
- •Published, April, 1939.
- •Introduction
- •Introduction
- •Introduction
- •Introduction
- •Introduction 78-82
- •Introduction 131-135
- •Introduction 297-298
- •Introduction 400-401
- •Introduction 510-511
- •List of maps
- •Introduction to the historical study of the white race
- •Statement of aims and proposals
- •Theory and principles of the concept race
- •Materials and techniques of osteology**
- •Pleistocene white men
- •Pleistocene climate
- •Sapiens men of the middle pleistocene
- •The neanderthaloid hybrids of palestine
- •Upper palaeolithic man in europe,
- •Fig. 2. Neanderthal Man. Fig. 3. Cro-Magnon Man.
- •Aurignacian man in east africa
- •The magdalenians
- •Upper palaeolithic man in china
- •Summary and conclusions
- •Fig. 12. Fjelkinge, Skane, Sweden. Neolithic.
- •Mesolithic man in africa
- •The natufians of palestine
- •The midden-d wellers of the tagus
- •Mesolithic man in france
- •The ofnet head burials
- •Mesolithic man in the crimea
- •Palaeolithic survivals in the northwest
- •Clarke, j. G. D., op. Cit., pp. 133-136.
- •38 Fiirst, Carl m., fkva, vol. 20, 1925, pp. 274-293.
- •Aichel, Otto, Der deutsche Mensch. The specimens referred to are b 5, ks 11032, ks 11254b, b 38, b 34, b 37, b 10.
- •Clarke, j. G. D., op. Citpp. 133-136.
- •Summary and conclusions
- •The neolithic invasions
- •(1) Introduction
- •1 Childe, V. Gordon, The Dawn of European Civilization; The Most Ancient East; The Danube in Prehistory; New Light on the Most Ancient East; Man Makes Himself.
- •And chronology '
- •The neolithic and the mediterranean race
- •Vault medium to thin, muscular relief on vault as a rule slight.
- •Iran and iraq
- •Vallois, h. V., “Notes sur les Tfctes Osseuses,” in Contencau, g., and Ghirsh- man, a., Fouilles de Tepe Giyan.
- •Jordan, j., apaw, Jh. 1932, #2.
- •Keith, Sir Arthur, “Report on the Human Remains, Ur Excavations,” vol. 1: in Hall, h. R. H„ and Woolley, c. L., Al 'Ubaid,
- •10 Frankfort, h., “Oriental Institute Discoveries in Iraq, 1933-34,” Fourth Preliminary Report, coic #19, 1935,
- •Civilized men in egypt
- •11 Morant, g. M., Biometrika, 1925, p. 4.
- •12 This summary of climatic changes in Egypt is based on Childe, V. G., New Light
- •18 Childe, op. Cit.Y p. 35. 14 Leakey, l. S. B., Stone Age Africa, pp. 177-178.
- •Brunton, Guy, Antiquity, vol. 3, #12, Dec., 1929, pp. 456-457.
- •Menghin, o., Lecture at Harvard University, April 6, 1937.
- •Childe, V. G., op. Cit.Y p. 64.
- •Derry, Douglas, sawv, Jahrgang, 1932, #1-4, pp. 60-61. 20 Ibid., p. 306.
- •Morant, g. M., Biometrika, 1927, vol. 27, pp. 293-309.
- •21 Morant, g. M., Biometrika, vol. 17, 1925, pp. 1-52.
- •Morant, op. Cit., 1925.
- •Neolithic north africa
- •(6) The neolithic in spain and portugal
- •The eastern source areas: south, central, and north
- •The danubian culture bearers
- •The corded or battle-axe people
- •The neolithic in the british isles
- •Western europe and the alpine race
- •Schlaginhaufen, o., op. Cit.
- •Schenk, a., reap, vol. 14, 1904, pp. 335-375.
- •Childe, The Danube in Prehistory, pp. 163, 174.
