The mediterranean world

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doid group of humanity. Their affiliation to the white racial stock is of a borderline quality.

The second group is composed of tribesmen who inhabit the Hadhra- maut valley proper, and who trace their ancestry to the Yemen and to other parts of Arabia. The ancestors of these tribesmen seem to have en­tered the Hadhramaut in pre-Islamic times. In addition to these early immigrants, there is a class of artisans who claim varied ancestry from different parts of the Arabic-speaking world, and, as an upper crust, a group of Sayyids, descendants of the Prophet, who form a priestly aristoc­racy. From the racial standpoint, the inhabitants of the Hadhramaut in­clude both Veddoid and Mediterranean elements. In more recent times great numbers of slaves have been brought from Africa to increase this racial complexity.

In Mahra, Dhofar, and the island of Socotra, pre-Arabic Semitic lan­guages survive. These are Mahri, spoken by the Mahra and the Socotrans, and Shahari, spoken by the people who live in the hills behind Dhofar.² Other early Semitic dialects seem to be affiliated with these two language groups. The Mahra and the people immediately behind Dhofar belong largely to the same general racial classification as the Hadhramaut Beda- win, and form a more exaggerated nucleus of the same physical type.

The origin of these non-Mediterranean, partly Veddoid people in southern Arabia is obscure. Culturally, they possess many primitive traits which would relate them, on the one hand, to the food-gathering economy of such people as the Australians and Veddas; and, on the other, to the cattle culture of the Todas in India and of the Hamites and Bantu in East Africa.

Let us first consider the racial characters of the plateau Yemenis, who seem to form the purest nucleus of the Mediterranean race in Arabia which has yet been studied.³ A group of 400 adult males from the central plateau and from the adjacent escarpment region belongs, with few exceptions, to a homogeneous Mediterranean type. The series is a mature one with a mean age of 33 years. The mean stature of this group, 164 cm., is moder­ate and is typical of the smaller Mediterranean race as defined in earlier chapters.

The bodies of these Yemenis are slightly built; gross observations on constitutional type show the Yemenis to be predominantly leptosome in 60 per cent of cases, and rarely if ever pyknic. The relative shoulder breadth of 21.5 is smaller than that found in most European groups; the

² Thomas, Bertram, Arabia Felix.

8. This material is based upon a series of 1500 men measured in the Yemen and Ha­dhramaut by the author in 1933-34, and presented here for the first time. It will be published in proper statistical form at a later date.

THE RACES OF EUROPE

relative span of 102 resembles that of the pure Nordic groups of east Norway, and a relative sitting height of 51.3 is less than that found among most Europeans. The Yemenis, although short, are relatively long legged. Their heads are of moderate dimensions, with a mean length of 188 mm. and a mean breadth of 143 mm., giving a cephalic index of 76, which lies on the upper border of dolichocephaly. It is to be noted that while the head form is the same as that of the Nordic race, the length and breadth dimensions are considerably smaller. The head height of 125 mm. is moderately high, and comparable to Nordic dimensions. The facial diameters are consistently narrow; the minimum frontal mean is 102 mm., the bizygomatic 132 mm., and the bigonial 101 mm. These dimensions are narrower than any that we have heretofore seen in Europe. The face height of 121 mm. is moderate, while the upper face height of 72 mm. must be considered great. It is, in fact, greater than that of many European groups of larger cranial and facial bulk. The nose height of 56 mm. is as great as that of most Nordic groups, while the nose breadth of 33.5 mm. is narrow. The facial index of 92 is only moderately leptoprosopic, while the upper facial index of 55 is extremely leptene. Here one sees a disharmony between the total face height and the great upper face height, which indi­cates the excessive shallowness and fragility of the Mediterranean mandi­ble. A nasal index of 61 is extremely leptorrhine. The dimensions given above may serve as metrical specifications of the small Mediterranean racial variety in its purest form. Observational specifications follow.

