We have spoken in the previous chapter of the three chief races of Europe, but before proceeding to discuss them in detail it is necessary to clear the ground of certain misconceptions and difficulties.

The first of these is the notion that nationality has anything to do with race, in the anthropological sense. There is much to be said for the view that the European civilisations owe their development largely to the mingling of races which has occurred within the area; it is at least certain that no European nation, whatever the fervour of its citizens’ patriotism, is of anthropologically pure race. There is no British race, no French race, no German race, even though the word Germanic is sometimes applied to one of the strains which occurs in the German Empire. We recognise this fact, of course, in our popular language, for the contrast between the Briton of Saxon race and the Briton of Celtic race is a favourite literary topic. Unfortunately for accuracy, the people within the British area who speak Celtic languages are not all of the same race, and there is nothing more certain than the fact that few of them, if any, have any distinct trace of Celtic blood. Although in literature also the comparison between the “Celts” of Brittany and the “Celts” of Wales and western Great Britain generally is a favourite one, upon which many deductions have been based, it is certain that the Bretons are not homogeneous, and that they have language but not race in common with the dark-haired Welsh.

This naturally leads us to the second point of importance—that language has nothing to do with race. In his book on the Races of Europe, Ripley illustrates this in a very interesting way by a consideration of the languages and races of the Iberian Peninsula. This peninsula shows at the present time relative purity of race—not absolute purity, for a mingling has certainly occurred, but nevertheless one race, that which we have called Mediterranean, enormously predominates. Yet in spite of this relative purity of race, the peninsula is divided between two nationalities and no less than three languages. Portugal forms a separate nation with its own language, while Spain, though forming one nation, has two languages, Castilian or Spanish, and Catalan. Catalan is nearly related to Langue d’oc, the language of Provence across the French border. ProvenÇal again, before its gradual displacement by the Langue d’oeil, or true French, was spoken by men of the Mediterranean as well as of the Alpine race. Within both French and Spanish territory still another language, Basque, is spoken.

In other words, the almost uniform race of the Iberian peninsula speaks four separate tongues, the Portuguese, Castilian, Catalan, and Basque languages, and the political boundary of the Pyrenees separates at its eastern end two groups of Mediterranean man, speaking similar languages, Catalan or ProvenÇal, the latter of which is also spoken, or was spoken, in France by the men of another race, the Alpine, found in the uplands of southern and central France, as well as elsewhere.

Ripley’s explanation of the heterogeneity of language combined with homogeneity of race in Spain and Portugal is interesting. The peninsula was peopled from Africa before the dawn of history, by a division of the Mediterranean race called Iberian, which traversed the Strait of Gibraltar. This race established itself firmly in the peninsula and has persisted there despite infusions of other races from the north and north-east. But the road from Africa remained open, and the region was constantly liable to new invasions from the area of its prime origin. Differences of culture produced fierce warfare between the incoming and the old established race, and led temporarily to the triumph of the invaders, known to history as Saracens and Moors. The original Iberians, like the people of the same stock in Wales and parts of the Scottish Highlands, were pushed back to the mountains of Galicia, to the hill country of Castile, to the hills of Aragon and round and over the Pyrenees to Languedoc and the south of France generally. Ultimately they reasserted themselves, and drove the Moors out of Europe, but the driving force was exerted from three different centres, Galicia, Castile, and Aragon, which, owing to the configuration of the country, were isolated from each other. A political accident united Castile and Aragon, and imposed Castilian Spanish on a united Spain as the official language, but the geographical conditions have led to the long retention of the Catalan speech, though not of a Catalan nation. The Iberians who found a refuge in the mountains of Galicia, at a later date, formed the nucleus of the Portuguese nation.

With these preliminary considerations we may pass to the discussion of what is known, or surmised, as to the different races of Europe and their origin.