- •Neolithic scandinavia
- •Introduction
- •Bronze age movements and chronology
- •The bronze age in western asia
- •The minoans
- •The greeks
- •Basques, phoenicians, and etruscans
- •The bronze age in britain
- •The bronze age in central europe
- •The bronze age in the north
- •The bronze age on the eastern plains
- •The final bronze age and cremation
- •Summary and conclusions
- •Race, languages, and european peoples
- •The illyrians
- •The kelts
- •Vallois, h. V., Les Ossements Bretons de Kerne, TouUBras, et Port-Bara.
- •We know the stature of Kelts in the British Isles only from a small Irish group, and by inference from comparison with mediaeval English counterparts of Iron Age skeletons.
- •Greenwell, w., Archaeologia, vol. 60, part 1, pp. 251-312.
- •Morant, g. M., Biometrika, 1926, vol. 18, pp. 56-98.
- •The romans
- •46 Whatmouffh. J., The Foundations of Roman Italy.
- •The scythians
- •88 Browne, c. R., pria, vol. 2, ser. 3, 1899, pp. 649—654.
- •88 Whatmough is in doubt as to their linguistic affiliation. Whatmough, j., op. Cit., pp. 202-205.
- •Fig. 29. Scythians, from the Kul Oba Vase. Redrawn from Minns, e. H., Scythians and Greeks, p. 201, Fig. 94.
- •Doniti, a., Crania Scythica, mssr, ser. 3, Tomul X, Mem. 9, Bucharest, 1935.
- •The germanic peoples
- •Stoiyhwo, k., Swiatowit, vol. 6, 1905, pp. 73-80.
- •Bunak, V. V., raj, vol. 17, 1929, pp. 64-87.
- •Shetelig, h., Falk, h., and Gordon, e. V., Scandinavian Archaeology, pp. 174-175.
- •70 Hubert, h., The Rise of the Celts, pp. 50-52.
- •71 Nielsen, h. A., anoh, II Rakke, vol. 21, 1906, pp. 237-318; ibid., III Rakke, vol. 5, 1915, pp. 360-365. Reworked.
- •Retzius, g., Crania Suecica, reworked.
- •78 Schliz, a., pz, vol. 5, 1913, pp. 148-157.
- •Barras de Aragon, f. De las, msae, vol. 6, 1927, pp. 141-186.
- •78 Hauschild, m. W., zfma, vol. 25, 1925, pp. 221-242.
- •79 Morant, g. M., Biometrika, vol. 18, 1926, pp. 56-98.
- •8° Reche, o., vur, vol. 4, 1929, pp. 129-158, 193-215.
- •Kendrick, t. D., and Hawkes, c. F. C., Archaeology in England and Wales, 1914-1931.
- •Morant, Biometrika, vol. 18, 1926, pp. 56-98.
- •Lambdoid flattening is a characteristic common to Neanderthal and Upper Palaeolithic man, but rare in the exclusively Mediterranean group.
- •Calculated from a number of series, involving over 120 adult males. Sources:
- •Peake, h., and Hooton, e. A., jrai, vol. 45, 1915, pp. 92-130.
- •Bryce, t. H., psas, vol. 61, 1927, pp. 301-317.
- •Ecker, a., Crania Germanica.
- •Vram, u., rdar, vol. 9, 1903, pp. 151-159.
- •06 Miiller, g., loc. Cit.
- •98 Lebzelter, V., and Thalmann, g., zfrk, vol. 1, 1935, pp. 274-288.
- •97 Hamy, e. T., Anth, vol. 4, 1893, pp. 513-534; vol. 19, 1908, pp. 47-68.
- •The slavs
- •Conclusions
- •The iron age, part II Speakers of Uralic and Altaic
- •The turks and mongols
- •I® Ibid.
- •Introduction to the study of the living
- •Materials and techniques
- •Distribution of bodily characters
- •Distribution of bodily characters
- •Distribution of bodily characters
- •2. Skin of tawny white, nose narrow,
- •Hair Flaxen
- •Gobineau, a. De, Essai sur Vinegaliti des races humaines.
- •Meyer, h., Die Insel Tenerife; Uber die Urbewohner der Canarischen Inseln.
