# Popular Science Monthly/Volume 51/June 1897/The Racial Geography of Europe: The Three European Races V

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* THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE.
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.
Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.
By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. D.,
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
V.—THE THREE EUROPEAN RACES.
IT may smack of heresy to assert, in face of the teachings of all our text-books on geography and history, that there is no single European or white race of men; and yet that is the plain truth of the matter. No continental group of human beings with greater diversities or extremes of physical type exists. That fact accounts in itself for much of our advance in culture. We have already shown in the preceding papers that entire communities of the tallest and shortest of men as well as the longest and broadest headed ones are here to be found within the confines of Europe. Even in respect of the color of the skin, hair, and eyes, responsible more than all else for the misnomer "white race," the greatest variations occur. To be sure, the several types are to-day all more or less blended together by the unifying influences of civilization; there are few sharp contrasts in Europe such as those between the Eskimo and the American Indian or the Malay and the Papuan in other parts of the world. We have been deceived by this in the past. It is high time for us to correct our ideas on the subject, especially in our school and college teaching.
Instead of a single European type there is indubitable evidence of at least three distinct races, each possessed of a history of its own, and each contributing something to the common product, population, as we see it to-day. If this be established it does away at one fell swoop with most of the current mouthings about Aryans and pre-Aryans; and especially with such appellations as the "Caucasian" or the "Indo-Germanic" race. Supposing for present peace that it be allowed that the ancestors of some peoples of Europe may once have been within sight of either the Caspian Sea or the Himalayas, we have still left two thirds of our European races and population out of account. As yet it is too early to discuss the events in the history of these races; that will claim our attention at a later time. The present task before us is to establish first of all that three such racial types exist in Europe.
The skeptic is already prepared perhaps to admit that what we have said about the several physical characteristics, such as the shape of the head, stature, and the like, may all be true. But he will continue to doubt that these offer evidence of distinct races because ordinary observation may detect such gross ​inconsistencies on every hand. Even in the most secluded hamlet of the Alps, where population has remained undisturbed for thousands of years, he will be able to point out blond-haired children whose parents were dark, short sons of tall fathers, and the like. Our portraits of four Corsicans chosen at random offer a case in point. The people of this rocky island are as highly individualized as any in Europe. They offer the purest examples of the southern or Mediterranean type of Europeans; and yet these four men are quite different from one another. As the indexes show, the heads are quite unlike in their proportions. The man on the right is apparently broader-faced than either of the fellows next him, although he is relatively much longer-headed than either. The four vary considerably in the color of the hair and eyes. Nor in stature is there any greater apparent similarity. Such diversities
| 72·3. | 80·8. | 80·1. | 75. |
| Cephalic Index of Corsican Peasants. ||||
confront us on every hand even in this retired corner of Europe. What may we not anticipate in less favored places, especially in the large cities?
Traits in themselves are all right, our objector will maintain: but you must show that they are hereditary, persistent. More than that, you must prove not alone the transmissibility of a single trait by itself, you must also show that combinations of traits are so handed down from father to son. Three stages in the development of our proof must be noted: first, the distribution of separate traits; secondly, their association into types; and, lastly, the hereditary character of those types which alone justifies the term races. We have already taken the first step: we are now entering upon the second. It is highly important that we should keep these distinct. Even among professed anthropologists there is still much confusion of thought upon the subject—so much so, in fact, that some have, it seems to me without warrant, abandoned the task in despair. Let us beware the example of the monkey in the fable. Seeking to withdraw a huge handful of racial nuts from the jar of fact, we may find the neck of scientific possibility all too small. We may fail because we have grasped too much at once. Let us examine. ​There are two ways in which we may seek to assemble our separate physical traits into types—that is, to combine characteristics into living personalities. The one is purely anthropological, the other inferential and geographical in its nature. The first of these is simple. Answer is sought to a direct question. In a given population, are the blondes more often tall than the brunettes, or the reverse? Is the greater proportion of the tall men at the same time distinctly longer-headed or otherwise? and the like. If the answers to these questions be constant and consistent, our work is accomplished. Unfortunately they are not always so, hence our necessary recourse to the geographical proof: but they at least indicate a slight trend, which we may follow up by the other means.
