# Humanities & Anthropology > Anthropology & Ethnography > Guess the Ethnicity >  Can you guess the ethnic background?

## BMW

Can you guess the ethnic background of the father in this photo?

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## Angela

I wouldn't be surprised if you told me he was Irish or Ulster Scots, i.e. Appalachians.

However, you may not believe me but there are also Italians who look like that, my husband's father amongst them, except that the lower part of his face was broader.

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## BMW

Angela,This photo is 15-20 years earlier.

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## BMW

Sorry, let me try again.
This is 15-2 years earlier.

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## BMW

As you can see I'm new at posting photos...... :)

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## mitty

BMW, he looks Irish or West Scottish to me :)

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## BMW

Angela and mitty,

This photo shows his paternal grandfather and siblings.

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## Angela

I'm with Mitty. :)

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## TardisBlue

British or Irish?

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## BMW

Hello to all.

My Dad would have been a Y-DNA haplogroup T.
All his great grandparents were Irish.....south Ireland....more specifically Co. Carlow for his paternal line.
Angela, you were onto something when you mentioned his possible Italian look. I am still trying to figure out the apparent rare circumstances which brought a Y-DNA "T" to Ireland. Anything out there that addresses this subject in more detail?

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## Duarte

> Can you guess the ethnic background of the father in this photo?





> Sorry, let me try again.
> This is 15-2 years earlier.





> Angela and mitty,
> 
> This photo shows his paternal grandfather and siblings.





> Hello to all.
> 
> My Dad would have been a Y-DNA haplogroup T.
> All his great grandparents were Irish.....south Ireland....more specifically Co. Carlow for his paternal line.
> Angela, you were onto something when you mentioned his possible Italian look. I am still trying to figure out the apparent rare circumstances which brought a Y-DNA "T" to Ireland. Anything out there that addresses this subject in more detail?


Hello BMW. 
Beautiful family you have. Everybody, in all pics you posted, seems very british to me.
I have great difficulty in differentiating the various European phenotypes. IMO, all europeans are very similar, in my not very well trained vision. 
The following, I put some Iberian phenotypes to prove what I said:

1. 40's - my father and my great-uncle:


2. 1954 - My father, graduating in Political Sciences from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (I graduated from this same university, in Engineering):


3. 1966 - My father and mother:


4. 1959 - My parental grandfather, Christovan (Here in Brazil all called him Cristóvão, but his real name of baptism is Christovan), 5 years before he died in 1965. I inherited his eyes.

6. 1965 - My older brother, Fabio. The photo is bad, but he had red hair, LOL.

I love old family photos.

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## BMW

Duarte,

Thank you for your nice comments and sharing your great family photos!

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## BMW

Another photo of my Dad.
This time in 1992 with two of his grandchildren. He was to die of cancer only two years later.

I don't think he looked as much Irish as he did Peter Ustinov "like" in his later years....especially when he was carrying a few more pounds in the 1970's and 80's. He sure loved his grandkids.

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## Angela

The Celtic "fringe", especially Ireland, but western Scotland as well, and Ulstermen, the so called Scots-Irish, who some may not consider "Irish", have a lot of people who retain a lot of the "Med" along with the "Atlanto" in their phenotypes. In America I see it particularly in the people of the Appalachians.

When I first saw a picture of Loretta Lynn, I thought she looked a lot like me when I was in my twenties and early thirties, to be honest. :) It's just a mix of the ancestral populations we have in common which by happenstance result in a similar look. 



Spaniards can sometimes overlap a bit with them too, although Duarte's father (very handsome, btw, Duarte), looks very Spanish to me still, not at all British. Some can definitely fool me, though. When I first saw a picture of Tyrone Power, I was absolutely certain he was a Spaniard who had changed his name. Alas not. Completely British, with a lot of Irish in him.

 

I have relatives who could fit pretty well in the picture of your very handsome family, but it has to do with shared ancient ancestry, I think, including ancient EEF/Neolithic farmer ancestry which produces that longer face and more refined features, but I don't think it is necessarily tied only to your yDna "T". I'm sure there are other y lines, and, more likely, given what happened to Neolithic y lines in Britain, lots of mtDna lines which can be traced to the Neolithic farmers of Europe.

