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Chapter XI

The mediterranean world

  1. Introduction

In the first two chapters of our survey of the living white peoples, we lave covered the whole northern third of the European continent, and lave discussed at some length the physical characteristics of the present rep­resentatives of the Nordic race, and of the East Baltic and Neo-Danubian acial types, as exemplified by the Finno-Ugrian peoples and by the peakers of the Baltic branch of Indo-European. We have, furthermore, tudied the survival and reemergence in northwestern Europe of unre- luced, unmodified Upper Palaeolithic types, as exemplified especially by he Irish, and other British, and by the Scandinavians and East Baltic >eoples. We have also discussed the incipiently mongoloid Lapps, and the nongoloid intrusions on European soil along its northern borders.

The next strip to follow, in a geographical sense, would be the whole tighland belt of central Europe stretching over to the Balkans, to Asia *linor, and across to the Caucasus and Turkestan. This second zone, Lowever, is one of immense racial complexity. In it various branches of he greater Mediterranean family, of Neolithic date and later, have been Qodified by combining in various proportions with each other and with he autochthonous Alpine race. The key to the complexity of this zone ies in the genetic action of this last entity, which is apparently a reduced, 3mewhat foetalized, or more highly evolved branch of the old Palaeo- thic stock than those which we have been studying in the north. Since, owever, it is the action of this element upon the Mediterranean family fhich is important here, it will be easier to study this zone after having nrveyed the population of a third belt, that occupied by the purest living epresentatives of the Mediterranean race.

This third racial zone stretches from Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar 3 Morocco, and thence along the southern Mediterranean shores into irabia, East Africa, Mesopotamia, and the Persian highlands; and across Afghanistan into India. This zone is one of comparative racial simplicity, n it the brunet Mediterranean race lives today in its various regional >rms without, in most cases, the complication of the Palaeolithic survivals nd reemergences which have so confused the racial picture on the ground f Europe itself. Only in the mountains of Morocco and Algeria, and in le Canary Islands, is such a survival of any importance. The careful

400

THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD

401

study of living populations of the Mediterranean race in its early home­lands will do much to simplify the task which lies ahead.

  1. The mediterranean rage in arabia

The Mediterranean racial zone stretches unbroken from Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco, and thence eastward to India. A branch of it extends far southward on both sides of the Red Sea into southern Arabia, the Ethiopian highlands, and the Horn of Africa. Of the three main Mediterranean sub-races which this zone contains, the most widespread, the most central, the most highly evolved, and most charac­teristically Mediterranean is the central Mediterranean form, as best ex­emplified skeletally by the pre-dynastic Egyptians. Today the largest uni­fied area in which this moderate-sized, intermediate Mediterranean racial type is found in greatest purity is the Arabian Peninsula.

Arabia, some fifteen hundred miles long by a thousand wide, possesses a huge land mass but a small population. Owing to the aridity of the great Ruba' el Khali desert and much of the north, the entire country can support no more than six million people, of whom at least a half live in the small, fertile, southwestern corner, the kingdom of Yemen.

The study of the prehistory of Arabia has hardly begun. It is, however, known that during the pluvial periods of the Pleistocene, the Empty Quar­ter was a fertile plateau, through which large streams carved wide and deep wadys; and that it has been inhabited by man from at least Acheu- lean times onward. With the post-glacial desiccation of this part of the world, Arabia may well have served as a vagina gentium, sending forth into other regions great numbers of inhabitants whom it could no longer sup­port. In legendary and historic times this role has been continued; the early wanderings of the Jews, the settlement of the Ethiopian highlands by colonists from the Hadhramaut, the great expansion of the Arabs in early Moslem times, all serve as examples.

Modern Arabia is divided into several kingdoms each of which occupies a distinct geographical area. The largest,'Saudi Arabia, includes the Nejd, Hasa, the Hejaz, and Asir; in other words, all of the regions north and im­mediately west of the Ruba' el Khali. The Nejd is occupied by a mixed population of pastoral nomads and agriculturists, of which the former are by far the more numerous. The Nejdis form a natural unit with the tribes­men of Transjordania and of the Syrian desert. The northern frontier of Arabia, in an ethnic sense, is not its present political boundary, but a line skirting the southern edge of the so-called Fertile Crescent. In northern Arabia should be included such tribes as the Ruwalla, the Shammar, and the Howeitat. The Hejaz, which includes the holy cities of Mekka and Medina, contains a sedentary population, which lives partly by agriculture

402

THE RACES OF EUROPE

and partly by trade, while the wealth brought in by the annual hordes of pilgrims from the entire world of Islam helps, in large measure, to sup­port the population of this sacred territory. Asir, the southernmost and most recently acquired section of Saudi Arabia, is a mountainous country occupied for the most part by farmers, and its ethnic relationships are with the Yemen, rather than with the north.

The kingdom of Yemen is bounded on the north by, roughly, the seven­teenth parallel of north latitude; on the west by the Red Sea; on the south by the British Protectorate of Aden; and on the east by the southwestern- most extension of the Empty Quarter. It consists of two main parts, the narrow coastal plain and the plateau country which slopes gently east­ward from a 10,000 foot escarpment. This plateau is extremely fertile and supports a large agricultural population. On its northern and eastern borders it tapers off gradually into pastoral country, and in the south merges into the ethnic unit of the Hadhramaut. The eastern part of this plateau was once an extremely populous region, since it was the seat of the three great kingdoms of Ma'an, Kataban, and Saba. This country was supported partly by agriculture, based on extensive irrigation projects, and partly by tolls from the incense caravans which passed through them on their way northward.

To the west of Yemen lies the Wady Hadhramaut, a narrow strip of fertile valley, separated from the Gulf of Aden by a forbidding mass of almost vegetation-free mountains. To the east of the Hadhramaut lies Dhofar, hemmed in by the Qara Mountains; and this small semi-circle of land preserves a lush vegetation made possible by the steady rainfall brought by the southeast monsoon. It, alone of all of southern Arabia, retains the Pleistocene climate which made this region, in former times, a land of great fertility. To the northeast of the great desert, which acts as a formidable barrier to separate these kingdoms, lies Oman, a mountain­ous country in which agriculture is practiced, and which is noted for its seafaring activities and for its export of dates.

The inhabitants of Arabia may be divided into two general groups: Arabs proper, and the aboriginal inhabitants of Hadhramaut, the Dhofar country, and the island of Socotra. Those who belong to the first category are almost without exception of Mediterranean race, and it is with this group that we are dealing in our search for a pure Mediterranean form. The Hadhramaut, on the other hand, contains a varied population with at least four social and ethnic elements.1 These include the Bedawin, who live in the smaller side valleys and in the valleys between the Hadhramaut proper and the Gulf of Aden. They are slender, small-headed men, with ringlet hair, and facial features which relate them partly to the great Ved-

  1. Van den Berg, L. W. C., Le Hadhramout et les Colonies Arabes dans VArchipel Indien.

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