Let it be boldly confessed at the outset that in the great number of cases no invariable association of traits in this way occurs. This is especially true among the people of the central part of Europe. The population of Switzerland, for example, is persistently aberrant in this respect; it is everything anthropologically that it ought not to be. This should not surprise us. In the first place, mountainous areas always contain the "ethnological sweepings of the plains," as Canon Taylor puts it. Especially is this true when the mountains lie in the very heart of the continent, at a focus of racial immigration. Moreover, the environment is competent to upset all probabilities, as we hope to have shown. Suppose a brunette type from the south should come to Andermatt and settle. If the altitude exerts an influence upon the pigmentation, as we have sought to prove; or if its concomitant poverty in the ante-tourist era should depress the stature, the racial equilibrium is as good as vanished in two or three generations. It is therefore only where the environment is simple; and especially on the outskirts of the continent, where migration and intermixture are more infrequent, that any constant and normal association of traits may be anticipated. Take a single example from many. We have always been taught to regard the Teutonic peoples—the Goths, Lombards, and Saxons—as tawny-haired, "large-limbed giants." History is filled with observations to that effect from the earliest times. Our maps have already led us to infer as much. Nevertheless, direct observations show that tall stature and blondness are by no means constant companions in the same person. In Scandinavia, Dr. Arbo asserts, I think, that the tallest men are at the same time inclined to blondness. In Italy, on the other edge of the continent, the same combination is certainly prevalent. Over in Russia, once more on the outskirts of Europe, the tall men are again found to be ​lighter complexioned as a rule. Dr. Beddoe asserts that in Britain it is more often true than otherwise. But if we turn to central Europe we are completely foiled. The association of stature and blondness fails or is reversed in Bavaria, in Baden, along the Adriatic, and in upper Austria and Salzburg, as well as among the European recruits observed in America during our civil war. In Würtemberg alone have we assurance that the relation holds good. It seems to me significant, however, that when the association fails, as in the highlands of Austria, where the environment is eliminated, as in lower Austria, the tall men again become characteristically more blond than the short ones. In this last case environment is to blame; in others, racial intermixture, or it may be merely chance variation, is the cause.
In order to avoid disappointment, let us bear in mind that in no other part of the world save modern America is such an amalgamation of various peoples to be found as in Europe. History, and archaeology long before history, show us a continual picture of tribes appearing and disappearing, crossing and recrossing in their migrations, assimilating, dividing, colonizing, conquering, or being absorbed. It follows from this that, even if our environment were uniform, our pure types must be exceedingly rare. Experience proves that the vast majority of the population of this continent shows evidence of crossing. Thus, in Germany, of six million school children observed on a given day, not one half of them showed the simple combination of dark eyes and dark hair or of light eyes and light hair. In the British Isles it appears that over thirty per cent of persons measured have fair eyes and dark hair—in other words, that the hair and the eyes do not accompany one another in type. Of four hundred and eighty-six students of the Institute of Technology, sixty-five per cent of them were of this mixed type. Even among the Jews, less than forty per cent of them are characterized by the same tinge of hair and eyes; so that in general we can not expect that more than one third of the population will be marked by this simple and single combination. We need not be surprised, therefore, that if we next seek to add a third characteristic, say the shape of the head, to this combination of hair and eyes, we find the proportion of pure types combining all three traits in a fixed measure to be very small indeed. Imagine a fourth trait, stature, or a ​fifth, nose, to be added, and our proportion of pure type becomes almost infinitesimal. We are thus reduced to the extremity in which my friend Dr. Ammon, of Baden, found himself when I wrote asking for photographs of a pure Alpine type from the Black Forest. He has measured thousands of heads, and yet he answered that he really had not been able to find a perfect specimen in all details, as all his round-headed men were either blond, or tall, or narrow-nosed, or something else that they ought not to be.
