# Humanities & Anthropology > Anthropology & Ethnography > Guess the Ethnicity >  WHG or EHG look alike?

## Angela

I recently saw Mait Metspalu on a video about the Pagani et al "Out of Africa" paper, and he immediately struck me as having a somewhat archaic look...WHG/EHG, maybe? I'm talking strictly facially. Am I totally off here? Does he have any unique ancestry to anyone's knowledge? 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=...74915937037976



See:


This guy above has higher cheekbones and a bonier nose, but as to the nose I'm always skeptical that they can get it right.

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## Dagne

oh they are very much alike! I love the comparison, let's ask Mait Metspalu, how much EHG he is...

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## Kristiina

The figure 3 in Haak 2015 provides us with evidence of higher WHG ancestry in Estonia. 

Haak 2015.PNG

In this figure Estonians seem to be more than 30% Loschbour like.

The guy Angela posted is Loscbour. Isn't he?

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## Angela

> The figure 3 in Haak 2015 provides us with evidence of higher WHG ancestry in Estonia. 
> 
> Haak 2015.PNG
> 
> In this figure Estonians seem to be more than 30% Loschbour like.
> 
> The guy Angela posted is Loscbour. Isn't he?


Yes, Kristina, it is. So, maybe WHG like it is?

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## Kristiina

Yeah, could be so. Maybe he is a lookalike of "true Europeans": no African, no Mediterranean, no West Asian, no Yamnaya, no Siberian, no Native American. :)

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## Fire Haired14

Until someone here gives sources telling what WHG skeletal features were, we'll have no idea if he has a WHG look. Does anyone have said sources? Anyone can have a heavy build and beard, lots did in the ancient world, so that doesn't add to his WHGness, WHG didn't look any rougher or primitive than anyone else. EHG is basically a mixture of WHG and ANE, so if we assume there were distinct WHG looks the question is does he have a WHG or other look.

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## Fire Haired14

> Yeah, could be so. Maybe he is a lookalike of "true Europeans": no African, no Mediterranean, no West Asian, no Yamnaya, no Siberian, no Native American. :)


I'm being picky here but.... Modern West Asians aren't pure CHG and modern Mediterraneans aren't pure Anatolia Neolithic. Also, Anatolia Neolithic and his relatives lived in the East Mediterranean, most of the European Mediterranean was WHG. I get what you're saying though and you're right. Also, btw Western Europe wasn't the only location WHG lived in.....

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## Kristiina

> Until someone here gives sources telling what WHG skeletal features were, we'll have no idea if he has a WHG look.


As per Angela, we are only talking about facial features. WHG is defined on the basis of Loschbour and the facial reconstruction is made of Loschbour, so we really cannot have any better facial reference for WHG than Loschbour.

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## Moi-même

> Maybe he is a lookalike of "true Europeans"


True Europeans would be Neandertals, anyone else is just super late comer. ^_~

A-model-of-a-Neanderthal-008.jpg

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## Fire Haired14

> As per Angela, we are only talking about facial features. WHG is defined on the basis of Loschbour and the facial reconstruction is made of Loschbour, so we really cannot have any better facial reference for WHG than Loschbour.


Loschbour is only one individual. Two different individuals from the same population can have very different facial features. In some populations most individuals do have similar facial features(ex: East Asians and Native Americans), but I've noticed Europeans have lots of variation in facial features. Maybe Loschbour is representative of WHGs and maybe not.

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## Goga

There were NOT 2 but _at least_ *3* ( three !! ) types of the European hunter gatherers. *EHG* (Eastern European), *SHG* (Scandinavian) and *WHG* (Western European).


Ancient EHG were much more shifted toward ANE than other European hunter gatherers. The distance between 'EHG and ANE' was practically the same as the distance between 'CHG/Neolithic Iran and ANE'.

But today modern day Caucasians/Iranians have more ANE than Europeans..

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## Goga

If you look at that map screenshot you can see that EHG and WHG were clearly 2 *totally DIFFERENT* species / races!!!

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## davef

Could you imagine if he really was loschbour and had his own show? It would be called "An Intellectual Discourse with Professor Loscbour" 

Today's episode, we shall discuss the metaphysical aspects of spearing a wild boar

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## Tomenable

> "true Europeans": no African, no Mediterranean, no West Asian, no Yamnaya, no Siberian, no Native American.


*Ancients with Eurogenes K15:*

https://s9.postimg.org/h9vj9gi9p/K15_Ancients.png

*File with data:* http://www85.zippyshare.com/v/E6DR0qQl/file.html



*A PCA based on those results:*

http://s16.postimg.org/d5v0tx1et/PCA_described.png



*If we add moderns, then I guess:*

http://s9.postimg.org/rkmjd7cr3/Europeans.png

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## Kristiina

Indeed!

