What ethnicity were the ancient spartans?

Question

I don't know if that's the right word. But spartans were doric, so were they more olive complected or what? How might they have looked?

Answer 1

They were Spartan for crying out loud!

Now I don't want to tar you with any particular brush but it strikes me as particularly pointless to talk about "ethnicity" all the time as our North American cousins appear inclined to.  Two things:

- Surely we have seen so much conflict and suffering caused by people talking all the time about their "ethnicity" rather than their shared values, culture and history.

- WTF is "ethnicity" anyway?  How do you define someone as "olive complected" - my wife who's family have lived in the same part of southern england for seven generations would certainly be considered "caucasian" or "white" yet her skin is a darker shade than at least two friends of mine who would be considered "black" or "african".  My own beautiful nose is broader than many people who would be considered "black" and my tight curly hair could mark me out as having that "ethnicity", while my pale white, nearly blue skin surely mark me out as the nordic viking I so surely am.

I don't want to end up getting reported but to paraphrase my dear friend Ollie

"I hate using words like wanker in this forum, but with questions like these I don't have any fkn choice".

Why don't you get back to asking whether god loves texas more than florida and count the number of angels on the head of a pin.

Answer 2

Dorian is a branch of Indo-Europen family, which could look as diverse as the Slavs, or the modren Greeks. I think Spartans would look close to how the were represented im the movie 300. Neither too dark, nor too light skinned.

Answer 3

From what I've read, the Dorians derive from around Macedonia.

My guess is that they were of the same racial type as Alexander

and his army, whatever type that is.

Answer 4

Spartans are Greek. That's why Sparta is a GREEK city-state. However, they are known as Dorian Greek though because there are three other tribes of Greek and Dorian is one of the four Greek tribes.

Answer 5

Sparta was part of ancient Greece.  They were very athletic, with larger builds.  Other than that, they looked like the typical Greek person- darker skin, eyes and hair.

Answer 6

Greeks.... theirs was a warring tribe so they pretty much looked like warriors.. may be tall, strong but yes looks are decpetive. They only lived their lives to fight and wage wars, there was nothing to them apart from that. The Athenians were much better off. They were strong but also creative, artistic...

In Athens they had adopted a holistic approach to life... Spartan view world in a very monotonous manner.