About

About this atlas

This website illustrates different anthropological types of the pre-colonial world.

Two levels of detail

basic types (the meta level)

209

local varieties (detailed)

The meta level describes broad types once called human “subraces”. The detailed level shows more than 200 local varieties. Distributions refer to the year 1500, before colonisation and globalisation.

Reading the distribution maps

Common The type is typical of the region’s native population.
Occasional The type is found regularly but is not dominant.
Rare The type appears only occasionally among individuals.

Notes from the original site

There are two levels of detail: On the meta-level 38 basic types are described, that were sometimes called human "subraces". On the detailed level more than 200 local varieties are shown. Please note that the maps and most descriptions refer to the distribution around the year 1500 before the processes of colonisation and globalisation. The yellow color indicates that a type is common, the dark yellow that it is occasionally found, and the black that it is rarely found. For more details, see the methodological section.

Provenance

The material has a longer lineage than it appears. The original site was humanphenotypes.com, compiled by an unknown author from the 20th-century anthropological typologies and literature cited throughout this atlas (the .com watermark is still visible on many portraits). After it shut down, a third party faithfully recreated it at humanphenotypes.net — the version mirrored here.

This is a modern rebuild of that recreation, reproducing its content, images and academic sources with a new interface. It is not affiliated with the original authors.