Loschbour admixture.jpg

Only European components: North Sea, Atlantic, Baltic and East Euro. That 0.8% of Oceanian is probably archaic noise.

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## davef

> True Europeans would be Neandertals, anyone else is just super late comer. ^_~
> 
> A-model-of-a-Neanderthal-008.jpg


Brilliant!

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## Tomenable

> That 0.8% of Oceanian is probably archaic noise.


It is *not* archaic, but from the First Out of Africa of Homo Sapiens 90,000 years ago:

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...ion-90-000-ybp

Note that Oceanian = Papuan-like (Papuans score ~99,99% of Oceanian admixture).

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

On the other hand, "Sub-Saharan" and "Northeast African" in some samples might be excess (above the norm) of archaic.

Because this calculator does not distinguish between Neanderthal/Denisovan (above the "modern norm") and Sub-Saharan.

It probably counts anything from Before-Out-Of-Africa as Sub-Saharan, no matter if it was 50,000 or 800,000 years before.

Check on your own:

*Gedmatch kit - sample:*

F999902
AltaiNeanderthal

F999903
DenisovaHominin

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## Tomenable

> In some populations most individuals do have similar facial features(ex: East Asians and Native Americans)


No, they have as much variation as Europeans. However, we don't see this because they look just so different.

There is a condition when people cannot distinguish faces at all: 

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

Gather 20 stones of similar size and shape, and try to remember their features, then recognize which is which.

People with face blindness also have such difficulty but with faces. 

People of a given race have more difficulty with distinguishing faces of people of another race, than their own.

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## Angela

> No, they have as much variation as Europeans. However, we don't see this because they look just so different.
> 
> There is a condition when people cannot distinguish faces at all: 
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopagnosia
> 
> Gather 20 stones of similar size and shape, and try to remember their features, then recognize which is which.
> 
> People with face blindness also have such difficulty but with faces. 
> ...


That's absolutely true; it's called the cross-race effect, and has to be taken into account when taking eye witness testimony. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-..._ethnic_groups

However, in my opinion there's no question there's less variation in east Asians. For one thing there isn't the variation in hair and eye color we have in Europe, and skin tone too. Height also varies more.

Those are all "hooks" for recognition.

The only way to know would be to test large numbers of Caucasians doing facial recognition of Caucasians, and East Asians doing it of East Asians, and see if there are differences. Of course, that might be politically incorrect, so they probably won't do it.

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## Tomenable

> For one thing there isn't the variation in hair and eye color we have in Europe, and skin tone too.


There is quite a lot of variation in skin tone between East Asians. Probably more than in Europe.

As for hair and eye color, here I agree.

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## Fire Haired14

East Asian faces vary much less than European. Native American faces vary much less than European. It's fact. I wouldn't say this about African Americans, I'd say they have more variation than Europeans. It has nothing to with them being foreign to me. So, my point stands that we can't trust Loschbour is representative of all WHGs. Plus we need flesh not just skulls and we are unable to get flesh, so reconstructions are just guess work.

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## davef

> Indeed!
> 
> Loschbour admixture.jpg
> 
> Only European components: North Sea, Atlantic, Baltic and East Euro. That 0.8% of Oceanian is probably archaic noise.


I should score about 45-50 percent of those components going by averages but hey if we are going by how long one should stay in a certain continent in order to be of that continent, I have a message for you lol. We are all from Africa lol. Here's a song from BLACK UHURU 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlYoGdFUqs

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## Tomenable

> ENative American faces vary much less than European.


I don't think so: http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Pi...ndians-00.html

And what about differences between South and North American natives?

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## Fire Haired14

> I don't think so: http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Pi...ndians-00.html
> 
> And what about differences between South and North American natives?


Just google crowds of Chinese people. There's probably difference between different Amerindians but they all look very similar. The few Natives I meet have short hair and look like typical Mexicans. 1800s photos of Natives in American run schools with short hair look like Mexicans. There is a very uniform Amerindian look that most of them have. It's just a fact European populations and Middle Eastern populations and African populations and others have more intra-variation in facial shape and body build. I don't need a scientific paper for this to know it is true.

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## Sile

> *Ancients with Eurogenes K15:*
> 
> https://s9.postimg.org/h9vj9gi9p/K15_Ancients.png
> 
> *File with data:* http://www85.zippyshare.com/v/E6DR0qQl/file.html
> 
> 
> 
> *A PCA based on those results:*
> ...


