Aquiline nose

Last updated June 28, 2024

An "aquiline" nasal profile

An aquiline nose (also called a Roman nose) is a human nose with a prominent bridge, giving it the appearance of being curved or slightly bent. The word aquiline comes from the Latin word aquilinus ("eagle-like"), an allusion to the curved beak of an eagle.^[2]^[3]^[4] While some have ascribed the aquiline nose to specific ethnic, racial, or geographic groups, and in some cases associated it with other supposed non-physical characteristics (i.e. intelligence, status, personality, etc., see below), no scientific studies or evidence support any such linkage. As with many phenotypical expressions (e.g. 'widow's peak', eye color, earwax type) it is found in many geographically diverse populations.

Distribution

Some writers in the field of racial typology have attributed aquiline noses as a characteristic of different peoples or races; e.g.: according to anthropologist Jan Czekanowski, it is most frequently found amongst members of the Arabid race and Armenoid race. It is also often seen in the Mediterranean race and Dinarid race, where it is known as the "Roman nose" when found amongst Italians, the Southern French, Portuguese and Spanish.^[5] Racial theorist William Z. Ripley argued that it is characteristic of peoples of Teutonic descent.^[6]

In racialist discourse

In racialist discourse, especially that of post-Enlightenment Western scientists and writers, a Roman nose has been characterized as a marker of beauty and nobility,^[7] but the notion itself is found early on in Plutarch, in his description of Mark Antony.^[8] The supposed science of physiognomy, popular during the Victorian era, made the "prominent" nose a marker of Aryanness: "the shape of the nose and the cheeks indicated, like the forehead's angle, the subject's social status and level of intelligence. A Roman nose was superior to a snub nose in its suggestion of firmness and power, and heavy jaws revealed a latent sensuality and coarseness".^[9]

Among Native Americans

The aquiline nose was deemed a distinctive feature of some Native American tribes, members of which often took their names after their own characteristic physical attributes (i.e. The Hook Nose, or Chief Henry Roman Nose).^[5] In the depiction of Native Americans, for instance, an aquiline nose is one of the standard traits of the "noble warrior" type.^[10] It is so important as a cultural marker that Renee Ann Cramer, a non-Native legal scholar, argued in Cash, Color, and Colonialism (2005), that tribes without such characteristics have found it difficult to receive "federal recognition"/"acknowledgement" (which are specific/significant terms) from the US government, resulting in failure to win benefits including tax-exempt status, reclamation rights, and the right to administer and profit from casinos.^[11]

Among populations in Africa

The flat, broad nose is ubiquitous among most populations in Sub-Saharan Africa,^[12] and is noted by nineteenth-century writers and travelers (such as Colin Mackenzie) as a mark of "Negroid" ancestry.^[13] It stands in opposition to the narrow aquiline, straight or convex noses (lepthorrine), which are instead deemed "Caucasian".^[12]

In the 1930s, an aquiline nose was reported to be regarded as a characteristic of beauty for girls among the Tswana and Xhosa people. However, a recent scholar could not discern from the original study "whether such preferences were rooted in precolonial conceptions of beauty, a product of colonial racial hierarchies, or some entanglement of the two".^[14] A well-known example of the aquiline nose as a marker in Africa contrasting the bearer with their contemporaries is the protagonist of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688). Although an African prince, he speaks French, has straightened hair, thin lips, and a "nose that was rising and Roman instead of African and flat".^[15] These features set him apart from most of his peers, and marked him instead as noble and on par with Europeans.^[16]^[17]^[18]

According to craniometric analysis by Carleton Coon (1939), aquiline noses in Africa are largely restricted to populations from North Africa and the Horn of Africa (in contrast to those of Sub-Saharan Africa), which is more generally peopled by those of Semitic, Arab, and other non-"Negroid" descent. However, they are generally less common in these areas than are narrow, straight noses, which instead constitute the majority of nasal profiles. It has been reported however, that aquiline noses are more prevalent among Egyptian, Tunisian, Moroccan, Eritrean, Ethiopian and Somali people, than among Southern Europeans.^[19]^[20] Among the Copts and Fellahin of Egypt, two distinct nasal types reportedly exist: one with a narrow, aquiline nose accompanied by a slim face, slender jaw and thin lips; the other with a slightly lower rooted, straight-to-concave nose, accompanied by a wider and lower face, a strong jaw, prominent chin, and moderately full lips.^[21]

