blonde, brown, black, also red) and anthropological "races".

How can a group of close relatives be divided into many "races" ???

============================

*Check also composite images of some anthropological types mentioned above here:* 

http://www.xpomo.com/ruskolan/rasa/phenotype_01.htm

http://www.xpomo.com/ruskolan/rasa/phenotype_03.htm

http://embartanitipusok.blog.hu

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## Tomenable

Back to Upper Silesian types - some old photographs:

http://www.muzeum.gliwice.pl/cykle-slaskie...-obrzedy-cz-ii/

http://ajnfart.blog.onet.pl

http://zobacz.slask.pl/_pokaz.php?id=1&gal...__img/staredom/











http://ajnfart.blog.onet.pl/files/2014/11/...84-domowych.jpg

*^ In those photos, I can see also some examples of the Sudetisch type (der Sudeten Typus).

It was named so due to being common in populations living around the Sudeten Mountains:*

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## Tomenable

> As far as dark-haired Poles are concerned, one of the first film femme-fatales was actually a dark haired Pole-Pola Negri.
> http://theredlist.com/media/database...theredlist.jpg


Indeed. Some mostly Dark-pigmented West Slavic and South Slavic types here:




Some dark-haired, light-haired and natural redhead (right side, first photo) young Polish lawyers and law graduates:

http://ziemski.com.pl/pl/nasz-zespol/

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## Tomenable

From a 1995 study on eye colours in Poland:

https://repozytorium.amu.edu.pl/bits...OCZU_53-67.pdf

Translation to English:


*"(...) In Poland eye colours of test subjects living in: 1. cities (over 25 thousand inhabitants); 2. small towns (below 25 thousand inhabitants); and 3. villages was compared. (...) It was established, that frequency of dark eyes increases together with settlement size (tab. 2). Men with dark eyes more often live in cities, while women with dark eyes more often live in cities and small towns, than in villages. (...)"*

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## Tomenable

*Kashubians (Northern Poland) tend to be much blonder than Upper Silesians:

**Donald Tusk (politician):*



*Piotr Kaszubski (businessman and fraudster):*



*Some random Kashubians:*











*In terms of Y-DNA, Kashubians are ca. 65-66% (or 2/3) R1a and ca. 13% I1, they also have up to 3% Q1a.

Surprising is their low % of R1b, considering that they lived next to German-speakers (if Kashubians have Non-Slavic admixtures, it seems - judging from Y-DNA - that they have more of Scandinavian ancestry than of German).

**In general, R1a is their main Y-DNA haplogroup, followed by I1 and only then by R1b.

This is contrast to the rest of Poland, where R1b is more numerous than I1:*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashubians#Genetics




> *Genetics:* According to a study published in September 2015, by far the most common Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup among the Kashubians who live in Kashubia, is haplogroup *R1a, which is carried by 61.8% of Kashubian males. It is followed in frequency by I1 (13.2%)*, R1b (9.3%), I2 (4.4%) and E1b1b (3.4%). Altogether these account for over 9/10 of the total Kashubian Y-DNA diversity.[43] A study from January 2010 discovered *similar proportions of most haplogroups (R1a - 68.8%, I1 - 12.5%*, R1b - 7.8%, I2 - 3.1%, E1b1b - 3.1%), *but found also Q1a in 3.1% of Kashubians* (...).[44] When it comes to mitochondrial DNA haplogroups, according to a January 2013 study, the most common major lineages among the Kashubians, each carried by at least 2.5% of their population, include J1 (12.3%), H1 (11.8%), H* (8.9%), T* (5.9%), T2 (5.4%), U5a (5.4%), U5b (5.4%), U4a (3.9%), H10 (3.9%), H11 (3.0%), H4 (3.0%), K (3.0%), V (3.0%), H2a (2.5%) and W (2.5%). Altogether they account for almost 8/10 of the total Kashubian mtDNA diversity.[45]


*Haplogroup Q / Q1a:*



============================

*And here a large sample of North-Eastern Poles (**Polish minority in Southern Lithuania):*




*Here a paper on mtDNA and Y-DNA haplogroups of Lithuanians:*

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...03.00119.x/pdf

Areas where the Polish minority is concentrated tend to have a bit higher % of R1a and a bit lower of N1c.

But sample sizes used in that study were very small.

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## arvistro

Hmmm.
In Latvia I would expect Dementieva speak Latvian (would consider her local), whilst Sharapova Russian (would consider her of Russian/ Slavic background, that arrived in Soviet times). 
Kashubians to me look Belarussian (but also East Latvian, East Lithuanian would fit). That if from my very narrow view point :)

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