Why were tall men from the south dumber than tall men from the north?

Why has the tallest region  in Europe (parts of Balkan) also been the poorest when the next tallest region (Northern Europe) has been the most affluent?

Answer: It's got absolutely nothing to do with tallness - and everything to do with brainpower. Oops, did Klevius say something "blasphemic"? Ok, here's Klevius' defense.

 Väinö Myllyrinne, Finland, 251 cm (8 ft 3 in), had the world's biggest hands - and a quite ordinary life, except for some circus trips to earn some bucks on his stature.

So what if Väinö Myllyrinne had been born into a warrior family some 5,000 ybp and equipped with a brain like, say Klevius (but way more aggressive)? Oops, Klevius did it again.

Height is genetically determined. Stunting because of malnutrition is only between 1-2 cm in a study of the Chinese famine 1959-1961. What has previously been assigned to malnutrition is in fact selection. Growth hormone irregularities are relatively rare.

There's a distinct genetic growth stop at around age 14 for a huge (?) part of the world's population, while others continue growing until the age of 16-18. Mixing of these genes give results that no one so far has studied in more detail. This is the basic reason for height variation among today's humans. Klevius strongly suggests that someone starts a research project based on this Klevius' problem formulation.

However, some continue growing also after their growth spurt. One such an example was the world's tallest healthy man (most exceptionally tall people are sick and die young) the Finnish Väinö Myllyrinta.

Väinö Myllyrinne (born 27 February 1909 in Helsinki – 13 April 1963 in Helsinki, Finland) was an acromegalic (continued growth after the growth plates have closed) giant who was at one time (1961–1963) the world's tallest living person and is the tallest non-American person of all time whose height is not disputed (do note that all Americans were physically handicapped). He stood 224 cm (7 ft 4 in) and weighed 141 kg (311 pounds) at the age of 21, but experienced a second phase of growth in his late thirties, attaining a height of 251 cm (8 ft 3 in) and weighing 376 pounds. Myllyrinne is considered the tallest soldier ever, having served in the Finnish Defence Forces. He underwent his conscript training in 1929 in the Viipuri Heavy Artillery Regiment, and was 220 cm (7 ft 3 in) tall and really strong. In the 1930s he travelled around Europe. He returned to Finland in 1939 to serve in the Finnish Army during the Winter War. In 1946, he moved to Järvenpää and ran a chicken farm. He died in 1963 after a hip surgery caused inflammation. In 1962, just a year before his death, he was measured by doctors at 2.47 m (8 ft 1.2 in). This confirms with normal shrinking over more than a decade. He had a 340 mm (13.2 in) size hand, the largest known.

Väinö Myllyrinne

Väinö Myllyrinne with two upper average size women.

Peter Klevius' (who isn't tall) analysis: Because the northerners had access to short and intelligent women to the north of themselves among the hunter-gatherer population, they also  got closer to the genetic background of modern humans. So some kids became short, others average, and some tall - and some even blond. Likewise, some got average IQ while a few got the genius gene. And a few became highly intelligent giant warriors at a time when size mattered - especially in sparsely populated areas where hit and run attacks were easy and where they could gather more of the same while going southward. One may assume that these phenomena happened more frequently during bad farming times - which occurred quite often in the vulnerable climatic borderland of farming, and dwelling in dark woodlands in the extreme north added blondness and fair skin.

The tallest people seem to have followed part of haplogroup I-M170. And when it comes to aDNA there are hints that point to the same direction, e.g. some tall ancient human remains in the southern Gravettian ice-age refuges (e.g. Italy).

However, it's mainly tall people from Fennoscandia/Russia (Indoeuropeans and Uralics) who - together with shorter people - constituted the stock from which the technological expansion of the West emanated. This has also led to many misconceptions, i.e. that being tall would somehow be connected to intelligence - no matter how many short geniuses (Einstein etc.) there are. Looking back in prehistory it seems more likely that the opposite is true. However, luckily today we've already messed everything up globally to an extent that it's impossible to tell anything for certain based on physical appearance. So why not just follow James Mallory's Bhuddist advise in the context of Tocharians: Don't believe what you see!

The Indoeuropean language border just south of the Uralic one is approximately the same as the border of farming which is pushed to the dark north when affected by the Gulf-stream.

