Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Sun 11 Oct 2009 02:25 Post subject: Various Ethnic Facial Composites
I thought some on the site might find this interesting. For the past few months I've been playing around with software that allows me to average the faces of people. I've tried to find the average face of various ethnic groups. I try very hard to base it on what is known of actual demographics of a country or people. I do not use actors or actresses in the composites, once in awhile I will use athletes, but not too many, as they are usually more lean than normal and have more masculine features. I try not to use anyone under 16 or over 45. I use about 15-20 photos per composite. I've done a good bit of Europe, almost all of East and Southeast Asia, an Uzbeks, Mongolian, Saudi, Iraqi, Afghan, Iranian...I will put them up on my site later on. Some things I want to do I cannot. For example it is very hard to find pictures of Saudi females, for obvious religious reasons. Most nations in Africa have sparse pics on the internet, although I have South African blacks, and Ethiopians. I will do Nigerians eventually. If this post is allowed, I will edit this to add pictures of a Mexican Female and PR male in the next 24 hours.
Here are some examples:
Average Puerto Rican Male
Average Mexican Male
Average Spaniard
Average Spaniard Female
Average Englishman (I mean English, tried to avoid obvious Scot, Welsh, etc last names).
Average English Female
Average West African Male (from Senegal to Angola)
Average West African Female (same formulation as above)
Average African American Male (this one does contain some famous folks, but no models or anything, I need to redo it)
Average African American female
I broke my averages into groups and did subAverages of those: European, Central Asian + Middle East, Southeast And East Asia (without Chinese) + Sub-Sahara African, South Asian (Indian), and Chinese. That is a rough estimate of how the human population is divided...being their are 1 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians. So I'm basically mixing everyone else, Aborigines, South Pacific, Native Americans (North and South America)...but in reality if you add all those left out they are not even half a billion people, because most humans live in Eurasia and then second is Africa. I'm not counting North and South America nonNative populations because they are are represented in the old world populations, they are just some mixture of those. If I added in the extra folks I mentioned, then I expect the eyes to look more "East Asian" and the skin to be slightly lighter.
Average Human Male (Missing Pacific Islanders and New World Natives)
Average Human Female (Missing Pacific Islanders and New World Natives)
Were any fugly people used to come up with the averages?? Because the averages, in my opinion, are more attractive than they really should be.
There has been some study of this phenomenon. The current hypothesis is that what we subconsciously perceive as a beautiful face, is precisely the average of all the faces that we saw in early childhood. Consequently, any time that you average a large number of faces, you wind up with a beautiful face.
Were any fugly people used to come up with the averages?? Because the averages, in my opinion, are more attractive than they really should be.
There has been some study of this phenomenon. The current hypothesis is that what we subconsciously perceive as a beautiful face, is precisely the average of all the faces that we saw in early childhood.
So if what we determine now to be beautiful is based on the averages of all the faces we saw in early childhood, would that mean that we find beauty in the average of looks of our own family. I say this since most people's early childhood was overwhelmingly filled with relatives. And if this be the case then what we find beautiful could be some kind of subconsciously incestuous attraction that we are acting on??
So if what we determine now to be beautiful is based on the averages of all the faces we saw in early childhood, would that mean that we find beauty in the average of looks of our own family? I say this since most people's early childhood was overwhelmingly filled with relatives. And if this be the case then what we find beautiful could be some kind of subconsciously incestuous attraction that we are acting on?
Well, this is far outside my area of expertise, so the short answer is "I do not know." But from what I have read, I would say "yes" and "yes." For details, see "The Instinctive Need to See “Otherness” in The Perception of “Racial” Traits, especially endnotes 13 through 16.
Being comfortable and perceiving beauty among those who look like your family is definitely a real phenomenon. I would not call it "incestuous" however. I think that our taxonomic family (Hominidae) is very much into faces and facial recognition, and it is for that very reason that we have such a strong revulsion to incest (which would propagate lethal recessive alleles).
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Thu 15 Oct 2009 19:28 Post subject:
fwsweet wrote:
onlyhuman77 wrote:
Were any fugly people used to come up with the averages?? Because the averages, in my opinion, are more attractive than they really should be.
There has been some study of this phenomenon. The current hypothesis is that what we subconsciously perceive as a beautiful face, is precisely the average of all the faces that we saw in early childhood. Consequently, any time that you average a large number of faces, you wind up with a beautiful face.
Yes this is what I found, beauty may be a cultural designation, but I would say attractive, the reason is the average face tends to be symmetric.
To answer Only's question, yes, I used people who would be considered unattractive, believe it or not 3 or 4 or more of those people out of 15 or so pictures does not drastically affect the average. What we consider ugly is usually asymmetrical and extreme features (like a nose that is too long, lips way too big for the face) when you average the photos it gets rid of the extremes.
How did you get the faces for African Americans? Those don't look correct at all, they are way too light. The average European genomic input in African Americans is 17%, and the correlation between craniomorphology and ancestry is nearly 1. Your faces show obvious craniomorphological characteristics of substantialy mixed-race persons, and appear to be around 25-30% Caucasoid. Your african sample is also far too light. What countries did you get the faces from? I have met very few west africans that looked as light as those faces. They appear to be around 10% caucasoid. In other words, your "African Americans" look like dark Mulattos, and your Africans look like Black Americans. How did you get arrive at these averages?
