- Research
On May 10 ten long-form articles went live, about 13,438 words in all, each grounded in peer-reviewed research. They explain the measurements the catalog uses: skin tone scales, hair, eye color, body composition, stature and more.
Each article opens with a real question and answers it with specific numbers and the studies they come from. The set includes an inventory of every classification scale in the catalog and a guide to reading a catalog page, so the articles double as the catalog's field manual.
Each article links into the catalog as worked examples. A reader can move from the definition of a scale straight to the peoples it describes.
Under the hood
- Skin tone: the Fitzpatrick I to VI scale, the ITA° angle derived from the CIELAB color space, undertone classification, and von Luschan as a historical scale.
- Eye color: the single HERC2 variant behind blue eyes, population color distributions and epicanthic-fold morphology.
- Hair: Andre Walker texture typing, MC1R and red hair, and Solomon Islands blondism, driven by a TYRP1 variant distinct from European blondism.
- Body and stature: the Heath-Carter somatotype, measured-height data from the NCD-RisC consortium and the secular trend, and foot length on the ISO 9407 Mondopoint system.
- Every scale is cited to its foundational study with year and journal, and measured data is kept distinct from self-report.
- long-form articles
- 10
- words in all
- ~13,438
See it on the site
Sources and open data
- Fitzpatrick scale Wikipedia
- CIELAB color space Wikipedia
- Von Luschan's chromatic scale Wikipedia
- HERC2 Wikipedia
- Epicanthic fold Wikipedia
- Epicanthic fold Britannica
- Andre Walker Hair Typing System Wikipedia
- Melanocortin 1 receptor Wikipedia
- Melanesians Wikipedia
- TYRP1 Wikipedia
- Somatotype and constitutional psychology Wikipedia
- Somatotype and constitutional psychology Britannica
- Human height Wikipedia
- Human height Britannica
- Fitzpatrick (1988), The Validity and Practicality of Sun-Reactive Skin Types I Through VI Archives of Dermatology
- Chardon, Cretois and Hourseau (1991), Skin colour typology and suntanning pathways International Journal of Cosmetic Science
- Eiberg et al. (2008), Blue eye color in humans may be caused by a perfectly associated founder mutation in a regulatory element located within the HERC2 gene inhibiting OCA2 expression Human Genetics
- Kenny et al. (2012), Melanesian Blond Hair Is Caused by an Amino Acid Change in TYRP1 Science
- Heath and Carter (1967), A modified somatotype method American Journal of Physical Anthropology
- NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (2016), A century of trends in adult human height eLife
Related build notes
- May 7, 2026196 ways to describe a human body, each tied to a published scale22 controlled phenotype vocabularies: 196 dimensions, 853 defined terms and 113 references, with every dimension anchored to a published scale.
- May 7, 2026Open pipeline, methodology paper and a DOI: rebuild it yourselfThe code that builds the phenotype dataset is public under Apache 2.0, with a methodology paper and a Zenodo DOI, so anyone can rebuild and cite it.
- May 6, 202613,094 notable people and 5,668 photos read by a vision modelGroup pages gain Notable People linked to Wikipedia, and a vision model turns 5,668 reference photos into structured trait observations, each traceable.