Physical Appearance
Physically the Khoisan, with their short frames (149–163 cm/4'9-5'4;), copper brown skin, tightly coiled "peppercorn" hair, high cheekbones, and epicanthic eye folds are quite distinct from the darker-skinned peoples who constitute the majority of Sub-Saharan Africa's population, though both population are usually dolichocephalic (Huxley, 1870).
In his 1965 work The Living Races of Man, Carleton Coon wrote of the Khoisan that "hey have moderately long legs and longer abdominal muscles, traits that sharply distinguish them from the Pygmy and surrounding Bantu populations having muscles with short bellies and long tendons." In past ethnography, the Khoisan have been referred to as the Capoid race because they can be visually distinguished from the Congoid Africans of Bantu origin.
In the 19th century, a distinguishing feature of Khoisan women was considered to be their tendency for steatopygia. This belief contributed greatly to the European fascination with the so-called Hottentot Venus.
Read more about this topic: Khoisan
Famous quotes containing the words physical and/or appearance:
“A separation situation is different for adults than it is for children. When we were very young children, a physical separation was interpreted as a violation of our inalienable rights....As we grew older, the withdrawal of love, whether that meant being misunderstood, mislabeled or slighted, became the separation situation we responded to.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into mountain, plain, plateau. The country was still waiting to be made into a landscape.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)