The Pamirid race, also Pamir-Fergana race (Russian Памиро-ферганская раса, named for the Pamir range and the Fergana valley), is the most Eastern subrace of the Europid race, a racial category is now considered to be obsolete. It was said to be common in Central Asia, represented mostly by the Tajiks, Uyghurs[1] and the Pamir people and Uzbeks. Characterized by brachycephalic skull, dark hair, white skin (these characteristics are absent in the Pamir people and the mountain Tajiks), narrow protruding nose and fairly strong development of the tertiary hair cover.[2]
During the Bronze Age, the Pamir-Fergana type was widely represented on the territory of Central Asia among the Indo-European population.
In the late 19th and first three decades of the 20th century the most characteristic representatives of this race, the population of the Western Pamir, was attributed to the Eastern branch of the Alpine race. But in the early second decade of the 20th century, appeared a classification, that distinguishes this type as an independent race, standing in the same row with Armenoid, Dinaric, and Alpine races. Such theories were joined to the Soviet researchers of Central Asia in the 20-30-s.
In Le Razze e i popoli della terra, Renato Biasutti offers the Armenoid as a sub-type of the Pamirian (Anatolico-Pamirian).
According to Ginzburg (1966),[3] the Pamir-Fergana race was developed from intermixture of the two other Central Asian types: the Andronovo, which went through the process of gracilization (reduction of prominence of facial features), and a Central Asian variant of Mediterranean that became brachycephalic.[3] According to Andrianov (1969, 1991), with the transition of Central Asian peoples from nomadic to agricultural lifestyle, parallel processes of anthropological mixing, on the one hand, brachycephalization and gracilization, on the other, could have occurred here.[citation needed] According to Khodjaev (1981), the Pamir-Fergana race has no ancient origin and is a result of intermixture between different races.[citation needed]
According to L.T. Yablonski, at the end of the 1st millennium BC, as a result of centuries of mixing processes among a wide variety of anthropological components, and above all, among descendants of hypomorphic, high-headed Europids and descendants of meso-brachycephalic, mesomorphic Europids with a slightly flattened facial skeleton the foundations for the plain version of the Pamir-Fergana race was created.[4]