Why are Greek gods and goddesses portrayed in art as Caucasian with blonde hair?

Question

When Greeks didn't have blonde hair and white skin?

Answer 1

There were quite a high percentage of the Greek population who had red or blonde hair ,with blue eyes and pale skin.Alexander the Great came from a Macedonian family.
The early Greeks looked much different to their modern day counterparts.
The shorter,stockier built ,dark haired olive skinned Greek population developed later.During the long periods of Turkish invasion and control of Greece.
Pale skin and fair or red hair were much favoured in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean,as far as Egypt.
Where a number of the late Ptolemies, the last Pharaohs of Egypt. Were proud of their Caucasian looks.
It was seen as proof you belonged to the line of Alexander The Great.
This popularity for Caucasian features was most common among the powerful ruling classes.
So became,very likely instrumental in the development of the looks for depicting characters of the Greek myths. For it would please the rich and powerful classes to see Gods and Goddesses with the same similar features,hair colour and skin tone as themselves.
The artists,would have been only too willing to depict them as such because of the popularity.
In the Royal Turkish harems it was fashionable to have wives and concubines who had Caucasian features and pale skin. One of the most famous and powerful being Roxanne.
The dark or black haired individual with olive skin, was more likely to be a slave.
These had been brought from areas now referred to as the Middle East,including the countries of Palestine,Israel,Lebanon, Iran and Iraq.

Answer 2

The Doric Greeks -were- caucasian, and not nearly as olive-skinned as their descendants have since become. The Dorians, like the Celts and Germans, came from the steppes of central Asia, which in that pre-classical era was peopled not by the "asiatic" peoples who now dominate it, but by light-skinned caucasians.

Modern Greeks are the product of three thousand years of mixing with the many peoples who settled in the Mediterranean, including the Turks, Arabs, Semites, Phoenicians, Persians, etc. A significant percentage of these groups exhibited the darker, olive skin associated with the modern Near East.

Answer 3

Aphrodite You`re most like Aphrodite. Most people just know her as being the Goddess of Beauty and Love, but there`s so much more than that. You recieved this result because not only are you beautiful inside and out, but you`re rare, different. You`re not the most loyal of all Goddesses, you had many affairs. You can be decieving and sly but people can`t seem to get enough of you. Aphrodite`s birth was never known for sure. Some say her father was Zeus, others say she was born from the sea..(keep an open mind here.) You make enemies easily..stop stealing other women`s men. Geez. haha, I don't think it's accurate at all! But it is interesting, thanks :) edit: I took a similar quiz on another sight just because I was curious and I got Demeter, which I think is much more fitting: "You are an Earth Mother, provider of delicious food and beautiful children. You prefer the company of the young, but you have a decided wanderlust, which makes being tied down lead to periods of depression. You are conscientious, law-abiding, and spiritual."

Answer 4

there are olive skinned Caucasians with blond hair out there. Wasn't Alexander the great supposed to have been light haired? I read somewhere that he had inadvertently ended up leaving a lot of his soldiers in the lands he went through and there are descendants today that are Blond with blue eyes.

Answer 5

The way a people portrays their gods is an ideal picture of themselves. So, you might probably presume that a people which pictures its gods as Caucasian and blond-haired, should have been the same way also...
Are you really sure about what you've said about the ANCIENT Greeks? Maybe you were thinking of today's Greeks?

Answer 6

i dont know maybe back then thats how they looked or some of the greeks looked and the people beleaved caucasian blonde hair people looked beautiful plus i dont think th greeks had "black" slaves so if they had not been use to seeing black people they wouldnt make there gods to look black just like how black people portray jessus to be black so who is to say anyone is wrong you and everyone elese is intitled to beleav whatever he or she wants theres no wrong or right answer on this. how do you really know they all didnt have blonde hair and white skin? not all mexican are dark iv seen blonde hair and white mexicans

Answer 7

Well obviously that is the way a perfect a person was portrayed and back when whoever was drawing it they would not have used Black people because they were slaves, and no one really knew about asian people and Spanish and latin looking people came along later in time after the Romans and Greeks.

Answer 8

that was considered a sign of great beauty in the greek culture. its kind of like how blonde hair and blue eyes are revered in the asian cultures.

Answer 9

Blonde hair and white skin was beautiful to them, and was a sign of beauty.
-mumble-
Personally, I think brunettes are better.

Answer 10

and they still dont, funny isnt it. the people who wrote all the stories were europeans and they saw the all white statues and simply chose to make them like themselves.