Could have both Phillip II and Alexander looked like in the film "Alexander ( 2004 )"?

[enoch]

@cookie

We are all trolling cookie, self awareness is the only variable differentiating us. Would you address my arguments more directly? A study that sees orientation or attraction as being black or white, existing in a duality of two absolutes tells us some people do not understand sexuality, not that machines do.

Cultural differences are easier to spot from your story. Hetero and Homo are not because everyone is almost certainly bisexual. The strength of genetic preference and lived experience and the greater forces of culture, gender construction so forth might fool most of us into thinking we are one or the other. And certainly there are likely large populations whose genetic preference is so strong to be near absolute.

Find me a machine that can tell everyone is a bi and I would be wildly impressed. Ancient Greeks diddled boys. Young Spartan girls are thought to rarely have not been sodomized by the end of adolescence. Were the Greeks mostly homosexuals and if they were genetically it stands to reason a population that was mostly homosexuals and pedophiles after the Bronze Age and hasn’t changed much still is what they were.

I'm well aware that the majority of the Greeks have had their genome change very little since the Bronze Age

I answer like with like. Always been my way. Newer people like you sometimes don’t know that so consider yourself illuminated.

I see you too

[Roma_Victrix]

Find me a machine that can tell everyone is a bi and I would be wildly impressed. Ancient Greeks diddled boys. Young Spartan girls are thought to rarely have not been sodomized by the end of adolescence. Were the Greeks mostly homosexuals and if they were genetically it stands to reason a population that was mostly homosexuals and pedophiles after the Bronze Age and hasn’t changed much still is what they were.

The science of it is still rather inexact, but from what I gather there is no population group that contains a significantly higher percentage of homosexuals or bisexuals than another when the data is collected in earnest. The vast majority of people in any given country are heterosexual, at least according to statistics and perhaps common sense given how birthrates aren't exactly declining everywhere (and in countries where that is the case, it's due to economic reasons involving recession and decline, not sexual orientation ones). For instance, in the USA, only 5.6% of the entire population identifies as LGBTQ, up from 4.5% in 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/u...ation-usa.html

[Cookiegod]

Why make that assumption at all when the ancient Greeks under Macedonian rulers from Philip II onwards repeatedly conquered Thrace and intermarried with Thracians who populated ancient Bulgaria, as well as Illyrians who inhabited what is now FYROM and Albania? For that matter thousands of Thracians even lived in the city of Classical Athens, their presence littering the plays, poems and histories composed by Greek authors. Those same Greek authors frequently mentioned how the Thracians were a bunch of blonds and redheads for that matter.

For instance, Xenophon who stated that the Thracians viewed all their gods the same way they viewed themselves, with red hair, while Kushites of Nubia (Sudan, or Ethiopians, the Aethiopioi) viewed their gods as black skinned with broad, flat noses. This wasn't applied exclusively to Thracians, though, but also generically to northern Greeks. For instance, the poet Bacchylides described Theseus as being a redhead to distinguish him as a northerner.

Let's take a few steps back here:

1. As I said I don't disagree generally with your maxim, but all rules have exceptions, and I believe this area to be one of those. We'll get later back to why.
2. I'm well aware of the Greek stereotype (and fetish) with red hair regarding Thracians. I'm not arguing against that either. I know that Xenophanes quote quite well, I reference it very frequently when it comes to religion. I like that poem very much.
3. Our first disagreement comes in the fact that I think you highly overestimate the immigration of Thracians into Greece. Obviously we can't know for sure. Here are my arguments as to why I think you overexaggerate it quite a bit:
   
