PART II EUROPEAN RACES IN HISTORY
Reading edition
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I EOLITHIC MAN
Before considering the living populations of Europe we must give consideration to the extinct peoples that preceded them.
The science of anthropology is very recent—in its present form less than fifty years old—but it has already revolutionized our knowledge of the past and extended prehistory so that it is now measured not by thousands but by tens of thousands of years.
The history of man prior to the period of metals has been divided into ten or more subdivisions, many of them longer than the time covered by written records. Man has struggled up through the ages, to revert again and again into savagery and barbarism but apparently retaining each time something gained by the travail of his ancestors.
So long as there is in the world a freely breeding stock or race that has in it an inherent capacity for development and growth, mankind will continue to ascend until, possibly through the selection and regulation of breeding as intelligently applied as 98in the case of domestic animals, it will control its own destiny and attain moral heights as yet unimagined.
The impulse upward, however, is supplied by a very small number of nations and by a very small proportion of the population in such nations. The section of any community that produces leaders or genius of any sort is only a minute percentage. To utilize and adapt to human needs the forces and the raw materials of nature, to invent new processes, to establish new principles, and to elucidate and unravel the laws that control the universe call for genius. To imitate or to adopt what others have invented is not genius but mimicry.
This something which we call “genius” is not a matter of family, but of stock or strain, and is inherited in precisely the same manner as are the purely physical characters. It may be latent through several generations of obscurity and then flare up when the opportunity comes. Of this we have many examples in America. This is what education or opportunity does for a community; it permits in these rare cases fair play for development, but it is race, always race, that produces genius. An individual of inferior type or race may profit greatly by good environment. On the other hand, a member of a superior race in bad surroundings may, and very often does, sink to an extremely low level. While emphasizing the importance 99of race, it must not be forgotten that environment, while it does not alter the potential capacity of the stock, can perform miracles in the development of the individual.
This genius producing type is slow breeding and there is real danger of its loss to mankind. Some idea of the value of these small strains can be gained from the recent statistics which demonstrate that Massachusetts produces more than fifty times as much genius per hundred thousand whites as does Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi, although apparently the race, religion and environment, other than climatic conditions, are much the same, except for the numbing presence in the South of a large stationary Negro population.
The more thorough the study of European prehistory becomes, the more we realize how many advances of culture have been made and then lost. Our parents were accustomed to regard the overthrow of ancient civilization in the Dark Ages as the greatest catastrophe of mankind, but we now know that the classic period of Greece was preceded by similar dark ages caused by the Dorian invasions, that had overthrown the Homeric-Mycenæan culture, which in its turn had flourished after the destruction of its parent, the brilliant Minoan culture of Crete. Still earlier, some twelve thousand years ago, the Azilian Period of poverty and retrogression succeeded the wonderful achievements 100of the hunter-artists of the Upper Paleolithic.
The progress of civilization becomes evident only when immense periods are studied and compared, but the lesson is always the same, namely, that race is everything. Without race there can be nothing except the slave wearing his master’s clothes, stealing his master’s proud name, adopting his master’s tongue and living in the crumbling ruins of his master’s palace. Everywhere on the sites of ancient civilizations the Turk, the Kurd and the Bedouin camp; and Americans may well pause and consider the fate of this country which they, and they alone, founded and nourished with their blood. The immigrant ditch diggers and the railroad navvies were to our fathers what their slaves were to the Romans and the same transfer of political power from master to servant is taking place to-day.
Man’s place of origin was undoubtedly Asia. Europe is only a peninsula of the Eurasiatic continent and although the extent of its land area during the Pleistocene was much greater than at present, it is certain from the distribution of the various species of man, that the main races evolved in Asia, probably north of the great Himalayan range long before the centre of that continent was reduced to a series of deserts by progressive desiccation.
101The evidence based on man’s relatively large bulk, on the lack of the development of his fore limbs and particularly on his highly specialized foot structure all indicate that he has not been arboreal for a vast period of time, probably not since the end of the Miocene. The change of habitat from the trees to the ground may have been caused by a profound modification of climate, from moist to dry or from warm to cold, which in turn may have affected the food supply and compelled a more carnivorous diet.
Evidence of the location of the early evolution of man in Asia and in the geologically recent submerged area toward the southeast is afforded by the fossil deposits in the Siwalik hills of northern India; where the remains of primates have been found which were either ancestral or closely related to the four genera of living anthropoids and where we may confidently look for remains of the earliest human forms; and by the discovery in Java, which in Pliocene times was connected with the mainland over what is now the South China Sea, of the earliest known form of erect primate, the Pithecanthropus. This ape-like man is practically the “missing link,” being intermediate between man and the anthropoids and is generally believed to have been contemporary with the Günz glaciation of some 500,000 years ago, the first of the four great glacial advances in Europe.
102One or two species of anthropoid apes have been discovered in the Miocene of Europe which may possibly have been remotely related to the ancestors of man but when the archæological exploration of Asia shall be as complete and intensive as that of Europe it is probable that more forms of fossil anthropoids and new species of man will be found there.
Man existed in Europe during the second and third interglacial periods, if not earlier. We have his artifacts in the form of eoliths, at least as early as the second interglacial stage, the Mindel-Riss, of some 300,000 years ago. A single jaw found near Heidelberg is referred to this period and is the earliest skeletal evidence of man in Europe. From certain remarkable characters in this jaw, it has been assigned to a new species, Homo heidelbergensis.
Then follows a long period showing only scanty industrial relics and no known skeletal remains. Man was slowly and painfully struggling up from a culture phase where chance flints served his temporary purpose. This period, known as the Eolithic, was succeeded by a stage of human development where slight chipping and retouching of flints for his increasing needs led, after vast intervals of time, to the deliberate manufacture of tools. This Eolithic Period is necessarily extremely hazy and uncertain. Whether or not certain chipped or broken flints, called eoliths or dawn stones, were 103actually human artifacts or were the products of natural forces is, however, immaterial for man must have passed through such an eolithic stage.
The further back we go toward the commencement of this Eolithic culture, the more unrecognizable the flints necessarily become until they finally cannot be distinguished from natural stone fragments. At the beginning, the earliest man merely picked up a convenient stone, used it once and flung it away, precisely as an anthropoid ape would act to-day if he wanted to break the shell of a tortoise or crack an ostrich egg.
Man must have experienced the following phases of development in the transition from the prehuman to the human stage: first, the utilization of chance stones and sticks; second, the casual adaptation of flints by a minimum amount of chipping; third, the deliberate manufacture of the simplest implements from flint nodules; and fourth, the invention of new forms of weapons and tools in ever increasing variety.
Of the last two stages we have an extensive and clear record. Of the second stage we have in the eoliths intermediate forms ranging from flints that are evidently results of natural causes to flints that are clearly artifacts. The first and earliest stage, of course, could leave behind it no definite record and must in the present state of our knowledge rest on hypothesis.
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II PALEOLITHIC MAN
With the deliberate manufacture of implements from flint nodules, we enter the beginning of Paleolithic time and from here on our way is relatively clear. The successive stages of the Paleolithic were of great length but are each characterized by some improvement in the manufacture of tools. During long ages man was merely a tool making and tool using animal and, after all is said, that is about as good a definition as we can find to-day for the primate we call human.
The Paleolithic Period or Old Stone Age lasted from the somewhat indefinite termination of the Eolithic, some 150,000 years ago, to the Neolithic or New Stone Age, which began about 7000 B. C.
The Paleolithic falls naturally into three great subdivisions. The Lower Paleolithic includes the whole of the last interglacial stage with the subdivisions of the Pre-Chellean, Chellean and Acheulean; the Middle Paleolithic covers the whole of the last glaciation and is co-extensive with the Mousterian Period and the dominance of the Neanderthal 105species of man.[1] The Upper Paleolithic embraces all the postglacial stages down to the Neolithic and includes the subdivisions of the Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian and Azilian. During the entire Upper Paleolithic, except the short closing phase, the Cro-Magnon race flourished.
It is not until after the third severe period of great cold, known as the Riss glaciation, nor until we enter, some 150,000 years ago, the third and last interglacial stage of temperate climate, known as the Riss-Würm, that we find a definite and ascending series of culture. The Pre-Chellean, Chellean and Acheulean divisions of the Lower Paleolithic occupied the whole of this warm or rather temperate interglacial phase, which lasted nearly 100,000 years.
A shattered skull, a jaw and some teeth have been discovered recently in Sussex, England. These remains were attributed to the same individual, who was named the Piltdown Man. Owing to the extraordinary thickness of the skull and the simian character of the jaw, a new genus, Eoanthropus, the “dawn man,” was created and assigned to Pre-Chellean times. Some of the tentative restorations of the fragmentary bones make this skull altogether too modern and too capacious for a Pre-Chellean or even a Chellean.
106Further study and comparison with the jaws of other primates also indicate that the jaw belonged to a chimpanzee so that the genus Eoanthropus must now be abandoned and the Piltdown Man must be included in the genus Homo as at present constituted.
In any event the Piltdown Man is highly aberrant and, so far as our present knowledge goes, does not appear to be related to any other species of man found during the Lower Paleolithic. Future discoveries of the Piltdown type and for that matter of Heidelberg Man may, however, raise either or both of them to generic rank.
In later Acheulean times a new human species, very likely descended from the early Heidelberg Man of Eolithic times, appears on the scene and is known as the Neanderthal race. Many fossil remains of this type have been found.
The Neanderthaloids occupied the European stage exclusively, with the possible exception of the Piltdown Man, from the first appearance of man in Europe to the end of the Middle Paleolithic. The Neanderthals flourished throughout the entire duration of the last glacial advance known as the Würm glaciation. This period, known as the Mousterian, began about 50,000 years ago and lasted some 25,000 years.
The Neanderthal species disappears suddenly and completely with the advent of postglacial times, 107when, about 25,000 years ago, it was apparently supplanted or exterminated by a new and far higher race, the famous Cro-Magnons.