- •46 Eickstedt, e. Von, Rassenkunde und Rassengeschichte der Menschheit.
- •Nordenstreng, r., Europas Mdnniskoraser och Folkslag.
- •Montandon, g., La Race, Les Races.
- •Large-headed palaeolithic survivors
- •Pure and mixed palaeolithic and mesolithic survivors of moderate head size56
- •Pure and mixed unbrachtcephalized mediterranean deriva tives
- •Brachtcephauzed mediterranean derivatives, probably mixed
- •The north
- •Introduction
- •The lapps
- •I Wiklund, k. B., gb, vol. 13, 1923, pp. 223-242.
- •7 Schreiner, a., Die Nord-Norweger; Hellemo (Tysfjord Lappen).
- •8 Gjessing, r., Die Kautokeinolappen.
- •10 Kajava, y., Beitr'dge zur Kenntnis der Rasseneigenschaften der Lappen Finnlands.
- •17 For a complete bibliography of early Lappish series, see the lists of Bryn, the two Schreiners, Geyer, Kajava, and Zolotarev.
- •Schreiner, k. E., Zur Osteologie der Lappen.
- •Gjessing, r., Die Kautokeinolappen, pp. 90-95.
- •Hatt, g., Notes on Reindeer Nomadism, maaa, vol. 6, 1919. This is one of the few points regarding the history of reindeer husbandry upon which these two authorities agree.
- •The samoyeds26
- •Scandinavia; norway
- •Iceland
- •Sweden64
- •Denmark62
- •The finno-ugrians, introduction
- •Fig. 31. Linguistic Relationships of Finno-Ugrian Speaking Peoples.
- •Racial characters of the eastern finns
- •The baltic finns: finland
- •The baltic-speaking peoples
- •Conclusions
- •The british isles
- •R£sum£ of skeletal history
- •Ireland
- •Great britain, general survey
- •Fig. 32. Composite Silhouettes of English Men and Women.
- •The british isles, summary
- •Introduction
- •Lapps and samoyeds
- •Mongoloid influences in eastern europe and in turkestan
- •Brunn survivors in scandinavia
- •Borreby survivors in the north
- •East baltics
- •Carpathian and balkan borreby-like types
- •The alpine race in germany
- •The alpine race in western and central europe
- •Aberrant alpine forms in western and central europe
- •Alpines from central, eastern, and southeastern europe
- •Asiatic alpines
- •The mediterranean race in arabia
- •Long-faced mediterraneans of the western asiatic highlands
- •Long-faced mediterraneans of the western asiatic highlands: the irano-afghan race
- •Gypsies, dark-skinned mediterraneans, and south arabian veddoids
- •The negroid periphery of the mediterranean race
- •Mediterraneans from north africa
- •Small mediterraneans of southern europe
- •Atlanto-mediterraneans from southwestern europe
- •Blue-eyed atlanto-mediterraneans
- •The mediterranean reemergence in great britain
- •The pontic mediterraneans
- •The nordic race: examples of corded predominance
- •The nordic race: examples of danubian predominance
- •The nordic race: hallstatt and keltic iron age types
- •Exotic nordics
- •Nordics altered by northwestern european upper palaeolithic mixture: I
- •Nordics altered by northwestern european upper palaeolithic mixture: II
- •Nordics altered by mixture with southwestern borreby and alpine elements
- •The principle of dinaricization
- •European dinarics: I
- •European dinarics: II
- •European dinarics: III
- •European dinarics: IV
- •Dinarics in western asia: I
- •Dinarics in western asia: II
- •Armenoid armenians
- •Dinaricized forms from arabia and central asia
- •The jews: I
- •The jews: II
- •The jews: III
- •The mediterranean world
- •Introduction
- •The mediterranean rage in arabia
- •The mediterranean world
- •7 Lawrence, Col. T. E., The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
- •The Distribution of Iranian Languages
- •The turks as mediterraneans
- •Fig, 37. Ancient Jew.