Confronted by this situation, the tyro is here tempted to turn back in despair. There is no justification for it. It is not essential to our position that we should actually be able to isolate any considerable number, nor even a single one, of our perfect racial types in the life. It matters not to us that never more than a small majority of any given population possesses even two physical characteristics in their proper association; that relatively few of these are able to add a third to the combination; and that almost no individuals show a perfect union of all traits under one head, so to speak, while contradictions and mixed types are everywhere present. Such a condition of affairs need not disturb us if we understand ourselves aright. We should indeed be perplexed were it otherwise.
Consider how complex the problem really is! We say the people of Scotland are on the average among the tallest in Europe. True! But that does not mean that a great number of medium and undersized persons do not occur among them. We may illustrate the actual condition best by means of the accompanying diagram. Three curves are plotted therein for the stature of large groups of men chosen at random from each of three typical parts of Europe. The one at the right is for the tall Scotch, the middle one for the medium-sized northern Italians, and the one at the left for Sardinians, the people of this island being among the shortest in all Europe. The height of each curve at any given point indicates the percentage within each group of men which possessed the stature marked at the base of that vertical line. Thus eight per cent of the Ligurian men were five feet and five inches tall (1·65 metres), while nine per cent of the Sardinians were fully two inches shorter (1·60 metres). In either case these several heights were the most common, although in no instance is the proportion ​considerable at a given stature. There is, however, for each country or group of men some point about which the physical trait clusters. Thus the largest percentage of a given stature among the Scotch occurs at about five feet nine and a half inches. Yet a very large number of them, about five per cent, fall within the group of five feet seven inches (1·70 metres) that is to say, no taller
than an equal percentage of the Ligurians—and even in Sardinia there is an appreciable number of that stature. We must understand therefore, when we say that the Scotch are a tall people or a long-headed or blond one, that we mean thereby not that all the people are peculiar in this respect even to a slight degree, but merely that in this region there are more specimens of these special types than elsewhere. Still it remains that the great mass of the people are merely neutral. This is a more serious obstacle to overcome than direct contradictions. They merely whet the appetite. Our most difficult problem is to separate the typical wheat from the noncommittal straw; to isolate our racial types from the general mean of the continent.
We have now seen how limited are the racial results attainable by the first of our two means of identification—that is, the purely anthropological one. It has appeared that only in the most simple conditions are the several traits constant and faithful to one another in their association in the same persons. Nor are we justified in asking for more. Our three racial types are not radically distinct seeds which, once planted in the several parts of Europe, have there taken root; and, each preserving its peculiarities intact, have spread from those centers outward until they ​have suddenly run up against one another along a racial frontier. Such was the old-fashioned view of races in the days before the theory of evolution had remodeled our ways of thinking, when human races were held to be distinct creations of a Divine will. We conceive of it all quite differently. These types for us are all necessarily offshoots from the same trunk. The problem is far m.ore complex to us for this reason. It is doubly dynamic. Up-building and demolition are taking place at the same time. By our constitution of racial types we seek to simplify the matter—for a moment to lose sight of all the destructive forces, and from obscure tendencies to derive ideal results. We picture an anthropological goal which might have been attained had the life conditions been less complicated.