There may well have been during Mousterian times races of man in Europe other than the Neanderthaloids, but of them we have no record. Among the numerous remains of Neanderthals, however, we do find traces of distinct types showing that this race in Europe was undergoing evolution and was developing marked variations in characters.
Neanderthal Man was an almost purely meat eating hunter, living in caves or rather in their entrances. He was dolichocephalic and not unlike existing Australoids, although not necessarily of black skin and was, of course, in no sense a Negro.
The skull was characterized by heavy superorbital ridges, a low and receding forehead, protruding and chinless under jaw and the posture was imperfectly erect. This race was widely spread and rather numerous. Some of its blood may have trickled down to the present time and occasionally one sees a skull apparently of the Neanderthal type. The best skull of this type ever seen by the writer belonged to a very intellectual professor in London, who was quite unconscious of his value as a museum specimen. In the old black breed of Scotland the overhanging brows and deep-set eyes are suggestive of this race.
108Along with other ancient and primitive racial remnants, ferocious gorilla-like living specimens of Paleolithic man are found not infrequently on the west coast of Ireland and are easily recognized by the great upper lip, bridgeless nose, beetling brow with low growing hair and wild and savage aspect. The proportions of the skull which give rise to this large upper lip, the low forehead and the superorbital ridges are certainly Neanderthal characters. The other traits of this Irish type are common to many primitive races. This is the Irishman of caricature and the type was very frequent in America when the first Irish immigrants came in 1846 and the following years. It seems, however, to have almost disappeared in this country. If, as it is claimed, the Neanderthals have left no trace of their blood in living populations, these Firbolgs are derived from some very ancient and primitive race as yet undescribed.
In the Upper Paleolithic, which began after the close of the fourth and last glaciation, about 25,000 years ago, the Neanderthal race was succeeded by men of very modern aspect, known as Cro-Magnons. The date of the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic is the first we can fix with accuracy and its correctness can be relied on within narrow limits. The Cro-Magnon race first appears in the Aurignacian subdivision of the Upper Paleolithic. Like the Neanderthals, they were dolichocephalic but with 109a cranial capacity superior to the average in existing European populations and a stature of very remarkable size.
It is quite astonishing to find that the predominant race in Europe 25,000 years ago, or more, was not only much taller, but had an absolute cranial capacity in excess of the average of the present population. The low cranial average of existing populations in Europe can be best explained by the presence of large numbers of individuals of inferior mentality. These defectives have been carefully preserved by modern charity, whereas in the savage state of society the backward members were allowed to perish and the race was carried on by the vigorous and not by the weaklings.
The high brain capacity of the Cro-Magnons is paralleled by that of the ancient Greeks, who in a single century gave to the world out of their small population much more genius than all the other races of mankind have since succeeded in producing in a similar length of time. Attica between 530 and 430 B. C. had an average population of about 90,000 freemen, and yet from this number were born no less than fourteen geniuses of the very highest rank. This would indicate a general intellectual status as much above that of the Anglo-Saxons as the latter are above the Negroes. The existence at these early dates of a very high 110cranial capacity and its later decline shows that there is no upward tendency inherent in mankind of sufficient strength to overcome obstacles placed in its way by stupid social customs.
All historians are familiar with the phenomenon of a rise and decline in civilization such as has occurred time and again in the history of the world but we have here in the disappearance of the Cro-Magnon race the earliest example of the replacement of a very superior race by an inferior one. There is great danger of a similar replacement of a higher by a lower type here in America unless the native American uses his superior intelligence to protect himself and his children from competition with intrusive peoples drained from the lowest races of eastern Europe and western Asia.
While the skull of the Cro-Magnon was long, the cheek bones were very broad and this combination of broad face with long skull constitutes a peculiar disharmonic type which occurs to-day only among the very highly specialized Esquimaux and one or two other unimportant groups.
Skulls of this particular type, however, are found in small numbers among existing populations in central France, precisely in the district where the fossil remains of this race were first discovered. These isolated Frenchmen probably represent the last lingering remnant of this splendid race of hunting savages.
111The Cro-Magnon culture is found around the basin of the Mediterranean, and this fact, together with the conspicuous absence in eastern Europe of its earliest phases, the lower Aurignacian, indicates that it entered Europe by way of north Africa, as its successors, the Mediterranean race, probably did in Neolithic times. There is little doubt that the Cro-Magnons originally developed in Asia and were in their highest stage of physical development at the time of their first appearance in Europe. Whatever change took place in their stature during their residence there seems to have been in the nature of a decline rather than of a further development.
There is nothing whatever of the Negroid in the Cro-Magnons and they are not in any way related to the Neanderthals, who represent a distinct and, save for the suggestions made above, an extinct species of man.
The Cro-Magnon race persisted through the entire Upper Paleolithic, during the periods known as the Aurignacian, Solutrean and Magdalenian, from 25,000 to 10,000 B. C. While it is possible that the blood of this race enters somewhat into the composition of the peoples of western Europe, its influence cannot be great and the Cro-Magnons—the Nordics of their day—disappear from view with the advent of the warmer climate of recent times.
112It has been suggested that, following the fading ice edge north and eastward through Asia into North America, they became the ancestors of the Esquimaux but certain anatomical objections are fatal to this interesting theory. No one, however, who is familiar with the culture of the Esquimaux and especially with their wonderful skill in bone and ivory carving, can fail to be struck with the similarity of their technique to that of the Cro-Magnons.
To the Cro-Magnon race the world owes the birth of art. Caverns and shelters are constantly unearthed in France and Spain, where the walls and ceilings are covered with polychrome paintings or with incised bas-reliefs of animals of the chase. A few clay models, sometimes of the human form, are also found, together with abundant remains of their chipped but unpolished stone weapons and tools. Certain facts stand out clearly, namely, that they were purely hunters and clothed themselves in furs and skins. They knew nothing of agriculture or of domestic animals, even the dog being probably as yet untamed and the horse regarded merely as an object of chase.
The question of their knowledge of the principle of the bow and arrow during the Aurignacian and Solutrean is an open one but there are definite indications of the use of the arrow, or at least the barbed dart, in early Magdalenian times and this 113weapon was well known in the succeeding Azilian Period.
The presence toward the end of this last period of quantities of very small flints called microliths has given rise to much controversy. It is possible that some of these microliths represent the tips of small poisoned arrows such as are now in very general use among primitive hunting tribes the world over. Certain grooves in some of the flint weapons of the Upper Paleolithic may also have been used for the reception of poison. It is highly probable that the immediate predecessors of the Azilians, the Cro-Magnons, perhaps the greatest hunters that ever lived, not only used poisoned darts but were adepts in trapping game by means of pitfalls and snares, precisely as do some of the hunting tribes of Africa to-day. Barbed arrowheads of flint or bone, such as were commonly used by the North American Indians, have not been found in Paleolithic deposits.
In the Solutrean Period the Cro-Magnons shared Europe with a new race known as the Brünn-Předmost, found in central Europe. This race is characterized by a long face as well as a long skull, and was, therefore, harmonic. This Brünn-Předmost race appears to have been well settled in the Danubian and Hungarian plains and this location indicates an eastern rather than a southern origin.
114Good anatomists have seen in this race the last lingering traces of the Neanderthaloids but it is more probable that we have here the first advance wave of the primitive forerunners of one of the modern European dolichocephalic races.
This new race was not artistic, but had great skill in fashioning weapons and possibly is associated with the peculiarities of Solutrean culture and the decline of art which characterizes that period. The artistic impulse of the Cro-Magnons which flourished so vigorously during the Aurignacian seems to be quite suspended during this Solutrean Period, but reappears in the succeeding Magdalenian times. This Magdalenian art is clearly the direct descendant of Aurignacian models and in this closing age of the Cro-Magnons all forms of Paleolithic art, carving, engraving, painting and the manufacture of weapons, reach their highest and final culmination.
Nine or ten thousand years may be assigned to the Aurignacian and Solutrean Periods and we may with considerable certainty give the minimum date of 16,000 B. C. as the beginning of Magdalenian time. Its entire duration can be safely set down at 6,000 years, thus bringing the final termination of the Magdalenian to 10,000 B. C. All these dates are extremely conservative and the error, if any, is in assigning too late and not too early a period to the end of Magdalenian times.
115At the close of the Magdalenian we enter upon the last period of Paleolithic times, the Azilian, which lasted from about 10,000 to 7,000 B. C., when the Upper Paleolithic, the age of chipped flints, definitely and finally ends in Europe. This period takes its name from the Mas d’Azil, or “House of Refuge,” a huge cavern in the eastern Pyrenees where the local Protestants took shelter during the persecutions. The extensive deposits in this cave are typical of the Azilian epoch and here certain marked pebbles may be the earliest known traces of symbolic writing, but true writing was probably not developed until the late Neolithic.
With the advent of this Azilian Period art entirely disappears and the splendid physical type of the Cro-Magnons is succeeded by what appear to have been degraded savages, who had lost the force and vigor necessary for the strenuous chase of large game and had turned to the easier life of fishermen.
In the Azilian the bow and arrow are in common use in Spain and it is well within the possibilities that the introduction and development of this new weapon from the South may have played its part in the destruction of the Cro-Magnons; otherwise it is hard to account for the disappearance of this race of large stature and great brain power.
The Azilian, also called the Tardenoisian in the north of France, was evidently a period of racial 116disturbance and at its close the beginnings of the existing races are found.
From the first appearance of man in Europe and for many tens of thousands of years down to some ten or twelve thousand years ago all known human remains are of dolichocephalic type.
In the Azilian Period appears the first round skull race. It comes clearly from the East. Later we shall find that this invasion of the forerunners of the existing Alpine race came from southwestern Asia by way of the Iranian plateau, Asia Minor, the Balkans and the valley of the Danube, and spread over nearly all of Europe. The earlier round skull invasions may as well have been infiltrations as armed conquests since apparently from that day to this the round skulls have occupied the poorer mountain districts and have seldom ventured down to the rich and fertile plains.
