THE RACES OF EUROPE

Barrow type, with which it is frequently associated. Von Eickstedt’s series of 30 men from Llangynog in North Montgomeryshire, and from Kerry in the southern part of the same county, furnish the best anthropometric evidence of its presence. In both regions brunet pigmentation is character­istic; both series are mesocephalic. The mean stature of the Kerry men is 166.5 cm., of the Llangynog group 168.2 cm. The first mean is low enough to indicate a strong Mediterranean element. The head and face measure­ments, however, of both groups are much alike, and too great for a small Mediterranean series; the head length mean is 196 mm. in each, the breadth 154; the mention-nasion face height is 124 mm. in Kerry, 125 mm. in Llangynog; the bizygomatic of Kerry 140 mm., that of Llangynog 139 mm. The noses of each are roughly 55 mm. by 34 mm., the nasal in­dices—61.8 for Kerry, 62.8 for Llangynog.

The head breadth, face height, and face breadth are all a little too great for a small Mediterranean type, but an examination of the distribu­tion curves of the two series eliminates this difficulty. The stature is strongly bimodal, with a smaller mode at 163 cm., and a larger peak at 169 cm.; head length has modes at 193 and 199 mm.; head breadth at 151 mm. and 157 mm.; the facial index at 86 and 92; the nasal index at 59 and 67. If we grant the small Mediterranean type a mean stature of 163 cm., a head length of 193 mm., and the lower facial and higher nasal indices, it assumes a metrical character which can easily be duplicated in the countries in which this type is more numerous and more easily iden­tified, for example, Arabia and North Africa.

The pursuit of these early brunet survivals in remote districts of Wales must not, however, make us forget that the bulk of the evidence from that country as a whole indicates that the variety of Nordic to which the bearers of Kymric speech belonged is today nearly if not fully as important there as the totality of earlier human varieties.

2. The british isles, summary

The racial history of the British Isles, reviewed in the first section of the present chapter, is a more complicated matter than one would expect in view of the marginal position of these islands. Its complexity serves to illustrate the little appreciated fact that men of European racial type be­gan navigation in a serious way while still limited to the tools and resources of a Neolithic economy; and that even at that remote time navigation was a primary means by which large populations were transferred between distant points. The population of the British Isles has been drawn from a number of widely separated regional sources, and the sea has served not so much as a barrier as a highroad over which these diverse elements have converged.

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These elements include most of the known branches of the white race; one or more varieties of unreduced or unaltered Palaeolithic man; two varieties of brunet Mediterranean, of which the sea-borne Atlanto- Mediterranean is the more important; the two principal surviving vari­ants of the Iron Age Nordic group; brachycephals of Dinaric or Armenoid type, as well as the composite Beaker type which is a blend of Dinaric, Borreby, and early Corded elements.

The snub-nosed Neo-Danubians and East Baltics, the brunet hook­nosed Irano-Afghans, may for practical purposes be considered absent, while the Alpine race, that important bearer of brachycephaly in central Europe from France to the Bosporus, and over into the highlands of western Asia, is notably uncommon. Individuals of apparent Alpine type are, in most cases, Borreby descendants. It is the virtual absence of Alpines in the British Isles which has prevented the British from undergoing a brachycephalization comparable to that found in most of central Europe. There seem to be no dominant trends in head form, for the component elements in the British racial amalgam have retained their original cephalic index levels.

In both Great Britain and Ireland, the invasion of the Keltic Iron Age Nordics was the event which brought in the largest single body of people, and the British of today, by and large, owe more in a physical sense to these Kelts than to any other group of invaders. In both Great Britain and Ireland, the Neolithic and Bronze Age invasions were of secondary importance in respect to the present population, as were the invasions of Germanic-speaking peoples.

In the different countries which make up the British Isles, these various minorities have differential values in the local populations. It is these minority differences which separate the English, the Scotch, the Irish, and the Welsh, while the community of the Iron Age Nordic element serves as an opposing force to hold them together.

In England, the Germanic element is the most distinctive; in Wales it is the Atlanto-Mediterranean; in Scotland it is a combination of Bronze Age and Scandinavian elements in the northeast, of Irish with Atlanto- Mediterranean in the west; in Ireland the one fact of greatest importance is the reemergence of the old northern Palaeolithic stock. The Keltic Iron Age racial type is least important in northeastern Scotland, where Keltic speech never penetrated, and in Wales, where it has attained its maximum survival.