Are we in this more presumptuous than other natural scientists? Is the geologist more certain of his deductions in his restoration of an ideal mountain chain from the denuded roots which alone bear witness to the fact to-day? In this case all the superstructure has long since disappeared. The restoration is no less scientific. It represents more clearly than aught else the rise and disappearance, the results and future tendencies of great geological movements. We take no more liberties with our racial types than this geologist with his mountains; nor do we mean more by our restorations. The parallel is instructive. The geologist is well aware that the uplifted folds as he depicts them never existed in completeness at any given time. He knows full well that erosion took place even as lateral pressure raised the contorted strata; that one may even have been the cause of the other. If indeed denudation could have been postponed until all the elevation of the strata had been accomplished, then the restoration of the mountain chain would stand for a real but vanished thing. This, the geologist is well aware, was not thus and so. In precisely the same sense do we conceive of our races. Far be it from us to assume that these three races of ours ever in the history of mankind existed in absolute purity or isolation from one another. As soon might the branch grow separate and apart from the parent oak. No sooner have environmental influences, peculiar habits of life, and artificial selection commenced to generate distinct varieties of men from the common clay; no sooner has heredity set itself to perpetuating these; than chance variation, migration, intermixture, and changing environments, with a host of minor dispersive factors, begin to efface this constructive work. Racial up-building and demolition, as we have said, have ever proceeded side by side. Never is the perfect type in view, while yet it is always possible. "Race," says Topinard, "in the present state of things is an abstract conception, a notion of continuity in discontinuity, of unity in diversity. It is the rehabilitation of a real ​but directly unattainable thing." In this sense alone do we maintain that there are three ideal racial types in Europe to be distinguished from one another. They have often unfortunately dissolved in the common population; each trait has gone its own way; so that at the present time rarely, if indeed ever, do we discover a single individual corresponding to our racial type in every detail. It exists for us nevertheless.
Thus convinced that the facts do not warrant us in expecting too much of our anthropological means of isolating racial types, we have recourse to a second or inferential mode of study. In this we work by geographical areas rather than by personalities. We discover, for example, that the north of Europe constitutes a veritable center of dispersion of long-headedness. Quite independently we discover that the same region contains more blond traits than any other part of Europe; and that a high average stature there prevails. The inference is at once natural that these three characteristics combine to mark the prevalent type of the population. If one journeyed through it, one might at first expect to find the majority of the people to be long-headed and tall blondes; that the tallest individuals would be the most blond, the longest-headed most tall, and so on. This is, as we have already shown, too good and simple to be true, or even to be expected. Racial combinations of traits indeed disappear in a given population, as sugar dissolves, or rather as certain chemical salts are resolved into their constituent elements when immersed in water. From the proportions of each element discovered in the fluid, quite free from association, we are often able to show that they once were united in the same compound. In the same manner, we, finding these traits floating about loose, so to speak, in the same population, proceed to reconstitute types from them. We know that the people approach this type more and more as we near the specific center of its culmination. The traits may refuse to go otherwise than two by two, like the animals in the ark, although they may change partners quite frequently; and they may still manifest distinct affinities one for another nevertheless.
The apparent inference is not always the just one, although it tends to be. Suppose, for example, that one observer should prove that sixty per cent of ten thousand natives of Holland were blondes: and another, studying the same ten thousand individuals, should prove that a like proportion were very tall—would this of necessity mean that the Hollanders were mainly tall blondes? Not at all! It might still be that the two groups of traits merely overlapped at their edges. In other words, the great majority of the blondes might still be constituted from the shorter half of the population. Only twenty per cent need necessarily be tall and blond at once, even in this simple case where both observers ​studied the same men from different points of view. How much more confusing if each chanced to hit upon an entirely different set of ten thousand men! This, be it noted, is generally the case in practice. Nevertheless, although there is always danger in such inferences, we are fortunate in possessing so many parallel investigations that they check one another, and the tendencies all point in one direction.
