# Popular Science Monthly/Volume 52/January 1898/The Racial Geography of Europe: The Aryan Question XII

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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.
XII.—THE ARYAN QUESTION.
IN our school days most of us were brought up to regard Asia as the mother of European peoples. We were told that an ideal race of men swarmed forth from the Himalayan highlands, disseminating culture right and left as they spread through the barbarous West. The primitive language, parent to all of the varieties of speech—Romance, Teutonic, Slavic, Persian, or Hindustanee—spoken by the so-called Caucasian or white race, was called Aryan. By inference this name was shifted to the shoulders of the people themselves, who were known as the Aryan race. In the days when such symmetrical generalizations held sway there was no science of physical anthropology; prehistoric archeology was not yet. Shem, Ham, and Japhet were still the patriarchal founders of the great racial varieties of the genus Homo. A new science of philology dazzled the intelligent world by its brilliant discoveries, and its words were law.
We have no time to trace here in detail the revolution of opinion ​which the last quarter century has produced. This has been done for us by a master hand. The logical rottenness of the Asiatic hypothesis, even from the linguistic point of view alone, speedily revealed itself to Latham, Omalius d'Halloy, and others; their contentions were supported by evidences of man's existence in Europe from the remotest antiquity, and of his gradual acquisition of culture on the spot. Then, nearly twenty years ago, arguments based upon the physical characteristics rather than the languages of living European peoples began to be injected into the controversy by Poesche, Penka, and others. Within a decade, physical anthropology dealing with living men, has struggled to its feet and claims the floor—perhaps to the damnation of its predecessors. It may justly be affirmed that no other scientific question, with the exception of the doctrine of evolution, was ever so bitterly discussed, or so confounded at the hands of biased writers by religious and national prejudice.
So much by way of introduction. Let us now at the outset distinguish culture, language, and race; let us rigidly avoid confusing them in any respect. The cultural evidence in turn may be resolved into several distinct parts: arts or customs, language, and perhaps even mythology. Each concerns an entire science by itself. Their relative importance is indicated in the order of naming. The credibility of the testimony of each varies directly with its liability to migrate in entire independence of any actual movement of peoples. Physical traits, of course, are absolutely certain; arts and customs are less apt than is language to be acquired abroad by mere contact. Mythologies are most fluid of all. In this paper we shall deal merely with the first of all these, namely, race, leaving the matter of the origin of culture for future treatment. We shall deal with physical anthropology and the witness of prehistoric archæology alone. Finally, we shall strive conscientiously to distinguish between the positively proved and the merely hypothetical. We shall advance by propositions, keeping them in martial order, as we are entering debatable territory. One great advantage alone we may claim. As Americans, we should be endowed with "the serene impartiality of a mongrel," as the late Professor Huxley put it. No logical conclusion has terror for us. Whether the noble Aryan be ​proved Teuton, Celt, or Iberian, it is all the same. We have no monopoly of inheritance in it in any case.
I. The European races, as a whole, show signs of a secondary or derived origin; certain characteristics, especially the texture of the hair, lead us to class them as intermediate between the extreme primary types of the Asiatic and the negro races respectively.
From what we have seen of the head form, complexion, and stature of the population of Europe, we might be led to expect that in other physical traits as well this little continent contained all extremes of human variation. We have been surprised, perhaps, at the exceeding diversity of forms occurring within so restricted an area, and in a human group which most of us have perhaps been taught to regard as homogeneous. One physical characteristic alone affords justification for this hypothesis of ethnic homogeneity. This is the form and texture of the hair. Only in this respect, not in color, the hair is quite uniform all over Europe, and even far into Hindustan, where Aryan languages have migrated. At the same time, however, this texture in itself indicates a secondary origin—that is to say, it denotes a human type derived from the crossing of others which we may class as primary. The population of Europe, in other words, should be numbered among the secondary races of the earth. What its constituent elements may have been we shall discuss somewhat later.