This new brachycephalic race is known as the Furfooz or Grenelle race, so called from the localities in Belgium and France where it was first discovered. Members of this round skull race have also been found at Ofnet in Bavaria where they occur in association with a dolichocephalic race, our first historic evidence of the mixture of contrasted races. The descendants of this Furfooz-Grenelle race and of the succeeding waves of invaders of the same brachycephalic type now 117occupy central Europe as Alpines and form the predominant peasant type in central and eastern Europe.
In this same Azilian Period there appear, coming this time from the South, the first forerunners of the Mediterranean race. The descendants of this earliest wave of Mediterraneans and their later reinforcements occupy all the coast and islands of the Mediterranean and are spread widely over western Europe. They can everywhere be identified by their short stature, slight build, long skull and brunet hair and eyes.
While during this Azilian-Tardenoisian Period these ancestors of two of the existing European races are appearing in central and southern Europe, a new culture phase, also distinctly Pre-Neolithic, was developing along the shores of the Baltic. It is known as Maglemose from its type locality in Denmark. It is believed to be the work of the first wave of the Nordic race which had followed the retreating glaciers northward over the old land connections between Denmark and Sweden to occupy the Scandinavian Peninsula. In the remains of this culture we find definite evidence of the domesticated dog.
With the appearance of the Mediterranean race the Azilian-Tardenoisian draws to its close and with it the entire Paleolithic Period. It is safe to assign for the end of the Paleolithic and the beginning of 118the Neolithic or Polished Stone Age, the date of 7,000 or 8,000 B. C.
The races of the Paleolithic Period, so far as we can judge from their remains, appear successively on the scene with all their characters fully developed. The evolution of all these subspecies and races took place somewhere in Asia or eastern Europe. None of these races appear to be ancestral one to another, although the scanty remains of the Heidelberg Man would indicate that he may have given rise to the later Neanderthals. Other than this possible affinity, the various races of Paleolithic times are not related one to another.
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III THE NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGES
About 7,000 B.C. we enter an entirely new period in the history of man, the Neolithic or New Stone Age, when the flint implements were polished and not merely chipped. Early as is this date in European culture, we are not far from the beginnings of an elaborate civilization in parts of Asia and Egypt. The earliest organized governments, so far as our present knowledge goes, were Egypt and Sumer. Chinese civilization at the other end of Asia is later, but mystery still shrouds its origin and its connection, if any, with the Mesopotamian city-states. The solution probably lies in the central region of the Syr Darya and future excavations in those regions may uncover very early cultures. Balkh, the ancient Bactra, the mother of cities, is located where the trade routes between China, India and Mesopotamia converged and it is in this neighborhood that careful and thorough excavations will probably find their greatest reward.
However, we are not dealing with Asia but with Europe only and our knowledge is confined to the fact that the various cultural advances at the end of the Paleolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic correspond with the arrival of new races.
120The transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic was formerly considered as revolutionary, an abrupt change of both race and culture, but a period more or less transitory, known as the Campignian, now appears to bridge over this gap. This is only what should be expected, since in human archæology as in geology the more detailed our knowledge becomes the more gradually we find one period or horizon merges into its successor.
For a long time after the opening of the Neolithic the old-fashioned chipped weapons and implements remain the predominant type and the polished flints so characteristic of the Neolithic appear at first only sporadically, then increase in number until finally they entirely replace the rougher designs of the preceding Old Stone Age.
So in their turn these Neolithic polished stone implements, which ultimately became both varied and effective as weapons and tools, continued in use long after metallurgy developed. In the Bronze Period metal armor and weapons were for ages of the greatest value. So they were necessarily in the possession of the military and ruling classes only, while the unfortunate serf or common soldier who followed his master to war did the best he could with leather shield and stone weapons. In the ring that clustered around Harold for the last stand on Senlac Hill many 121of the English thanes died with their Saxon king, armed solely with the stone battle-axes of their ancestors.
In Italy also there was a long period known to the Italian archæologists as the Eneolithic Period when good flint tools existed side by side with very poor copper and bronze implements; so that, while the Neolithic lasted in western Europe four or five thousand years, it is, at its commencement, without clear definition from the preceding Paleolithic and at its end it merges gradually into the succeeding ages of metals.
After the opening Campignian phase there followed a long period typical of the Neolithic, known as the Robenhausian or Age of the Swiss Lake Dwellers, which reached its height after 5000 B. C. The lake dwellings seem to have been the work chiefly of the round skull Alpine races and are found in numbers throughout the region of the Alps and their foothills and along the valley of the Danube.
These Robenhausian pile built villages were the earliest known form of fixed habitation in Europe and the culture found in association with them was a great advance over that of the preceding Paleolithic. This type of permanent habitation flourished through the entire Upper Neolithic and the succeeding Bronze Age. Pile villages end in Switzerland with the first appearance of iron but 122elsewhere, as on the upper Danube, they still existed in the days of Herodotus.
Pottery is found together with domesticated animals and agriculture, which appear during the Robenhausian for the first time. The chase, supplemented by trapping and fishing, was still common but it probably was more for clothing than for food. A permanent site is not alone the basis of an agricultural community, but it also involves at least a partial abandonment of the chase, because only nomads can follow the game in its seasonal migrations and hunted animals soon leave the neighborhood of settlements.
The Terramara Period of northern Italy was a later phase of culture contemporaneous with the Upper Robenhausian and was typical of the Bronze Age. During the Terramara Period fortified and moated stations in swamps or close to the banks of rivers became the favorite resorts instead of pile villages built in lakes. The first traces of copper are found during this period. The earliest human remains in the Terramara deposits are long skulled, but round skulls soon appear in association with bronze implements. This indicates an original population of Mediterranean affinities overwhelmed later by Alpines.
CLASSIFICATION OF THE RACES OF EUROPE
THEIR CHARACTERS AND DISTRIBUTION
European Races Modern Peoples Ancient Peoples Skull Cephalic Index Face Nose Stature Hair Color Eye Color Language
Nordic.
Homo sapiens nordicus, Homo sapiens europeus, Baltic, Indo-Germanic, Indo-European, Scandinavian, Teutonic, Germanic, Dolicho-lepto, Reihengraber, Finnic. All Norse, Swedes, Danes, Letts, many Finlanders, many Russians and Poles, North Germans, many French, Dutch, Flemings, English, Scotch, most Irish, Native Americans, Canadians, Australians, Africanders. Sacæ, Massagetæ, Scythians, Cimmerians, Persians, Phrygians, Achæans, Dorians, Thracians, Umbrians, Oscans, Gauls, Galatians, Cymry, Belgæ, many Romans, Goths, Lombards, Vandals, Burgunds, Franks, Danes, Saxons, Angles, Norse, Normans, Varangians. Reihengraber. Kurgans. Maglemose culture. Long. 79 and less. High. Narrow. Long. Narrow. Straight. Aquiline. Tall. Flaxen. Fair. Red. Light brown to chestnut. Never black. Blue. Gray. Green. Light brown or hazel. All Aryan except Tchouds, Esths, many Finlanders, and a few tribes in Siberia.
Alpine.
Homo sapiens alpinus (Eurasiatic), Celto-Slav or Kelts of the French, Sarmatian, Arvernian, Auvergnat, Slavic, Savoyard, Lappanoid, Armenoid. Bretons, Walloons, Central French, some Basques, Savoyards, Swiss, Tyrolese, most South Germans, North Italians, German-Austrians, Bohemians, Slovaks, Magyars, many Poles, most Russians, Serbs, Bulgars, most Rumanians, most Greeks, Turks, Armenians, most Persians and Afghans. Sumerians, Hittites, Medes, Khosars, Sarmatians, Wends, Sorbs. Furfooz-Grenelle race, Swiss Lake Dwellers, Gizeh skulls. Robenhausen. Round Barrows. Bronze culture. Round. 80 and over. Broad. Variable. Rather broad. Coarse. Medium. Stocky. Heavy. Dark brown. Black. Black or dark brown. Often hazel or gray, in western Europe. In Europe all Aryan except Magyars, some Basques, and some Finlanders. In Asia mostly Aryan, except Turcomans, Kirghizes, and other nomad tribes.
Mediterranean.
Homo sapiens mediterraneus (Eurafrican), Iberian, Ligurian, Atlanto-Mediterranean. Many English, Portuguese, Spaniards, some Basques, Provençals, South Italians, Sicilians, many Greeks and Rumanians, Moors, Berbers, Egyptians, many Persians and Afghans, Hindus. Egyptians, many Babylonians, Pelasgians, Etruscans, Ligurians, Phœnicians, most Greeks, many Romans, Cretans, Iberians. Long Barrows. Neolithic culture. Megalithic monuments. Long. 79 and less. High. Narrow. Long. Rather broad. Short. Slender. Dark brown. Black. Black. Dark brown. In Europe all Aryan, except some Basques. In Africa all Non-Aryan. In Asia nearly all Aryan.
Upper Paleolithic.
Extinct races.
Furfooz-Grenelle. Proto-Alpines. Round, 79–85. Medium. Probably very dark. Probably very dark. Probably non-Aryan.
Brünn Předmost. Long, 66–68. Low and medium.
Homo sapiens cromagnonensis. A few Dordognois. Cro-Magnons. Long, with disharmonic broad face, 63–76. Low and broad. Narrow and aquiline. Very tall and medium. Probably very dark. Probably very dark. Probably non-Aryan.
Middle Paleolithic.
Homo neanderthalensis, Homo primigenius. Doubtful traces among west Irish and among the old black breed of Scotland and Wales. Neanderthals. Neanderthaloids. Long. Long. Broad. Short and powerful. Probably very dark. Probably very dark. Probably non-Aryan.
