Note 850 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

The uniformity in cranial type prevailing all over the British Isles is amazing; it is greater than in either Spain or Scandinavia. The cephalic indices range chiefly between 77 and 79, a restricted variation as compared with the ten points which represents the usual range for Central Europe, and the thirteen between the extremes of 75 and 88 found in France and Italy.850 Japan stands in much the same ethnic relation to Asia as Britain to Europe. She has absorbed Aino, Mongolian, Malay and perhaps Polynesian elements, but by reason of her isolation has been left free to digest these at her leisure, so that her population is fairly well assimilated, though evidences of the old mixture can be discerned.851 In Corsica and Sardinia a particularly low cephalic index, dropping in some communes to 73, and a particularly short stature point to a rare purity of the Mediterranean race,852 and indicate the maintenance here of one ethnic type, despite the intermittent intrusion of various less pure stocks from the Italian mainland, Africa, Phoenicia, Arabia, and Spain. The location of the islands off the main routes of the basin, their remoteness from shore, and the strong spirit of exclusiveness native to the people,853 bred doubtless from their isolation, have combined to reduce the amount of foreign intermixture.