These tendencies we may discover by means of curves drawn as we have indicated above in our diagram. By them we may analyze each group in detail. Every turn of the lines has a meaning. Thus, the most noticeable feature of the Sardinian curve of statures is its narrowness and height; the Ligurian one is broader at the base, with sloping sides; and the Scotch one looks as if pressure had been applied at the apex to flatten it out still farther. The interpretation is clear. In Sardinia we have a relatively unmixed population. Nearly all of the people are characterized by statures between five feet one inch (1·56 metres) and five feet five inches (1·65 metres). They are homogeneous, in other words: and they are homogeneous at the lower limit of human variation in stature. The curve is steepest on the left side. This means that the stature has been depressed to a point where neither misery nor chance variation can stunt still further; so that suddenly from seven per cent of the men of a height of five feet one and a half inches [more frequent than any given stature in Scotland] we drop to two per cent at a half inch shorter stature. A moment's consideration will show that the narrower the pyramid, the higher it must be. One hundred per cent of the people must be accounted for somewhere. If they do not scatter sidewise, their aggregation near the center will elevate the apex, or the shoulders of the curve at least. So that a sharp pyramid points to a homogeneous people. If they were all precisely alike, a single vertical line one hundred per cent high would result. On the other hand, a flattened curve indicates the introduction of some disturbing factor, be it an immigrant race, environment or what not. In this case the purity of the Sardinians is readily explicable. They have lived in the greatest isolation, set apart in the Mediterranean. A curve drawn for the Irish shows the same phenomenon. Islands demographically tend in the main to one or the other of the extremes. If unattractive, they offer examples of the purest isolation, as in Corsica and Sardinia. If inviting or on the cross-paths of navigation, like Sicily, their people speedily degenerate into mixed types. For if incentive to immigration be offered, they are approachable alike from all sides. The Scotch, as we have observed, are more or less mixed in type, and unequally subjected to the influences of environment; so that their curve shows evidence of heterogeneity. ​Scotland combines the isolation of the highlands with a great extent of seacoast. The result has been that in including the population of both areas in a single curve we find evidence of impurity in the great variability of stature.
By the second geographical method which we have described, we constitute our racial types as the archæologist, from a mass of broken fragments of pottery, restores the designs upon his shattered and incomplete vases. Upon a bit of clay he discovers tracings of a portion of a conventionalized human figure. A full third—let us say the head of Thoth or some other Egyptian deity—is missing. The figure is incomplete to this extent. Near by is found upon another fragment a representation of the head and half the body of another figure. In this case it is the legs alone which lack. This originally formed no part of the same vase with the first bit. It is perhaps of entirely different size and color. Nevertheless, finding that the portions of the design upon the two fragments bear marks of identity in motive or design, data for the complete restoration of the figure of the god are at hand. It matters not that from the fragments in his possession the archæologist can reconstruct no single perfect form. The pieces of clay will in no wise fit together. The designs, notwithstanding, so complement one another that his mind is set at rest. The affinity of the two portions is almost as clearly defined as the disposition of certain chemical elements to combine in fixed proportions; for primitive religion or ornament is not tolerant of variation.
We copy the procedure of the archæologist precisely. In one population color of hair and stature gravitate toward certain definite combinations. Not far away, perhaps in another thousand men drawn from the same locality, the same stature is found to manifest an affinity for certain types of head form. It may require scores of observations to detect the tendency, so slight has it become. In still another thousand men perhaps a third combination is revealed. These all, however, overlap at the edges. Granted that an assumption is necessary. It is allowed to the archæologist. Our conclusions are more certain than his, even as the laws of physical combination are more immutable than those of mental association. For it was merely mental conservatism which kept the primitive designer of the vase from varying his patterns. Here we have unchanging physical facts upon which to rely. Of course, we should be glad to find all our physical traits definitely associated in completeness in the same thousand recruits, were it not denied to us. The archæologist would likewise rejoice at the discovery of a single perfect design upon a single vase. Both of us lack entities; we must be contented with affinities instead. ​A final step in our constitution of races—that is, of hereditary types—is to prove that they are persistent; that like father like son corresponds to the facts in the case. Of direct testimony we possess nothing. No single investigator, save perhaps Galton, has to my knowledge followed down a line from one generation to another. Anthropologists are human themselves. The life of man is all too short to cover such tasks. But of indirect proof we have plenty. We know, for example, that in the north of Europe, as far back as archæology can carry us, men of a type of head form identical with the living population to-day were in a majority. Likewise the lake dwellers in Switzerland in the stone age, little more civilized than the natives of Africa, were true ancestors of the present Alpine race. Prehistoric archæology thus comes to our aid with cumulative proof that at all events traits are hereditary in populations, even if not always so in men. In truth, we here enter upon a larger field of investigation than the anthropological one. The whole topic of heredity opens up before us, too immense to discuss in this place. Suffice it to say that in the main no question is entertained upon the subject, save in the special cases of artificially acquired characteristics and the like.