Among South Asian peoples

Among South Asian ethnic groups, the aquiline nose type is most common among the peoples of Afghanistan, Dardistan, the Pamirs, also frequent in Kashmir as well as among the Hindus of various castes in rest of India,^[22]^[23] as well as a prominent feature in the Greco-Buddhist statuary of Gandhara (a region spanning the upper Indus and Kabul River valleys throughout northern Pakistan and north-east Afghanistan).^[24] The ethnographer George Campbell, in his Ethnology of India, stated:

The high nose, slightly aquiline, is a common type [among Kashmiri Pandit]. Raise a little the brow of a Greek statue and give the nose a small turn at the bony point in front of the bridge, so as to break the straightness of the line, you have the model type of this part of India, to be found both in living men and in the statues of the Peshawar Valley.^[25]

Among Jews

Julius Streicher, a Nazi propagandist, attempted to distinguish the hooked/eagle noses of non-Jews and the hooked/eagle noses of Jews, and isolate the Jewish nose for discrimination.^[26] He believed that the 'Jewish nose' was bent at its point like the number six in a downward manner. Conversely, hooked 'gentile' noses were bent upwards.^[27] Jerome Webster additionally described the 'Jewish nose' as having a 'slight hump' and 'broad tip'.^[28]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carleton S. Coon</span> American anthropologist (1904–1981)

Carleton Stevens Coon was an American anthropologist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is best known for his scientific racist theories concerning the parallel evolution of human races, which were widely disputed in his lifetime and are considered pseudoscientific by modern science.

The Dinaric race, also known as the Adriatic race, were psuedoscientific terms used by certain physical anthropologists in the early to mid-20th century to describe the perceived predominant phenotype of the contemporary ethnic groups of southeast Europe. According to the discredited theories of physical anthropologist Carleton Coon, the Dinaric race was most commonly found among the populations in the Balkans and Carpathians, such as Montenegrins, Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats, Ghegs, Slovaks, Romanians, Hungarians, Western Ukrainians, and Southern Poles.Additionally, in Northern Europe, the South Germans are also identified as having Dinaric characteristics.

Australo-Melanesians is an outdated historical grouping of various people indigenous to Melanesia and Australia. Controversially, some groups found in parts of Southeast Asia and South Asia were also sometimes included.

The concept of race as a categorization of anatomically modern humans has an extensive history in Europe and the Americas. The contemporary word race itself is modern; historically it was used in the sense of "nation, ethnic group" during the 16th to 19th centuries. Race acquired its modern meaning in the field of physical anthropology through scientific racism starting in the 19th century. With the rise of modern genetics, the concept of distinct human races in a biological sense has become obsolete. In 2019, the American Association of Biological Anthropologists stated: "The belief in 'races' as natural aspects of human biology, and the structures of inequality (racism) that emerge from such beliefs, are among the most damaging elements in the human experience both today and in the past."

The Caucasian race is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The Caucasian race was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, depending on which of the historical race classifications was being used, usually included ancient and modern populations from all or parts of Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jan Czekanowski</span>

Jan Czekanowski was a Polish anthropologist, statistician, ethnographer, traveller, and linguist. His scientific contributions include introducing his system of racial classification and founding the field of computational linguistics.

The Nordic race is an obsolete racial concept which originated in 19th-century anthropology. It was once considered a race or one of the putative sub-races into which some late-19th to mid-20th century anthropologists divided the Caucasian race, claiming that its ancestral homelands were Northwestern and Northern Europe, particularly to populations such as Anglo-Saxons, Germanic peoples, Balts, Baltic Finns, Northern French, and certain Celts, Slavs and Ghegs. The supposed physical traits of the Nordics included light eyes, light skin, tall stature, and dolichocephalic skull; their psychological traits were deemed to be truthfulness, equitability, a competitive spirit, naivete, reservedness, and individualism. In the early 20th century, the belief that the Nordic race constituted the superior branch of the Caucasian race gave rise to the ideology of Nordicism.