The earliest man who has left traces in Europe is he of the PalÆolithic Period, or Old Stone Age, a hunter and cave-dweller without domesticated animals, whose traces are especially found in southern Europe. No traces of his presence have yet been found in Scandinavia or in Scotland, where the climatic conditions perhaps made his existence impossible. Not much is known of this early race, but it seems to have been long-headed, and was probably dark. It is no longer believed that there was a complete rupture between the culture of the PalÆolithic period, with its unpolished stone implements, and that of the Neolithic age, with its polished implements, but the relations of the two remain somewhat uncertain. The remains of the Neolithic period are much more extensive and enable us to draw much more satisfactory conclusions as to racial characters. We shall describe briefly some of these Neolithic remains as they appear in Great Britain.

Before doing this, however, it is necessary to say a few words about the means of recognising different races of men. The criterion most employed is that of head form, and especially what is known as the cephalic index, that is, the ratio between the breadth of the skull between the ears and its length from front to back. The ratio is expressed as a percentage, the length being taken as 100, and the breadth stated as a fraction of it. When the index rises above 80, the skull is said to be brachycephalic, or rounded; when it is below 75, the skull is long, or dolichocephalic. The Italian anthropologist, Sergi, adopts another classification of skulls, based upon the shape, but this is only a refinement of the ordinary distinction between long and round skulls.

Another important character, which, like the shape of the skull, can be measured either in the living person or in the skeleton, is the height, which has some racial significance. A third character, of much importance, is the colouring of the skin, eyes and hair. This can only be inferred in the case of pre-historic peoples. Finally, the shape of the features, especially of the nose, has some racial significance.

In the west of Great Britain generally, and extending northwards to Orkney, there occur the burying-places of a Neolithic people, which have yielded abundant remains, including skeletons. The cairns, tumuli, or barrows of this people are recognised by their elongated shape, by the fact that they are chambered, and by the contained skeletons, which are always those of a dolichocephalic people. “Long barrows, long skulls” is an anthropological rule for England and Scotland, no less than for the other parts of Europe in which these tumuli occur. The skeletons within the barrows show no marks of fire, so that inhumation not cremation was practised, and a very curious feature found in Scotland, in Sicily, in Egypt and elsewhere, in tombs supposed to be of similar age, is that the body is usually placed in a doubled-up position. The position corresponds to the pre-natal position of the human infant, and this method of burial is supposed to imply some belief in a future life—is a record of a naÏve hope that man could “enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born again.”

Graves of this type, containing the skeletons of long-headed men, believed to be of the race which we have called Mediterranean, occur not only in western Great Britain, but also in France, in Scandinavia, in Germany, in the Mediterranean basin, and elsewhere. There seems reason to believe that they prove that in Neolithic times the Mediterranean race was widely distributed, especially in the west; it seems, further, tolerably certain that Mediterranean man himself was an immigrant from the north of Africa, and established himself first in the Mediterranean basin.

The members of this race have now, and apparently have always had, the following characters:—The skull is markedly dolichocephalic, the skin tends to be brown, the eyes and hair are dark, the stature is medium and the build slight, and the nose is rather broad.

According to Prof. Sergi there are four great stocks of this race; of these, one remained within Africa, and has been known under various names, the ancient Egyptians, the Libyans, the Berbers being all of this stock. The other three stocks invaded Europe, entering by the three natural routes which present themselves, that is, by the three regions where the sea is most easily crossed. The most western group, the Iberians, crossed, as we have seen, via Gibraltar, and occupied the Iberian peninsula. The next group, the Ligurians, found an entrance into Europe via Sicily, and passing up into Italy extended westwards along the Riviera, till they encountered the Iberians in southern France.

Finally, the third group, the Pelasgians, reached Greece by means of the islands of that part of the Mediterranean. It still remains uncertain whether an earlier migration still had peopled Europe with PalÆolithic man, who, on this theory, would belong also to the Mediterranean race, or whether the immigrant African race displaced some earlier unrelated population. In any case, it is tolerably certain that the first peopling of Europe on any considerable scale was the result of this immigration of Mediterranean man.