After this tedious summary of methods, let us turn to results. The table on this page shows the combinations of traits into racial types which seem best to accord with the facts. It speaks for itself.
European Racial Types.
| | | Head. | Face. | Hair. | Eyes. | Stature. | Nose. | Synonyms. | Used by. |
| 1 | Teutonic. | Long. | Long. | Very light. | Blue. | Tall. | Narrow; aquiline. | Reihengräber. Germanic. Kymric. Aryan. (?) Homo Europæus. | Germans French. Laponge. |
| 2 | Alpine (Celtic). | Round. | Broad. | Light chest- nut. | Hazel- gray. | Medium. | Variable; rather broad; heavy. | Celto-Slavic. Dissentis. Arvernian. Ligurian. Homo Alpinus. | French. Germans Beddoe. Taylor. Laponge. |
| 3 | Mediter- ranean. | Long. | Long | Dark brown or bl'k. | Dark. | Short. (?) | Rather broad. | Iberian. Ligurian. | English. Livi. |
The first of our races is perhaps the most characteristic. It is entirely restricted to northwestern Europe, with a center of dispersion in Scandinavia. Our portraits, chosen as typical by Dr. Arbo of the Norwegian army, show certain of the physical peculiarities, especially the great length of the head, the long oval face, and the straight aquiline nose. The face is rather smooth in outline, the cheek bones not being prominent. The narrow nose seems to be a very constant trait, as much so as the ​tendency to tall stature. Dr. Collignon has even demonstrated it as a law in France that the relation between the two holds good. Teutonic Type. Norway, Vaage. Cephalic Index, 75. The Teutonic race is also strongly inclined to blondness. The eyes are blue or light gray, and the hair flaxen, tawny, reddish, or sandy. The whole combination accords exactly with the descriptions handed down to us by the ancients. Such were the Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals, Lombards, together with the Danes, Norsemen, Saxons, and their fellows of another place and time. History is thus strictly corroborated by natural science.
Our second racial type is most persistently characterized by the shape of the head. This is short and at the same time broad. The roundness is accompanied by a broad face, the chin full, and the nose rather heavy. These traits are all shown more or less clearly in our portraits, one from south central France, two from Bavaria, and one from northern Italy. The side views show the shortness of the
Teutonic Types. Norway, Hedalen. Cephalic Index, 76.
head as contrasted with the Teutonic type above described. At the same time the cranium is high, the forehead straight, sometimes almost overhanging. It seems as if pressure had been applied front and back, the skull having yielded in an upward direction. This type is of medium height, decidedly inclined toward stockiness in build. Its whole aspect is rather of solidity than of ​agility. The color of the hair and eyes is rather neutral, at all events intermediate between the Teutonic and Mediterranean
Alpine Type. Auvergne, Central France.
races. There is a tendency toward grayish eyes, while the hair is more often brown. In these respects, however, there is great variability, and the transition to the north and south is very gradual. Climate or other environmental influence has in these
Alpine Types. Bavaria.
traits eliminated all sharp division lines. These peculiarities appear only when the type is found in extreme isolation and purity.