This is what I mean.

Couldn't some of these people from the Lunigiana fit in pretty well in your group?




I wouldn't mistake them for Irish, most of them, but the differences can be pretty subtle between Europeans from different countries.




Elio Germano

A Miss Parma:


A good number of them I'd have difficulty with myself.

Miss Parma contestants:


A Miss Liguria:


Coon talks about some of this in his books, i.e. British Mediterraneans
http://www.nordish.org/troeplate25.htm

One of his examples of an Atlanto-Med from near Genoa looks a lot like my Dad when he was younger.
http://www.nordish.org/troeplate23.htm

Your Dad to me actually had in the first picture of him a bit of this plate of what Coon calls a Dinaric. That's why I thought he looked a bit like my husband's father, who was definitely Dinaric. I don't see it the other pictures so much, however, or in the rest of the people in your family pictures. It may have just been the angle.

Anyway, feel free to ignore any or all of this. :) It's just my subjective view of a very nebulous subject. 

BTW, did you know that Thomas Jeffferson carried a "T" haplogroup? He's the only one among all those R1bs. They definitely traced his ancestry back to somewhere in England.





He wasn't always wrong. :)

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## Duarte

@ Ángels @BMW,

First of all I would like to congratulate everyone for posting family photos. I love. It is a rare opportunity for us to review intimate and happy moments. I find very interesting these overlaps that exist between British, Italian, French and Iberian. It is a demonstration of the great movement of people who happened in Europe for millennia. Of course that certain types predominate in certain regions, but the most important fact is that all types can be found everywhere in Europe. I find this very cool.

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## BMW

Angela,

Thank you for all you sent....much appreciated. Miss Liguria looks as though she could have been homecoming queen in the majority of schools here in the U.S. when I was in high school. I understand your point very well.
What you sent deserves a better response than I can send at the moment. I will reply with more a little later.

Duarte,
Thank you for another good response!

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## BMW

Angela,

The photo on the left, I believe, shows the same look for my father you mentioned earlier. When he was that age most of his photos looked like that.
Believe it or not, the gent lying on the ground in the photo on the right is my Dad's brother.

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## Angela

> Angela,
> 
> The photo on the left, I believe, shows the same look for my father you mentioned earlier. When he was that age most of his photos looked like that.
> Believe it or not, the gent lying on the ground in the photo on the right is my Dad's brother.


Take a look at these young men in one of our festivals celebrating our history.



This is from the most "Tuscan" of the towns in the Lunigiana, but I think he's a bit more "Dinaric" than that.

Something was niggling at me. What do you think? A bit of a young Nicholas Cage? He's at least half far southern Italian.

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## BMW

When I block out Cage's eyes and ears it does seem to work for me.

My Uncle Bill definitely took after my paternal grandmother...round faced and on the shorter side.
I grew up hearing about the "Walsh nose" and by that they were referring to a Roman nose they said. My Dad's father and sister had it as well.

This might be close for his profile but with a slightly longer face under the nose.

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## BMW

This is an earlier photo of my Dad's grandfather and siblings....with their parents.
My great grandfather is at the top right but I resemble his brother more (holding his baby daughter) in the middle of the front row. It's been a long time since my hair was that dark, though.... :)

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## Angela

Your relative isn't the only man from the Celtic fringe to have an imposing nose.:)

Liam Neeson:



Adrian Dunbar, currently in "Line of Duty". Really good actor.


I'm quite fond of them even if the features aren't very harmonious as a whole as a result. Maybe they project strength and masculinity to me.

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## bigsnake49

My son has been accused of looking like JFK Jr.

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## BMW

Angela and all,

This is my paternal grandfather....also a haplogroup T, of course.
He had the dark hair like my Dad but otherwise a different look. I wouldn't say he has an Irish look....maybe Mediterranean?

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## Salento

and He’s feeding a crocodile (cool).
That explains why we y Ts are a the brink of extinction. lol  :Smile: 

fyi y T in my region is about 5%, in Calabria 2%

It is difficult to say how much Mediterranean y T actually is.