123Neolithic culture also flourished in the north of Europe and particularly in Scandinavia now free from ice. The coasts of the Baltic were apparently occupied for the first time at the very beginning of this period, as no trace of Paleolithic industry has been found there, other than the Maglemose, which represents only the very latest phase of the Old Stone Age. The kitchen middens, or refuse heaps, of Sweden and more particularly of Denmark date from the early Neolithic and thus are somewhat earlier than the lake dwellers. Rough pottery occurs in them for the first time, but no traces of agriculture have been found and, as said, the dog seems to have been the only domesticated animal.
From these two centres, the Alps and the North, an elaborate and variegated Neolithic culture spread through western Europe and an autochthonous development took place, comparatively little influenced by trade intercourse with Asia after the first immigrations of the new races.
We may assume that the distribution of races in Europe during the Neolithic was roughly as follows.
The Mediterranean basin and western Europe, including Spain, Italy, Gaul, Britain and parts of western Germany, were populated by Mediterranean long heads. In Britain the Paleolithic population must have been very small and the Neolithic Mediterraneans were the first effectively to open up the country. Even they kept to the open moorlands and avoided the heavily wooded and swampy valleys which to-day are the main centres of population. Before metal and especially iron 124tools were in use forests were an almost complete barrier to the expansion of an agricultural population.
The Alps and the territories immediately adjacent, with Central Gaul and much of the Balkans, were inhabited by Alpine types. These Alpines extended northward until they came in touch in eastern Germany and Poland with the southernmost Nordics, but as the Carpathians at a much later date, namely, from the fourth to the eighth century A. D., were the centre of radiation of the Alpine Slavs, it is very possible that during the Neolithic the early Nordics lay farther north and east.
North of the Alpines and occupying the shores of the Baltic and Scandinavia, together with eastern Germany, Poland and Russia, were located the Nordics. At the very base of the Neolithic and perhaps still earlier, this race occupied Scandinavia, and Sweden became the nursery of what has been generally called the Teutonic subdivision of the Nordic race. It was in that country that the peculiar characters of stature and blondness became most accentuated and it is there that we find them to-day in their greatest purity.
During the Neolithic the remnants of early Paleolithic man must have been numerous, but later they were either exterminated or absorbed by the existing European races.
125During all this Neolithic Period Mesopotamia and Egypt were thousands of years in advance of Europe, but only a small amount of culture from these sources seems to have trickled westward up the valley of the Danube, then and long afterward the main route of intercourse between western Asia and the heart of Europe. Some trade also passed from the Black Sea up the Russian rivers to the Baltic coasts. Along these latter routes there came from the north to the Mediterranean world the amber of the Baltic, a fossil resin greatly prized by early man for its magic electrical qualities.
Gold was probably the first metal to attract the attention of primitive man, but could only be used for purposes of ornamentation. Copper, which is often found in a pure state, was also one of the earliest metals known and probably came first either from the mines of Cyprus or of the Sinai Peninsula. These latter mines are known to have been worked before 3400 B. C. by systematic mining operations and much earlier “the metal must have been obtained by primitive methods from surface ore.” It is, therefore, probable that copper was known and used, at first for ornament and later for implements, in Egypt before 4000 B. C. and possibly even earlier in the Mesopotamian regions.
We now reach the confines of recorded history and the first absolutely fixed date, 4241 B. C., is established for lower Egypt by the oldest known 126calendar. The earliest date as yet for Mesopotamia is somewhat later, but these two countries supply the basis of the chronology of the ancient world until a few centuries before Christ.
With the use of copper the Neolithic fades to its end and the Bronze Age commences soon thereafter. This next step in advance was made apparently before 3000 B. C. when some unknown genius discovered that an amalgam of nine parts of copper to one part of tin would produce the metal we now call bronze, which has a texture and hardness suitable for weapons and tools. The discovery revolutionized the world. The new knowledge was a long time spreading and weapons of this material were of fabulous value, especially in countries where there were no native mines and where spears and swords could only be obtained through trade or conquest. The esteem in which these bronze weapons, and still more the later weapons of iron, were held, is indicated by the innumerable legends and myths concerning magic swords and armor, the possession of which made the owner well-nigh invulnerable and invincible.
The necessity of obtaining tin for this amalgam led to the early voyages of the Phœnicians, who from the cities of Tyre and Sidon and their daughter Carthage traversed the entire length of the Mediterranean, founded colonies in Spain to work the Spanish tin mines, passed the Pillars of Hercules 127and finally voyaged through the stormy Atlantic to the Cassiterides, the Tin Isles of Ultima Thule. There, on the coasts of Cornwall, they traded with the native British of kindred Mediterranean race for the precious tin. These dangerous and costly voyages become explicable only if the value of this metal for the composition of bronze be taken into consideration.
After these bronze weapons were elaborated in Egypt the knowledge of their manufacture and use was extended through conquest into Palestine, and northward into Asia Minor.
The effect of the possession of these new weapons on the Alpine populations of western Asia was magical and resulted in an intensive and final expansion of round skulls into Europe. This invasion came through Asia Minor, the Balkans and the valley of the Danube, poured into Italy from the north, introduced bronze among the earlier Alpine lake dwellers of Switzerland and among the Mediterraneans of the Terramara stations of the valley of the Po and at a later date reached as far west as Britain and as far north as Holland and Norway, where its traces are still to be found among the living population.
The simultaneous appearance of bronze about 3000 or 2800 B. C. in the south as well as in the north of Italy may possibly be attributed to a lateral wave of this same invasion which, passing 128through Egypt, where it left behind the so-called Gizeh round skulls, reached Tunis and Sicily. In southern Italy bronze may have been introduced from Crete. With the first knowledge of metals begins the Eneolithic Period of the Italians.
The close resemblance in design and technique among the implements of the Bronze Age in widely separated localities is so great that we can infer a relatively simultaneous introduction.
With the introduction of bronze the custom of incineration of the dead also appears and replaces the typical Neolithic custom of inhumation.
The introduction of bronze into England and into Scandinavia may be safely dated about one thousand years later, after 1800 B. C. The fact that the Alpines only barely reached Ireland indicates that at this time that island was severed from England and that the land connection between England and France had been broken. The computation of the foregoing dates, of course, is somewhat hypothetical, but the fixed fact remains that this last expansion of the Alpines brought the knowledge of bronze to western and northern Europe and to the Mediterranean and Nordic peoples living there.
The effect of the introduction of bronze in the areas occupied chiefly by the Mediterranean race along the Atlantic coast and in Britain, as well as in north Africa from Tunis to Morocco, is seen in the construction and in the wide distribution of 129the megalithic funeral monuments, which appear to have been erected, not by Alpines but by the dolichocephs. The occurrence of bronze tools and weapons in the interments shows clearly that the megaliths of the south of France date from the beginning of the Bronze Age. The absence of bronze from the dolmens of Brittany may indicate an earlier age. It is, however, more likely that the opening Bronze Age in the South was contemporary with the late Neolithic in the North. The construction and use of these monuments continued at least until the very earliest trace of iron appears and in fact mound burials among the Vikings were common until the introduction of Christianity.
Although there is evidence of very early use of iron in Egypt the knowledge of this metal as well as of bronze in Europe centres around the area occupied by the Alpines in the eastern Alps and its earliest phase is known as the Hallstatt culture, from a little town in the Tyrol where it was first discovered. This Hallstatt iron culture appeared about 1500 B. C. The Alpine Hittites in northeast Asia Minor were probably the first to mine and smelt iron and they introduced it to the Alpines of eastern Europe, but it was the Nordics who benefited by its use. Bronze weapons and the later iron ones proved in the hands of these Northern barbarians to be of terrible effectiveness. With these metal swords in their grasp, the Nordics conquered the Alpines of central Europe and then suddenly 130entered the ancient world as raiders and destroyers of cities. The classic civilizations of the northern coasts of the Mediterranean Sea fell, one after another, before the “Furor Normanorum,” just as two thousand years later the provinces of Rome were devastated by the last great flood of the Nordics from beyond the Alps.
The first Nordics to appear in European history are tribes speaking Aryan tongues in the form of the various Celtic and related dialects in the West, of Umbrian in Italy and of Thracian in the Balkans. These barbarians, pouring down from the North, swept with them large numbers of Alpines whom they had already thoroughly Nordicized. The process of conquering and assimilating the Alpines must have gone on for long centuries before our first historic records and the work was so thoroughly done that the very existence of this Alpine race as a separate subspecies of man was actually forgotten for many centuries by themselves and by the world at large until it was revealed in our own day by the science of skull measurements.
The Hallstatt iron culture did not extend into western Europe and the smelting and extensive use of this metal in southern Britain and northwestern Europe are of much later date and occur in what is called the La Tène Period, usually assigned to the fifth and fourth century B. C.
131Iron weapons were, however, known sporadically in England much earlier, perhaps as far back as 800 B. C., but were very rare and were probably importations from the Continent.
“Hallstatt relics have only been found in the northeast or centre of France and it appears that the Bronze Age continued in the remainder of that country until about 700 B. C.”
The spread of this La Tène culture is associated with the Nordic Cymry, who constituted the last wave of Celtic-speaking invaders into western Europe, while the earlier Nordic Gauls and Goidels had arrived in Gaul and Britain equipped with bronze only.
In Roman times, following the La Tène Period, the main races of Europe occupied the relative positions which they had held during the whole Neolithic Period and which they hold to-day, with the exception that the Nordic subspecies was less extensively represented in western Europe than when, a few hundred years later, the so-called Teutonic tribes overran these countries; but on the other hand, the Nordics occupied large areas in eastern Germany, Hungary, Poland and Russia now mainly occupied by the Slavs of Alpine race.
Many countries in central Europe were in Roman times inhabited by fair-haired, blue eyed barbarians, where now the population is preponderantly brunet and becoming yearly more so.
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CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE[2]
METALS
Later Iron
La Tène Culture Europe 500 B. C.—Roman times
Early Iron
Hallstatt Culture Europe 1500–500 B. C.
Orient 1800–1000 B. C.
Bronze Western and northern Europe 1800–500 B. C.