The two extremes of hair texture in the human species are the crisp curly variety so familiar to us in the African negro; and the stiff, wiry, straight hair of the Asiatic and the American aborigines. These traits are exceedingly persistent; they persevere oftentimes through generations of ethnic intermixture. It has been shown by Pruner Bey and others that this outward contrast in texture is due to, or at all events coincident with, real morphological differences in structure. The curly hair is almost always of a flattened, ribbon-like form in cross section, as examined microscopically; while, cut squarely across, the straight hair more often inclines to a fully rounded or cylindrical shape. It may be coarse, or fine, or of any color, but the texture remains quite constant in the same individual and the same race. Moreover, this peculiarity in cross section may often be detected in any crossing of these extreme types. The result of such intermixture is to impart a more or less wavy appearance to the hair, and to produce a cross section intermediate between a flattened oval and a circle. Roughly speaking, the more pronounced the flatness, the greater is the tendency toward waviness or curling, and the reverse.
​As in all our preceding world maps, we have to do with the aboriginal and not the imported peoples. Our data for North America apply to the Indians alone, before the advent of either the whites or negroes. These latter depart in no wise physically from the types whence they were derived. It appears that most of Asia and both the Americas are quite uniformly straight-haired. At the other extreme stands Africa, and especially Papua and the archipelago to the southeast of it, which as far as the Fiji group is known as Melanesia, or the "black islands." This map strikingly corroborates the evidence presented by our other world maps, showing the distribution of the head form and the skin color. Generally speaking, the aphorism holds that the round-headed people are also round-haired. The black-skinned races are, on the other hand, generally long-headed and characterized by hair of an elongated oval in cross section. Physical anthropologists, to be sure, distinguish several subvarieties of this curly hair. Thus, among the Bushmen and Hottentots at the southern tip of Africa, the spirals are so tight that the hair aggregates in little nubbles over the scalp, leaving what were long supposed to be entirely bald spots between. This is known as the peppercorn type, from its resemblance to such grains scattered over the head. And in Melanesia the texture is not quite like that of the main body of the Africans; but for all practical purposes they may all be classed together.
The remaining tints upon our map denote the extension of the wavy textured hair, which is generally intermediate in cross section, varying from ribbonlike to nearly cylindrical shape. There are three separate subdivisions under this head. Two of these, the Polynesian and the Australian, are most certainly wavy-haired mongrels, derived from intermixture of the straight-haired Asiatic races with the extreme frizzled type of Melanesia. This latter is by all authorities regarded as the primitive occupant of the Pacific archipelago, and of Indonesia as well. Among the Malays, and such hybrids as the Japanese, the Asiatic type preponderates; in the Australian peoples the other element is more strongly represented. Tasmania is quite distinct from its neighboring continent. Isolation perhaps has kept it true to its primitive type. The Polynesians and Micronesians seem to be compounded of about equal proportions of each. Of course, all sorts of variations are common. The peoples of the Pacific are peculiarly aberrant in this respect. Some islands are characterized by quite lank and coarse-haired types; some have the frizzled hair stiffened just enough to make it stand on end, producing those surprising shocks familiar to us in our school-geography illustrations of the Fiji islanders.
What shall we say of the European races, the third of our ​intermediate types? Here also all individual variations occur, seemingly in utter defiance of any law. The Italian is as apt to be straight-haired as the Norwegian; in either nation the curly variety seems to occur sporadically. Yet common observation, to say nothing of microscopical examination, would naturally class the population of Europe among the fine-textured, wavy-haired races of the earth. One never sees the wiry form so familiar in the American Indian, or the frizzle of the full-blooded negro. Are we to infer from this that the people of Europe, therefore, are, like the Polynesians and Australians, the result of an ethnic cross between other more primary types? Certainly the study of the head form, with every extreme known to man within the confines of the single continent, seems to discredit this possibility. The only alternative is to consider this texture of hair to be a more liquid characteristic, so to speak, than the shape of the head; in other words, to assume that a few drops of alien blood might suffice to produce an intermediate texture of the hair, and yet not be adequate to modify the head form. If this were indeed so, then we might imagine that, even while our three European races have kept reasonably distinct in head form, intermixture has nevertheless taken place to some extent in every nook and corner of the continent; and that this infinitesimal crossing has been enough to modify the hair texture. But we are now wandering off into vague hypothesis. There is yet enough that is positively known to demand our attention without indulging in speculation. We have stated the situation; let the reader draw his own conclusions.