- •North africa, introduction
- •Fig. 38. Ancient Libyan. Redrawn from
- •The tuareg
- •Eastern barbary, algeria, and tunisia
- •The iberian peninsula
- •The western mediterranean islands
- •The basques
- •The gypsies
- •Chapter XII
- •The central zone, a study in reemergence
- •Introduction
- •8 Collignon, r., msap, 1894.
- •9 Collignon, r., bsap, 1883; Anth, 1893.
- •Belgium
- •The netherlands and frisia
- •Germany
- •Switzerland and austria
- •The living slavs
- •Languages of East-Central Europe and of the Balkans
- •The magyars
- •The living slavs (Concluded)
- •Albania and the dinaric race
- •The greeks
- •Bulgaria
- •Rumania and the vlachs
- •The osmanli turks
- •Turkestan and the tajiks
- •Conclusions
- •Conclusion
- •Comments and reflections
- •The white race and the new world
- •IflnrlrH
- •Alveon (also prosthion). The most anterior point on the alveolar border of the upper jaw, on the median line between the two upper median incisors.
- •Length of the clavicle (collar bone) and that of the humerus (upper arm bone);
- •Incipiently mongoloid. A racial type which has evolved part way in a mongoloid direction, and which may have other, non-mongoloid specializations of its own, is called incipiently mongoloid.
- •List of books
- •Index of authors
- •54; Language distribution, 561, map; Jews in, 642; Neo-Danubian, ill., Plate 31, Jig. 4.
- •Map; classified, 577; racial characteristics, 578-79; ill., Plate 3, fig. 3.
- •Ill., Plate 6, Jigs. 1-5; survivors in Carpathians and Balkans, ill., Plate 8, figs. 1-6; Nordic blend, ill., Plate 34, figs.
- •61; Associated with large head size, 265, 266. See also Cephalic index, Cranial measurements.
- •Ill., Plate 36, fig. 1. See also Great Britain, Ireland, Scotland.
- •Ill., Plate 30, fig. 2.
- •85; Von Eickstedt’s, 286-88; Gzek- anowski’s system, 288-89; author’s, 289-96; schematic representation, 290, chart; geographic, 294- 95, map.
- •396; Cornishmen in France, 512, 514.
368
THE
RACES OF EUROPE
light
or white; less than 30 per cent are light or light brown haired, and
over 70 per cent dark brown or black in hair color. In eye color
almost half are classified as brown, and very few appear to be pure
light. Although these Tatars are not purely brunet, they are much
more brunet than the Lithuanians, and the light elements among them
may not wholly be accounted for as the result of recent or local
mixture.
In
stature they are appreciably shorter than the Lithuanians, with a
mean of 162.8 centimeters. Their head form, with a cephalic index of
81.9, is no different from that of the Lithuanians, although the
absolute dimensions of the head, 183.6 and 151.4 millimeters, are
smaller. Although the facial measurements are not comparable,
the forehead is even broader than that of the Lithuanians, and the
nose, while identical in breadth, is even shorter, with a nasal
index of 69.4. As nearly as one may judge, these Tatars seem to have
preserved in large measure the characters of their ancestors.
The
deviation of the Lithuanians from their Lettish kinsmen cannot,
however, be attributed in major degree to the absorption of Tatar
blood. The Lithuanians are more southerly in habitat than the Letts,
and are in contact with different neighbors; they form as a national
group a branch of the greater East Baltic race, but a somewhat
different variety from that of the other peoples living on the
eastern side of the Baltic Sea. Their divergence in a racial sense
points to the populations which we will study later in eastern
Germany, Poland, and western Russia.
The
systematic study of the living peoples of the northern regions of
Europe, by geographic, ethnic, and linguistic groups, has led to the
following conclusions:
This
zone still shelters various groups of Upper Palaeolithic
survivors. These include both reduced and unreduced varieties.