Orient 3000–2000 B. C.
NEOLITHIC
Late Neolithic Copper, Eneolithic 3000–2000 B. C.
Typical Neolithic Swiss lake dwellings, Robenhausian culture 5000 B. C.
Early Neolithic Campignian culture 7000 B. C.
UPPER PALEOLITHIC
Postglacial Caves and shelters:
Azilian-Tardenoisian Nordic-Maglemose Furfooz-Grenelle race Proto-Mediterranean race 10,000–7000 B. C.
Magdalenian Cro-Magnon race 16,000–10,000 B. C.
Solutrean Brünn-Předmost race Cro-Magnon race 25,000–16,000 B. C.
Aurignacian Cro-Magnon race
133
MIDDLE PALEOLITHIC
IV. Glaciation
Würm Mousterian Neanderthal race Caves and shelters 50,000–25,000 B. C.
LOWER PALEOLITHIC
III. Interglacial
Riss-Würm Acheulean, river terraces 75,000 B. C.
Chellean, river terraces 100,000 B. C.
Pre-Chellean and Mesvinian, river terraces 125,000 B. C. 150,000 B. C.
EOLITHIC
III. Glaciation
Riss 200,000–150,000 B. C.
II. Interglacial
Mindel-Riss Heidelberg Man 350,000–200,000 B. C.
II. Glaciation
Mindel 400,000–350,000 B. C.
I. Interglacial
Günz-Mindel 475,000–400,000 B. C.
Glaciation
Günz Pithecanthropus 500,000–475,000 B. C.
134
IV THE ALPINE RACE
The Alpine race is clearly of Eastern and Asiatic origin. It forms the westernmost extension of a widespread subspecies which, outside of Europe, occupies Asia Minor, Iran, the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush. In fact the western Himalayas were probably its original centre of evolution and radiation and among its Asiatic members is a distinct subdivision, the Armenoids.
The Alpine race is distinguished by a round face and correspondingly round skull which in the true Armenians has a peculiar sugarloaf shape, a character which can be easily recognized. The Alpines must not be confounded with the slit-eyed Mongols who centre around Thibet and the steppes of north Asia. The fact that both these races are round skulled does not involve identity of origin any more than the long skulls of the Nordics and of the Mediterraneans require that they be both considered of the same subspecies, although good anthropologists have been misled by this parallelism. The Alpines are of stocky build and moderately short stature, except sometimes where they have been crossed with Nordic elements. This race is also 135characterized by dark hair, except where there has been a strong Nordic admixture as in south Germany and Switzerland. In Europe at the present time the eye, also, is usually dark but sometimes grayish. The ancestral Proto-Alpines from the highlands of western Asia must, of course, have had brunet eyes and very dark, probably black, hair. Whether we are justified in considering gray eyes as peculiar to populations of mixed Alpine and Nordic blood is difficult to determine, but one thing is certain, the combination of blue eyes and flaxen hair is never Alpine.
The European Alpines retain very little evidence of their Asiatic origin except the skull shape and have been in contact with the Nordic race so long that in central and western Europe they are everywhere saturated with the blood of that race. Many populations now considered good Germans, such as the majority of the Würtembergers, Bavarians, Austrians, Swiss and Tyrolese are merely Nordicized Alpines.
While the Swiss are to-day neither tall nor long-headed, their country was thoroughly conquered early in the Christian era by the Nordic Alemanni who entered from the Rhine Valley. The exodus of soldiers from the forest cantons throughout the Middle Ages to fight as mercenaries in France and Italy gradually drained off this Nordic element until the chief evidence of its former existence lies 136to-day in the large amount of blondness among the Swiss. With the loss of this type the nation has ceased to be a military community.
The first appearance in Europe of the Alpines dates from the Azilian Period when it is represented by the Furfooz-Grenelle race. There were later several invasions of this race which entered Europe from the Asia Minor plateaux, by way of the Balkans and the valley of the Danube, during Neolithic times and, also, at the beginning of the Bronze Age. It appears also to have passed north of the Black Sea, as some slight traces have been discovered there of round skulls which long antedate the existing population but the Russian brachycephaly of to-day is of much later origin and is due mainly to the eastward spread of Alpines from the regions of the Carpathians since the first centuries of our era.
This race in its final expansion far to the northwest ultimately reached Norway, Denmark and Holland and planted among the dolichocephalic natives small colonies of round skulls, which still exist. These colonies are found along the coast and while of small extent are clearly marked. On the southwestern seaboard of Norway these round heads are dark and relatively short.
When this invasion reached the extreme northwest of Europe its energy was spent and the invaders were soon forced back into central Europe 137by the Nordics. The Alpines at this time of maximum extension about 1800 B. C. crossed into Britain and a few reached Ireland and introduced bronze into both these islands. As the metal appears about the same time in Sweden it is safe to assume that it was introduced by this invasion.
The men of the Round Barrows in England were Alpines, but their numbers were so scanty that they have left behind them in the skulls of the living population but little demonstrable evidence of their former presence. If we are ever able accurately to analyze the various strains that enter in more or less minute quantities into the blood of the British nation, we shall find many traces of these Round Barrow men as well as other interesting and ancient remnants especially in the western isles and peninsulas.
In the study of European populations the great and fundamental fact about the British Isles is the almost total absence there to-day of true Alpine round skulls. It is the only important state in Europe in which the round skulls play no part and the only nation of any rank composed solely of Nordic and Mediterranean races in approximately equal numbers. To this fact are undoubtedly due many of the individualities and much of the greatness of the English people.
The cephalic index in England is rather low, 138about 78, but there is a type of tall men, with a tendency to roundheadedness allied to a very marked intellectual capacity, known as the “Beaker Maker” type. They are probably descended from the men of the Round Barrows, who while brachycephalic were tall and presumably dark and entered England on the east and northeast. The Beaker Makers appear at the very end of the Neolithic and, at least in the case of the last of them to arrive, are identified with the Bronze Age.
Before this tall, round-headed type reached Britain, they had absorbed many Nordic elements and they have nothing except the skull shape in common with the Alpines living closest, those of Belgium and France. However, they do suggest strongly the Dinaric race of the Tyrol and Dalmatian coast of the Adriatic. In addition to the Beaker Makers remains of short, thick-set brachycephs have also been found in small numbers. These last appear to have been true Alpines.
The invasion of central Europe by Alpines, which occurred in the Neolithic, following in the wake of the Azilian forerunners of the same type—the Furfooz-Grenelle race—represented a very great advance in culture. They brought with them from Asia the art of domesticating animals and the first knowledge of the cereals and of pottery and were an agricultural race in sharp contrast 139to the flesh eating hunters who preceded them.
The Neolithic populations of the lake dwellings in Switzerland and the extreme north of Italy, which flourished about 5000 B. C., all belonged to this Alpine race. A comparison of the scanty physical remains of these lake dwellers with the inhabitants of the existing villages on the lake shores demonstrates that the skull shape has changed little or not at all during the last seven thousand years and affords us another proof of the persistency of physical characters.
This Alpine race in Europe is now so thoroughly acclimated that it is no longer Asiatic in any respect and has nothing in common with the Mongols except its round skulls. Such Mongolian elements as exist to-day in scattered groups throughout eastern Europe are remnants of the later invasions of Tatar hordes which, beginning with Attila in the fifth century, ravaged eastern Europe for hundreds of years.
In western and central Europe the present distribution of the Alpine race is a substantial recession from its earlier extent and it has been everywhere conquered and subordinated by Celtic- and Teutonic-speaking Nordics. Beginning with the first appearance of the Celtic-speaking Nordics in western Europe, the Alpine race has been obliged to give ground but has mingled its blood everywhere 140with the conquerors and now after centuries of obscurity it appears to be increasing again at the expense of the master race.
The Alpines reached Spain, as they reached Britain, in small numbers and with spent force but they still persist along the Cantabrian Alps as well as among the French Basques on the northern side of the Pyrenees.
The Anaryan Basque or Euskarian language may be a derivative of the original speech of these Alpines, as its affinities point eastward and toward Asia rather than southward and toward the littoral of Africa and the Hamitic speech of the Mediterranean Berbers. Basque was probably related to the extinct Aquitanian. The Ligurian language, also seemingly Anaryan, if ever closely deciphered may throw some light on the subject. There are dim traces all along the north African coast of a round skull invasion about 3000 B. C. through Syria, Egypt, Tripoli and Tunis and from there through Sicily to southern Italy.
The Alpine race forms to-day, as in Cæsar’s time, the great bulk of the population of central France with a Nordic aristocracy resting upon it. They occupy as the lower classes the uplands of Belgium, where, known as Walloons, they speak an archaic French dialect closely related to the ancient langue d’oïl. They form a majority of the upland population of Alsace, Lorraine, Baden, Würtemberg, 141Bavaria, Tyrol, Switzerland and northern Italy; in short, of the entire central massif of Europe. In Bavaria and the Tyrol the Alpines are so thoroughly Nordicized that their true racial affinities are betrayed by their round skulls alone.
When we reach Austria we come in contact with the Slavic-speaking nations which form a subdivision of the Alpine race appearing relatively late in history and radiating from the Carpathian Mountains. In western and central Europe in relation to the Nordic race the Alpine is everywhere the ancient, underlying and submerged type. The fertile lands, river valleys and cities are here in the hands of the Nordics but in eastern Germany and Poland we find conditions reversed. That is an old Nordic broodland with a Nordic substratum underlying the bulk of the peasantry, which now consists of round skulled Alpine Slavs. On top of these again we have an aristocratic upper class of comparatively recent introduction and of Saxon origin in eastern Germany. In Austria this upper class is Swabian and Bavarian.