   1. We know from the records that most cities were at least initially very homogeneous ethnically. The home cities made a concerted expedition, and the natives were for the most part expelled rather than absorbed. The Greeks introduced the same tribal systems (as in: Phylai) as they had from home. Later obviously you can expect natives from surrounding lands moving in, but they would be heavily discriminated against.
   2. From the above two points you can easily infer that the Greek native population vastly outnumbered the Thracians, through higher population density, etc.
   3. You presented Athens as an example of a city that's far away and yet hat lots of Thracians. But firstly, Athens was a far more profitable goal for Thracian mercenaries than most other Greek cities, and it had indeed a close relationship to the Thracians for that reason. Athens also had vast numbers of other possibly lighthaired (no idea on those to be honest) barbarians, like Skythians.
      Even so, barbarians for the most part faced significant discrimination by the Athenians, would often move back home after earning money, or, if they stayed, because for example they were slaves, wouldn't necessarily procreate at the same rate as the Greeks.
      But even if we ignore the above, the Thracians in Athens were a very small drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of thousands of Athenians, other Greeks, and other barbarians.
   4. Even though northern Greece is closer, the cities were in the classical era likely not an as attractive destination as Athens. Obviously we don't know what the exact numbers were, but I would not expect them to be higher.
   
   Obviously all the above are pure speculation. But what I'm getting at is this: You can't expect the percentage of light skinned people in premigration Greece to have been that high. You can take any percentage you like. Nota bene I'm combining redheads and blondes here because for redheads alone the numbers would be incredibly small.
   My expectation is exactly the same as outlined in the article quoted by sumskilz: Redheads would have been numerous enough to be heard of but not that numerous to be all that common.
4. Just because Greeks obviously emphasised the light perplexions (partly due to observation bias), this does not mean that all Northern Greeks or even a majority would need to be light skinned for this. It's enough for that proportion to simply have been a bit higher.
5. We will now simplify the problem a lot. We will, for example, simply assume each person in that equation has equal weight when it comes to descendance. This is not true for obvious reasons. We will also assume that the genes are carried over equally, which is also not true. Our assumption consists of two types of variables: The numbers of "natives" at each stage x, and the share of lighthaired people for each demographic.

Before I show you my calculations, I want to reiterate that the numbers are pure speculation. You can choose any numbers you like. As long as you agree with my tenants outlined earlier, you'd get similar results to me.
You should also keep in mind that I was absolutely lowballing this. I assume only 1/4th of the new population in northern Greece would have been made up of the new peoples from the migration period. Which quite frankly is at an extremely low end imho. This area is likely one of the most affected areas in the Balcans. Greece proper further south and Epirus/Albania were probably not affected much in turn. Tribalism was very significant outside of the cities. The immigrating Germanic and Slavic tribes did usually not intermingle much with the natives, except in the cities. Each demographic lived in their own villages, and this continued throughout the Ottoman period, which we btw. completely ignore here.
Language also gives you a good clue as to what happened. Where the immigrating tribes were significantly outnumbered by the natives, they usually adopted the native languages. The Langobard influence on the Lombard language for example is quite limited, but clearly present.

Anyway, onwards to the calculations, which you should simply take as an example, feel free to do your own numbers:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Ignore the red. My laptop assumes all English words to be wrong. Which I fully agree with. >:]

The example calculations in the spoiler above don't even matter much, except to highlight that you made a very significant (and common) statistical error in that you failed to account for the fact that you had limited the demographic you were talking about. You actually subconsciously noticed it when you assumed the redheads to be mostly Thracian. Let's say you have 100 Barbarians living amongst 900 Greeks. Let's give the native Greek a 1% likelyhood of being lightskinned, and let's give the Barbarian a 75% likelihood of being lightskinned.
Of the 100 Barbarians, 75 would be lightskinned. Of the 900 Greeks 9 would be lightskinned. If you take one random person out of the total population, he'd with a 90% likelihood be a native Greek. But if you take a random lightskinned person, he'd be ~90% likely to be a Barbarian.
You very much forget that when you then take the population of all of Greece. You could by the same reasoning take the whole world and surmise that the ancient Greeks had to be predominantly Asian.

If you take all the genes of all the "lightskinned" people of the modern Greek population, you'd have to assume, as long as you agree to my tenants that Greeks are likely by far the most Mediterranean of the discussed demographics, and as long as you agree that the migration period was a far more significant event than some Thracians moving to settle amongst the Greeks, that the postmigration element would by far outweigh the premigration element when it comes to the specific genes responsible for these traits.
This claim of mine I believe to be supported by the circumstance that, to my knowledge, little to no Thracian linguistic traces have survived in the region.