What name shall we apply to this second race, characterized by its great breadth of head primarily, and which has its main ​center of dissemination in the Alps. For the first three of our types the task of christening was simple enough. To name this second one would have been comparatively easy as well, if Cæsar had not introduced his Commentaries by the well-known passage: "All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgæ inhabit; the Aquitani, another; those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third." The so-called Celtic question is all involved in this simple statement. Let us reduce it to its lowest terms. The philologers properly insist upon calling all those who speak the Celtic language Celts. With less reason the archæologists follow them and insist upon assigning the Alpine Type. Piedmont, Northern Italy. Cephalic Index, 91·2. name Celt to all those who possessed the Celtic culture; while the physical anthropologists, finding the Celtic language spoken by peoples of divers physical types, with equal propriety hold that the term Celt should be applied to that physical group or type of men which includes the greatest number of those who use the Celtic language. This manifestly operated to the exclusion of those who spoke Celtic but who differed from the linguistic majority in physical characteristics. The practical result of all this was that anthropologists called the tall and blond people of northern France and Belgium, Gauls or Kymri; and the broad heads of middle and southwestern France Celts: while Cæsar, as we saw, insisted that the Celt and the Gaul were identical. The anthropologists affirmed that the Celtic language had slipped off the tongues of some, and that others had adopted it at second hand. Their explanation held that the blond Belgæ had come into France from the north, bringing the Celtic speech, which those already there speedily adopted; but that they remained as distinct in blood as before. These anthropologists, therefore, insisted that the Belgæ deserved a distinctive name: and they called them Gauls, since they ruled in Gaul, in distinction from the Celts, who, being the earlier inhabitants, constituted the majority of the Celtic-speaking people. This was a cross-division with the philologists, who called the Belgæ Celts, because they brought the language, reserving the name Gaul, as they said, for the natives of that country; but ​both philologists and anthropologists alike differed from the historians, who held to Cæsar's view that the Gauls and the Celts were all one.
Still greater confusion arises if we attempt to discuss the origin of the people of the British Isles, where this Celtic question enters again. Thus the people of Ireland and Wales, of Cornwall and the Scottish Highlands, together with the Bretons in France, would all be Celtic for the linguist because they all spoke the Celtic language. For the anthropologist, as we shall see, the
Alpine (Slavic) Types. Middle Russia.
Breton is as far from the Welsh as in some respects the Welsh are from the Scotch.
It happened that the father of modern anthropology, the illustrious Paul Broca, having pre-empted the term Celt for the people including most of the broad-headed type and its main crosses, all the anthropologists have followed him. The linguists have refused to yield their side, and still use the name in their own sense. We shall not seek to solve the question. If we have shown what confusion may result from the use of this term, we are content. Our own view is that the linguists and the archæologists are perhaps better entitled to the name Celt; but that they should be utterly denied the use of the word race. Be this as it may, we shall invent a new term, or rather adopt one from M. de Lapouge, ​and call the broad-headed type Alpine. It centers in that region. It everywhere follows the elevated portions of western Europe. Mixed Alpine (Asiatic) Type. Hungary. It is, therefore, pre-eminently a mountain type, whether in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, or Albania. By the use of it we shall carefully distinguish between language, culture, and physical type. Thus the Celtic language and the Aryan culture may spread over the Alpine race, or vice versa. As, in fact, each may migrate in independence of the others; so in our terminology we may distinctly follow them apart from one another. No confusion of terms can result. It is purely a geographical name, like the one we have applied to the third group.