The introduction of Slavs into eastern Germany is believed to have been by infiltration and not by conquest. In the fourth century these Wends were called Venethi, Antes and Sclaveni, and were described as strong in numbers but despised in war. Through the neglect of the Teutons they had been allowed to range far and wide from their homes 142near the northeastern Carpathians and to occupy the lands formerly belonging to the Nordic nations, who had abandoned their country and flocked into the Roman Empire. Goth, Burgund, Lombard and Vandal were replaced by the lowly Wend and Sorb, whose descendants to-day form the privates in the east German regiments, while the officers are everywhere recruited from the Nordic upper class. The mediæval relation of these Slavic tribes to the dominant Teuton is well expressed in the meaning—slave—which has been attached to their name in western languages.
The occupation of eastern Germany and Poland by the Slavs probably occurred from 400 A. D. to 700 A. D. but these Alpine elements were reinforced from the east and south from time to time during the succeeding centuries. Beginning early in the tenth century, the Saxons under their Emperors, especially Henry the Fowler, turned their attention eastward and during the next two centuries they reconquered and thoroughly Germanized all this section of Europe.
A similar series of changes in racial predominance took place in Russia where in addition to a nobility largely Nordic a section of the population is of ancient Nordic type, although the bulk of the peasantry consists of Alpine Slavs.
The Alpines in eastern Europe are represented by various branches of the “Slavic” nations. 143Their area of distribution was split into two sections by the occupation of the great Dacian plain first by the Avars about 600 A. D. and later by the Hungarians about 900 A. D. These Avars and Magyars came from somewhere in eastern Russia beyond the sphere of Aryan speech and their invasions separated the northern Slavs, known as Wends, Czechs, Slovaks, and Poles, from the southern Slavs, known as Serbs and Croats. These southern Slavs entered the Balkan Peninsula in the sixth century from the northeast and to-day form the great mass of the population there.
The centre of radiation of all these Slavic-speaking Alpines was located in the Carpathians, especially the Ruthenian districts of Galicia and eastward to the neighborhood of the Pripet swamps and the head-waters of the Dnieper in Polesia, where the Slavic dialects are believed to have developed and whence they spread throughout Russia about the eighth century. These early Slavs were probably the Sarmatians of the Greek and Roman writers. Their name “Venethi” seems to have been a later designation. The original Proto-Slavic language being Aryan must have been at some distant date imposed by Nordics upon the Alpines, but its development into the present Slavic tongues was chiefly the work of Alpines.
In other words, the expansion of the Alpines of the Slavic-speaking group seems to have occurred 144after the Fourth Century and they have spread in the East over areas which were originally Nordic, very much as the Teutons had previously overrun and submerged the earlier Alpines in the West. The Mongol, Tatar and Turk who invaded Europe much later reinforced the brachycephalic element in these countries. To some extent the round skulled Alpines in Russia have been reinforced by way of the Caucasus and the route north of the Black Sea by their kindred in western Asia. The greater part of the purely Asiatic types has been thoroughly absorbed and Europeanized except in certain localities in Russia more especially in the east and south, where Mongoloid tribes such as the Mordvins, Bashkirs and Kalmucks have maintained their type either in isolated and relatively large groups or side by side with their Slavic neighbors. In both cases the isolation is maintained through religious and social differences.
The Avars preceded the Magyars in Hungary, but they have merged with the latter without leaving traces that can be identified. Certain Mongoloid characters found in Bulgaria are believed, however, to be of Avar origin.
The original physical type of the Magyars and the European Turks has now practically vanished as a result of prolonged intermarriage with the original inhabitants of Hungary and the Balkans. 145These tribes have left little behind but their language and, in the case of the Turks, their religion. The brachycephalic Hungarians to-day resemble the Austrian Germans much more than they do the Slavic-speaking populations adjoining them on the north and south or the Rumanians on the east.
Driven onward by the Avars, the Bulgars appeared south of the Danube about the end of the seventh century, coming originally from eastern Russia where the remnants of their kindred still persist along the Volga. To-day they conform physically in the western half of the country to the Alpine Serbs and in the eastern half to the Mediterranean race, as do also the Rumanians of the Black Sea coast.
Little or nothing remains of the ancestral Bulgars except their name. Language, religion and nearly, but not quite all, of the physical type have disappeared.
The early members of the Nordic race in order to reach the Mediterranean world had to pass through the Alpine populations and must have absorbed a certain amount of Alpine blood. Therefore the Umbrians in Italy and the Gauls of western Europe, while predominantly Nordic, were more mixed especially in the lower classes with Alpine blood than were the Belgæ or Cymry or their successors, the Goths, Vandals, Burgundians, Alemanni, Saxons, Franks, Lombards, Danes and 146Northmen, all of whom appear in history as Nordics of the so-called Teutonic group.
In some portions of their range notably Savoy and central France the Alpine race is much less affected by Nordic influence than elsewhere but on the contrary it shows signs of a very ancient admixture with Mediterranean and even earlier elements. Brachycephalic Alpine populations in comparative purity still exist in the interior of Brittany as in Auvergne, although nearly surrounded by Nordic populations.
While the Alpines were everywhere overwhelmed and driven to the fastnesses of the mountains, the warlike and restless nature of the Nordics has enabled the more stable Alpine population to reassert itself slowly, and Europe is probably much less Nordic to-day than it was fifteen hundred years ago.
The early Alpines made very large contributions to the civilization of the world and were the medium through which many advances in culture were introduced from Asia into Europe. This race at the time of its first appearance in the west brought to the nomad hunters a knowledge of agriculture and of primitive pottery and of domestication of animals and thus made possible a great increase in population and the establishment of permanent settlements. Still later its final expansion was the means through which the knowledge 147of metals reached the Mediterranean and Nordic populations of the west and north. Upon the appearance on the scene of the Nordics the Alpine race temporarily lost its identity and sank to the subordinate and obscure position which it still largely occupies.
In western Asia members of this race seemingly are entitled to the honor of the earliest Mesopotamian civilization of which we have knowledge, namely, that of Sumer and its northerly neighbor Accad in Mesopotamia. It is also the race of early Elam and Media. In fact, the basis of Mesopotamian civilization belongs to this race. Later Babylonia and Assyria were Arabic and Semitic while Persia was Nordic and Aryan.
In classic, mediæval and modern times the Alpines have played an unimportant part in European culture and in western Europe they have been so thoroughly Nordicized that they exist rather as an element in Nordic race development than as an independent type. There are, however, many indications in current history which point to an impending development of civilization in the Slavic branches of this race and the world must be prepared to face changes in the Russias which will, for good or for evil, bring them more closely into touch with western Europe.
148
V THE MEDITERRANEAN RACE
The Mediterranean subspecies formerly called the Iberian is a relatively small, light boned, long skulled race, of brunet coloring, becoming even swarthy in certain portions of its range. Throughout Neolithic times and possibly still earlier it seems to have occupied, as it does to-day, all the shores of the Mediterranean including the coast of Africa from Morocco on the west to Egypt on the east. The Mediterraneans are the western members of a subspecies of man which forms a substantial part of the population of Persia, Afghanistan, Baluchistan and Hindustan with perhaps a southward extension into Ceylon.
The Aryanized Afghan and Hindu of northern India speak languages derived from Old Sanskrit and are distantly related to the Mediterranean race. Aside from a common dolichocephaly these peoples are entirely distinct from the Dravidians of south India whose speech is agglutinative and who show strong evidence of profound mixture with the ancient Negrito substratum of southern Asia.
Everywhere throughout the Asiatic portion of its range the Mediterranean race overlies an even 149more ancient Negroid race. These Negroids still have representatives among the Pre-Dravidians of India, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Sakai of the Malay Peninsula and the natives of the Andaman Islands.
This Mediterranean subspecies at the close of the Paleolithic spread from the basin of the Inland Sea northward by way of Spain throughout westernmost Europe including the British Isles and, before the final expansion of the Alpines, was widely distributed up to and, possibly, touching the domain of the Nordic dolichocephs. The Mediterraneans did not cross the Alps from the south but spread around the mountains. In attaining to Britain from Spain by way of Central France it is probable that they swept with them Paleolithic remnants from the ancient centre of population in the Auvergne district.
In all this vast range from the British Isles to Hindustan, it is not to be supposed that there is absolute identity of race. Certain portions, however, of the populations of the countries throughout this long stretch do show in their physique clear indications of descent from a Neolithic race of a common original type, which we may call Proto-Mediterranean.
Quite apart from inevitable admixture with late Nordic and early Paleolithic elements, the brunet type of Englishman has had perhaps ten 150thousand years of independent evolution during which he has undergone selection due to the climatic and physical conditions of his northern habitat. The result is that he has specialized far away from the Proto-Mediterranean race which contributed his blood originally to Britain while it was, probably, still part of continental Europe.
At the other end of their range in India this race, the Mediterraneans, have been crossed with Dravidians and with Pre-Dravidian Negroids. They have also had imposed upon them other ethnic elements which came over through the Afghan passes from the northwest. The resultant racial mixture in India has had its own line of specialization. Residence in the fertile but unhealthy river bottoms, the direct rays of a tropic sun and competition with the immemorial autochthones have unsparingly weeded generation after generation until the existing Hindu has little in common with the ancestral Proto-Mediterranean.
It is to the Mediterranean race in the British Isles that the English, Scotch and Americans owe whatever brunet characters they possess. In western Europe, wherever it exists, it appears to underlie the Alpine race and, in fact, wherever this race is in contact with either the Alpines or the Nordics it would seem to represent the more ancient stratum of the population.
So far as we know this Mediterranean type never 151existed in Scandinavia and all brunet elements found there can be attributed to introductions in the Bronze Age or in historic times. Nor did the Mediterranean race ever enter or cross the high Alps as did the Nordics at a much later date on their way to the Mediterranean basin from the Baltic coasts.
The Mediterranean race with its Asiatic extensions is bordered everywhere on the north of its enormous range from Spain to India by round skulls but there does not seem to be as much evidence of mixture between these two subspecies of man as there is between the Alpines and the Nordics.