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## Carlos

The crocodile man has been recognizable to me, that look I have seen in Spain. He reminded me of that look of the actor Antonio Garisa.




Rocío Durcal


Macarena García


Virginia

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## Angela

> Angela and all,
> 
> This is my paternal grandfather....also a haplogroup T, of course.
> He had the dark hair like my Dad but otherwise a different look. I wouldn't say he has an Irish look....maybe Mediterranean?


He actually does look distinctly Irish to me. All Europeans have what you're calling "Mediterranean" ancestry, southerners the most, then Northwest and Central, then Eastern Europeans, and Northeast Europeans the least. All of them do have it, however. There are different types of southern or "eastern" as in eastern Mediterranean ancestry. What I see in him and in some of the people in your prior family pictures are traces of what is sometimes called "small Med", more oval faces, more even, refined features. mixed to smaller or larger degrees with traces of other ancestry.

The reason that I waffled on your grandfather is that he has what was called by old time anthropologists a slight Dinarid strain, which pops up in Italy and the Balkans. I don't see it very much in his later pictures. 

This is what I mean: It's one of Coon's anthropology plates.


This is a man from Yorkshire who is labeled a European Dinaric on one of those old anthropology plates:


This is someone one of those sites that specialize in this sort of thing labeled a European Dinaric. It doesn't mean he's Italian or has Italian ancestry. It's just a look that pops up here and there, not just in countries in the Balkans or in Italy. I actually think he happens to look very British Isles in ancestry.


How he got it is anybody's guess. He could have got it from back in his mother's lines as well as some one further back in his father's line. Certain phenotypic traits aren't carried on certain y lines. They don't "stick" to them if you understand what I mean. They're on you're autosomal snps and freely combine.

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## MOESAN

> The Celtic "fringe", especially Ireland, but western Scotland as well, and Ulstermen, the so called Scots-Irish, who some may not consider "Irish", have a lot of people who retain a lot of the "Med" along with the "Atlanto" in their phenotypes. In America I see it particularly in the people of the Appalachians.
> 
> 
> 
> When I first saw a picture of Loretta Lynn, I thought she looked a lot like me when I was in my twenties and early thirties, to be honest. :) It's just a mix of the ancestral populations we have in common which by happenstance result in a similar look. 
> 
> 
> 
> Spaniards can sometimes overlap a bit with them too, although Duarte's father (very handsome, btw, Duarte), looks very Spanish to me still, not at all British. Some can definitely fool me, though. When I first saw a picture of Tyrone Power, I was absolutely certain he was a Spaniard who had changed his name. Alas not. Completely British, with a lot of Irish in him.
> ...


Honestly I don't find Coon was very good at picking models for his types, spite hs types were defined correctly at the measures level - 
his "med" from Wales is completeley under 'croma's influence and some of his other examples are not very better!

That said there is no odd that diverse 'med' types were found in the Isles: they were there before, suffered a bit (they were pushed in less valuable lands and recovered some "wealth" after too, as Coon said, rather in suburbs of big towns - I think that in Ireland, it's not so in West but rather among Catholic Ulstermen that we can see the most of diverse 'med' input. But it is only a visible component, not the bulk of Irish people there.

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## BMW

Salento and Carlos,

Thanks for your input into my question! I appreciate it.

With my Grandfather doing things like feeding crocodiles, I'm surprised my Dad and I ever had the opportunity to walk this planet.

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## BMW

Hi Angela,

You gave me "food for thought". The term "small Med" is new to me and I appreciate you introducing me to it. 

My Grandfather is on the right in this photo with his siblings. This was before he was befriending crocodiles.

Hello, Moesan.

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## Carlos

> Salento and Carlos,
> 
> Thanks for your input into my question! I appreciate it.
> 
> With my Grandfather doing things like feeding crocodiles, I'm surprised my Dad and I ever had the opportunity to walk this planet.


Do not worry my paternal great-grandmother had a crow as a pet and what was after her daughter-in-law, my paternal grandmother shot the real eagles to scare them away when their little children played and the sky filled with eagles.

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## calf

Sicilian 

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