He doubtless first established himself on the margin of the great sea, and there became thoroughly suited to his environment. Later he spread northwards, being no doubt especially attracted by the relatively mild climate of the west, by what has been called the “winter gulf of warmth” which extends over north-western Europe.

Whatever was the cause of his northward trend, however, Mediterranean man does not appear to have been left long in undisturbed possession of his acquired territory. In Scotland, in the Clyde valley, which is typical of many other parts of Europe, round barrows or cairns are found side by side with the long ones. These are of later origin, as is shown by the nature of the pottery, by the occurrence of ornaments, and especially by the presence of bronze weapons—a great advance upon stone. The skeletons in these cairns mostly show marks of fire, suggesting that cremation was practised, and the skulls are those of a round-headed race. “Round barrows mean round skulls” is a second anthropological maxim for Britain.

These barrows are the first traces of the second great European race, called Alpine, Celtic, Eurasiatic, or Celto-Slavic by different anthropologists. The members of this race are of medium height, but are more stoutly built than Mediterranean man. Though generally resembling him in the coloration of hair and eyes, they are lighter in tint, the hair tending to be chestnut-coloured, and the eyes hazel grey, instead of both being very dark as in the former race. The nose, though variable, is in living types usually rather broad, and the special feature is of course the round head and broad face. As one of the names given indicates, this race is supposed by most anthropologists to have been of Asiatic origin.

Where the two sets of barrows occur there are indications that the incoming race greatly influenced the culture of the old. The use of bronze must have given its members an enormous advantage in the struggle for existence, and they seem to have imposed their customs, burial and other, and apparently also their language, on the older race.

This conflict of races which has left its traces in the Clyde valley apparently occurred in other parts of Europe. Everywhere the new race imposed its language and its customs upon the old, and everywhere its appearance is associated with a change and a rise in culture. It is presumed by the majority that this Alpine race brought with it the use of bronze, and was therefore at a higher level than Mediterranean man, but Prof. Sergi believes that the appearance of bronze and of the new race simultaneously was a mere coincidence, and that the Mediterranean race itself originated the use of metals. Meantime there is no means of deciding this question, which in any case is not of supreme importance, but what seems clear is that everywhere, except in the Mediterranean basin, the new race pressed the old one hard, whether by its skill in the arts of peace or in those of war remains uncertain. Even in the Mediterranean the old languages went down before that of Alpine man.

In the Mediterranean area the new-comers seized the upland regions, that is, as we have suggested, the regions of pasture, and ousted the longheads permanently from them. In Spain and Portugal, perhaps because of the vicinity of the reservoir of the race in North Africa, Mediterranean man kept his hold, and the brachycephalic forms did not succeed in obtaining much foothold. But they are strongly represented in parts of southern France. In southern Italy, in Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia Mediterranean man largely kept out the intruders, though they appear again on the Alpine slopes of the north of Italy. But in the eastern Mediterranean the dark longheads are hard pressed and have kept little save the seaboard from the broadheads.

Outside the Mediterranean area, the success of Alpine man was more checkered, but we are met with the difficulty that here a third race supervened later, so that existing conditions are not necessarily comparable to earlier conditions.

At the present time Alpine man occupies almost all the upland and therefore relatively infertile regions of France, especially Savoy and the Dauphiny, the central uplands, and parts (not the whole) of Brittany. Outliers of this race also occur in other regions, e. g. in parts of the SaÔne valley, which is not infertile. In Great Britain, despite their first success, the broadlands have left little trace on the existing population. We thus see the absurdity of talking about British Celts, for Celts in the true sense are almost extinct in Britain though their language remains and is spoken by types of Mediterranean man as well as by others. In Scandinavia Alpine man was more successful, for he has left traces in various parts, especially on the coast of Norway. Throughout Belgium and in Southern Germany the broad-headed element in the population is very strong, while in Austria, the Balkan States and Russia this race predominates and is no longer confined to elevated or infertile regions. This increase in numbers and in dominance towards the east is one of the facts which lead anthropologists to believe that Alpine man is of Asiatic origin.