TL;DR: Statistics!

[enoch]

The science of it is still rather inexact, but from what I gather there is no population group that contains a significantly higher percentage of homosexuals or bisexuals than another when the data is collected in earnest. The vast majority of people in any given country are heterosexual, at least according to statistics and perhaps common sense given how birthrates aren't exactly declining everywhere (and in countries where that is the case, it's due to economic reasons involving recession and decline, not sexual orientation ones). For instance, in the USA, only 5.6% of the entire population identifies as LGBTQ, up from 4.5% in 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/u...ation-usa.html

My common sense tells me humans are all bisexual in a near infinite spectrum of what bisexual encompasses.

Agreed though, looking at people’s faces and determining their sexual preferences from it is not an exact science.

Cookie’s statistics show Greeks haven’t changed genetically much since the Bronze Age and we know from the ancient sources that male relationships were common and systemic throughout the Greek city states. Yet they still had children.

So if they haven’t changed, and we know they were bisexual (at least men) all the facts are pointing towards the majority of modern southern Greek males being bisexual.

[Cookiegod]

Various source materials actually indicate that most Greek men were only reluctantly hetero when homely duties demanded.

[enoch]

Your statement is true Cookiegod. Source material is seriously lacking but if someone said to me did the ancient Greeks prefer sex with boys or sex with women it’s impossible to argue the latter from the sources.

So most modern southern Greeks are statistically likely to be either homosexual or bisexual trending more towards homo.

[Roma_Victrix]

So if they haven’t changed, and we know they were bisexual (at least men) all the facts are pointing towards the majority of modern southern Greek males being bisexual.

LOL. What? There's no link between inherited genetics and homosexuality. It's simply random chance as far as we know, whether determined by the wiring of the brain at birth or during early development. Gay, lesbian or bisexual individuals manifest themselves even in families that have entire extended bloodlines of nothing but heterosexual people.

If you take all the genes of all the "lightskinned" people of the modern Greek population, you'd have to assume, as long as you agree to my tenants that Greeks are likely by far the most Mediterranean of the discussed demographics, and as long as you agree that the migration period was a far more significant event than some Thracians moving to settle amongst the Greeks, that the postmigration element would by far outweigh the premigration element when it comes to the specific genes responsible for these traits.
This claim of mine I believe to be supported by the circumstance that, to my knowledge, little to no Thracian linguistic traces have survived in the region.

You're fixated on the Thracians, and while your math seems fine, it's not just about them, it's about northern Greeks more generally and even all mainland Greeks on average since the Mycenaean Bronze Age, excluding the inhabitants of Crete and Cyprus who were far less impacted by the initial wave of Bronze Age Indo-European invaders.

You're talking about the Migration Period of Late Antiquity, which as Sumskillz has demonstrated with Hellenthal et al 2014 contributed maybe roughly 1/3 of the Greek genome but varies according to region. However, you're ignoring or forgetting the Indo-European proto-Greeks (and others like Phrygians) who settled the southern Balkans millennia before the first Slavs even stepped foot there. While the original Neolithic farmer population of early Helladic period Greece were West Asiatic in origin and perhaps more Middle Eastern looking, these original inhabitants were assimilated and/or conquered by these Bronze Age Indo-European newcomers from the Pontic Steppe who seem to have been lighter skinned on average, or at least became so after centuries of cereal grain diets. Per the article I cited on the previous page (Laziridis et al 2017 via ScienceMag.org), mainland Greeks, unlike the Cretans, have retained a significant proportion of this early Indo-European steppe ancestry versus the Anatolian Bronze Age component, upwards of ~20% (a similar situation to northern Italy versus southern Italy).