2
2
odd how this calculator is different when I test myself with the ancients in Gedmatch............my closest are stuttgart and BR
2 Real close..............yet below the numbers are different from your chart




Atlantic
24.78

2
West_Med
18.81

3
East_Med
13.91

4
North_Sea
13.36

5
Baltic
9.59

6
West_Asian
8.42

7
Eastern_Euro
7.71

8
Red_Sea
2.27

9
South_Asian
0.77

10
Sub-Saharan
0.26

11
Oceanian
0.12

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## Alan

He does look WHG just a bit overweight.

I made some posts in this thread here already about my opinion based on the skeletal material, regional looks and as well the informations given by scientists, on how the people of the ancient components looked like. Of course there must have been overlap because the components share ancestry.

Here are the posts.
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...l=1#post484328
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads...l=1#post484330

the skin color etc is secondary in this because as we know depending on the region, the diat their is some variance within the single components.

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## MOESAN

> You're not WHG. There are no WHG left. They're extinct. They're outside the range of modern European variation.
> 
> Have you had a dna test? If you have, run your results through gedmatch. They're not perfect by any means but at least you'd know your breakdown.


O...
Extinct as a relatively homogenous group, but this doesn't tell us they didn't pass some external and internal genetic traits, the first ones incorporated into the phenotype!
All the way my opinion is that they already grouped two principal sets of bony features very distinct one from another, inherited for the most from Paleolithic ; the bearers of more 'cromagnon' oriented could be arrived the first, from East and before surely from Near-East(as all our ancestors in Europe, or almost, except some SSA) - the 'brünnoid-capelloids' ancestors for I believe arrived later, from elswhere, but maybe through a more northern route (not directly from Near-East but after a stage in East Eurasia), only guess here; I see them arriving with Gravettian culture. It seems the place where the meeting between both was the more evident based on bones aspects (on what was known sometime ago) would be Czechoslovakia (Brno) and generally Central Europe; the resulting Mesolithic pop, with its unequally admixed pops, and maybe with more recent recent arrivals of Hgs of roughly same remote originS, shew diverse metric means, with some trends concerning stature but not too clear geographic cranial repartitions, only perhaps more weight to 'brünnoid' in East and Northeast, and more weight to 'cromagnoid' in West and Southwest; at the Mesolithic period of Balkans it seems the remote descendants of these two big floods still shew some clear enough divisions (tendancy towards one side or the other; the trend towards gracilisation, which is not by force a rupture in descent and the proof of demic foreign input, did not erase the two phyla shapes in a lot of individuals, and are still visible today, but NEVER AS A MAJORITY OR AS A GROUP. 
"outside the range of ...": to be proved! their means are outside the range of our means; but absolute sizes are not the lone criteria to take in account concerning heredity. I add some regions of Europe, yes, show today more often "rescaped" features of the WHG; I add too that the 'cromagnoid' trend has left very undiscernable traces concerning craniology/heads (frontal: smoothly receding, a bit curved, nothing "brutal"), only it gave square short broad faces and low eyesockets, rather small. 
the more common inheritage from 'brünnoid' is a very receding frontal, strong browridge, great orbits, and excess of bizygomatic breadth
compared to jaw breadth and frontal breadth; 
the people which say WHG traits are not visible today (under its 2 opposed forms) have not looked often and deeply enough to their European brethren (I think in places in Wales, Sardigna, Portugal, Flanders, Norway, even Grrec or Ukraina and so on... but I could say everywhere a the individual level).
evidently the typical features I evocated here doesn't resume the variability of WHGs descendants because in some places some new traits appeared (as the not satisfyingly explained brachycephaly); and I don't speak of fleshy parts of body, which are less traceable to ancient times by evidence.
No offense Angela, I'm sure you'll understand what I mean; we are no more WHG as we are no more EEF/Anatolians or any ancient component, sure; but the global mixture doesn't prevent the conservation of precise features here and there in the body, in the region too. All genes don't disappear quickly, if their combinations change at avery generation.

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## MOESAN

You are not too marked as "WHG" I would say; 
you show a clear 'cromagnoid' component (by instance I think I devine a high placed occiput if I cannot see your crania basis), for me associated with a more gracile types ('nordic' or kind of 'mediterranean' (slight influence on the fleshy part of the nose?)? 'nordic' itself could an ancient 'mediterranean' form adapted to more northern climate; when? where? only bets; as a whole, the combination of your 'cromagnoid' traits (at least what i believe I see) put you even farther from 'brünnoid' types and from your "model" Loschbour, itself very more on the 'brünnoid' type, even exagerated: perhaps crossing with dominant traits inherited from "antagonist" parents? you are closer to Oberkassel type spite far to be the same, Oberkassel which seems to me the same crossing as Loschbour, but with the opposite inherited traits; their bony extravagance could be the result of recent enough crossings, uneasy to prove, we were not living at their times to know their genealogy, or we were very young.
That said, I wonder if the basis of the two opposite types of bony structure was not present since a very long time, because i believe we can discerne same opposition in pops very far from Europe. So WHG if we want when speaking of Europeans, but elsewhere? Only speculations here but?