Yemeni highlanders, in exposed skin color on the face, hands, and legs, often appear to be brown, and the characteristic range of exposed skin color lies between von Luschan’s #12 and #18. Over 50 per cent of the series have exposed skins of #15 and darker. Really light exposed skin was observed in but one individual, who was a man seldom out under the sun. When the observer inspects the skin of the breast or inner arm in places where the sun seldom penetrates, he sees at once that these people are much lighter. The unexposed skin color, in 83 per cent of the entire series, is a swarthy white, fitting into the von Luschan #10 and #11. Lighter shades running from von Luschan #7 and #9 occur in roughly 5 per cent, while the rest of the series is darker. No individual meas­ured, who came from the Yemen plateau, was darker than von Luschan #18. Vascularity is present in all but one-fifth of the subjects, but, in the majority of cases, is only slightly in evidence. Freckling was found in but

1. per cent of the entire group, and is not a characteristic of the unmixed Mediterranean race.

The head hair of the Yemenis is straight in only 4 per cent of the series, and low waves account for the majority, while 20 per cent have hair which may be classified as curly. This hair form consists of wide, open ringlets

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and is the same as the dominant form found among the Veddoid aborigines of the Hadhramaut. Negroid hair does not occur in this group. The hair is of medium texture in 80 per cent of the series and fine in the rest. It is for the most part abundant on the head, and baldness is rare. Only 14 per cent of the entire group showed any signs of baldness other than patholog­ical favus. The beard is slight in over 50 per cent of the series and seldom covers the entire lower part of the face. There are usually bare patches between the ends of the mustache and the chin beard. Body hair, aside from the pubis and axis, is absent in one-third of the entire group and, on the whole, but moderately developed. There is a minority of 10 per cent which shows excessive hairiness. On the whole, the classic Mediterranean racial type is characterized by a moderate to slight amount of body hair, but one must not conclude that excessive hairiness cannot be found among individual Mediterraneans.

The head hair is black in 90 per cent of the series; except for one example of blondism and another of rufosity, the rest of the group is dark brown haired. Beard color, however, is black in only 75 per cent of the group, and the remaining one-fourth of the series is divided between various hues of brown and red. Beard rufosity occurs in 6 per cent of the Yemeni series, while head hair rufosity was found in but one individual. Twelve men out of 400 had beards which contained visible increments of golden-brown hair. Reddish-brown beards are as common as red ones. Since there is no evidence of ash-blondism in either the head or beard hair, while golden and red hues account for all of the existing blondism, it is apparent that the hair of the basic Mediterranean stock, as exemplified by these Yemenis, contains a considerable amount of red pigmentation.

The 25 per cent of brown and blond beards may be matched by 25 per cent of light and mixed eye color. Dark brown, however, accounts for nearly half of the entire series, and black and light brown eyes are def­initely in the minority. Of the mixed eyes, green-brown is the most fre­quent hue, and the dark-mixed outnumber the light-mixed. Not a single case of pure blue or pure gray eyes was encountered in the Yemen; the lightest contained a few flecks of superficial brown pigment.

It is extremely suggestive that the percentage of beards containing evi­dence of blondism is the same as that of mixed irises, while the head hair color is almost exclusively black. Since it would be difficult to find a purer Mediterranean racial strain than this, one may postulate that some tend­ency towards a blond mutation is present in roughly one-fourth of this otherwise brunet branch of the Mediterranean race, but this tendency rarely expresses itself in extreme blondism. For historical reasons a 25 per cent incidence in the Yemen is too high to be explained on the basis of outside mixture alone.

THE RACES OF EUROPE

Internal eyefolds are wholly absent. Median eyefolds are found in some 10 per cent of the series, while external eyefolds account for another 15 per cent. Thus a condition which is usually considered Nordic is found to exist almost equally among Mediterraneans. In 15 per cent of the series a slight upward obliquity of the eyes is found, and the opening between the lids is usually moderate. The eyebrows are pronouncedly thick in one- fourth of the series, and moderately so to medium in the rest. It is inter­esting to note that eyebrow concurrency is present in all but 15 per cent of the group. This is slight in most cases, but moderately pronounced in 40 per cent of the whole. One must, therefore, dismiss the idea that these Mediterraneans, at least, have no eyebrow concurrency. A moderate amount of it is apparently a Mediterranean trait. The browridges of these Yemenis are slight in half the group and moderate in most of the other half; only about 5 per cent have pronounced browridges comparable to those so frequently found in northern Europe.

From the observational standpoint, the forehead is of moderate to great height; the slope is less than that usually found among Nordics. Absent or very slight slopes are found in nearly half of the group, while a slope com­parable to that of Nordics accounts for the other half.