II. The earliest and lowest strata of population in Europe were extremely long-headed; probability points to the living Mediterranean type as most nearly representative of it to-day.
Of these most primitive races, coexisting with a fauna and flora now extinct or migrated with change of climate from central and western Europe, oftentimes no remains exist except the skulls by which to judge of their ethnic affinities. We know more, in fact, concerning their culture than their physical type in the earlier stone age at least; but it is nevertheless established beyond all question that they were dolichocephalic, and that, too, to a remarkable degree. This feature characterized all subdivisions of the populations of this epoch. Many varieties have been identified by specialists, such as the stocky, short-statured Neanderthal type and the taller and more finely molded Cro-Magnon race. The classification of each nation differs in minor details, but they all agree in this, that the population both of the early and the late stone age was long-headed to an extreme.
The present unanimity of opinion among archæologists concerning this earliest dolichocephalic population is all the more ​remarkable because it represents a complete reversal of the earliest theories on the subject. Retzius, in 1842, from a comparison of the Scandinavians with the Lapps and Finns, propounded the hypothesis that the latter broad-headed brunette types were the relics of a pre-Aryan population of Europe. Their comparative barbarism confirmed him in this view. It seemed to be plain that this Mongoloid or Asiatic variety of man had been repressed to this remote northern region by an immigrant blond, long-headed race from the southwest. Nilsson adopted this view; it was stoutly maintained by Pruner Bey in France, and most leading authorities of the day. Then began the discoveries of abundant prehistoric remains all over Europe, particularly in France. These with one accord tended to show that the European aborigines of the stone age were not Mongoloid like the Lapps after all, but the exact opposite. In every detail they resembled rather the dolichocephalic negroes of Africa. The only other races approaching them in long-headedness are either the Eskimos, whom Boyd Dawkins believes to be a relic of this early European people, or else the Australians. Mr. Huxley long ago asserted these savages in turn to be our human progenitors. We need not stop to discuss either of these radical opinions. It is sufficient for us that Broca finally dealt the death blow to the older view in 1868 by the evidence from the caves of Périgord, the very district where our living Cro-Magnon type still survives, as we have already shown.
This dolichocephalic substratum has been traced all over Europe with much detail in the neolithic or late stone age, by which time the geography and the flora and fauna of the continent had assumed in great measure their present conditions. "We know that the long-headed races, now found living on the northern and southern outskirts of Europe, in Spain, southern Italy, the British Isles, and Scandinavia, once occupied territory close up to the foot of the high Alps on every side. Remains of it have not yet been found in the mountains themselves, although closely hedging them in on every side. For example, Zampa, Nicolucci, and Sergi have alike collected evidence to prove that the whole basin of the Po River, now a strongly brachycephalic center, was in the nelithic period populated by this long-headed type. In other words, Italy, from end to end, was once uniform anthropologically. For France, a recent summary of the human remains of the late stone age, based upon nearly seven hundred skeletons or skulls, shows an overwhelming preponderance of this long-headed type. The roundheads were almost entirely absent in the beginning, as in our last article we showed them to have been ​in the British Isles during the same epoch. France was apparently very unevenly populated. In all the uplands, especially the central plateau of Auvergne and in the Alps, human remains are less abundant, although when occurring being of the same decidedly long-headed type—this, be it remembered, in those sterile uplands where to-day, as we have shown, one of the roundest-headed populations in the world resides. Less easy to summarize is the evidence from Germany, but the scattered investigations all point the same way. As for Spain, northern Africa, and Scandinavia, the earliest types seem to have always been identical in head form with the ones there living to-day, decidedly dolichocephalic. Nor is there in Russia any contradiction of this law, as Bogdanov has shown.
Assuming it as proved, therefore, that the head form of the first population of Europe was of this quite uniform type, what do we know of its other physical characteristics? This concerns the second half of our primary proposition. That is to say, may we decide to which branch of the living long-headed race it belonged; that of the tall, blond Teuton or of the shorter-statured, dark-complexioned Mediterranean type? It is a matter of no small moment to settle this if possible. Unfortunately, we can prove nothing directly concerning the complexion, for of course all traces of hair have long since disappeared from the graves of this early period. Presumptively, the type was rather brunette than blond, for in the dark color of hair and eye it would approach the foundation tints of all the rest of the human race. The light hair and blue eye of northern Europe are nowhere found in any appreciable proportion elsewhere, save perhaps among the Ainos in Japan, an insignificant people, too few in numbers and too remote to affect the generalization. If, therefore, as all consistent students of natural history hold to-day, the human races have evolved in the past from some common root type, this predominant dark color must be regarded as the more primitive. It is not permissible for an instant to suppose that ninety-nine per cent of the human species has varied from a blond ancestry, while the flaxen-haired Teutonic type alone has remained true to its primitive characteristics.