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## Fire Haired14

> I see it changes with time. But what is the most informative or correct one? I gather that EEF/WGH/ANE was the most common one a while ago?


The most informative one is EEF+WHG+CHG+EHG. Europeans are mixture of four differnt races who lived in Europe and the Middle East 10,000 years ago. Different is a relative word. It has differnt definitions for differnt measurements. By some measurements European's four ancestors were closely related and by other measurements they were very unrelated. 

EEF: Lived in Turkey and surrounding regions. Their territory 10,000 years ago may have stretched from Greece to Syria. 
WHG: Lived in all of Europe except Russia and maybe Greece. 
EHG: Lived in Russia. Was a mixture of WHG and ANE(The Paleolithic Siberians who contributed ancestry to Native Americans). 
CHG: Lived in the Caucasus mountains. Also had close relatives who lived in Iran. Had a lot of ANE ancestry like EHG. They also shared an ancient Middle Eastern ancestor with EEF which is called "Basal Eurasian."

A current theory is that all those ancestors were a mixture of WHG and other stuff. They might have all been to a large extent WHG. We know EHG and EEF had at least some WHG in them.

CHG migrated to Russia and mixed with EHG 6,000 years ago. The end result was Yamnaya(aka "Steppe"). EEF migrated into Europe and mixed with WHG 7,000 years ago. The end result was Neolithic Europeans(aka "MN"). Then Steppe migrated into Northern Europe and mixed with MN 4,500 years ago. The end result was modern Northern Europeans. Southern Europeans are mostly the same mixture plus extra EEF and CHG from the Middle East which migrated into Europe sometime after 5,000 years ago. Also people at the Eastern coast of the Baltic sea; Finns, Lithuanians, etc. have extra WHG.

If you're Scandinavian this roughly how much ancestry you get from each ancestor...
EEF: 40
WHG: 15
EHG: 30
CHG: 15
Percentages vary in each test, but they usually get roughly the same results. Your "Steppe" and "MN" ancestry would be almost exactly 50/50 if you're Scandinavian.

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## Fire Haired14

> Thank you! That was super informative!
> Are there maps or graphs of distribution of WHG/EHG/CHG/EEF? I have seen plenty on WHG/EEF/ANE, but haven't seen one on EHG and CHG, for example. Also it would have been interesting to know what were their major phenotypical differences back in the Paleolithic/Mesolithic. 
> 
> Although I recollect one they did not include ANE, but instead contained Yamna, which is of course much more informative.


I don't know of any good maps for those types of ancestry. I don't know about traits from those ancestors either. I do know they have all been classified as having Caucasin, European-like, skulls by researchers. Modern Sardinians are the best representative for EEF look because they're about 90% EEF. Udmurts are the best representative for Steppe because they're about 60%.

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## Angela

In my opinion, if anyone looks WHG, it's Mait Metspalu of the Estonian Biocenter. It makes sense, too, as the northeast Baltic populations have the most of that ancestry.





The original poster's face is too long and too narrow to be in the running. His nose is also long and the shape quite different from this.

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## Aha

> In my opinion, if anyone looks WHG, it's Mait Metspalu of the Estonian Biocenter. It makes sense, too, as the northeast Baltic populations have the most of that ancestry.
> 
> The original poster's face is too long and too narrow to be in the running. His nose is also long and the shape quite different from this.


No doubt any baltid phenotype face is broad and WHG-influenced. But this guy in the photos is not a good model. Why? Because he is fat. You can't really tell if his face is really broad behind all that fat. You can't even tell the shape of his skull. There are many better examples out there of people with really wide skull. 
And so far, I thought the known and analyzed WHG were blue-eyed? The nose shape is a mere speculation. Nobody knows how WHG noses were shaped. Baltic states evolved their nose shapes in their own isolation. It might be (and most probably is) a regional feature.

Btw, the reason I posted mine photos side by side with the Loshbour is that the reconstruction artist drew his fleshy features very close to mine (including nose). Look closer. And yet, it doesn't mean the original Loshbour had those features. It is a mere speculation.

2Btw, I have been to Estonia, nobody looks like this guy.

