Note 796 — Chapter XII · —Continents And Their Peninsulas

The northern wall of the Apennines and the outpost barrier of the Alps have combined to protect peninsular Italy from extensive ethnic infusions from the direction of the continent. This portion of the country shows therefore, as the anthropological maps attest, a striking uniformity of race. It has been a melting-pot in which foreign elements, filtering through the breaches of the Apennines or along the southern coast, have been fused into the general population under the isolating and cohesive influences of a peninsular environment.796 The population of the Iberian Peninsula is even more unified, probably the most homogeneous in Europe. Here the long-headed Mediterranean race is found in the same purity as in island Corsica and Sardinia.797 Spain's short line of contact with France and its sharp separation by the unbroken wall of the Pyrenees robs the peninsula of any distinctly continental section, and consequently of any transitional area of race and culture; hence the unity of Spain as opposed to that twofold balanced diversity which we find in Italy and India. The Balkan Peninsula, on the other hand, owing to the great predominance of its continental section and the confused relief of the country, has not protected its distinctively peninsular or Greek section from the southward migrations of Slavs, Albanians, Wallachians, and other continental peoples.798 It has been like a big funnel with a small mouth; the pressure from above has been very great. Hellas and even the Peloponnesus have had their peninsularity impaired and their race mixed, owing to the predominant continental section to the north.