One more matter of racial names remains for consideration. What shall we do with the term Slavic, which like Celtic is purely a linguistic or ethnological term? Curiously enough, from Poland Mediterranean Type. Corsican. Cephalic Index, 72·3. to Macedonia, all over eastern Europe in fact, where the Slavic language is in common use, the people are of the same physical type as the Alpine race. The distinctive features, especially the broad-headedness, are somewhat attenuated, to be sure; but anthropologists are agreed that the two groups are identical. Our Russian portraits show the tendency in this direction. In eastern Europe, however, this type ceases to be identified with the mountainous areas. Its zone of extension is widespread over the plains. Shall we continue to call these people Slavs from their language, or assign them to the Alpine group despite this circumstance? Or shall we, as in recent vogue, apply the term Slavo-Celtic to the whole combination? The question is still further confused because the Slavic language linguistically is akin to the Teutonic, although the two physical types are as wide apart as the poles. If we reject our term Celt, ​the other, being equally a linguistic term, should go as well. The only alternative seems to be to apply the term Homo Alpinus Berber, Tunis. Cephalic Index, 72. to this broad-headed group wherever it occurs, whether in mountains or plains, in the west or in the east. The name is justified by the circumstance that its main body occurs in the Alps, and that its purest types culminate there as well.
We now come to the last of our three races, which is generally known as the Mediterranean or Iberian type. It prevails everywhere south of the Pyrenees, along the southern coast of France, and in southern Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia. Once more we return to a type of head form almost identical with the Teutonic. Our portraits of Corsicans on a preceding page, with the enlargement of one of the four in the group, show the exaggerated length of face and the narrowness of the forehead. The cephalic index drops from eighty-seven and above in the Alps to about seventy-five all along the line. This is the primary fact to be noted. Coincidently, the color of hair and eyes becomes very dark, almost black. The Mediterranean Type. Montpellier. Cephalic index, 67. figure is less amply proportioned, the people become light and rather agile. It is certain that the stature at the same time falls to an exceedingly low level: fully nine inches—more than a head—below the averages for Teutonic Europe. Authorities are, however, divided as to the significance of this. It has been shown that while the average height is low, a considerable number, and those of the purest type in other respects, are of goodly stature. It may indeed be that, as we have already suggested, too protracted civilization is responsible for this diminutiveness. The people of northern Africa (illustrated by our portrait), pure Mediterranean Europeans, are of medium size in fact. Personally I incline to the view that culture is to blame, and that the type is normally of ​medium size, although it would be impossible of proof at this writing.
It would be interesting at this time to follow out the intellectual differences between these three races which we have described. The future social complexion of Europe is largely dependent upon them. The problem is too complicated to treat briefly. In a later paper, devoted expressly to modern social problems, we may return to it again. Our physical analysis is now complete. The next task is to trace the origin of nationalities from the combination of these elements. We shall begin with the French; for this single nation is, alone in all Europe, compounded of all three racial elements; nay, more, we shall be able to point to a still older population than any of these, living to-day in France, with an unbroken ancestry reaching back to the prehistoric stone age.
* ↑ Livi. Anthropometria Militare. pp. 74. 76.
* ↑ Globus, vol. xlii, 1892, p. 337.
* ↑ Stature and Bulk of Man in the British Isles, p. 171. The opposite is perhaps true in Scotland (Topinard, Eléments, p. 491).
* ↑ Ranke. Physische Beiträge zur Anthropologie Bayerns, p. 195 seq.; and Der Mensch, ii, p. 124. Ammon, in Sammlung gemeinverständlicher, wissenschaftliche Vorträge, Series V, vol. ci, p. 14. Mittheilungen der anthropologishcen Gesellschaft in Wien, xxv, p. 70. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Supplement, 1884, p. 26ü. Baxter, op cit., vol i, pp. 23, 38. Von Hölder, Zusammenstellung der in Würtemberg vorkommenden Schädelformen, p. 6.
* ↑ The curve for the Scotch, taken from the Report of the Anthropometric Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science for 1883, has been arbitrarily corrected to correspond to the metric system employed by Dr. Livi in the other curves. A centimetre is roughly equal to 0·4 of an inch. It is assumed that in consequence only 0·4 as many individuals will fall within each centimetre class as in the groups of stature differing by inches. The ordinates in the Scotch diagram have therefore been reduced to 0·4 of their height in the original curve.