The Vikings, Goths, the Seima-Turbino, phenomenon, Kurgan people etc. are all example of movements of mainly tall male warriors in the first stages. And all of them were closely connected to Uralic speaking cultures.

This map from Chernyc's Nomadic Cultures in the Mega-Structure of the Eurasian World (2017) emphasizes the hot spot area of metal working in the 5th millennium. However, do note the upper reaches of the darker area which points towards the most often cited Urheimat of proto-Uralic. This strange tail seems to be quite unexplainable if you don't take this into account.

The unfortunate belittling of first the steppe people and then the Uralic speakers has blindfolded many theories - and maps. Here the Corded Ware culture well overlaps later Uralic areas. Klevius assumes the people there must have spoken relaed languages at the time of Corded Ware.

According to Klevius, Corded ware horizon is a mix of Indoeuropean and Uralic with bilingual border zones. Although Iceland was populated from Fennoscandia some two millennium later, Icelandic has many characteristics in common with Finnish. This makes sense when considering the Vikings started as "Finland-Swedish" (see Origin of Vikings) explorers/raiders capable of making themselves understood from Finnish Karelia to Old Nordic Scandinavia and beyond, e.g. Shetland, Scotland, England, Ireland etc. And do note that 'land' is an old pre-Viking age Gothic word.

Haplogroup U descends from a woman in the haplogroup R mtDNA branch of the phylogenetic tree, who is estimated to have lived around 55,000 years ago. An Upper Palaeolithic human who lived in Western Siberia c. 45,000 years ago has been shown to belong to the U* mitochondrial haplogroup. Haplogroup U has also been found among ancient Egyptian mummies excavated at the Abusir el-Meleq archaeological site in Middle Egypt, which date from the Pre-Ptolemaic/late New Kingdom, Ptolemaic, and Roman periods.

Red hair distribution from a northern heartland. The Uralic speaking Udmurts have been described as the "most red-headed" people in the world and having "deep blue eyes".



Blond hair distribution was connected to southern Fennoscandia being the northernmost place were small scale farming was possible due to the Gulf stream. However, this part of the farming world was also the darkest, hence putting immense pressure on vitamin D uptake - resulting in survival advantage for fair skinned people in the farming/hunting communities. The northern hunter-gatherers, like Inuits, Sami etc., got their vitamin D from other sources.

Read about Kvenland and Finnland - the oldest 'land' in the world.


If, as Klevius working theory suggests, the boost in intelligence, that created the unique paleolithic Eurasian art etc. track from Mal'ta Buret to the Pyrenees, was the result of a Homo floresiensis like tropical island dwarfed brain genetically flowing up in the form of Denisovan to big skulled northern homos, then we would expect a concentration of intelligence genes in the sparsely populated north (because those going back south were diluted by the mass of people already there). Most of these moderṇ (<50 and="" are="" br="" central="" compared="" e.g.="" europeans="" fair="" haired.="" half-northern="" iberians="" most="" nbsp="" nor="" north="" northerners="" not="" of="" relatively="" short="" skinned="" stature="" still="" to="" very="" were="" ybp="">

The tallest people used to live in Australia - already some 40-60,000 ybp. 

There are two main unsolved mysteries about height:

1  Where did the tall genes originate?

2   Which genes determine earlier and later growth stop?

Lake Mungo man (Australia) who lived more than 40,000 ybp is estimated to 196 cm (just a couple of centimeter shorter than Klevius childhood friend).

Mungo Man's "wife" was found 400 m away from him.

These guys from the Burrup peninsula (Western Australia), photographed in the 1920s, were 200.6 cm and 195.5 cm.

These guys photographed in the 1920s in North West Australia, were reportedly both over two meter.

However, most Aborigines are of relatively short stature, and the tall guys above were reportedly even less intelligent than other tribes the Western "conquesters" - to use a word commonly used about muslim colonizers - had met with.

Southern farmers were short and not particularly intelligent

It's a myth that - as Klevius still thought 1992 - that farming caused civilizations. It was only when the gains of farming was utilized by non-farmers that the so called "civilizations" emerged in Mideast. Long before this time there had already been advanced civilizations from Ural to Ukraine.

Klevius theory on IQ and human evolution and its relation to stature - the first truly intelligent humans weren't tall.