We shall return to him in a moment, but meantime it is necessary to speak of the third element in Europe, the race variously called Nordic, Teutonic, or even Germanic, in spite of the fact that many Germans belong to the Alpine race. The members of this race are remarkable for their tall stature, for their long skulls and face, for their blue eyes and fair hair, their light complexions, and their narrow aquiline noses. The resemblance in skull form leads many anthropologists to regard them as derived from a common stock with the Mediterranean race, but the race seems to have originated in Europe. The place and date of its origin are still quite uncertain. It is possible that it was produced from an early form of the Mediterranean race in adaptation to the moist climate of western Europe. Ripley gives Scandinavia as the probable place of origin, but meantime there can be no certainty.

What we do know is that this race shows as perfect an adaptation to the climate of forest-clad temperate Europe as Mediterranean man does to the dry climate of that region. Just as the border of the Mediterranean is the province of Mediterranean man, and has been his for countless ages, so north-western Europe is the almost unchallenged possession of Nordic man. Between the two, along the great wedge of uplands, is the land of Alpine man, which widens to the east, his original home. Just as Mediterranean man in the days of his prime pushed north wherever conditions permitted, so Nordic man has pushed south, across the Alpine barrier, both in the literal and anthropological sense, and has left traces of his coming even within the territory of Mediterranean man. Just as the dark-haired Welsh and the dark-haired strain of Scottish Highlanders bear witness to the old exploits of Mediterranean man, so do the fair-haired, tall-statured Lombards bear witness to the former activity of Nordic man. Nevertheless, the main territory of the two races is widely separated.

The relation of these two types, at least, to their zones of distribution is relatively easy to explain. Mediterranean man is highly susceptible to diseases of the breathing-organs to which the fair-haired Nordic type is more resistant. Here is one possible explanation of their command of their respective habitats, and there are many others. The forest-dwelling Nordic type, as Prof. Penck points out, must necessarily have had the family as the unit, for only by dwelling in small family groups can primitive man war against the forest. Mediterranean man, with his early use of irrigation, had necessarily to evolve a larger unit, for irrigation means extensive co-operation, so that political organisations would arise early in the Mediterranean. We can hardly doubt that these two facts had some bearing on the survival rate of the two races. The Nordic race with their strong family life, and with their abundant pasturage, had doubtless a relatively low death-rate among the children, though, as Prof. Myres points out, the struggle in adult life must have been keen. In the Mediterranean, as he also notes, the dry summer means difficulties with the water supply, difficulties in sanitation, and the risk of pestilence, which, with the abundant supply of fruit and the absence or scarcity of milk, has probably always meant a very high death-rate among the children. But the fact that the struggle for existence among adults was much less keen than among the forest folk, perhaps prevented this high infantile death-rate from being a great handicap. Once the geographical surroundings of the two peoples were changed by migration, the qualities which aided them to survive in their native habitat might become a positive hindrance. In brief, as two types evolved in harmony with well-defined geographical conditions, the very perfectness of their respective adaptations would hinder either from appropriating the territory of the other, while leaving a considerable margin for struggle on the debatable land between the two geographical regions.

If it seems at the present day that the Nordic race has more than passed the Mediterranean in the race of life, we must remember that the fact that coal is chiefly found in the territory of the former, has given it an enormous economic advantage in recent times, an advantage which it may not be able to keep.