We are strengthened in this assumption that the earliest Europeans were not only long-headed, but also dark-complexioned, by various points in our inquiry thus far. "We have proved the prehistoric antiquity of the living Cro-Magnon type in southwestern France, and we saw that among these peasants the prevalence of black hair and eyes is very striking. And again in our last article, ​comparing types in the British Isles, we saw that everything tended to show that the brunette populations of Wales, Ireland, and Scotland constituted the most primitive stratum of population in Britain.
As to stature, a trait in which the Teuton and the Iberian differ markedly from one another to-day, we have abundant evidence that this neolithic population was more akin to the medium-statured French than to the relatively gigantic Germans and Scandinavians. The men of this epoch were not, to be sure, as diminutive as the modern south Italians or the Spaniards; they seem rather to approximate the medium height of the inhabitants of northern Africa. These Berbers and their fellows, in fact, shading off as they do into the negro race south of the Sahara, we must regard as having least departed from the aboriginal European type. And in Europe proper the brunette long-headed Mediterranean race is but slightly aberrant from it. It may have become stunted by too protracted civilization, it may have changed somewhat in facial proportions, but on the whole it has remained true to its ancestral image.
III. It is highly probable that the Teutonic race of northern Europe is merely a variety of this primitive long-headed type of the stone age, both its distinctive blondness and its remarkable stature having been acquired in the relative isolation of Scandinavia through the modifying influences of environment and of natural selection.
This theory of a relationship between the two long-headed races of Europe is not entirely novel. Canon Taylor hints it under his breath as a remote possibility. We affirm it as the best working hypothesis possible in the light of recent investigations. It will be seen at once that this theorem rests upon the assumption that the head form is a decidedly more permanent racial characteristic than pigmentation. In so doing it relegates to a secondary position the color of the hair and eyes, which so eminent an anthropologist as Huxley has made the basis of his whole scheme of classification of European peoples. Dr. Brinton, and after him Keane, have likewise relied upon these traits in tracing their Aryan race to a lair in northern Africa. Nevertheless, we do not hesitate to affirm that the research of the last ten years has turned the scales in favor of the cranium, if properly studied, as the most reliable test of race. We know that brunetteness varies with age in the same individual—that is one proof of its impermanence. In a preceding article we devoted some attention to proving also that there is a factor of the environment in mountainous or infertile regions which operates to increase the proportion of blond traits among men. We did not seek ​to determine whether this were due to climate alone, or to the defective nutrition which too often attends a poverty of environment. It is a well-recognized law in the geographical distribution of lower forms of life that two hundred and fifty feet increase in altitude is equivalent to one degree's remove in latitude from the equator. If this be true, applied to man, it would lead us to expect a steady increase of blondness toward the north of Europe, a fact which all our maps have substantiated fully. Experience in colonizing Africa to-day indicates that such adaptation of the Teutonic race to a northern climate constitutes a serious bar to its re-entry into the equatorial regions. May not this change physiologically be correlated in some way with the modified pigmentation? We should assume, in other words, that as the primitive long-headed type of the stone age gradually spread over northern Europe, environmental influences slowly, very slowly, through scores of generations, would lead this subvariety to emerge. Its differentiation would then be commensurate with the distance from its original southern center of migration—whether a direct product of environment or merely indirectly through natural selection is not for us to determine as yet.