As for the other populations, they look reasonably correct. Good research.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Mon 11 Jan 2010 11:50 Post subject:
ImBack wrote:
DH,
How did you get the faces for African Americans? Those don't look correct at all, they are way too light. The average European genomic input in African Americans is 17%, and the correlation between craniomorphology and ancestry is nearly 1. Your faces show obvious craniomorphological characteristics of substantialy mixed-race persons, and appear to be around 25-30% Caucasoid. Your African sample is also far too light. What countries did you get the faces from? I have met very few West Africans that looked as light as those faces. They appear to be around 10% Caucasoid. In other words, your "African Americans" look like dark Mulattos, and your Africans look like Black Americans. How did you get arrive at these averages?
As for the other populations, they look reasonably correct. Good research.
Actually I redid the African American male and female samples.
You are correct the African American male was too light and Caucasoid looking. That was corrected. The female one looked almost identical, I chalk that up to make up. Also, in almost every population, women tend to be slightly lighter than men for various reasons.
As far as the African features. It depends on "what African"
My sample is only West Africans that live along the coast from Senegal to Angola. SOme of the darkest people in Africa I have met are from the Sahel or live close to it or have ancestors who lived there (Like Barack Obama's father's tribe the Luo, like many folks in Uganda)...then you have Central Africans who look significantly different. On my site I have a "Central African" (well only from two nations, which was done by request) and a South African black, which look significantly different from the West African composite.
None of them were mixed race to my knowledge, all had African names and the pictures, to my knowledge were in Africa. Maybe you should adjust your idea of what "Africans" look like, African has significant prototypical variation, on a craniological level, far more than any other region I have sampled.
This is based on what I sampled, it was random, based on pictures on the internet, i did not pick and choose other than for pictures with frontal profiles that I could use, I did not select based on what "I thought an African looked like".
Maybe you should be more open to what you think people from Senegal to Angola look like. I also tried to base my samples on % of the population, about 1/4 of Africans live in Nigeria and not all Nigerians are "dark" even by American standards.
The famous French Muslim politician Rama Yade, is of pure Senegalese descent.
Ghanese:
Igbo Women in Nigeria:
Ghanian School Kids
I show these pictures to show the diversity of Africa, in Ghana, Senegal, and some areas of Angola I have seen darker people or more "stereotypically" extremely negroid individuals, but they are not the only people around. Actually in Senegal, likely due to the fact it borders North Africa, many people are quite dark, but their facial features, to me, show some affinity to their berber and arab neighbors to the North, I'm sure gene flow was not uncommon in the past.
Finally, my aunt is married to a Yoruban man, I've met many of his close relatives. Only (in my opinion) half of them stand out to me as "odd looking", to be honest, as far as their facial features. They all kind of stand out due to their dress style though.
My Central African Female Composite
My South African Female Composite
My Ethiopian Female Composite
In any case, I don't want to have an argument over what nearly 1 billion people or in the case of West Africa, maybe 500 million or more Africans look like. That will devolve into stupidity. It would be worse than arguing who is "really European looking"...or who in Europe represents "true Europeans" and who is a result of Asian, black African, Gypsies, Arab, Berber, etc admixture to some degree...no thanks. Take it as you will, if you don't agree do your own.
Last edited by Dragon Horse on Mon 11 Jan 2010 17:25; edited 1 time in total
One reason why Americans often see Africans as not being "African-looking" is that the United States endogamous color line has long been enforced on the basis of appearance. For three centuries, if you "looked Black" then you were consigned to the Black side of the intermarriage barrier, no matter your actual ancestry proportions. And, except for the 50-year Jim Crow period, if you "looked White" then you were accepted into the White side of the intermarriage barrier, no matter your actual ancestry proportions. Consequently, there has been strong phenotype selection in the United States for traits that are considered to be stereotypically Black. Sort of a self-fulfilling idealogy. There has been no similar genetic selection in Africa, so its inhabitants exhibit a normal (much greater) phenotype range.
Speaking of West Africans, perhaps you might post some pictures of Fulani.
These are very interesting pictures DragonHorse. Thanks for posting. I can agree with OnlyHuman that every single one of the faces above is very pleasing to look at. None of them are ugly. They are all beautiful, which makes for nice viewing, IMO.
I would love to see a composite "white" American contrasted with various different European populations, and also to see a "black" American contrasted with both various European group averages.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Mon 11 Jan 2010 17:15 Post subject:
fwsweet wrote:
One reason why Americans often see Africans as not being "African-looking" is that the United States endogamous color line has long been enforced on the basis of appearance. For three centuries, if you "looked Black" then you were consigned to the Black side of the intermarriage barrier, no matter your actual ancestry proportions. And, except for the 50-year Jim Crow period, if you "looked White" then you were accepted into the White side of the intermarriage barrier, no matter your actual ancestry proportions. Consequently, there has been strong phenotype selection in the United States for traits that are considered to be stereotypically Black. Sort of a self-fulfilling idealogy. There has been no similar genetic selection in Africa, so its inhabitants exhibit a normal (much greater) phenotype range.