The former includes the Lapps, whose home was formerly in the
region of the Ural Mountains, and the Ladogan type of the eastern
forest, which has blended with Danubian descendants to form a type
known as Neo-Danubian. The latter includes full-sized descendants
of the Briinn-type men of the Aurignacian, blended into the
coastal population of Norway and into the Icelandic racial body; it
also includes brachycephalic Borreby descendants in Norway,
Denmark, and elsewhere.
The
eastern valley region of Norway, along with the Swedish plain,
forms an area of maximum survival of the Iron Age Nordic race of
central Europe.
The
East Baltic race in the strict sense is to be distinguished from
the Neo-Danubian; it is concentrated in the eastern Baltic
countries only
Conclusions
THE
NORTH
369
and
consists of a blend of unreduced Upper Palaeolithic survivors with
Corded people and with Neo-Danubians.
Completely
evolved mongoloids live on European soil, on the rim of the Arctic
Ocean. These mongoloids are the Samoyeds, whose spread westward and
northward from central Asia has been recent. Neither the Lapps nor
the Ladogan derivatives are or ever have been fully mongoloid, but
they have evolved a certain distance in a mongoloid direction.
There is nothing specifically mongoloid about the Brunn or Borreby
types, the unreduced Upper Palaeolithic survivors.
Except
for the Lapps, none of the racial types mentioned is confined to
regions studied in this chapter. We shall encounter all of the
others elsewhere.
Chapter
X
In
the earlier historical chapters, various sections have been devoted
to the racial history of Great Britain and Ireland. Before
commencing the study of the living population of these islands, we
shall bring this material together in a brief but continuous resume,
and dilate at greater length upon the skeletal remains which cover
the period from the Middle Ages through the seventeenth century, to
the threshold of modern times. Fortunately the documents concerning
British racial history are abundant, and the picture which can be
drawn is relatively clear.
Beginning
with the Pleistocene, we recall that the earliest known sapiens
men,
Swanscombe and Galley Hill, were excavated from English soil, as was
the still problematical Piltdown. During the last interglacial and
the time of the final maximum ice, available portions of Great
Britain were inhabited by men similar to the Upper Palaeolithic
population in France, while in the post-glacial Mesolithic
period, hunting and fishing peoples of central European origin
invaded Scotland, and furnished to Ireland its earliest human
inhabitants. This Mesolithic population is represented by the
MacArthur’s Gave skeleton, which resembles the Brunn-Predmost
group of Late Pleistocene central Europe, and by others of doubtful
age in both Scotland and Ireland, which belong essentially to
the same racial type. These unreduced Upper Palaeolithic
descendants who sought refuge in the British Isles after the
glacial retreat clung on through a Late Mesolithic, and their
descendants form, as we shall see presently, an element of some
importance in the present racial composition of certain British
regions.
The
Neolithic economy was probably first brought to Britain by the
bearers of the Windmill Hill culture from the Continent, and they in
turn were members of the group which had invaded western Europe from
North Africa by way of Gibraltar. The racial type to which these
Windmill Hill people presumably belonged was a small Mediterranean,
but there is little or no direct skeletal evidence from England to
confirm this. By far the most important Neolithic movement into
Great Britain, and into Ireland as well, came by sea from the
eastern Mediterranean lands, using Spain as a halting point on the
way. It was this invasion which passed up the Irish Channel to
western and northern Scotland, and around to
The british isles
R£sum£ of skeletal history
370
THE
BRITISH ISLES
371
Denmark
and Sweden. The settlers who came by sea were the Megalithic people,
and belonged to a clearly differentiated variety of tall, extremely
long-headed Mediterranean, which was presumably for the most part
brunet. This racial group furnished both Great Britain and Ireland,
which consisted, before their arrival, of nearly empty land, with a
numerous and civilized population which has left many descendants
today.