As you dear reader already know, until proven wrong Klevius analysis of the evolution of modern humans is in its shortest form as follows:

1 The early IQ track visible through the Aurignacian art/technology track from Baikal/Siberia to the Pyrenees means something extraordinary happened in the Altai region more than 50,000 ybp when the first sewing needles were already in use.

An extremely sophisticated stone bracelet was produced in Siberia/Altai more than 40,000 ybp. Both the needle above and the stone bracelet were found in the Denisova cave.

2 DNA analysis from the Denisova cave has revealed both hybridization between so called Neanderthals, Homo sapiens sapiens, and a third party, the so called Denisovan who in turn is also linked to Australia, Papua New Guinea and Melanesia.

3  Homo floresiensis proves that a bigger skull can shrink in a tropical jungle/island environment without loosing IQ. So if a similar but opposite (i.e. expanding skull while keeping up the per cm3 IQ) process was at stake among the so called Denisovans when they managed to re-enter mainland Asia during lower sea level, they would sooner or later meet with their big skulled northern relatives in the Altai area. As a resukt some of their kids would get both a big skull as well as high IQ. How many of them is up to guesswork so far but there must have been quite a few (proportionally - considering small population) of them to cause such a rapid spread of what we might call the truly modern human over the world.

However, this spread was far from even. Climatic as well as geographical factors played an important role - compare e.g. Mammoth fluctuation, migration and extinction.

When farming emerged population rapidly increased while stature and intelligence decreased (e.g. compared to the early geniuses in Altai). So when the tall Kurgan people from the Russian steppe met the southern farmers the difference in height could be up to half a meter - and some of the Kurgans also possessed superior intelligence due to their mating connections to the north. So whereas mating with average farmer girls didn't produce many geniuses, the opposite was true when it comes to girls/women from the north.

Klevius will teach you more about this scenario later on but in the meantime he suggests you read the Finnish/Karelian epic Kalevala where

Louhi is a "wicked queen" with magical power of the land known as Pohjola (the North). Louhi promises her eldest and most magnificent maiden daughter to the smith Ilmarinen if he forges a Sampo (or Sammas) which was a magical artifact constructed by Ilmarinen that brought riches and good fortune to its holder.

Klevius wrote:

Friday, March 25, 2016

Klevius' Finland-Swedish Hobbit story

The Dragon of Evil, Tolkien, and Moomin Mum

 The Dragon of Evil in the Tolkien calendar by Tove Jansson

Everyone (except islamist muslims) seem to agree that islamism is evil. However, many, especially politicians and muslims, claim that islam is "a great and peaceful religion". From this we may conclude that islamism contains both islam and evil in an inseparable connection which poses the question how islam could possibly be without evil. Even more so when considering that the original spread of islam during more than hundred years (before it settled as sultanates simply sponging on slave business - the so called "golden age") was completely based on evil religiously "justified" robbery, slaughtering, raping and enslavement of the "infidels". Islam's problem is it foundation in evil medieval parasitism that it has now brought to the modern society.

The twisted logic that evil islam should be blinked as "islamism" has led to a variety of incomprehensible stand points. For example and ironically, because of muslim terrorists muslims now ask for extra protection against "anti-muslim sentiments" - on top of the general protection already in place. Why? Does this mean that non-muslim right-wing politicians also should get extra protection because of right-wing extremists? However, the worst twist of all is by far the Saudi based and steered (by the Saudi dictator family) all muslim's world organization OIC and its sharia declaration via UN.

 Klevius has no knowledge about J R Tolkien's view on islam. However, Klevius is convinced that J R Tolkien would have shared Klevius definition of evil based on Human Rights equality.

J R Tolkien's main hero since he was a boy and throughout his entire life was Kullervo in the Finnish epic Kalevala. Many characteristics of Kullervo can also easily be traced in Beowulf and Hamlet both of whom were Scandinavians from a time when Fennoscandia was known as Kvenland (see further down). This period is called Vendel time after a small village near Uppsala in eastern Sweden which at that time was populated by Finns and some old Nordic speaking bi-lingual "Finland-Swedes" (see more about this further down).

Klevius is convinced that Tove Jansson would have full heartedly approved of Tolkien's choice of such an ambiguous hero as Kullervo.

The official Tolkien calendar of 2016 (left) is illustrated by Finland-Swedish Tove Jansson (aka Moomin Mum).