The Mediterranean race is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. According to writers of the late 19th to mid-20th centuries it was a sub-race of the Caucasian race. According to various definitions, it was said to be prevalent in the Mediterranean Basin and areas near the Mediterranean and Black Sea, especially in Southern Europe, Eastern Europe, North Africa, most of West Asia, the Middle East or Near East; western Central Asia, parts of South Asia, and parts of the Horn of Africa. To a lesser extent, certain populations of people in Ireland, western parts of Great Britain, and Southern Germany, despite living far from the Mediterranean, were thought to have some minority Mediterranean elements in their population, such as Bavaria, Wales, and Cornwall.

Nordicism is an ideology which views the historical race concept of the "Nordic race" as an endangered and superior racial group. Some notable and influential Nordicist works include Madison Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race (1916); Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853); the various writings of Lothrop Stoddard; Houston Stewart Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899); and, to a lesser extent, William Z. Ripley’s The Races of Europe (1899). The ideology became popular in the late-19th and 20th centuries in Germanic-speaking Europe, Northwestern Europe, Central Europe, and Northern Europe, as well as in North America and Australia.

The Alpine race is a historical race concept defined by some late 19th-century and early 20th-century anthropologists as one of the sub-races of the Caucasian race. The origin of the Alpine race was variously identified. Ripley argued that it migrated from Central Asia during the Neolithic Revolution, splitting the Nordic and Mediterranean populations. It was also identified as descending from the Celts residing in Central Europe in Neolithic times. The Alpine race is supposedly distinguished by its moderate stature, neotenous features, and cranial measurements, such as high cephalic index.

The Armenoid race was a supposed sub-race in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism. The Armenoid race was variously described as a "sub-race" of the "Aryan race" or the "Caucasian race".

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irano-Afghan race</span> Obsolete racial classification term

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The Jewish nose, or the Jew's nose, is an antisemitic ethnic stereotype referring to a hooked nose with a convex nasal bridge and a downward turn of the tip of the nose. It was singled out as a hostile caricature of Jews in mid-13th century Europe and has since become a defining and persisting element of the overall Jewish stereotype globally. In modern times, it has also been adopted by Jews as a part of their identity to spite historic antisemitism.

The Indid race was a supposed sub-race of Hindi people in the context of a now-outdated model of dividing humanity into different races which was developed originally by Europeans in support of colonialism. In 19th and early 20th century anthropological literature, the Indid type was classified as belonging to the Mediterranean type of the greater Caucasoid race.