Along its southern boundary the Mediterraneans are in contact with either the long skulled Negroes of Africa or the ancient Negrito population of southern Asia. In Africa this race has drifted southward over the Sahara and up the Nile Valley and has modified the blood of the Negroes in both the Senegambian and equatorial regions.
Beyond these mixtures of blood, there is absolutely no relationship between the Mediterranean race and the Negroes. The fact that the Mediterranean race is long skulled as well as the Negro does not indicate relationship as has been suggested. An overemphasis of the importance of the skull shape as a somatological character can easily mislead and characters other than skull proportions 152must be carefully considered in determining race.
From a zoological point of view Africa north of the Sahara is now and has been since early Tertiary times a part of Europe. This is true both of animals and of the races of man. The Berbers of north Africa to-day are racially identical with the Spaniards and south Italians while the ancient Egyptians and their modern descendants, the fellaheen, are merely well-marked varieties of this Mediterranean race.
The Egyptians fade off toward the west into the so-called Hamitic peoples (to use an obsolete name) of Libya, and toward the south the infusion of Negro blood becomes increasingly great until we finally reach the pure Negro. On the east in Arabia we find an ancient and highly specialized subdivision of the Mediterranean race, which has from time out of mind crossed the Red Sea and infused its blood into the Negroes of east Africa.
To-day the Mediterranean race forms in Europe a substantial part of the population of the British Isles, the great bulk of the population of the Iberian Peninsula, nearly one-third of the population of France, Liguria, Italy south of the Apennines and all the Mediterranean coasts and islands, in some of which like Sardinia it exists in great purity. It forms the substratum of the population of Greece and of the eastern coast of the Balkan Peninsula. 153Everywhere in the interior of the Balkan Peninsula, except in eastern Bulgaria and parts of Rumania, it has been replaced by the South Slavs and by the Albanians, the latter a mixture of the ancient Illyrians and the Slavs.
In the British Isles the Mediterranean race represents the Pre-Nordic population and exists in considerable numbers in Wales and in certain portions of England, notably in the Fen districts to the northeast of London. In Scotland it is far less marked, but has left its brunetness as an indication of its former prevalence and this dark hair and eye color is very often associated with tall stature.
This is the race that gave the world the great civilizations of Egypt, of Crete, of Phœnicia including Carthage, of Etruria, of Mycenæan Greece, of Assyria and much of Babylonia. It gave us, when mixed and invigorated with Nordic elements, which probably predominated in the upper and ruling classes and imposed their guidance upon the masses, the most splendid of all civilizations, that of ancient Hellas, and the most enduring of political organizations, the Roman state.
To what extent the Mediterranean race entered into the blood and civilization of Rome, it is now difficult to say, but the traditions of the Eternal City, its love of organization, of law and military efficiency, as well as the Roman ideals of family life, of loyalty and truth, point clearly to a northern 154rather than to a Mediterranean origin, although there must have been some Alpine strains mixed in with the Nordic element.
The struggles in early Rome between Latin and Etruscan and the endless quarrels between patrician and plebeian may have arisen from this existence in Rome, side by side, of two distinct and clashing races, probably Nordic and Mediterranean respectively. The Roman busts that have come down to us often show features of a very Anglo-Saxon cast but with a somewhat round head. The Romans were short in stature in comparison with the nations north of the Alps and in the recently discovered battlefield of the Teutoburgian Forest where Varus and his legions perished in the reign of Augustus the skeletons of the Romans, identified by their armor, were notably smaller and slighter than were those of the German victors. The indications on the whole point to a Nordic aristocracy in Rome with some Alpine elements. The Plebs, on the other hand, was largely Mediterranean and Oriental and finally in the last days of the Republic ceased to contain any purely Roman blood.
The northern qualities of Rome are in sharp contrast to the less European traits of the classic Greeks, whose volatile and analytical spirit, lack of cohesion, political incapacity and ready resort to treason all point clearly to southern and eastern affinities.
155While very ancient, located for probably ten thousand years in western and southern Europe, and even longer on the south shore of the Mediterranean, nevertheless this subspecies cannot be called purely European. Its occupation of the north coast of Africa and the west coast of Europe can be traced everywhere by its beautifully polished stone weapons and tools. The megalithic monuments also, which are found in association with this race, may mark its line of advance in western Europe, although they extend beyond the range of the Mediterraneans into the domain of the Scandinavian Nordics. These huge stone structures were chiefly sepulchral memorials and are very suggestive of the Egyptian funeral monuments. They date back to the first knowledge of the manufacture and use of bronze tools by the Mediterranean race. They occur in great numbers, size and variety along the north coast of Africa and up the Atlantic seaboard through Spain, Brittany and England to Scandinavia.
It is admitted that the various groups of the Mediterranean race did not speak in the first instance any form of Aryan tongue and we know that these languages were introduced into the Mediterranean world by invaders from the north.
In Spain the language of the Nordic invaders was Celtic and is believed to have nearly died out by Roman times. Its remnants and the ancient 156speech of the natives were in turn superseded, along with the Phœnician spoken in some of the southern coast towns, by the Latin of the conquering Roman. Latin mixed with some small elements of Gothic construction and Arabic vocabulary forms to-day the basis of modern Portuguese, Castilian and Catalan.
The native Mediterranean race of the Iberian Peninsula quickly absorbed the blood of these Celtic-speaking Nordic Gauls, just as it later diluted beyond recognition the vigorous physical characters of the Nordic Vandals, Suevi and Visigoths. A certain amount of Nordic blood still persists to-day in northern Spain, especially in Galicia and along the Pyrenees, as well as generally among the upper classes. According to classic writers there were light and dark types in Spain in Roman times. The Romans left no evidence of their domination except in their language and religion; while the earlier Phœnicians on the coasts and the later swarms of Moors and Arabs all over the peninsula, but chiefly in the south, were closely related by race to the native Iberians.
That portion of the Mediterranean race which inhabits southern France occupies most of the territory of ancient Languedoc and Provence and it was these Provençals who developed and preserved during the Middle Ages the romantic civilization 157of the Albigensians, a survival of classic culture which was drowned in blood by a crusade from the north in the thirteenth century.
In northern Italy only the coast of Liguria is occupied by the Mediterranean race. In the valley of the Po the Mediterraneans predominated during the early Neolithic but with the introduction of bronze the Alpines appear and round skulls to this day prevail north of the Apennines. About 1100 B. C. the Nordic Umbrians and Oscans swept over the Alps from the northeast, conquered northern Italy and introduced their Aryan speech, which gradually spread southward. The Umbrian state was afterward overwhelmed by the Tyrrhenians or Etruscans, who were of Mediterranean race and who, by 800 B. C. had extended their empire northward to the Alps and temporarily checked the advance of the Nordics. In the sixth century B. C. new swarms of Nordics, coming this time from Gaul and speaking Celtic dialects, seized the valley of the Po and in 382 B. C. these Gauls, heavily reinforced from the north and under the leadership of Brennus, stormed Rome and completely destroyed the Etruscan power. From that time onward the valley of the Po became known as Cisalpine Gaul. Mixed with other Nordic elements, chiefly Gothic and Lombard, this population persists to this day, and is the backbone of modern Italy.
158A continuation of this movement of these Gauls, or Galatians as the Greek world called them, starting from northern Italy occurred a century later when these Nordics suddenly appeared before Delphi in Greece in 279 B. C. and then crossed into Asia Minor and founded the state called Galatia, which endured until Christian times.
South Italy until its conquest by Rome was Magna Græcia and the population to-day retains many Pelasgian Greek elements. It is among these classic remnants that artists search for the handsomest specimens of the Mediterranean race. In Sicily also the race is purely Mediterranean in spite of the admixture of types coming from the neighboring coasts of Tunis. These intrusive elements, however, were all of kindred race. Traces of Alpines in these regions and on the adjoining African coast are very scarce and wherever found may be referred to the final wave of round skull invasion which introduced bronze into Europe.
In Greece the Mediterranean Pelasgians speaking a Non-Aryan tongue were conquered by the Nordic Achæans, who entered from the northeast according to tradition prior to 1250 B. C. probably between 1400 and 1300 B. C. Doubtless there were still earlier waves of these same Nordic invaders as far back as 1700 B. C., which was a period of general unrest and migration throughout the ancient world.
159The Nordic Achæans and Mediterranean Pelasgians as yet unmixed stand out in clear contrast in the Homeric account of the ten year siege of Troy, which is generally assigned to the date of 1194 to 1184 B. C.
The same invasion that brought the Achæans into Greece brought a related Nordic people to the coast of Asia Minor, known as Phrygians. Of this race were the Trojan leaders.
Both the Trojans and the Greeks were commanded by huge blond princes, the heroes of Homer—in fact, even the Gods were fair-haired—while the bulk of the armies on both sides was composed of little brunet Pelasgians, imperfectly armed and remorselessly butchered by the leaders on either side. The only common soldiers mentioned by Homer as of the same race as the heroes were the Myrmidons of Achilles.
About the time that the Achæans and the Pelasgians began to amalgamate, new hordes of Nordic barbarians collectively called Hellenes entered from the northern mountains and destroyed this old Homeric-Mycenæan civilization. This Dorian invasion took place a little before 1100 B. C. and brought in the three main Nordic strains of Greece, the Dorian, the Æolian and the Ionian groups, which remain more or less distinct and separate throughout Greek history. Among these Nordics 160the Dorians may have included some Alpine elements. It is more than probable that this invasion or swarming of Nordics into Greece was part of the same general racial upheaval that brought the Umbrians and Oscans into Italy.
Long years of intense and bitter conflict follow between the old population and the newcomers and when the turmoil of this revolution settled down classic Greece appears. What was left of the Achæans retired to the northern Peloponnesus and the survivors of the early Pelasgian population remained in Messenia serving as helots their Spartan masters. The Greek colonies in Asia Minor were founded largely by refugees fleeing from these Dorian invaders.