The Alpine race presents a much more difficult problem. We have said nothing here of the so-called Aryan problem, because the whole conception of an Aryan race advancing from Asia with a ready-made culture, and imposing it upon a barbarian Europe, is somewhat out of date, and much that has been written on the subject of the Aryans preceded in time the disentanglement of the complex problems presented by European races. But with all deductions made, the incoming Asiatic race which we have called Alpine presents many curious problems. It seems probable that the languages of Europe are largely due to the grafting of Alpine or Eurasian tongues upon the different tongues already spoken by Mediterranean man. We have still in Britain a Celtic language, though it is spoken by people of Mediterranean characters, and it is an extraordinary fact that a people should impose its language and culture upon another race, and yet be itself unable to keep its footing among that race.

It has been suggested that the new-comers, in Britain at least, were never more than an aristocracy, and that they disappeared by the mingling of their blood with the indigenous people, after having long dominated them. That is, it was as if we might suppose that the British population in India was cut off from the mother country, and ultimately disappeared owing to intermarriage, while their language and their customs remained in greatly modified form and replaced the existing languages and customs.

The difficulties in regard to this hypothesis are twofold. In the first place, such a hypothesis of mingling seems inconsistent with the extraordinary persistency which this race has manifested in other parts of Europe, where it came into contact with the same races as in Britain; and, second, the position of the Alpine race in western Europe generally, its virtual limitation to relatively infertile land, seems inconsistent with the notion that it ever formed an aristocracy, apart from and above the other races. To-day in Germany it is so far from occupying the position of an aristocracy that it sometimes forms the lower classes to a Nordic dominant class, though the Alpine race is sometimes stated to be better adapted to town life than the Nordic.

Of the three races, Mediterranean man seems to be perfectly adapted to a dry region, with deficient pasture, naturally clothed with a drought-resisting type of forest. As he prospered he spread beyond his own region, with the result that he reached a region markedly different in climate and vegetation from his own, to which his adaptation was never very perfect. Where, as in Ireland and western Great Britain, the conditions permitted the natural growth of some of the Mediterranean plants, there his hold was fairly firm, elsewhere it must always have been loose and uncertain.

Into a Europe thus peopled, with probably large vacant spaces, came a pastoral type of man from Asia, certainly a transporter, if not an originator, of a higher culture, best fitted for a region of pasture land, but better fitted than Mediterranean man to withstand cold. He filled the spaces which Mediterranean man could not fill, and pressed him hard in many places. Ultimately the forest region of Europe evolved its own type, perhaps from some aberrant strain of Mediterranean man, and this type, perfectly fitted to the forest regions, conquered the north and west, driving Alpine man up to the hills, and largely displacing Mediterranean man except where distinctively Mediterranean influences prevailed.

To the east, as the European forest dies away into the steppes of Asia, Nordic man can no longer compete successfully with Alpine man, and diminishes in numbers and in strength.

Thus while in Germany the tendency is for the tall, fair longheads of the north to dominate the short, darker broadheads of the south, further to the east this same broad-headed race, under the banner of Panslavism, strives, not unsuccessfully, to dominate the longheads of Finland and elsewhere.

Thus below and beneath the warfare of race is the contrast of physical conditions, which have produced the various types of man, no less than of plants and animals, and from which man cannot fully emancipate himself.

The New World was first colonised by Mediterranean man, but later all the European races contributed their part to its peopling. When we add a strong negro element in the southern United States, a remnant of the original Indian population, and an infusion of eastern races, it is obvious that the mingling of blood which has apparently produced good results in Europe, is being carried out on a much more elaborate scale across the Atlantic.

One other point may be touched upon. We have shown that the nations of Europe are not races in the pure sense. But, at the same time, it may be noted that in the western nations one or other of the two chief races tends to predominate at the expense of the other.

Thus broadly we may say that the antagonism between the French and German nationalities is fed by the fact that in race, in culture, in tradition, the one is predominantly Mediterranean, and the other predominantly Teutonic. In the Iberian peninsula, as we have seen, the Mediterranean strain enormously predominates, while in the countries of the north-west the Teutonic race tends to overbalance the other.