The inhabitants of the Near East, North Africa and the Indian subcontinent have been grouped together here under the name Tndo- Mediterranean’. They have much in common physically, though there are also differences. We include the dark Hamites and Indo-Dravidians along with Egyptians, Kuwaitis, and Libyans. Even within India itself, Guha (1944) distinguished 51 different ethnic groups. However, as far as child growth is concerned, it seems that the principal dissimilarities are brought about by socioeconomic differences rather than by minor ethnic variations. Mediterranean peoples dwelling on the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea have already been considered in Chapter 2, dealing with Europeans.

The growth studies

As can be seen in Table 7, data from these population groups are not numerous. From Egypt there is a growth study of the Egyptian Nubians (El-Nofely, 1978) who were resettled after the construction of the High Dam south of Aswan City. Whereas formerly they lived in small villages, they now live in urban centers. Two groups speak dialects of the Nubian language: the Kenouz and the Fededji; the third group are Arabic-speaking. There are new studies from mostly Arabic-speaking peoples in rural Khartoum (Sukkar et al., 1979), from schoolchildren in Libya (Abounaja & Gilmour, 1985), from infants in Israel (Palti et al., 1981, 1982) and from groups in various areas in India. These latter comprise children in private schools (Sidhu, Bhatragar & Dubey, 1982; P. Malhotra, unpubl.) and another group of lower socioeconomic school children (Singh, Sidhu & Malhotra, 1987) both in Patiala City, Punjab; infants in Chandigarh, Punjab (Bhalla, Kaul & Kumar, 1986); boys in Calcutta (Pakrasi et al., 1988) and Bod boys of Ladakh (Malik & Singh, 1978).