Tove Jansson has also illustrated Swedish and Finnish books by Tolkien (right). However, she is most famous for her Moomin books and illustrations.

Klevius wrote:

Sunday, August 10, 2014

Finland-Swedish Moomin Mum Tove Jansson 100 years

Back then Hitler (the Germans) cried for more cake - today islam (the muslims) do the same!

A brave caricature, 'more cake' was made by Tove Jansson in Finland during a time when Hitler (the Germans) were considered friend of Finland in its war against Stalin's communist Soviet-union.

Here Tove Jansson with her longtime partner Tuulikki Pietilä


Tove Marika Jansson (9 August 1914 – 27 June 2001) was a Swedish-speaking novelist, painter, illustrator and comic strip author from Finland. For her contribution as a children's writer she received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966.

Tove Jansson is best known as the author of the Moomin books for children and the astonishing The True Deceiver for adults. The first Moomin book, The Moomins and the Great Flood, appeared in 1945, i.e. the same year Astrid Lindgren, an other world famous Swedish speaking author, published her first book about the Tomboyish Pippi Longstocking.

Like Klevius, Tove Jansson belongs to the tiny bilingual Finland-Swedish minority. In fact, access to her summer house on the pic passes a nearby place where Klevius used to live, neighboring a carpenter who used to build Moomin furnitures for Moominland.

However, unlike Klevius, Tove Jansson never had kids. It's even alleged that she felt slightly uncomfortable with kids. So where Klevius has been a family man in practice, Tove Jansson created her family environment as a fiction.

For more on this topic do visit Klevius' Love Letter to Edith Södergran (an other world famous Finland-Swede).

The little bright Hobbit girl and the giant blonde warrior

 There seems to be no way of avoiding the fact that the first truly intelligent modern humans arose in northern Eurasia. The art and genetic tracks (see below) are more than convincing albeit not yet visibly presented as such other than on Klevius book, blogs and sites so far (though the field is slowly but inevitably moving towards Klevius). 


 The people who got the new brain set up were short in stature as most Siberian people were until recently. However, when Seima-Turbino like phenomenons started (possibly even long before Seima-Turbino) big guys who had become blond in the north hunted for cute mongolic looking girls (compare Kalevala). Some of those girls possessed still a great chunk of the original super brain (compare the Denisova cave etc) so some of the kids produced with the blond giants turned up really smart. Their smartness together with a strong physical constitution in a sparsely populated river way landscape with small villages/camps constituted an ideal environment for nomadic robbery. And after some time some of these guys had collected enough financial and man power to go further south. Klevius will in detail explain this development later. Suffice to say that this is also the explanationary basis for why the Goths from the north managed to conquer the whole of Europe.



Klevius wrote:

Saturday, June 20, 2015

Klevius Midsummer quiz: How come that Klevius can read Beowulf but modern Brits can not?!

Klevius question to BBC: Why so much focus on Muhammad and so little on Beowulf?

The epic poem Beowulf, the masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon literature, was composed in pre-Viking time by an anonymous poet. It tells the story of a Scandinavian hero whose feats include battles with the fearsome monster Grendel and a fire-breathing dragon. It survives in a single manuscript dating from around 1000 AD. In form (e.g. alliteration) and content it follows much of  the Finnish Kalevala (pictured below). Not the least as how it's influenced by later Christian material.

The simple answer is that as a Finland-Swede Klevius happens to master not only Swedish and Finnish but also old Finland-Swedish dialects - and in an extension most old wordings based on Old Nordic (aka Old Norse) over an area covering all the Nordic countries (incl. Gotland) plus Netherlands, England, Scotland plus most of the north Atlantic islands east of Iceland.

In the 1990s when Klevius studied English at Stockholm University they offered a video recording of a play based on thousand year old English texts. To Klevius astonishment he immediately recognized  many familiarities with the  East-Nyland dialects Klevius had grown up with. So when two Norwegian linguists a couple of years ago stated that English is a Scandinavian language Klevius applauded them.

So what does this have to do with Midsummer? Well, it's not just linguistics but a load of other familiarities as well, not to mention the fire feasts which may even be traced back to the Celts. And remember that much/most pre-Christian cultural influences are shared within all the Nordic countries.

For a background take a look at Kvenland: