Question | Ancients with a different profile, where are they?

maxresde

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I was just reading the OP here. This is a bit tangential, but I wanted to point something out. Either here or the old site, I think there was a thread about some old American coins and stuff where the people on the coins had a particular profile where the forehead shoots straight into the bridge of the nose, with no indentation. Whoever had made that thread was saying something about 'What sort of people were these? Why don't we see people like this now? Was this some kind of stylized representation?' It has always stuck in my head. I have actually seen about three people in real life that actually look like this subsequent to reading that thread. Anyway, the drawing of Massinnissa in the original post here has that same unusual facial profile. Not sure what to make of it. Just wanted to point it out.

Massinnissa.jpg


KD: Made this into a separate topic of discussion.
 
Well, it appears they went extinct. I think Marie-Antoinette might have been one of those individuals. Then again, some of her depictions display a different bridge. Who knows what's real?
Marie-Antoinette,_1775_-_Musée_Antoine_Lécuyer.jpg

Beheadings were allegedly reserved for the nobles. The narrative suggests that beheadings were more humane. At the same time were these beheadings really reserved for them nobles only?
Could it be that those beheaded, were slightly different?
 
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The elongated skulls always made me think if they're real or not or how people would look in real life if they had such an unusual head shape. A curious thing is a white cap that is used in Albania with the folklorist attire, it's semi-egg shaped made of wool and it's called "Plis" or "Qeleshe". The shape of the cap has no use whatsoever either to keep warm in winter time or to shade from the sun, it's wearied every time by men only, and that led me to think that either the people wearing it had an elongated skull and they were covering the tip of their head.

Or, normal people like us were ordered to wear it in order to look very similar to the appearance of their overlords which could have been with elongated skull like Marie Antoinette. "If I'm ugly than everyone has to look ugly because I'm the king" sort of logic. Weird.

I think there was a thread about some old American coins and stuff where the people on the coins had a particular profile where the forehead shoots straight into the bridge of the nose, with no indentation. Whoever had made that thread was saying something about 'What sort of people were these? Why don't we see people like this now? Was this some kind of stylized representation?
I remember that thread it's on the other site, it's on stolenhistory.net and I ended up making a duplicate of it without intention. I'll be putting the link but that site is offline now. Everytime I need to use a link from them, strangely enough, they're down. Maybe maintenance.
 
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I swear, I didn't mean to contribute to derailing here with these elongated skulls, lol. Just wanted to point out that some images of people with possible elongated skulls have this type of nose bridge.

From here on:
  • Let's discuss nose bridges in the current thread.
  • Elongated skulls - here.
 
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Found only one snapshot from Wayback Machine for one thread.
Edit: Found the other one also, finally.
Excellent, that is the very thread I was thinking of. As I wrote above, since seeing that, I have noted three live people with this appearance. They actually look a bit odd, but I guess people either don't remark on it, or more likely don't really even notice. People seem to be generally very unobservant. Of these people, I had the opportunity to speak to one of them, but I was not able to detect anything very notable in a brief conversation. I didn't feel like I could ask anything very invasive, since it was just a stranger I happened to encounter. But I would say that I don't think it is just an artistic convention or stylistic choice. This would appear to be representations of real people.

I would agree with that original thread that it looks like these people persisted into the early 1900s, based on the coinage. But it is hard to understand how they might have become extinct or much reduced as a part of the population in such a short period of time, with no record of it. The nature of my work has allowed me to meet many very old people over the years, and I have never heard anyone mention anything like this. I was speaking to someone born in 1929 the other day. I would imagine if these people were numerous in, say, 1910, they must still have been around 20 years later. So I can't account for where these people went. Perhaps it was a very recessive or weak trait that did not persist when mixed with people from other backgrounds?
 
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I was just reading an article and I noticed this coin in the attached photo. It is another person with this strange, straight nose.

'The Roman Republic may have been long-lasting from 509 to 27 BC. However, it went through many upheavals, including the Great Social War. Here is a silver denarius of the rebels. The revolt of Rome’s Italian allies (socii, hence ‘Social War’) broke out toward the close of 91 BC. It was the culmination of longstanding grievances occasioned by the Senate’s prejudiced handling of foreign relations. The Marsi were especially prominent in this movement, hence the name ‘Marsic Confederation,’ often applied to the rebel state.'

Marsi - Wikipedia

======edit march 14, 2024=======

I was just thinking about this more. Massinissa up at the top with a similar facial profile was an enemy of Rome in North Africa, who later became an ally of Rome.

These Marsi also were enemies of Rome that became allies. Seems funny. If these people with this facial profile were an ethnicity or nation or something, maybe there was a period where the Romans came to some kind general alliance with them.
 

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They look like caryatids to me.
Source
View attachment 14566
Thanks. I agree. I was just looking them up. They originate from some particular town in Greece in the vicinity of Sparta. If these statues were faithfully copied, it seems like it would indicate the people in that place at that time must have had faces like this. So it seems that in N Africa the Berbers looked like this, the Marsi tribe in Italy, and the people in this town all would have similar facial profiles. This seems to me to indicate that this type of person must have been common at least around the Mediterranean Sea back in those days.

Looking up these caryatids made me think that it might be worthwhile just to look up very ancient depictions of faces and see what they look like. It seems like even many thousands of years ago, you could find people like this. But there are also depictions of the same age with 'normal' looking faces.

Illustrerad_Verldshistoria_band_I_Ill_111.jpg

This is an ancient Greek coin, again with this same face. It must have been common back in those days.

I might try to put together a little overview of ancient depictions of faces and see if any patterns become apparent.
 
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Just wanted to put a note here, I saw one of these people in real life at the store the other day. The profile was very striking. You would never mistake it for something else. I wish it would be possible to get a photo, but it would be weird to ask a stranger to take their picture.
 
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