I’ve never been to England, but I’ve seen one in the movies. So I’m basing my generalizations on that. I was watching the US Open this morning and saw Tim Henman soundly whup that german guy, who’s name escapes me. Sorry, german guy.
Anyway, Henman looks like one of the taller, more head hair, slender types like Prince Charles, etc.
Then there’s the huskier, shorter, more prone to baldness types like maybe Phil Collins or some of those hooligans of football fame.
Windsor Castle vs Liverpool, if you will.
I know there’s a lot of variance, and mixing, but are there basically two major gene pools in Jolly Old England? phil
Being English I’ve never managed to notice two different types of Caucasian Englishman. Sure there’s healthy ones and unhealthy ones. And more irish blood in the North West Brits than elsewhere. But people just range a lot in looks anyway don’t they. Isn’t there similar range amongst Caucasian Americans?
Then there’s the huskier, taller, more prone to baldness types - though you are more likely to find them as forwards on a rugby field than a tennis court.
Well, according to old school Physical Anthropologists, most British people (aside from ethnic minorities of recent immigrant origin) are either some variety of “Nordic” (tall, generally blondish with light eyes) or “Atlanto-Mediterranean” (shorter, with dark hair and any color of eyes). Then there are the redheads, who are freaks of nature. Of course that doesn’t explain short blond people or tall black haired people.
The presumption that this is based on is that the taller Nordic types represent the Teutonic invaders, while the darker types represent Romano-Celtic populations, and the redheads are from a very early population. The problem with that is that recent genetic studies indicate that most modern Britons - even the “Anglo-Saxon” ENglish, are primarily descended from pre-Celtic settlers, and that subsequent Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norman invasions mostly brought in a new cultural elite into the basic British population.
The bottom line is that comparisons physical type is not as reliable an indicator of “genes” as a DNA test.
For what its worth, Cavalli Sforza’s “gene map” of the world, shows the “English” to be in a rather tight cluster with most other Caucasians, including Iranians.
Furthermore, were all so closely related that it is impossible to claim two different ‘gene pools’ exist in a rather small territory such as the British Isles. 98-99% of all modern English people (even many who are “non-white”) probably share a common ancestor from less than a thousand years ago.
Maybe you’re trying to tell me that if I watched more (English) tv I wouldn’t have to ask this question.
I do know from history that there wasn’t, in the olden days, much mixing between the upper and lower classes. Is that wrong too?
That maybe true. I also know from American movies that blacks and whites never get it on. You need to mate from within your own race, right? Or is stereotyping not very helpful?
I think we can safely say that your question rests on a false premise for ANY nationality-- that there are pure “types” of people anywhere that don’t overlap withth other groups. You don’t need to go to Enlgand to expect there to be a normal (gaussian) distribution of most physical characteristics, and not some bimodal distribution.
Except for the fact that probably everybody is part everything if you go back far enough, Charles is by no means “part Greek” – his paternal ancestry is from the former Greek royal house, which, like quite a bit of the rest of European royalty, is largely Danish. (In the 19th century, France exported wine, Norway fish, and Denmark royalty! ;)) His paternal grandfather was a Windsor (changed from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1917), his paternal grandmother was a Bowes-Lyon (Scottish aristocracy), his maternal grandfather was Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg (Umlauts and Danish alternate spellings omitted), and his maternal grandmother was a Battenberg. That works out to 50% Anglo-German, 25% Scottish, and 25% Danish.
Nope, I’m telling you that your question was very, very silly. And not worth gracing with a serious answer.
If you had a more serious question in mind you’d have been better not hiding it behind nonsense about extrapolating two men into a generalisation about an entire country. And even then, it would still have been ridiculous. Not offensive, just ridiculous.
