General Traits
Modern Portuguese are an Iberian ethnic group and their ancestry is very similar to other western and southern European peoples, particularly from Spain, with whom they share ancestry and have some cultural proximity. It is largely consistent with the geographic position of the western part of the Iberian peninsula, located on the extreme southwest of continental Europe. There are clear connections with Atlantic Europe and Western Europe as well as parts of the Western Mediterranean. Dark to medium brown hair and brown and hazel eyes predominate in a majority of Portuguese people. However, light brown and blond hair and blue or green eyes are also found with some regular frequency. Chestnut and auburn-colored hair types occur generally. Light, true red hair (meaning red shades that are non-auburn) is seen on occasion.
Well designed pigmentation field studies by Tamagnini (1916, 1936), Correa (1919) and others recorded national average fair hair ("blondism") frequencies of between 18 and 20%. Approximately 11% are legitimate blond shades, mainly medium to ash blond, and the remainder (7-9%) light brown. True red hair (ginger) amounts to approximately 3%. However, there are higher percentages of individuals with auburn and dark red-brown shades. Light eyes run between 20-49% for the Portuguese, according to recently published pigmentation maps of Europe (see P. Frost, 2006).
Read more about this topic: Portuguese People
Famous quotes containing the words general and/or traits:
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Perhaps nothing is so depressing an index of the inhumanity of the male-supremacist mentality as the fact that the more genial human traits are assigned to the underclass: affection, response to sympathy, kindness, cheerfulness.”
—Kate Millet (b. 1934)