With
or shortly before the introduction of metal, the British Isles were
invaded from both sides by fresh settlers. From the west came a
triple combination of Borreby brachycephals, Corded people, and
eastern Mediterranean Dinarics, under the hybrid auspices of the
Zoned Beaker culture, which had grown into an important entity in
southern and western Germany; these people entered England and
Scotland, but not Ireland. From Spain or the southwestern
French coast came the Food Vessel people, who represented the
Dinaric element only, and who went first to Ireland and thence over
into Scotland. Thus all parts of the British Isles, with the virtual
exception of Wales, received an infusion of Dinaric blood, while the
oversized Borreby and Corded elements also entered Great Britain,
but avoided Ireland. These Bronze Age invaders pushed their
Megalithic predecessors back into the hills and into economically
undesirable country, whence many of their descendants later
reemerged. The Bronze Age lasted long in the British Isles,
especially in Scotland, and the new Bronze Age racial amalgam
attained a firm foothold, especially in eastern Scotland, in
Yorkshire, and in such open country regions as Wiltshire,
Gloucestershire, and Derbyshire. In the Late Bronze Age cremation,
which had been an alternative funeral rite before, now became so
fashionable that this period is a blank in our knowledge of
British racial history. What few bones escaped complete destruction,
however, suggest that with this new rite came an Alpine racial
element from the Swiss highlands. This element could not,
however, have been numerically very important.
Whoever
the Bronze Age peoples were," and whatever languages they
spoke, we know that the Iron Age invaders were uniformly Keltic;
they came in various waves and at various times, through various
ports of entry, but the cranial type of the invaders was inevitably
the same. Both the Goidels of Ireland, and the Kymric A and B
invaders of England, belonged to the Keltic Iron Age branch of the
Nordic race; a type characterized by a medium-sized mesocephalic
skull, with a low vault, a sloping forehead, a cylindrical
lateral vault profile, a long, prominent nose, and a relatively
small lower facial segment. Those who entered Ireland were tall;
those who settled England and Wales were perhaps shorter. The
Belgae, the last of the Iron Age Kelts or near-Kelts, despite their
alleged Germanic mixture, cannot be shown to have differed from the
others.
372
THE
RACES OF EUROPE
These
Keltic invasions furnished Ireland with her upper class, but
apparently not with the bulk of her population; in England
regional Iron Age cemeteries disclose the survival of Bronze Age
types, although the Keltic Iron Age people furnished a larger
ultimate population element than any other contributing group which
came before or after. These Kymric- speaking Iron Age people settled
Britain as far north as the Clyde, but failed to penetrate the
center and north of Scotland, where the Bronze Age people, who were
apparently the Piets, continued undisturbed until after the time of
Christ. The Cruithni, the Irish counterparts of the Piets, seem to
have been absorbed by their neighbors earlier.
In
Ireland the conquering Goidels were organized into clans, under the
leadership of the high kings of Tara; other clans, formed of
subservient people, and presumably of aborigines, were numerous, and
gave the island its name. The mythical history of Ireland constantly
refers to the arrival of immigrants, in different waves, from Spain.
The Milesians, the actual Goidels, are said to have come directly
from Spain, where they had sojourned for a short while, and
before that from some distant homeland.1
The crania from the Iron Age tombs are presumably those of Goidels,
and not of the survivors of the previous inhabitants, some of whom,
according to Irish legend, vanished underground, to haunt the
megalithic monuments.
The
Romans, in their conquest of Britain, probably introduced little of
ultimate racial importance. The Roman officers themselves were
almost exclusively of the standard Italic type, which differed
little from that of the Kelts, except in stature; but they
introduced to London and other towns urban populations from various
parts of the empire in which the Alpine race seems to have been most
noticeable.2
The
inruption of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, which brought to England
her present language and national identity, introduced into the
eastern counties of both England and Scotland a numerous population
of Iron Age Nordics fresh from Denmark and Germany. The Anglo-Saxons
were tall, heavy-boned, long-faced mesocephals showing suggestions
of the Tronder racial type which we have already studied in Norway.
At
the same time that the Saxons were pressing the Piets on the eastern
Scottish coasts, the Irish Goidels were invading Scotland from the
east, and the two groups, the Germans and Kelts, squeezed the Piets
between the two jaws of a pair of pincers. The Piets lost their
language, whatever it may have been, and their ethnic identity, and
at the same time Scotland assumed her traditional segregation into
east and west, highlands and lowlands, Gaelic and Saxon speech.
