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Comment by krapp | Hacker News Reader

>As an European, I find the definition of European that excludes Spaniards super weird.

Because you are, as I suspect many people will, intentionally misreading the context of my comment.

I am implying that the use of "European" herein does not literally refer to the geographic region known as "Europe," but rather that in the context of a statement about the likely physical appearance of Jesus it should be understood as a statement about race and ethnicity whereby "European" is a politically correct descriptor for the common set of physical traits often described as "white," as is represented in Western depictions of Jesus, particularly where traits like skin color, eye color and hair color are concerned.

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1.) Look, Spaniards are Europeans by any reasonable definition. They are part of Western Europe.

2.) Traditional western depiction of Jesus looking like Spaniards would be no exception. Traditional western depiction of Jesus tend to look sorta kinda like locals do.

3.) Europeans do have wild range of eye colors and hair colors. The eye color and hair being some specific colors even for whites is weird, because even whitey whites have all kind of hair colors and eye colors.

> "European" is a politically correct descriptor for the common set of physical traits often described as "white,

No it is not and to the extend it is, it is absurd whistleblowing attempt - the one that ends up redefine Western Europe as a place that excludes Spaniards.

99.99% of the population of the Mediterranean basin at the time Jesus lived were white, almost certainly more given that the trans-Saharan slave trade was a creature of the camel and post dated the Arab conquest of North Africa.

“White” didn’t exist at that time and the people of the Mediterranean certainly didn’t think of themselves as one homogeneous group. The various peoples had prejudices about each other which only consolidated into a hierarchy when the trans-Atlantic slave trade needed to legally define who couldn’t be property. Prejudices by, for example, the English or American against Greeks or Italians lasted into the 20th century.

> Prejudices by, for example, the English or American against Greeks or Italians lasted into the 20th century.

Which is a bit funny, considering how they asdmired the ancient Greeks and Romans. Why did they consider their culture and statecraft as so ideal, if they considered the people that originated them as so inferior?

From what I’ve read, there was a lot of thought about them having fallen from their ancestors. Some of the eugenics types wrote about this as a cautionary tale about mixing with other races or letting them share power. The reasoning only makes sense if you start with the conclusion and work backwards trying to make it fit.

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