Climate as an explanation for the derived blondness of the Teutonic race is, however, not sufficient by itself to account for the phenomenon. It neglects a significant fact on which we laid emphasis in an earlier chapter, viz., that blondness not only decreases as we proceed southward from Scandinavia, but in an easterly direction as well. In other words, the Russians at the latitude of Norway and Sweden are far more brunette in type. How shall we reconcile this with our environmental hypothesis? In the first place, the hordes which speak the Slavic languages are all comparatively recent immigrants in Europe; they are physically allied to the broad-headed Alpine type. This we shall explain in a succeeding paragraph. For this reason, comparisons between Scandinavia and the lands directly east of it are vitiated at once. But there is yet another reason why we may expect these Teutons to be notable even in their own latitude by reason of their blondness. It is this; that the trait has for some reason become so distinctive of a dominant race all over Europe that it has been rendered susceptible to the influence of artificial selection. Thus a powerful agent is allied to climate to exaggerate what may once have been an insignificant trait. Were there space we might adduce abundant evidence to prove that the upper classes in France, Germany, Austria, and the British Isles are distinctly lighter in hair and eyes than the peasantry, The classical ​Latin writers abound in testimony to this effect. We know also that the Teutonic conquerors of prehistoric times, the Reihengräber, for example, were of this type. Both tall stature and blondness together constitute insignia of noble descent. Gummere has collected some interesting materials from mediæval literature on this point. The thrall or churl is invariably a dark type, the opposite of the flaxen-haired, blue-eyed jarl or earl. Let us suppose, then, that such an opinion concerning nobility became widespread; suppose that it were intensified by the splendid military and political expansion of the Teutons in historic times all over the continent; suppose it to have become the priceless heritage of people more or less isolated in a corner of Europe! Is there any doubt that, entirely apart from any natural choice exerted by the physical environment, an artificial selective process would have been engendered, which in time would become mighty in its results? Is it not permissible to ascribe in some measure both the patent blondness of this Teutonic race and its unique stature as well to this cause? This is our hypothesis at all events.
IV. It is certain that, subsequent to the partial occupation of Europe by a dolichocephalic Africanoid type in the stone age, an invasion by a round-headed race of decidedly Asiatic affinities took place. This intrusive people is most nearly represented to-day by the Alpine or Celtic type of central Europe.
We know that the broad-headed layer of population was not contemporary with the earliest stratum we have described above, because its remains are often found directly superposed upon it geologically. From all over western Europe comes testimony to this effect. We saw in our last article how clear the distinction was in Britain. France and northern Italy give us the clearest proof of it. Oftentimes where several layers of human remains are found in caves or other burial places, the long-headed type is quite unmixed in the lowest stratum; gradually the other type becomes more frequent, until all across central Europe it outnumbers its predecessor utterly. The intensity of this supersession becomes more marked in proportion as we approach the Alps, the present stronghold of the Alpine broad-headed race. Here, however, in the mountains themselves, as we have already said, no displacement of an earlier population seems to have been necessary; for from Switzerland, Auvergne in south central France, and the German Alps eastward, the inhospitable highlands seem to have been but sparsely if at all occupied by the earlier long-headed races. At all events, it is certain that in these restricted areas the broad-headed type is the most primitive. There ​it has remained in relative purity ever since. From, the earliest remains of the lake dwellers; before iron was used; before many of the simpler arts of agriculture or domestication of animals were developed; man has in these Alps remained perfectly true to his ancestral type. We can add art after art to his culture, but we can not till very recent times detect any movement of population after the first occupation in a state of relative savagery by this broad-headed race. It is a surprising instance of persistence of ethnic types.
Let us trace the extension of this invasion of the Alpine race into Europe. Its limits were once much broader than they are to-day. Evidence accumulates to show that it spread widely at first, but that it was afterward obliged to recede from its first extravagant claims to possess all Europe. In our last article we saw that all along the southwest coast of Norway clear evidence of intermixture with this broad-headed type appears. The peasantry show a distinct tendency in this direction. In Denmark the same thing is true; the people are not as pure Teutons as in Hanover. We also know that this race invaded Britain for a time, but was exterminated or absorbed before reaching Ireland. A very peculiar colony of these Alpine invaders seems also to have so firmly intrenched itself in the Netherlands that its influence is apparent even to this day. As we have not described the population of this interesting country in any of our papers heretofore, it will repay us to consider it for a moment.