Hubert,
H., The
Rise of the Celts,
pp. 192-197.Morant,
G. M., and Hoadley, M. F., Biometrika, vol. 23, 1931, pp. 191-248.
THE
BRITISH ISLES
373
The
westward penetration of the Anglo-Saxons farther to the south
isolated the shrinking area of Kymric speech into three disconnected
centers; Strathclyde in the north, Wales in the middle, and Cornwall
in the south. Of these three Strathclyde was the first to lose its
Keltic speech, while that of Cornwall survived into the last
century, and Welsh still remains. Soon after the Saxons had
established themselves in England and Scotland, they were hampered
by fresh invasions from Scandinavia, of Danes and Norwegians, who
took over the most strongly Saxon sections of eastern England and
Scotland. The Northmen sailed around the north of Scotland, settled
the Orkneys, and also left colonies in the Hebrides and other
western Scottish Isles, and in many parts of Ireland. Dublin itself
and its neighborhood were long Danish territory. Along the western
coast of Ireland, in many places where Gaelic speech has persisted
longest, as on the Aran Isles, there may be seen a strong
Scandinavian cast in the racial appearance of the population. The
Norman invasions brought to the British Isles a further Scandinavian
increment, somewhat mixed by its continental sojourn, and along with
it adventurers from many parts of Europe. These Normans were not
numerous enough, however, to affect any but the uppermost social
levels of the nation.
The
post-Norman racial history of England may be reconstructed to a
certain extent by means of six large and abundantly documented
series, three from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and three
from the seventeenth. The first three will be dealt with, not in
chronological order because that is not precisely known, but rather
in geographical sequence, from northeast to southeast to west.
In
Rothwell, near Kettering in Northamptonshire, in the heart of the
country most thickly settled by Saxons and later by Danes, a
cryptful of skulls and other bones were discovered, about two
hundred years ago, in an old church. Although the exact age and
origin of these remains is not known, the most logical explanation
ijs that they represent the local population of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries.3
The crypt contains between five and six thousand skulls, of which
100 male examples have been measured. Owing to the dampness of their
resting place, the facial skeletons were mostly gone, and the few
faces that had survived were not measured. The vaults fall quite
close to the Keltic Iron Age type, although they are not
identical with it, differing in possessing a greater flatness of the
cranial baseband a slightly greater forehead breadth. They do not,
however, resemble the skulls of Anglo-Saxons, and the significance
of this series is that in the heart of Saxon country a population
should have existed, as early or as late as the fourteenth century,
which had almost entirely reverted to a pre-Saxon racial type. The
male stature mean,
*
Parsons, F. G., JRAI, vol. 40, 1910, pp. 483-504-
374
THE
RACES OF EUROPE
of
167 cm., is furthermore shorter than that of the Saxons and closer
to what we assume to have been the Keltic Iron Age level.
In
the vaulted ambulatory of St. Leonard’s Church at Hythe, Kent, is
another collection of skulls presumably from the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, although they may range anywhere in date
between 1100 and 1600 a.d.4
These
crania, of which 112 male specimens have been thoroughly
studied, represent a fairly homogeneous brachyccphalic group, of
small to moderate head size, and of Alpine racial type. They can by
no means be considered a Bronze Age survival, since they differ
profoundly from any known Bronze Age form; they resemble,
however, the Spitalsfields crania from Roman London, which
represents a continental population, probably largely Italian, which
had been transplanted to London by the Romans.
Stoessiger
and Morant believe that by the time of this Kentish series, the
Roman population of London, which must have survived the departure
of the Roman authorities by several centuries, had been largely
eliminated and replaced by new blood. In Kent, however, which was
one of the most thoroughly Romanized parts of Britain,5
they postulate a racial survival of the descendants of Roman-planted
auxiliaries, marines, and tradesmen into the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. Variations in the cranial index in different
parts of the ambulatory suggest that the original heaping, being
chronological, revealed a gradual change of type. In any case, the
modern Kentish population is not of this Hythe type, which seems in
the meanwhile to have disappeared by absorption.
