Persia White Nose Job

Question:

look at the pictures of Orodes I and Orodes II (below). Any wonder that their descendants in Iran have one of the highest number of "nose job" ops in the world?

http://www.romanorum.com.au/Shared/coins/0307N3372%20Orodes%20I.jpg

http://www.romanorum.com.au/Shared/coins/0404N1862.jpg

Answer:

I was refering to the Tarim mummies and you know well that their skeletons are still there, not to mention their skin and soft tissues. As far as the Kings of Persia were concerned, people that are well versed in physical anthropology can give you an answer. I am an artist, among other things, and one of the things that I have read about was how to identifiy the different facial features of different races of people and so forth. I don't know that you can do a whole reconstruction of someone's physical type based on some scribbles on a coin but apparently, you can get a good idea of what they were by comparing them to today's physical types. I have several Sassanian and Arsacid coins myself and the profiles are a give away to the person's physical features.

Then you talk of the prominent noses of some Parthian and persian Kings. Ardesshir Babakan had a very "Iranian" nose and his facial featurs would be best associated wh a type called "Irano-Afghan" by physical antrhropologists. Orode on the other hand, the King of Parthia at the time of Surena was definitely european in looks and I have seen that among several other Parthain Kings although Mehrdad was the same as Ardeshir.

last point you make with the noses: how many European people have you seen that have prominent noses and yet have light hair? And how many with very straight and thin noses with jet black hair and dark complexion? A few examples: Sean Connery and George Clooney. My familly hails from two regions of Iran: Mazandaran and Gilan and many have purely Azari roots. In fact, the father's side of the familly, which is very blond and very light haired and complexioned, has some individuals who have such huge prominent noses that you would think to send them to a plastic surgeon out of sheer pity. ironically, their hair comes out light brown or dirty blond and their eyes green and blue.

If you had followed the things I wsrote for CTG a few months ago, you would have gained an insight on the different laws of genetics and in this particular case, when a hybrid type acquires the physical features of one parent and associates them with those of the other parent, it is often called "random assortement of genes". Much of the population of northern Russia has Mongoloid blood in it and yet has light hair. Then you have the population of western Scotland, descended from Mediterranean Megalith builders which now partly, due to Celtic mixture, has blue eyes and yet black hair. See the point?

There is a certain reality that you obviously have an issue accepting, and that is blond-haired blue eyed Aryans mixed with the general fabric of the Iranian population, the same as black skinned Dravidians, half-African Arabs and Mongoloid Turkmen have. The fact that such populations exist in the northern part of Iran and sporadically in the Zagros, and the fact that historical references to such physical types are common among Greek, Roman and Indian sources should further convince you and not surprise you that a segment of the Iranian population has, to this day, preserved partially or largely Aryan genes, which does not go to say that the entire gene pool of Iran is thus composed.

Based on this, I would have no more trouble believing that Dariush was a tall, light hiared Nordic (and he was very tall by the way) than Arghun Khan was Mongoloid or that Mutawhakhil had Semitic features.

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