Attention was first directed to the Netherlands in 1876 through a remarkable paper by Virchow, in which he analyzed a series of skulls from Eriesland and from the islands of Urk and Marken in the Zuider Zee. In this he declared that the long-headed people there resident were not Teutons at all; but by reason of the peculiar low-vaulted formation of the cranium were to be regarded as far more ancient types. He asserted that here in these unattractive low-lands and islands was a last relic of the Neanderthal race of the early ​stone age. This was stoutly contested not only by the Dutch, but by so eminent German authorities as Von Hölder and others. The research stimulated by the discussion has, I think, controverted Virchow's hypothesis entirely. It is now generally recognized that the majority of these Dutch are Teutonic by descent, not distinguishable from either the Flemish in Belgium or the Germans in Hanover.
The population of Zeeland, with parts of the provinces of North and South Holland and Utrecht, however, including the low islands
Data for this map are corrected from the original skull measurements by adding two units, to make them comparable with other maps based upon study of living heads.
at the deltas of the Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt, is quite different. Even here, all along the seacoast, the Teutonic characteristics seem to have persisted, probably due to roving bands from the north ​similar to those which have settled all along the litus Saxonicum in France. But on the inner islands, especially in Nord and Zuid Beveland, there is every indication of a broad-headed Alpine colony of considerable size. This is shown by the dark tints upon our map. An extreme brachycephaly has been proved here by Dr. De Man, who has most courteously sent me photographs of crania reproduced herewith. The long-headed one is from the seacoast, where Teutonic
characteristics prevail; the other globular one is from a village in the middle of the brachycephalic area, submerged in the sixteenth century. These are each typical; the contrast is too marked to need further comment. There can be no longer any doubt that in these islands a settlement of the Alpine invaders took place at an early time. Lubach nearly forty years ago, long before any precise measurements were taken, commented upon the brunetteness, the stocky build, and the round visage of the peasants of this district. In each of these respects they differed from the Frieslanders further north; who, as we have said, are Teutonic by descent. The nearest blood relatives of these south Hollanders are the Walloons in Belgium and the original broad-headed element in the Danish population. From which of these colonies the round-barrow type invading the British Isles came we may never determine; we only know that the Alpine race touched the western ocean at this spot, and has here persisted in remarkable purity to this day. It seems as if a race had here found refuge in this secluded spot against the aggression of the Teutonic type, just as the Walloons are sheltered in the wooded uplands of the Ardennes plateau in Belgium a little farther south.
To resume once more the thread of our argument after this digression, we may continue to trace the uttermost limits of this broad-headed infiltration into Europe. The whole basin of northern France was overflowed, and the incoming human tide from the east ​swept away out to the point of Brittany, where it has held its own to this day. The central plateau of France, in fact, was peopled by it, perhaps for the first time. The intrusive type seems also to have with difficulty entered Spain, for, as we have shown, the population of the mountainous northwest provinces is even at this present day less purely Iberian in type by reason of it. One spot alone south of the Mediterranean Sea was perceptibly affected by it; recent evidence from the island of Gerba off Tunis proving such colonization to have taken place. In Italy we are certain as to the extension of the Alpine type down into the peninsula. The existing population of the Po basin was submerged entirely, with the inherited result that the broad-headedness of the peasantry to-day becomes less frequent across Tuscany until it vanishes somewhat north of Rome. In the eastern half of Europe the occupation was complete; whether primary or not it is impossible to state. In Austria at least, a long-headed people probably antedated it. We only know that the broad-headed Slavic populations extend to-day uninterruptedly across from the Baltic to the Black Sea, apparently becoming purer as we proceed eastward.