A
third but small collection of skulls of the same period comes from
the mediaeval Carmelite Cemetery at Bristol.6
It is estimated that during the fourteenth century 20 per cent of
the inhabitants of Bristol were immigrants from southern
France, but that in the following centuries this element, since
it was not renewed, was absorbed into the general population. At the
same time immigrants entered from Wales, Gloucestershire, and
Somersetshire, in connection with the growing maritime importance of
Bristol, and these latter replaced the French influence with a
Kymric tinge.
In
the early Bristol series, in which French blood was without doubt an
important factor, mesocephaly is the rule, with a considerable range
of head form. Both ordinary Keltic Iron Age type crania are found,
and moderately large Alpine brachycephals with wide foreheads, which
seem
Stoessiger,
B. N., and Morant, G. M., Biometrika, vol. 24, 1932, pp. 135-202.Parsons,
F. G., JRAI, vol. 38, 1908, pp. 419-450.
West
Hythe, Portus Limanus, was an important seaport in Roman times and
later, but declined when the harbor silted up about 1600 a.d.
Beddoe,
J., JRAI, vol. 37, 1907, pp. 215-219.See
also Andree, R., Globus,
vol. 27, 1900, p. 135.
THE
BRITISH ISLES
375
to
represent the French element. In our three series from the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, then, we are struck by the
tendency in England for local racial enclaves to persist and to be
formed; the Rothwell series represents an Iron Age survival, that
from Hythe a colonial carry-over from Roman times, and the Bristol
collection a local Keltic and continental combination.
Let
us turn to the seventeenth century, during which disasters of great
magnitude took place in London, the chief of which was the great
plague of 1666 a.d.
Wholesale
deaths which occurred during this century overcrowded the
cemeteries, and resulted in the dumping of bodies into plague pits.
Thus were formed the two large cranial series of Whitechapel7
and Moorfields,8
while a third, the Farringdon Street series,9
was obtained by the disposal of a cemetery to obtain building
space.
These
three series are very similar to one another, although they are not
identical; they, nevertheless, represent a single, clearly
differentiated and reasonably homogeneous population. In all
measurements, indices, and angles little difference can be found
between the three hundred male crania of which these series are
composed and the general series of Iron Age Keltic invaders of
England. The resemblance is morphological as well as metrical; for
the same low, cylindrical vaults, the same exaggeratedly
sloping foreheads, and the same pinched faces and narrow noses,
typify this city population of seventeenth century Londoners. The
continental Roman townsman, as exemplified by the Spitalfields
series, seems to have died out utterly in Defoe’s London. There
may, as Morant suggests, have been social selection at play in
the formation of these series; the upper classes may have disposed
of their dead elsewhere; still the seventeenth century London type
must have been predominantly Iron Age Nordic of the Keltic variety,
and this in turn must have been ancestral to the modern
Cockney. The arrival in London and other English towns of several
thousands of French Huguenots and of Dutchmen fleeing the cruelty of
the Duke of Alva, took place for the most part too late in the
seventeenth century for inclusion in the plague pits.
That
the Keltic Iron Age cranial type, in mediaeval and modern times, is
not confined to London, is made evident by a number of series from
graveyards in other regions. A collection of 524 male skulls from a
modern Glasgow cemetery, representing the western-central part of
Scotland, shows the predominance of this racial type with
considerable fidelity.10
This series is drawn from the region in which the Scots of Deira
settled
MacDonnell,
W. R., Biometrika,
vol.
3, 1904, pp. 191-244,MacDonnell,
W. R., Biometrika,
vol.
5, 1906-07, pp. 88-104.Hooke,
B. G. E., Biometrika,
vol.
18, 1928, pp. 1-55.Young,
M., TRSE, vol. 51, 1917, pp. 347-454; Biometrika,
vol.
23, 1931, pp. 10- 22.