Aside from archaeogenetic findings and statistics of ~20-25% of all modern Greeks with lighter features (both eye and hair color) per Lazaridis et al 2017, simple anecdotal observation of Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic art and literature demonstrates that at least some sizable minority of ancient Greeks had these features as well, with outside observers like the 4th century AD Jew Adamantios even exaggerating this claim. I'm not talking about mixed Greco-Thracians either (although they undoubtedly played a part), or Celtic Galatian invaders, I'm talking about Greeks proper. From Cleopatra VII being depicted as a redhead in frescoes at Pompeii (see Joann Fletcher, 2008: 87, who also describes some Ptolemies as blonde) to Antinous the gay Greek lover of emperor Hadrian depicted as a blond in sculpture, these instances are not coincidental or even that rare.



They're especially prominent in artistic depictions of Greeks in Homeric mythology, whether Hellenistic mosaics from Anatolia or Roman era ones as far away as Spain:


It's not just royalty or mythology, though. You even see lighter features and varied hair colors among common people engaged in everyday activities featured in some of the most famous Roman mosaics outside Pompeii, the 4th century Villa Romana Del Casale in Sicily, an island populated largely by Greeks in the east and Carthaginians in the west before the Romans conquered it:



Aside from hair or eye color, if we're just talking about light skin tones, ancient Greek pottery paintings from Magna Graecia to Attica plus Macedonian mosaics and frescoes like those from Pella, Mieza and Thessaloniki display a generally light skinned people with varying hair colors, some lighter and some darker.




I'm not saying light hair or eye color were features of the majority population, though, just to be clear. Unsurprisingly, there are also plenty of stereotypical Mediterranean or even Asiatic looking Greeks like this 1st century BC Roman encaustic painted grave stele dedicated to Theodoros, located at Thebes (although he's the darkest guy I'm able to find):

[Abdülmecid I]

Please try to discuss the topic at hand and not your interlocutor. Next violation will not be treated with a simple edit.

[enoch]

There are no heterosexual or homosexual people. There is infinite variety. As is natural.

And even if I am wrong Alexander was bisexual. As was Philip. The sources are straightforward about it.

[PanDemon]

The notion of widespread homosexuality in ancient greece is a misunderstood one;
The sources are clystar clear : being a homosexual was a disgrace ,and in some cases had severe penalties.
The name of a homosexual in ancient athens was "cynaidos" a heavy derogatory term .

So how most people today think the opposite?
This happens cause most of phillelenes in 18th century were homosexuals. And living in societies that did not accepted homosexuality back then. in order to ease their thesis and the pressure that their sexual orientation , they "cultivated" the idea of widepsread homosexuality in ancient greece. The notion was " Ancient greece was the peak of civilization.And were accepting homosexuality. So now in england do not look down upon us."
Oscar Wylde is a prime example of the said thesis.

All these nice and all some SJW would ask. Any arguments mister?
Here take some :

http://local.droit.ulg.ac.be/sa/rida.../macdowell.pdf

Athenian laws about homosexuality:
"If any Athenian (he says) is a catamite („tair ̧së), let him not be allowed to become one of the nine arkhons (because, I suppose, that office involves wearing a crown), nor to hold a priesthood (because even his body is not pure), nor to be a syndikos for the public;16 and let him never hold any public office (he says), neither at home nor abroad, neither by lot nor by vote; and let him not be a herald or an ambassador (nor put on trial those who were ambassadors, nor bring malicious prosecutions for payment17); and let him never deliver an opinion either in the Boule or in the assembly (even if he is a very clever speaker). If anyone transgresses these rules, he18 has established graphai for being a catamite and has imposed the severest penalties." (Ais. 1.19–20)"

"Even an Athenian citizen was not liable to prosecution or punishment for merely being a catamite, but only if, being a catamite, he transgressed certain restrictions on his activities. Although he had not been accused or convicted, he was regarded as having disqualified himself from certain things by his way of life. He had made himself atimos. "

--------



"it was a prosecution for taking a public office, or for speaking in the Ekklesia, or whatever, despite being a catamite. But the prosecutor would be expected to prove that the defendant was (or had been) a catamite, besides proving that he had transgressed the restrictions of atimia."