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## Angela

Goodness, poor Mr. Metspalu. I didn't mean to subject this eminent scientist to this kind of scrutiny. I will say he looks like a teddy bear to me in that picture. :) 

Even thinner, the features are basically the same.



I'm afraid we're going to have to agree to disagree here. 

Mait:



In terms of the above reconstruction, the nose is the most obviously incorrect. There's no way you can tell from the skull that this would be the nose. From comparisons of northern Europeans to southern Europeans, I think that the "original" WHG nose was probably short, sometimes upturned perhaps, not very bony, and broad at the tip. The "aquiline" bony nose is from the Near East, either with Neolithic or CHG people.

One of the only contemporaneous representations of aboriginal Europeans in existence would support that contention, I think.
 

As to whether or not he looks "normal" for his area, a Finnish poster here didn't seem to find him at all unusual for the Baltic area, and in fact concurred that he looked very WHG. It seems to me he fits in quite seamlessly, but as I said, these judgments are subjective.

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## Aha

> Absolutely disagree. As to whether or not he looks "normal" for his area, a Finnish poster here didn't seem to find him at all unusual for the Baltic area, and in fact concurred that he looked very WHG. It seems to me he fits in quite seamlessly, but as I said, these judgments are subjective.



My future wife is Estonian. I have already seen around half the population. I know very well the range of looks in that country. First hand experience. "Someone said" doesn't work as an argument. 





> Goodness, poor Mr. Metspalu. I didn't mean to subject this eminent scientist to this kind of scrutiny. I will say he looks like a teddy bear to me in that picture. :) 
> 
> 
> Even thinner, the features are basically the same.
> 
> 
> I'm afraid we're going to have to agree to disagree here.



Let's gently analyse your arguments:


You claim this guy looks like Loshbour. 
He doesn't. His skull is shaped differently. Different phenotype. While facial features of the Loshbour is a mere speculation, your argument for their look-alikiness is similar breadth of the face. Invalid. His face is both broad and long. Look more carefully at the pictures you yourself provide. 


You claim he does look like other people in Estonia and then you post pictures of the Estonian cyclists whose only shared features with the guy is their beards. If anything, most of them look Yamna-ish, very mixed (and pretty long faced), nothing very WHG, as you claim for Metspalu (and which is to some extend true, although gracilized and mixed)
Yet, they aren't uncommon for area. Although they all seem dark haired, which isn't that common there.
The girls look average Estonian. But yet their phenotype is also a mix of (east)baltid (your gracilized WHG) and nordid (yamna/eef/whg/etc)







> In terms of the above reconstruction, the nose is the most obviously incorrect. There's no way you can tell from the skull that this would be the nose. From comparisons of northern Europeans to southern Europeans, *I think* that the "original" WHG nose was probably short, sometimes upturned perhaps, not very bony, and broad at the tip. The "aquiline" bony nose is from the Near East, either with Neolithic or CHG people.



There is no way to confirm your assumptions. The only thing we can know about the WHG nose shapes comes from the skulls available. 

So let's leave assumptions to rest and be objective.


Those reconstruction artists weren't complete idiots. One needs to know human anatomy to be competent enough for such a job. There are two bones that could help identifying the nose position, aprox. shape, width and length - those are Nasal Bridge bone, Anterior Nasal Spine and the position and width/length of the hole in Maxilla 

The anatomy. You can identify where the nose ends by the Anterior Nasal Spine. 


An x-ray of a modern human with the relevant bones and seen flashy part


Loschbour WHG (6k BC)


La Brana (5k BC)


Oberkassel Cro-Magnon (12k BC)


3d skull from Rhine
http://www.dlt.ncssm.edu/tiger/360vi...900/index.html

It is as much as we can surmise - where it starts, where it ends and aprox. width (look up the frontals).
Paleolithic and Mesolithic European hunters seem to have nose bridges lower relative to the brow ridge and less projecting than their neolithic/chg counterparts had. 
On average. There is always a variation. There were more than one phenotype even among WHG







> One of the only contemporaneous representations of aboriginal Europeans in existence would support that contention, *I think*.


No anthropologist or archaeologist can take the carving seriously because no one can prove it's authenticity 

But for the fun's sake, let's assume that it is a real thing. 

I liked the comments about it:



> - medically it represents the head of a microcephalic individual who even with today's medical and social care would not survive puberty.
> - neither today nor then would any artist produce a labor intensive sculpture of a village idiot with microcephaly.
> - the nose of the ivory figure is so exaggerated that is better interpreted as that of a tertiary syphilitic which was then common in the pre-penicillin era and pre sulfonamides era.


Another fun thing. This carving was found in the same place from the same era:


What does it tell us about their anthropology? ; )

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