Speaking of West Africans, perhaps you might post some pictures of Fulani.
Frank, I am in agreement with you.
Here are some Fulani pictures I have come across, they are quite distinctive looking people, having migrated into West Africa from the Sahel region long ago (well many still live in the Sahel). The fact they are genetic outliers in the region they currently live says a lot about how much they have not mixed with locals and origins.
I'm glad you redid your facial averages, however you may have made several methodological mistakes. Contrary to what you might think, I have done fairly objective research involving phenotypes for several projects over the last 6 years. These included investigating Ashkenazi, Sub Saharan African, Mixed Race, and Indian craniomorphic characteristics. I will tell you right out, the following, and then I will leave the matter alone. You are right, it isn't worth a debate.
1. I don't find your assertions about African craniometric variety, convincing. It doesn't fit with the anthropological evidence, except your own.
2. I don't trust your methodology. It looks like you are not controling for lighting are selecting your faces from different sources which introduces confounding variables.
3. I've seen these kinds of assertions before - from ideologicaly motivated people. The very concept was based on Afrocentric pretentions to European physiognomy, not anthropological study. The assertion has NEVER (to my knowledge) been substantiated by objective research. The idea is about as absurd, as claiming that Southern Europeans are "Mulatto" looking (which is also an ideological farce, by the way). Yes a few populations might have 10% of their features in common with Sub Saharan Africans in a few localities, but that is not the case on the average, ANYWHERE in Europe. At least, as far as I know. I continue to be highly suspicious of dubious claims with known ideological underpinnings.
I don't expect you to debate me, I merely wish to express my conclusion. Let's leave it at this, whatever the case may be.
Joined: 07 Feb 2007 {Posts: 1829 } Location: Lookin DC Metro, Feelin Geneva
Posted: Tue 12 Jan 2010 11:44 Post subject:
ImBack wrote:
DH,
I'm glad you redid your facial averages, however you may have made several methodological mistakes. Contrary to what you might think, I have done fairly objective research involving phenotypes for several projects over the last 6 years. These included investigating Ashkenazi, Sub Saharan African, Mixed Race, and Indian craniomorphic characteristics. I will tell you right out, the following, and then I will leave the matter alone. You are right, it isn't worth a debate.
1. I don't find your assertions about African craniometric variety, convincing. It doesn't fit with the anthropological evidence, except your own.
2. I don't trust your methodology. It looks like you are not controling for lighting are selecting your faces from different sources which introduces confounding variables.
3. I've seen these kinds of assertions before - from ideologicaly motivated people. The very concept was based on Afrocentric pretentions to European physiognomy, not anthropological study. The assertion has NEVER (to my knowledge) been substantiated by objective research. The idea is about as absurd, as claiming that Southern Europeans are "Mulatto" looking (which is also an ideological farce, by the way). Yes a few populations might have 10% of their features in common with Sub Saharan Africans in a few localities, but that is not the case on the average, ANYWHERE in Europe. At least, as far as I know. I continue to be highly suspicious of dubious claims with known ideological underpinnings.
I don't expect you to debate me, I merely wish to express my conclusion. Let's leave it at this, whatever the case may be.
1) That's fine, you are free to believe what you wish.
2)I did not try to control for lightening, I was more concerned with facial features, not skin reflectiveness, that is your issue. Since all the pictures I used were taken from the internet there could also be selection bias, as in "who has technology in certain nations to take pictures and post them on the net, who they would take pictures of, etc. Lightening in pictures is obviously. I have a friend who has blue-green eyes but in almost every picture I have of them they look like they have dark brown eyes, due to lightening (or red eyes haha). The purpose was not to be uber scientific, it was to get a general understanding. Sub-Saharan Africans do very significantly in crainology though by region, the variation in head shape of Africans reflects the genetic variation in that it is greater than Europe, for example. I also no that shading can influence how features look on film, but once again, this is not meant to be a scientific study...and on average, I think some of that noise is filtered out by the averaging process anyway.
3) I was not making those assertions, you seem intent on looking for an argument. My point was, it would be as pointless as arguing along those lines, it will go nowhere on a message board. It is also not just "Afrocentrics" who hold those views, but more than a few Nordic White Supremacist, but that is another issue.
It's funny that you said the other composites were alright, but for the African ones, and African American ones, which is interesting as I used the exact same methodology for ALL OF THEM. Which would lead me to believe, either you have specific "attitudes" about what "blacks" must look like or something is biologically unique about blacks as compared to Eurasians that makes this technique problematic with them.
I know "it is all about the science", I've heard this before on another site...wasn't interested much in that either.
Joined: 07 Oct 2007 {Posts: 248 } Location: United States
Posted: Wed 13 Jan 2010 09:33 Post subject:
I was just about to suggest another source for African faces. In google, search: "hi-5 groups *insert country here*". For example, hi-5 groups Nigeria. It would bring you to myspace like pages of folks from said country. The only problem I suppose would be privacy, or rather I'd feel morally wrong about using a myspace like pic without the person knowing.
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