References

↑ Jabet, George (1852). Notes on Noses. Richard Bentley. p. 9.
↑ Eliza Cook (1851). Eliza Cook's Journal. J. O. Clark. p. 381.
↑ John C. Fredriksen (1 January 2001). America's Military Adversaries: From Colonial Times to the Present. ABC-CLIO. p. 432. ISBN 978-1-57607-603-3. He matured into a powerfully built man, tall, muscular, with an aquiline profile that gave rise to the name Woquni, or "Hook Nose." The whites translated this into the more familiar moniker of Roman Nose. In his early youth, Roman Nose ...
↑ Henry Neuman; Giuseppe Marco Antonio Baretti (1827). Neuman and Baretti's Dictionary of the Spanish and English Languages: Spanish and English. Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins. p. 65. Aquiline, resembling an eagle ; when applied to the nose, hooked.
1 2 Czekanowski, Jan (1934). Człowiek w Czasie i Przestrzeni (eng. A Human in Time and Space) - The lexicon of biological anthropology. Kraków, Poland: Trzaska, Ewert i Michalski - Bibljoteka Wiedzy.
↑ Winlow, Heather (2006). "Mapping Moral Geographies: W. Z. Ripley's Races of Europe and the United States". Annals of the Association of American Geographers . 96 (1): 119–41. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00502.x. JSTOR 3694148. S2CID 145454002.
↑ Adams, Mikaëla M. (2009). "Savage Foes, Noble Warriors, and Frail Remnants: Florida Seminoles in the White Imagination, 1865-1934". The Florida Historical Quarterly . 87 (3): 404–35. JSTOR 20700234.
↑ Jones, Prudence J. (2006). Cleopatra: A Sourcebook. U of Oklahoma P. p. 94. ISBN 9780806137414.
↑ Cowling, Mary (1989). The Artist as Anthropologist: The Representation of Type and Character in Victorian Art. Cambridge. Cambridge UP. Quoted in McNees, Eleanor (2004). "Punch and the Pope: Three Decades of Anti-Catholic Caricature". Victorian Periodicals Review . 37 (1): 18–45. JSTOR 20083988.
↑ Cramer, Renee Ann (2006). "The Common Sense of Anti-Indian Racism: Reactions to Mashantucket Pequot Success in Gaming and Acknowledgment". Law & Social Inquiry . 31 (2): 313–41. doi:10.1111/j.1747-4469.2006.00013.x. JSTOR 4092749. S2CID 144674479.
↑ McCulloch, Anne M. (2006). "Rev. of Cramer, Cash, Color, and Colonialism". Perspectives on Politics . 4 (1): 178–79. doi:10.1017/s1537592706430140. JSTOR 3688655. S2CID 144941744.
1 2 Heidari Z, Mahmoudzadeh-Sagheb H, Khammar T, Khammar M (May 2009). "Anthropometric measurements of the external nose in 18–25-year-old Sistani and Baluch aborigine women in the southeast of Iran". Folia Morphol. (Warsz). 68 (2): 88–92. PMID 19449295.
↑ Sundberg, Jeffrey Roger (2006). "Considerations on the dating of the Barabuḍur stūpa". Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde . 162 (1): 95–132. doi: 10.1163/22134379-90003675 . JSTOR 27868287.
↑ Thomas, Lynn M. (2006). "The Modern Girl and Racial Respectability in 1930s South Africa". The Journal of African History . 47 (3): 461–90. doi:10.1017/s0021853706002131. JSTOR 4501073. S2CID 163074804.
↑ Behn, Aphra (1987). Adelaide P. Amore (ed.). Oroonoko, Or, The Royal Slave: A Critical Edition. UP of America. p. 10. ISBN 9780819165299.
↑ Gates, Henry Louis (1998). "Introduction". In Henry Louis Gates; William L. Andrews (eds.). Pioneers of the Black Atlantic: Five Slave Narratives from the Enlightenment, 1772-1815. Civitas. pp. 1–30. ISBN 9781887178983.
↑ Popkin, Richard Henry (1988). Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought, 1650-1800: Clark Library Lectures, 1981-1982. Brill. p. 206. ISBN 9789004085138.
↑ Bohls, Elizabeth (2013). Romantic Literature and Postcolonial Studies. Oxford UP. p. 52. ISBN 9780748678754.
↑ Coon, Carleton (1939). The Races of Europe. The Macmillan Company. p. Chapter XI, Section 13 - Eastern Barbary, Algeria and Tunisia. Retrieved 7 June 2014.
↑ Coon, Carleton (1939). The Races of Europe. The Macmillan Company. p. Chapter XI, Section 8 - The Mediterranean Race in East Africa. Retrieved 7 June 2014.
↑ Coon, Carleton (1939). The Races of Europe. The Macmillan Company. p. Chapter XI, Section 9 - The Modern Egyptians. Retrieved 7 June 2014.
↑ Roy, Sarat Chandra (1940). Man in India. A.K. Bose. p. 32. ...aquiline nose, eagle nose and owl nose. These nasal forms are to be found in Aghanistan, Dardistan and on the Pamirs.. They may also be found in Kashmir frequently and in the remainder of India amongst the Hindus of different castes..
↑ Meyer, Johann Jakob (1971). Sexual Life in Ancient India: A Study in the Comparative History of Indian Culture. Motilal Banarsidass Publication. ISBN 9788120806382.
↑ Bamzai, P. N. K. (1994). Culture and Political History of Kashmir. M.D. Publications Pvt. Ltd. ISBN 9788185880310.
↑ Kaw, M. K. (2001). Kashmiri Pandits: Looking to the Future. APH Publishing. pp. 13, 32. ISBN 9788176482363.
↑ "NOSE - JewishEncyclopedia.com". www.jewishencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 31 May 2024.
↑ Streicher, Julius (c. 1939). "How to Tell a Jew". research.calvin.edu. From Der Giftpilz , an anti-Semitic children's book published by Julius Streicher, the publisher of Der Stürmer . Translated by Randall Bytwerk, 1999, for the Calvin Archive of Nazi Propaganda. Retrieved 29 May 2016.
↑ Preminger, Beth (2001), "The "Jewish Nose" and Plastic Surgery: Origins and Implications", Journal of the American Medical Association, 286 (17): 2161, doi: 10.1001/jama.286.17.2161-JMS1107-5-1 .