"The following are activities which were forbidden to the man who suffered total atimia but are not included in the list given in Ais. 1.19–20 of activities forbidden to the catamite. (i) Attending and voting at meetings of the Ekklesia (without speaking). (ii) Being a member of a jury.20 (iii) Speaking in a court on behalf of himself or a friend, either in prosecution or in defence or as a witness. However, Andokides in his oration On the Mysteries complains that one of his accusers, Epikhares, is a catamite and "according to your laws he is not allowed even to speak in defence of himself" (And. 1.100). Whether or not Epikhares was really a catamite, this can be taken as proof that a catamite, like other atimoi, was not allowed to speak in a court.21 (iv) Entering public temples and the Agora. However, later in the same speech Aiskhines imagines the Athenians saying indignantly to Timarkhos, "Are you pushing into the Agora?" (Ais. 1.164); and Diodoros, when alleging that Androtion is a prostitute, asserts that he is not allowed to enter the Agora (Dem. 24.126) or the temples (Dem. 22.73, repeated in 24.181). These passages can be taken as proof that a catamite, like other atimoi, was excluded from temples and the Agora."

"The law about procurement (proagvgeºa) prescribed death as the penalty for anyone procuring a free boy. The procedure for prosecution was graphe. (Ais. 1.14, 1.184)"


To sum it up:
state of Athens had severe laws against homosexuals;
They were forbiden to be elected in public offices, to enter temples to pass laws. Penalties for crossing these were severe; some penalties included death.

About vases and depictions;
There is an extremely limited number of vases depicting erotic scenes. An even more small percentage depicts homoerotic scenes. An even less scenes between them.
Some of them portray homosexuality in a degrading manner. Such is the Eyrymedon vase where the defeated male symbolized the Persian Army and the dominant male the victorious athenian army. And so on.

In our days true to their herritage most SJW people try to find excuse and to burden their phychological weight the even today society burden s upon them. And they do what oscar wylde a long time ago. Distorting facts.

[conon394]

People can accurately identify the sexuality of 61% of men based on a single photo of their face. AI can accurately identify the sexuality of 81% of men with a single photo of their face, which increases to 91% of men and 84% of women with five photos (source). If only we had a photo of Alexander for this thread.

Not sure how accurate people are at recognizing ethnicity based on phenotype. I assume it depends on how genetically distinct the ethnicity is compared to other possible options and how familiar the person guessing is with the ethnicity. It seems like I can almost always recognize if someone is Ashkenazi if both their parents are. When I've been wrong, the person has usually turned out to be Italian, Sephardi, or Levantine Christian, which actually makes sense. But could I differentiate between a French person and a Belgian with odds better than guessing? Probably not, but maybe depends on which part of France the French person's ancestors came from. I have a Chinese friend who claims to be able to easily differentiate people from different parts of China based on their facial features, but told me she can't usually differentiate between MENA people and Europeans except that she assumes blonde people are European.

At the risk OT-ism. Funny story. So I'm last in family who is all Polish back to the boats that transported my ancestors to the US. My wife's parents were hosting a Russian exchange student and when he was looking at a photo of my wife and I they had in their library his comment was why did you let your daughter marry a Pole.

Edit its worth adding that anyone in my grandparents generation would have said the same if I married a Russian.

[Roma_Victrix]

The notion of widespread homosexuality in ancient greece is a misunderstood one;
The sources are clystar clear : being a homosexual was a disgrace ,and in some cases had severe penalties.
The name of a homosexual in ancient athens was "cynaidos" a heavy derogatory term .

You're partially correct, although it was the submissive partner in a gay relationship that was frowned upon much more than a dominant one, an attitude also shared by the Romans. You hint at this with the allegoric artworks of Athenians conquering the Persians. Also, not every city-state had the same laws or penalties, since Athenian law regulated their city and its citizens. This didn't even extend to the Delian League, whose member states had their own local laws, let alone states outside the Delian League stretching across the Classical colonial Greek world from Emporion in Spain to Pantikapaion in the Crimea (Russia/Ukraine).

Alexander the Great was also clearly bisexual given his appetite for marrying numerous women, a royal bigamist like his father. Aside from Alexander's apparent relationships with men, the tradition of pederasty was still common enough and did not carry much of a stigma or even legal penalties, especially for institutions like the Theban legion. Greek literature from Sappho to Plato makes it clear enough that homosexuality was a taboo but was also generally tolerated.

