Ethnicity Guesser

Based on historical distributions from ~1500 years ago. Estimates appearance, not DNA ancestry or personal identity.

Phenotype

Pre Nilotid Phenotype - Face Features & Origin

Ancient type with Proto Nilotid traits, today still found in the border region of Sudan and Ethiopia. The entry below collects the Pre Nilotid composite face, its documented distribution around 11.3° N, 34.0° E in East Africa, its physical characteristics, the research history behind the name, and the academic references that support all of it.

Average Face

The Pre Nilotid composite below is not a photograph of a real person. Historical anthropologists aligned multiple individual portraits from the Pre Nilotid reference population and averaged them into one image, so recurring structures — skull outline, nose form, lip thickness, brow position — dominate while individual idiosyncrasies cancel out.

Pre Nilotid phenotype average face composite

Composite source: Human Phenotypes — Pre Nilotid

Geographic Distribution

Pre Nilotid is documented across East Africa, with its historical reference center near 11.3° N, 34.0° E. The coordinates mark where the type was most characteristic roughly 1500 years ago; population movements since then have scattered and blended the distribution far beyond that point.

Reference center: 11.3° N, 34.0° E — East Africa. Historical distribution documented circa 500 CE; modern distributions differ substantially.

Physical Characteristics

Black skin and kinky, sometimes tight-curly hair.

  • Medium height, brachyskelic, but with a longer torso than Nilotids proper, ectomorph to mesomorph
  • Mesocephalic with a very wide, flat face, and a great interorbital distance
  • Mildly platyrrhine nose
  • The nasal root is depressed and wide, the forehead steep, the chin marked
  • Prognathy is moderate

Historical Background

Ancient type with Proto Nilotid traits, today still found in the border region of Sudan and Ethiopia. Common in Kwama, Uduk, Gumuz, Mao, and related people. More mixed in Berta and other Nilotics. A link to early Ethiopids is possible. Many of these tribes have suffered war and displacement and are now dispersed all over the world.

Research History & Naming

Typological names were coined, contested, and renamed repeatedly across the 20th century, and Pre Nilotid is no exception. The extract below records the researchers who defined Pre Nilotid, the alternative labels it accumulated, and where the modern consensus settled.

The type was named and described by Grottanelli (1940) and Biasutti (1967) . The metrics and photographs were well documented by Cipriani (1942) . Genetically they seem to stand closer to Ethiopids than most Nilotids ( Pagani, 2012 ).

Comparison With Nearby Phenotypes

The five phenotypes whose documented centers lie closest to Pre Nilotid, ranked by great-circle distance. They are the types players most often confuse with Pre Nilotid in the quiz, precisely because their distributions overlap.

PhenotypeRegionDistanceDistinguishing trait
ShillukidEast Africa276 kmBlack skin, usually kinky, sometimes tight-curly hair.
East SudanidEast Africa369 kmDark brown, sometimes black skin, usually kinky hair.
Central EthiopidEast Africa519 kmMedium to dark reddish-brown skin, often tight-curly hair.
DinkaidEast Africa529 kmBlack skin and kinky hair.
Proto EthiopidEast Africa574 kmDark, sometimes medium brown skin and kinky-curly hair.

Pre Nilotid in the Game

Pre Nilotid is one of the faces that can appear in Classic Daily and Challenge Mode. When it does, the winning pin lands near 11.3° N, 34.0° E in East Africa — and because the scoring decays with distance, recognizing the region matters more than pixel-perfect placement.

Play Classic DailyPractice in Challenge Mode

Pre Nilotid Phenotype FAQ

Where does the Pre Nilotid phenotype come from?
Historical sources center the Pre Nilotid phenotype on 11.3° N, 34.0° E (East Africa). Treat that as a rough anchor: the type appeared across a wider surrounding area — its nearest documented neighbors, Shillukid and East Sudanid, sit 276 and 369 km from the reference point — and its present-day distribution no longer matches the historical map.
What does the Pre Nilotid phenotype look like?
The composite emphasizes recurring traits: black skin and kinky, sometimes tight-curly hair. The full trait list for Pre Nilotid appears in the physical characteristics section above.
Is the Pre Nilotid phenotype a race or a nationality?
No. Phenotypes like Pre Nilotid are descriptive averages, not ancestry groups. Pre Nilotid is one of several types documented in and around East Africa — see the comparison table above — and the same individual can carry traits associated with several of them at once. The Pre Nilotid entry describes a statistical pattern, not a group of people and not a nationality.
How does Pre Nilotid appear in the game?
When the Pre Nilotid face comes up in Classic Daily or Challenge Mode, you pin the world map where you believe the type is historically most common, and the score decays with your distance to 11.3° N, 34.0° E. Fair warning: the nearest other entry in our dataset, Shillukid, sits just 276 km away, so this face rewards precise placement — the right country alone is not always enough.

References & Literature

Every claim on this page traces back to the sources below — the researchers who defined, measured, and argued over the Pre Nilotid type. The originals behind the Pre Nilotid entry are worth consulting directly.

  • Grottanelli, V.L. 1940. Missione etnografica nel Uollega occidentale: I, I Mao, Rome.
  • Biasutti, R. 1967 (1941). Le Razze e i Popoli della terra. 4th Ed. Vol 1-4. U.T.E.T., Torino.
  • Cipriani, L. 1942. Sui Berta, Coma e Mao dell'ovest etiopico. Riv. studi etiopici 2.
  • Pagani et al. 2012. Ethiopian Genetic Diversity Reveals Linguistic Stratification and Complex Influences on the Ethiopian Gene Pool. The American Journal of Human Genetics 91, 1, 83-96.

Related Phenotypes

More entries from the same region of the historical map as Pre Nilotid, each with its own composite and trait profile.

  • Shillukid

    East Africa · 276 km away

    Nilotid variety similar to Dinkaid, but with slightly modified features. Typically found in the savannahs of the Upper Nile of South Sudan. ...

  • East Sudanid

    East Africa · 369 km away

    Isolated Sudanid variety of the Nuba mountains in Kurdufan / Sudan, native to the region at least since the Neolithic. Has resisted historic...

  • Central Ethiopid

    East Africa · 519 km away

    Ethiopid subtype of the central Ethiopian highlands and their surroundings. Found in its purest form among Oromos. Also in other Cushitic sp...

  • Dinkaid

    East Africa · 529 km away

    Nilotid proper that shows the most pronounced Nilotic features: the tallest, most long-legged and one of the darkest phenotypes in the world...

  • Proto Ethiopid

    East Africa · 574 km away

    Ancient type that inhabited the Southwestern Eritrean lowlands prior to the arrival of Ethiopids, and possibly resembles early "Out of Afric...

Further Reading

Background articles from the blog that explain where the Pre Nilotid type fits, how these composites are built, and what a face can and cannot tell you.