The Pelasgian strain seems to have persisted best in Attica and the Ionian states. The Dorian Spartans appear to have retained more of the character of the northern barbarians than the Ionian Greeks but the splendid civilization of Hellas was due to a fusion of the two elements, the Achæan and Hellene of Nordic and the Pelasgian of Mediterranean race.
The contrast between Dorian Sparta and Ionian Athens, between the military efficiency, thorough organization and sacrifice of the citizen for the welfare of the state, which constituted the basis of Lacedæmonian power, and the Attic brilliancy, instability and extreme development of individualism, 161is strikingly like the contrast between Prussia with its Spartan-like culture and France with its Athenian versatility.
To this mixture of races in classic Greece the Mediterranean Pelasgians contributed their Mycenæan culture and the Nordic Achæans and Hellenes contributed their Aryan language, fighting efficiency and the European aspect of Greek life.
The first result of a crossing of two such contrasted subspecies as the Nordic and Mediterranean races has repeatedly been a new outburst of civilization. This occurs as soon as the older race has imparted to the conquerors its culture and before the victors have allowed their blood to be attenuated by mixture. This process seems to have happened several times in Greece.
Later, in 338 B. C., when the original Nordic blood had been hopelessly diluted by mixture with the ancient Mediterranean elements, Hellas fell an easy prey to Macedon. The troops of Philip and Alexander were Nordic and represented the uncultured but unmixed ancestral type of the Achæans and Hellenes. Their unimpaired fighting strength was irresistible as soon as it was organized into the Macedonian phalanx, whether directed against their degenerate brother Greeks or against the Persians, whose original Nordic elements had also by this time practically disappeared. When in its turn the pure Macedonian blood was impaired 162by intermixture with Asiatics, they, too, vanished and even the royal Macedonian dynasties in Asia and Egypt soon ceased to be Nordic or Greek except in language and customs.
It is interesting to note that the Greek states in which the Nordic element most predominated outlived the other states. Athens fell before Sparta and Thebes outlived them both. Macedon in classic times was considered quite the most barbarous state in Hellas and was scarcely recognized as forming part of Greece, but it was through the military power of its armies and the genius of Alexander that the Levant and western Asia became Hellenized. Alexander with his Nordic features, aquiline nose, fair skin, gently curling light hair and mixed eyes, the left blue and the right very black, typifies this Nordic conquest of the Near East.
It is scarcely possible to-day to find in purity the physical traits of the ancient race in the Greek-speaking lands and islands and it is chiefly among the pure Nordics of Anglo-Norman type that there occur those smooth and regular classic features, especially the brow and nose lines, that were the delight of the sculptors of Hellas.
To what extent any of the blood of the ancient Hellenes flows in the veins of the Greeks of to-day is difficult to determine but it should be found, if anywhere, in Crete and in the Ægean Islands. 163The modern Greek is trying to purify his language back to classic Ionian and to appropriate the traditions of the mighty Past, but to do this something more is needed than the naming of children after Agamemnon and Hecuba. Even in Roman times, the ancient Greek of the classic period was little more than a tradition and the term Græculus given to the contemporary Hellenes was one of contempt.
Concerning the physical type of classic in contrast to Homeric Greece, we know that the Greeks were predominantly long-headed and of relatively short stature in comparison with the northern barbarians. The modern Greeks are also relatively short in stature, but are moderately round-headed. As to color these modern Greeks are substantially all dark as to eye and hair, with a somewhat swarthy skin.
Among Albanians and such Greeks as show blond traits light eyes are more than ten times as numerous as light hair. The Albanians are members of the tall, round-headed Dinaric race and have distant relationship with the Nordics. They may possibly represent an ancient cross between Nordics and Alpines and they constitute to-day a marked subdivision of the latter. They resemble the Round Barrow brachycephs who entered Britain just before or at the opening of the Bronze Age and who are still scantily represented among the living English 164and Welsh. This type called the Beaker Maker or Borreby type is characterized by a moderately round head and great stature, strength and considerable intellectual force. The Albanian or Dinaric type was not, so far as we know, represented in ancient Greece although some modern archæologists have suggested that the Spartans were of this type. We have as yet no evidence of the color, size and skull shape of the Spartans, but we do know that their Dorian ancestors claimed to have come from or through the mountains of northern Epirus (Albania). The Dorian dialects are also said to be more closely related to modern Albanian—which is derived from the ancient Illyrian—than are the Ionian dialects. The Spartan character, if that be any test of race, was heavy, slow and steady, and would indicate northern rather than Mediterranean antecedents.
Concerning modern Europe north of the Alps, culture came from the south and not from the east and to the Mediterranean subspecies is due the foundation of our civilization. The ancient Mediterranean world was for the most part of this race; the long-sustained civilization of Egypt, which endured for thousands of years in almost uninterrupted sequence; the brilliant Minoan Empire of Crete, which flourished between 3000 and 1200 B. C. and was the ancestor of the Mycenæan cultures of Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Sardinia; the 165mysterious Empire of Etruria, the predecessor and teacher of Rome; the Hellenic states and colonies throughout the Mediterranean and Black Seas; the maritime and mercantile power of Phœnicia and its mighty colony, imperial Carthage; all were the creation of this race. The sea empire of Crete, when its royal palace at Cnossos was burned by the ‘sea peoples’ of the north, passed to Tyre, Sidon and Carthage and from them to the Greeks. The early development of the art of navigation is to be attributed to this race and from them the North centuries later learned its maritime architecture.
Even though the Mediterranean race has no claim to the invention of the synthetic languages and though it played a relatively small part in the development of the civilization of the Middle Ages or of modern times, nevertheless to it belongs the chief credit of the classic civilization of Europe in the sciences, art, poetry, literature and philosophy, as well as the major part of the civilization of Greece and a very large share in the Empire of Rome.
In the Eastern Empire the Mediterraneans were the predominant factor under the guise of Byzantine Greeks. Owing to the fact that our histories have been written under the influence of Roman orthodoxy and because in the eyes of the Frankish Crusaders the Byzantine Greeks were heretics, 166they have been regarded by us as degenerate cowards.
But throughout the Middle Ages Byzantium represented in unbroken sequence the Empire of Rome in the East and as the capital of that Empire it held Mohammedan Asia in check for nearly a thousand years. When at last in 1453 the imperial city deserted by western Christendom was stormed by the Ottoman Turks and Constantine, last of Roman Emperors, fell sword in hand there was enacted one of the greatest tragedies of all time.
With the fall of Constantinople the Empire of Rome passes finally from the scene of history and the development of civilization is transferred from Mediterranean lands and from the Mediterranean race to the North Sea and to the Nordic race.
167
VI THE NORDIC RACE
We have shown that the Mediterranean race entered Europe from the south and forms part of a great group of peoples extending into southern Asia, that the Alpine race came from the east through Asia Minor and the valley of the Danube and that its present European distribution is merely the westernmost point of an ethnic pyramid, the base of which rests solidly on the round skulled peoples of the great plateaux of central Asia. Both of these races are, therefore, western extensions of Asiatic subspecies and neither of them can be considered as exclusively European.
With the remaining race, the Nordic, however, the case is different. This is a purely European type, in the sense that it has developed its physical characters and its civilization within the confines of that continent. It is, therefore, the Homo europæus, the white man par excellence. It is everywhere characterized by certain unique specializations, namely, wavy brown or blond hair and blue, gray or light brown eyes, fair skin, high, narrow and straight nose, which are associated with great 168stature and a long skull, as well as with abundant head and body hair.
A composite picture of this Nordic race and remarkable examples of its best contemporary types can be found in the English illustrated weeklies, which are publishing during this great war the lists and portraits of their officers who have fallen in battle. No nation, not even England although richly endowed with a Nordic gentry, can stand the loss of so much good blood. Here is the evidence, if such be needed, of the actual Passing of the Great Race.
Abundance of hair is an ancient and generalized character which the Nordics share with the Alpines of both Europe and Asia, but the light colored eyes and light colored hair are characters of relatively recent specialization and consequently highly unstable.
The pure Nordic race is at present clustered around the shores of the Baltic and North Seas from which it has spread west and south and east fading off gradually into the two preceding races.
The centre of its greatest purity is now in Sweden and there is no doubt that at first the Scandinavian Peninsula and later, also, the immediately adjoining shores of the Baltic were the centres of radiation of the Teutonic or Scandinavian branch of this race.
169The population of Scandinavia has been composed of this Nordic subspecies from the commencement of Neolithic times and Sweden to-day represents one of the few countries which has never been overwhelmed by foreign conquest and in which there has been but a single racial type from the beginning. This nation is unique in its unity of race, language, religion and social ideals.
Southern Scandinavia only became fit for human habitation on the retreat of the glaciers about twelve thousand years ago and apparently was immediately occupied by the Nordic race. This is one of the few geological dates which is absolute and not relative. It rests on a most interesting series of computations made by Baron DeGeer, based on an actual count of the laminated deposits of clay laid down annually by the retreating glaciers, each layer representing the summer deposit of the subglacial stream.
The Nordics first appear at the close of the Paleolithic along the coasts of the Baltic. The earliest industry discovered in this region, named the Maglemose and found in Denmark and elsewhere around the Baltic, is probably the culture of the Proto-Teutonic branch of the Nordic race. No human remains in connection therewith have been found.
The vigor and power of the Nordic race as a whole is such that it could not have been evolved 170in so restricted an area as southern Sweden although its Teutonic or Scandinavian section did develop there in comparative isolation. The Nordics must have had a larger field for their specialization and a longer period for their evolution than is afforded by the limited time which has elapsed since Sweden became habitable. For the development of so marked a type there is required a continental area isolated and protected for long ages from the intrusion of other races. The climatic conditions must have been such as to impose a rigid elimination of defectives through the agency of hard winters and the necessity of industry and foresight in providing the year’s food, clothing and shelter during the short summer. Such demands on energy if long continued would produce a strong, virile and self-contained race which would inevitably overwhelm in battle nations whose weaker elements had not been purged by the conditions of an equally severe environment.