After the Hellenistic period and during Roman Greece, this situation seems even more lax and those who enjoyed political power were virtually immune from heavy criticism or laws targeting homosexuals. Emperor Hadrian and his gay Greek lover Antinous (mentioned briefly above in my previous post) are a prominent example of that. The Romans viewed the Greeks as being too effeminate, for that matter, with derogatory slang like "Graeculus" ("a little Greek"). The adoption of Christianity as the state religion in the 4th century AD made life harsher for homosexuals. Previous Roman law going back to the 2nd century BC made harsh penalties for homosexual rape of young men, but did not outlaw casual or consensual homosexual relations between two men or two women. This changed under Constantine II and Constans with new laws starting in 342 AD, preserved in both the Theodosian Code and Code of Justinian. The submissive male partner was frowned upon the most and received the harshest penalty in these new laws with burning at the stake. These laws largely remained in practice during the period of Byzantine Greece.

So how most people today think the opposite?
This happens cause most of phillelenes in 18th century were homosexuals.

LOL. Citation needed! How exactly did you gather that statistic? From thin air? The vast majority of people on Earth are heterosexual now and it stands to reason this was most likely the case in every period of human history. Seeing how virtually all notable scholars, statesmen and monarchs of Europe were lovers of ancient Greece, you're basically saying they were all gay. Ditto for early American statesmen like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson who were also Philhellenes and, you know, married to women while having kids. Also, Oscar Wilde was a figure of the 19th century, not the 18th century, and that's spelled "Wilde", not "Wylde". And that's "Philhellenes", not "phillelenes".

[Cyclops]

Back to OP, I think its possible but unlikely Alexander looked like Colin Farrell in a wig (however his anxious and indecisive demeanour struck me as a weird acting choice for a character with such near-suicidal self confidence, his nervous eyebrows screamed 'am I doing the right thing?" even in the Gaugamela scenes, wtf?), and Val Kilmer's putty altered visage is also plausible if not the most likely option.

I think Stone by choosing Irish/Scots looking and sounding actors was making the point that Makedonians were not quite the same as other Hellenes (mostly portrayed in the film with English accents) or Persians (who had Hollywood terrorist/sheikh accents). I think Farrell was meant to be short and handsome, I suppose he is? Not sure.

At the risk OT-ism. Funny story. So I'm last in family who is all Polish back to the boats that transported my ancestors to the US. My wife's parents were hosting a Russian exchange student and when he was looking at a photo of my wife and I they had in their library his comment was why did you let your daughter marry a Pole.

Edit its worth adding that anyone in my grandparents generation would have said the same if I married a Russian.

Can of worms mate. When I visited the Hagia Sophia the polyglot touts were brilliant at addressing each passing mark in the crowd in their own language. I was identified as English speaking (and sometimes even as Australian) until I bought a leather coat and started rudely ignoring the touts, then they addressed me in German (!). One clever Spaniard I chatted to realised they never knew Portuguese (not sure why) and would answer in a few words of that language, so they could spot an Iberian at least.

The touts could seemingly spot Russian, Greek, Italian, French, German, Spanish, US and I think some Scandinavian easily that I saw.

On Sumskilz's point about sexuality, there's a couple of TV presenters I've casually comment to my Mrs that I think were sus and one went down for being a paedo...still waiting for the other one to be caught.

Same can be said about corrupt politicians (but we're deep into the phrenology archipelago with this level of rubbish): there is something about the way they hold the edges of their mouths that screams "offer me a bribe and see what happens".

very dodgy faces indeed:

Eddie Obeid, who has a permanent seat at the anti-Corruption commission. Is the former premier Barry O'Farrell corrupt? He can't seem to remember... A lawyer, a union boss and an MP, how could you not trust this man?