What right have we for the assertion that this infiltration of population from the east—it was not a conquest, everything points to it as a gradual peaceful immigration, often merely the settlement of unoccupied territory—marks the advent of an overflow from the direction of Asia? The proof of this rests largely upon our knowledge of the people of that continent, especially of the Pamir region, the western Himalayan highlands. Curiously enough, just here on the "roof of the world," where Max Müller and the early philologists placed the primitive home of Aryan civilization, a human type prevails which tallies almost exactly with our ideal Alpine or Celtic European race. The researches of de Ujfalvy, Topinard, and others localize its peculiar traits over a vast territory hereabouts. The Galchas, Tadjiks, and their fellows are gray-eyed, dark-haired, stocky in build, with cephalic indexes ranging above 86 for the most part. Be it noted, these people are not Hindus, those whom Max Müller held to be modern representatives of our primitive common ancestor. The Hindus are rather akin to our long-headed Mediterranean race. The basin of the Ganges is as different anthropologically from the Himalayan highlands as that of the Rhône is from the Swiss or Italian Alps. This was emphasized in our world ​map of cephalic index published in the March number of our series. Thus do we discover the complexity of the problem. Even if the old philologists were right in tracing European languages to a primitive home in western Asia, a point which is generally denied to-day, there would still be no possible solution as to which of these two Asiatic types were entitled to the name Aryan. Probably the Hindu would have been adopted for this honor; he is kith and kin physically of the Mediterranean race to which the Semites, Greeks, and Romans belong. But how about our proof that this type is the most primitive in Europe, persisting in situ from the stone age! Whence came the Aryan civilization then? The question is too broad to be settled here and now. We may return to it later.
The only point which the discovery of a broad area in western Asia occupied by an ideal Alpine type settles, is that it emphasizes the affinities of this peculiar race. It is no proof of direct immigration from Asia at all. It does, however, lead us to turn our eyes eastward when we seek for the origin of the broad-headed type. The wedge-shaped area of present Alpine occupation in Europe vaguely points to an original ethnic base of supplies somewhere in this direction. It could not lie westward, for everywhere along the Atlantic the race slowly disappears, so to speak. Neither does its original source lie in central Europe, for its greatest representation lies in the Slavic countries east of Vienna and Berlin. That the Alpine type approaches all the other human millions on the Asiatic continent, in the head form especially, but in hair color and stature as well, also prejudices us in the matter, just as the increasing long-headedness and extreme brunetteness of our Mediterranean race led us previously to derive it from some type parent to that of the African negro. These points are then fixed: the roots of the Alpine race run eastward; those of the Mediterranean type toward the south.
Before we leave this question we must clear up a peculiar difficulty. If the Alpine broad-headed race entered western Europe with sufficient momentum to carry it clear across to the British Isles, up into Norway, down into Spain, intruding between and finally separating the more primitive long-headed population into two distinct groups, why is it everywhere to-day so relegated to the mountainous and infertile areas? This is especially true wherever it comes in contact with the Teutonic race in the north. It is one of the most striking results of our entire inquiry thus far, this localization of the Alpine type in what we have termed areas of isolation. One is at a loss to account for this apparent turning back of a tide of prehistoric immigration. The Teutonic race must once have yielded ground before the invader; our prehistoric stratification shows it. Why has it now turned the tables and reoccupied all ​
Bronze Situla. Watsoh, Austrian Tyrol.
the more desirable territory, driving its intrusive competitor to the wall? Were there proof that the original invasion of our Alpine race from the east had been a forcible one, an answer to this would be afforded by a study of culture; for it is now accepted generally that the main arts of civilization have entered western Europe from the east. Moreover, the present seat of the Alpine race was characterized by a peculiarly advanced civilization in early times. Thus the extension of the so-called Hallstadt culture a thousand years or more before the Christian not unlike that of the Etruscan in Italy, coincided with the territory now ​distinctly Alpine by race. The character of this culture, its manners and customs, and its skill in the arts, are shown by the accompanying cuts. This is a reproduction of the design upon a bronze "situla" or vessel found at Watsch in the Austrian Tyrol in 1882. A culture capable of such work as this, and possessed of such a civilization to represent, centered in the eastern Alps at a very early time. We are assured, moreover, that the people were overwhelmingly Alpine in racial type. Study of upward of one thousand crania from their graves has made this certain. At the early period when this culture flourished, Scandinavia and Britain were probably in a far lower stage of civilization. Hence if, as we say, the invasion by the broad-headed race had been by force of arms, every advantage would have been on the side of the more civilized race against the primitive possessors of the soil. The clew to the situation would have lain in the relative order in which culture was acquired by the competing populations. It would then have been possible that the Alpine invaders, penetrating far to the west by reason of their equipment of civilization, would have lost their advantage so soon as their rivals learned from them the practical arts of metallurgy and the like. Unfortunately for this supposition, the movement of population was rather an infiltration than a conquest. How may we explain this?
