Karelians display a rather unusual trait combination, characterized by mesobrachycrany and a relatively short, wide, robust and extremely high braincase. The face is medium high and medium wide (it is wide in northern Karelia). The upper horizontal facial profile is flattened by European standards, but the midfacial profile is sharp. The nose is sharply protruding and convex. This trait combination opposes the Karelians to all modern and recent groups of Eurasia including the closest linguistic relatives of Karelians, the Baltic Finns, specifically the Suomi Finns and Estonians (Khartanovich, 1986, 1990). Among the prehistoric series, the same trait
combination is observed in the Meso-Neolithic sample from Zvejnieki, Latvia (Khartanovich, 1991b).
A significant contribution to the study of the early population history of Eastern Europe and of the origins of the contradictory trait combinations distributed on that territory was made by T.I. Alekseyeva. In a joint monograph describing the Neolithic cranial series from Sakhtysh in the Upper Volga area, she notes that certain European Mesolithic groups were characterized by large dimensions of the braincase and especially by its conspicuous height. The face was wide and relatively low and a flattened upper facial profile co-occurred with a sharp midfacial profile and sharply protruding nasal bones (Alekseyeva, 1997). In Alekseyeva’s words, this
unusual trait combination, which was more than once revealed by multivariate statistics, was widely distributed and was typical of Mesolithic Caucasoids of the forest and forest-steppe zones of Eastern Europe as evidenced by groups such as Zvejnieki, Popovo, Southern Oleniy (Reindeer) Island, and Vasilievka I and III. In her words, there is no doubt that robustness and upper facial flatness were inherited from earlier Caucasoid populations of Eastern Europe (Ibid.: 26). In the joint monograph integrating the anthropological studies of the Eastern Slavs, Alekseyeva formulated her conclusions regarding the origin of this trait combination: “Judging by the concentration of these unusual features in Scandinavia, the Baltic and the Onega area, people displaying them had migrated to Eastern Europe from the northwest and were possibly associated with the Mesolithic cultures of the circum-Baltic region. Revisiting the long-standing issue of admixture versus evolutionary conservatism in the Mesolithic population of Eastern Europe in the light of new data, we must reject the admixture hypothesis.
The location of this peculiar type and its expansion from the west to the east suggest that it should be regarded as an independent ancient type which originated in northwestern Europe” (Alekseyeva, 1999: 254–255). In the Neolithic, biological continuity with the Mesolithic population was preserved but the diversity increased.
Importantly, according to Alekseyeva (Ibid.: 255), the population which in the Mesolithic had been quite Caucasoid despite the unusual combination of the two 7 facial profiles flattened in the upper part and sharp in the middle part; one might add that the face was very broad and the braincase was very high) began to assume a somewhat “Mongoloid” appearance.After the Neolithic, groups marked by the trait combination noted by Alekseyeva and others seem to have disappeared from Eastern Europe. This may have been partly due to the scarcity of cranial remains from the Bronze Age, Early Iron Age, and medieval burials in the Eastern Baltic area and to the complete absence of such remains from Karelia.