So is there a national, or a gay or other sexual preference "face structure"? The national stuff is weird, I think dress and mien has a great deal to do with identification. I think Germans hold their mouths a certain way ( just a bit pursed and disapproving, the bottom lip is just a bit held in, even the cool groovy ones), perhaps to do with common pronunciation in German dialects? French people seem to cultivate a frank charm, and a half smile, I spotted my neighbours as French before we spoke. You can easily tell a Tasmanian Australian because both heads have the same facial expression . Jk but they have a monstrous rate of hereditary diseases.

Maybe dress and "resting face" is affected by culture and subculture and common pronunciation. That might work for ethnic or sexual subcultures?

[Cookiegod]

I mean that's the thing. People who do live with true diverse experience will have the experience to distinguish differences. Not just between countries, especially since many countries are multiethnic, but also between regions and sometimes villages. But some people coming out of a monoculture even if it is a melting pot will be swift to declare anything racist that doesn't match their own very limited frame of reference.

And I think there isn't really much left that needs to be said on the issue. I'm confident that there are several active threads on sexuality and racism in the mudpit, and I'd like for it to stay there.

---

Whilst agreeing with the overall points of Roma and sumskilz, the idea to look at the light haired people in Macedonia today to get an idea as to how Alexander looked is flawed for the reasons I explained earlier. A 1/3rd of the genome (already very significant imho) being due to the migration period influx doesn't mean that the 1/3rd is spread evenly. Add to this that the proclivity of light hair in slavs is significantly higher even if the 25% figure were true, and you'll struggle to make the numbers work out in a way that makes it likely (above 50%) that a random lighthaired person in Macedonia would have his/her looks due to premigration period native genes.

Next: I don't have time to go through any articles in any great detail, and I'll continue to be busy in the near future, but I did give the Lazaridis et al. article abstract a quick look. The sample size of 19 people is too low in my opinion to rely on it.

The next argument again is art. 1/4th of art portraying lighthaired people does not mean that this represents the general population in any way, shape or form.

Imagine taking movies from today and base your prediction of how people look on that. I do not expect a great subset of the Greek population to have been satyrs either.

I'd argue that there's strong indication that the Greeks (and Romans) did fetishise lighthairedness, as exemplified both in the Dionysios being a redhaired alastor story, and arguably also when it comes to Alexanders origin stories.

This does not mean that the Greeks didn't have any lighthaired people at all. Pyrrhos is a great example of someone who most definitely was a soulless ginger. It simply lowers the bar significantly when northern Greeks are called lighthaired in comparison to southern ones.

E.g. modern southern Italians would refer to northern Italians as light haired. Northern Italians in turn would probably call Germans light haired. Germans in turn would refer to Scandinavians as light haired.

All of this is again though playing a bit of a devil's advocate. I generally agree that looking at modern people from an area to get an idea what their potential ancestors might have looked like is a straightforward and easy thing to do, and not a wrong one. But introducing additional assumptions without considering the underlying assumptions is a cardinal sin when it comes to statistics. Hence why I hammer on about it. It's so important for all data driven discussions, including most about history.

The other sin worth mentioning, which mostly goes against the point I had argued thus far, is that it's a shame to discard myths and legends when not necessary. It doesn't matter whether Alexander was light haired or not, if it matters to a story (including to the ones in your head) he absolutely can and should be. If you want to make a movie about Alexander, having him look different from the other cast absolutely could help your story, just don't pick Colin Farrell and place an ugly wig on him.

[Roma_Victrix]

I'd argue that there's strong indication that the Greeks (and Romans) did fetishise lighthairedness, as exemplified both in the Dionysios being a redhaired alastor story, and arguably also when it comes to Alexanders origin stories.

This does not mean that the Greeks didn't have any lighthaired people at all. Pyrrhos is a great example of someone who most definitely was a soulless ginger. It simply lowers the bar significantly when northern Greeks are called lighthaired in comparison to southern ones.

LOL. Pyrrhus was a soulless ginger indeed, ignominiously killed by a middle-aged Spartan woman throwing a roof tile at his head.

