Three Tribes - Three Body Types

People with  European origin are a genetic mix of three tribes: hunter-gatherers, pastoralists (herders) and farmers.

I have argued that due to assortative mating these thee tribes have kept many personality traits (such as high conscientiousness for farmers) within their “neurotribe”, which correspond roughly to the Myers-Briggs groups. These groups are shown in the diagram and include Helen Fisher’s terminology of dating/mating patterns:

Not only personality traits could be prevalent in one group due to assortative mating, but all kinds of genetic traits.

Body types have long been theorized to have a connection to temperament. The first comprehensive system of constitutional psychology was proposed by American psychologist William H. Sheldon (1940). According to Sheldon, the ectomorph personality is anxious, self-conscious, artistic, thoughtful, quiet, and private. They enjoy intellectual stimulation and feel uncomfortable in social situation.

Anybody familiar with MBTI types knows that this description sounds very much like intuitives (N-types). Ectomorphs are typically late bloomers (late puberty) and have lightweight body types, which would have been ideal for hunting in our past.

Early farmers would have required very robust and strong body types fit for the hard work they had to do (endomorph) and pastoralists would have the most athletic body types due to increased walking/running and sexual competition (faster life-history strategy).

Mesomorph types have been associated with early puberty and ectomorph types with late puberty. This also corresponded the respective life-history strategies of our herder vs hunter-gatherer ancestors. 

Body type might be genetically more mixed among the three neurotribes as the body types themselves might not have a very high priority in assortative mating. However, that remains an open question for research.

Of course, things aren't always that simple. Many of the last hunter-gatherers are ectomorph: San, Hadza, and Australian Aborigines. The Inuit have hardly anything resembling an ectomorph body type.  

On the other hand, ectomorph body type is also common among the Tuareg and other African pastoralists. So, clearly other factors, like geography and climate, are also important. 

  

The above maps contrasts the spread of farming (Niger-Congo languages) with the presence/absence of ectomorph body type (yellow/grey areas) in Africa. 

Interestingly, in Ayurveda the three dosha types match really closely with the three body types and beyond that with psychological traits as well. Kahpa ~ farmer, pitta ~ pastoralist and vata ~ hunter-gatherer.