Our solution of the problem as to the temporary supersession of the primitive population of Europe by an invading race, followed by so active a reassertion of rights as to have now relegated the intruder almost entirely to the upland areas of isolation, is rather economic than military or cultural. It rests upon the fundamental laws which regulate density of population in any given area. Our supposition is this: that the north of Europe, the region peculiar to the Teutonic race to-day, is by nature unfitted to provide sustenance to a large and increasing population. In that prehistoric period when a steady influx of population from the east took place, there was yet room for the primitive inhabitants to yield ground to the invader. A time, however, was bound to come when the natural increase of population would saturate that part of Europe, so to speak. A migration of population toward the south, where Nature offered the possibilities of continued existence, consequently ensued. This may have at times taken a military form. It undoubtedly did in the great Teutonic expansion of historic times. Yet it may also have been a gradual expansion—a drifting or swarming forth, ever trending toward the south. We know that such a migration is now taking place. Germans are pressing into northern France as they have
* ↑ The best statement of the progress of opinion upon the Aryan question is given by Canon Taylor in the opening chapters of his Origin of the Aryans. Dr. Beddoe, in his Anthropological History of Europe, has succinctly touched upon it also. In our Bibliography of the Anthropology and Ethnology of Europe, soon to appear in a Bulletin of the Boston Public Library, we have collected about a hundred titles of books and monographs on this subject, indexed chronologically. This affords a striking picture of its relative importance in the domain of ethnology. For convenience we shall refer to all papers in this reference list by means of authors and dates alone. Full titles can be obtained by consulting the list.
* ↑ 1891, pp. 77 seq.; also 1891, p. 175.
* ↑ 1888, pp. 2 seq.
* ↑ 1883, pp. 118 seq.
* ↑ Salmon, 1895.
* ↑ Ecker, 1865, p. 79, said mixed; but von Hölder, 1876, p. 20, found purer; Virchow, 1872, p. 191.
* ↑ Jacques, 1888, p. 221; Arbo, 1887, etc.
* ↑ Popular Science Monthly, vol. 1, 1897, pp. 772-780; consult also Buchan, cited by Beddoe, 1893, p. 10.
* ↑ Popular Science Monthly, vol. xlviii, 1896, p.785.
* ↑ Von Hölder, 1876, p.15; Beddoe, 1870, p. 177, and 1885, p. 197, comparing different classes in Cork, Ireland; Taylor, 1889, p. 244.
* ↑ Germanic Origins, pp. 62 seq.
* ↑ Studer and Bannwarth, p. 14; Rütimeyer and His, pp. 31 seq.; Zuckerhandl, 1883; Matiegka, 1890.
* ↑ Keller's Reports on the Lake Dwellers prove this advance in culture in situ.
* ↑ Virchow, 1870, pp. 63 seq.
* ↑ The standard authorities on Holland are Drs. A. and J. Sasse, of Zaandam, and Dr. J. C. De Man, of Middelburg, in Zeeland. A full list of their papers will be found in our Bibliography previously mentioned. To the last two I am deeply indebted for assistance in collecting material, which I shall publish more fully later. Our map is based upon Dr. Sasse's data in Tijdschrift Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, Amsterdam, 1879, pp. 323 seq., supplemented by his later work and that of Dr. De Man. For other authorities, consult our Bibliography under Lubach, 1863; von Hölder, 1880; Former; and especially Virchow's Beiträge zur Anthropologie der Deutschen, mit besondere Berücksichtigung der Friesen, Berlin, 1876.
* ↑ Salmon, 1895, and Hervé, 1896, have well summarized the evidence for France.
* ↑ Hoyce Sainz and Aranzadi, 1892, and Jaxques, 1888.
* ↑ Bertholon, 1897
* ↑ Zampa, 1891, is best on this.
* ↑ Matiegka, 1890
* ↑ Les Aryens au Nord et au Sud de l'Hindou-Kouch, Paris, 1896. For other peoples of India, consult Risley.
* ↑ Consult our Bibliography for a full list of authorities by von Sacken, Hochstetter, Hoernes, Chantre, and others. Ranke, in Der Mensch, gives a good account of it.
* ↑ Zuckerhandi, 1883, pp. 93 seq.