Yes, the Romans clearly fetishized blond and red hair with wigs fashioned from the light-colored hair of Gallic slaves after taking them on a trip to the barbershop. Then again the Romans conquered northern Italy by the 3rd century BC, a land they called Gallia Cisalpina, and it was filled mostly with Celts like the Insubres and Boii, plus closely related Indo-European speakers like the Veneti and the Ligurians. Well before Caesar marched north of the province of Gallia Transalpina in southern France to conquer all of Gaul, these peoples were already assimilated into the Roman Republic.

While the Greeks had names like Pyrrhos ("flame-colored") to distinguish people with red hair, which must have been somewhat rarer than blond hair like today, the Romans did the same thing in Latin with the cognomen "Rufus" (also a nickname), and even the entire gens Rutilius. LOL. The Republican era consul and statesman Publius Rutilius Rufus must have looked like an Italian version of the comedian Carrot Top.

Also yes, the fact that the Greeks and Romans felt the need to create specific names for blond or redheaded Greeks and Romans is a sign that these were a rare minority phenotype. While we don't know the exact frequency of its appearance in relation to the overall population with total precision, the sample sizes provided by Laziridis et al 2017 at least provide a decent clue. Then again, blond and red hair aren't exactly majority hair colors in vast areas of Northern Europe either, given how these are recessive traits. A solid majority of British people have light brown (41%) or dark brown hair (37%), for instance, while Ireland has a higher percentage of redheads and Sweden a higher percentage of blonds.

E.g. modern southern Italians would refer to northern Italians as light haired. Northern Italians in turn would probably call Germans light haired. Germans in turn would refer to Scandinavians as light haired.

There's a kernel of truth to this, especially among totally black haired Central Asians and East Asians who view hair color differently than various Europeans. For example, I used to work as an English teacher in a former Soviet Republic in Central Asia. While my hair is light brown or blondish brunet at most, I had a conversation with a woman there once and she told me that I was a blond. LOL. I vehemently disagreed and explained that my cultural view of blond hair is that it looks either nearly white albino or school bus yellow, plus strawberry blond for mixed red and blond hair.

For that matter, Macedonian Greek mosaic artists consistently depicted Alexander the Great as a flaming redhead. Two centuries later, the Greco-Roman mosaic artist of Pompeii in southern Italy (Magna Graecia) who made the famous Alexander Mosaic at the House of the Faun interpreted the literary references to Alexander's light-colored hair by merely giving him some streaks of blond in otherwise light brown hair. Since most Greeks have light or dark brown hair, their view of someone being a redhead probably ranged from someone who was indeed a pale freckled ginger to someone who merely looked like this with auburn reddish brown hair, a woman from the Greek Island of Lefkada in the Ionian Sea:

[Cyclops]

... If you want to make a movie about Alexander, having him look different from the other cast absolutely could help your story, just don't pick Colin Farrell and place an ugly wig on him.

Maybe Stone was attempting an insane level directing challenge? 1. Use infamously coked up/drunk-arse actors (Farrell check, maybe Kilmer and Jolie too? not sure) 2. Depict notoriously contested subject matter (sexual, national and mythic history all hotly debated by historians and looney nationalists) 3. *** wig choices 4. Only showing incoherent snapshots of two battles of arguably the best general ever and 5. Makedonians are Scots and Irish (but Kilmer's accent wobbles like a Dublin whelk cart), other Hellenes are English (but so is Ptolemy from Lynkestis, ie a highlander wut?) and Persians are...Persian-ish...just as well Hopkins didn't go with his weaksauce Lecter southern drawl.

Ranks with Scorsese making Godfather. Pacino and Brando insane hellraisers, James Caan as an Italian lol (also allegedly a massive coke head), **** tier stereotypes about food and family (Brando's audition where he mimes eating the spicy meat-a-balls), how did that film actually ever get made?

[conon394]

LOL. Pyrrhus was a soulless ginger indeed, ignominiously killed by a middle-aged Spartan woman throwing a roof tile at his head.

Argive women as I recall lets not give Sparta too much credit.

[Roma_Victrix]

Argive women as I recall lets not give Sparta too much credit.

Oops! Good catch. Meant to say Argos, that was a mere brain fart. Also yes, Sparta does receive too much credit in general.