Anthropologist supported casting of black actors in series about Sweden

Russian anthropologist and non-fiction author Stanislav Drobyshevsky expressed his support for racially diverse casting for the Stone Age episodes in the new series “The History of Sweden.” Recently, footage from the first episodes of this ambitious project, which covers the history of Sweden from prehistoric times to the present, appeared on the Internet. In the scenes telling about the primitive inhabitants of the future Sweden, viewers saw actors with a skin tone uncharacteristic for Scandinavians, writes ridus.ru.

As Newsweek notes, this approach to casting caused sharp criticism in Sweden and did not go unnoticed on the RuNet, where users expressed their opinions regarding the “natural Swedes.” However, Stanislav Drobyshevsky, an expert in the field of anthropology, shared his opinion with Reedus, saying that dark-skinned people in Scandinavia during the Stone Age are quite consistent with the latest data of anthropological science.

“In fact, in the Stone Age, a dark-skinned population actually lived in Scandinavia, and only about seven thousand years ago the first light-skinned representatives appeared. Even in the Bronze Age, half the population retained this skin tone. Complete whitewashing only occurred in the Iron Age. So here, oddly enough, the creators of the series did absolutely the right thing,” Drobyshevsky emphasized.

Previously, he also expressed the opinion that the ban on research in
field of racial studies led to ideological contradictions and racial
conflicts in the West. He noted that the lack of a scientific concept and
perspectives on human biological diversity and its relationship with
social sphere leads to a variety of ideological positions,
including both racist views and their opposite forms