The nasion depression is usually slight; in many cases nearly absent. The nasal root is almost always high and narrow, the nasal bridge is of greater than medium height in 60 per cent of the series, while its breadth is characteristically narrow to medium. The nasal profile is convex in half of the group. Concave profiles are limited to 3 per cent of the whole, and the rest are straight. The concavo-convex profile, so common in some types of Nordic, is absent here. The nasal tip is usually narrow to medium. It is usually horizontal or inclined slightly upwards; downward inclina­tion occurs in only one-sixth of the group. The nasal wings are alternately medium or compressed, and flaring in but 2 per cent of the group. The nostrils usually take the form of a thin oval in outline, and are set at slightly oblique axes.

On the whole, the nasal form of the Yemenis is quite constant and of little variability. The Yemeni nose is high-rooted, high-bridged, and nar­row, with a convex to straight profile, and a narrow, slightly elevated tip, compressed to moderate wings, and narrow, slightly oblique nostril open­ings. The amount of nasal convexity is greater among Mediterraneans than among most Nordics, and the Mediterranean group as exemplified by this series is, in fact, slightly more leptorrhine than all but the most extreme Nordic groups.

The lips of the Yemenis are of moderate in tegumental thickness, and their membranous thickness is usually thin to medium. The lips are as a rule only slightly everted. The lip seam is visible in the entire group.

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Prognathism is rare; 9 per cent of the total group shows a slight to medium development of the facial variety, while the alveolar type is limited to

2. per cent. It must be remembered at this point that a small amount of facial prognathism is a characteristic white and particularly Mediterra­nean trait, while alveolar prognathism is more of a negroid character. This, like other negroid traits, is to all practical purposes absent in the Yemen highlands.

Despite the shallowness and narrowness of the Yemenis mandible, chins are of moderate European prominence in 70 per cent of the series. Markedly prominent chins such as one finds in northern Europe among Upper Palaeolithic survivors are lacking. These chins are median in three- fourths of the entire group, while the remaining fourth possess the bi­lateral form common among Europeans. Only one man out of five has the edge-to-edge bite so frequently found among mediaeval and earlier Euro­pean skulls, for in dentition and in general jaw development, the Yemenis possess the same features already noticed in the skulls of Mesopotamia as early as Sumerian times.

In the larger features of the face, Yemenis show little or no frontal pro­jection of the malars, while a moderate lateral projection is usual, owing to the small development of the temporal muscle and to the general thin­ness of the soft parts of the face. Gonial angles are medium or slight in most cases. The occipital protrusion is usually considerable, and flattening is absent or very slight in three-fourths of the series, and the other fourth is as pronounced as among most Nordics.

Although the plateau Yemenis of the region centered about Sana'a may rightly be taken to represent the smaller variety of the Mediterranean race in its purest form, this is not equally true of other parts of the Yemen. In the southern part of the mountain district, in the neighborhood of the cities of Yerim, Ibb, and Taiz, a mixture is seen between this Mediter­ranean strain and the Veddoid type characteristic of the Hadhramaut. Along the Yemen coast, furthermore, since the climatic conditions are such as to discourage serious physical effort among white men, the coun­tryside has been largely taken over by negroid farmers brought in as agri­cultural serfs. There is, however, a minority of white agriculturalists, and these belong partly to the Mediterranean type described above. However, there is a considerable coastal population located in the larger towns and maritime villages, which belongs to an entirely different physical type.

These coastal Yemenis are shorter than the plateau Mediterraneans, with a mean stature of only 160 cm. They are smaller-headed, with the extremely short mean glabello-occipital length of 177 mm., a vault height of only 122 mm., and a cephalic index mean of 84.⁴ Their faces are broader

⁴ The common misconception that the Yemenis as a whole are brachycephalic is due

THE RAGES OF EUROPE

than those of the plateau people, and very short, with a mean total face height of 118 mm. The nasal index of 64 is less leptorrhine, and the length of eye-slit opening is much greater. These maritime coastal people fre­quently have coarse and straight hair; their skin color tends to be darker than that of the plateau people, their faces fuller, and their ears promi­nent and slanting.

These brachycephalic coastal people bear a strong resemblance to Ma­lays and Indonesians, in a number of metrical characters, and there is a tradition that they have absorbed Malay blood in certain families. On the other hand, from the morphological standpoint, most of them look Arme­noid, since thick-tipped convex noses and sloping foreheads are frequent among them. In any case, whatever their origin, and it is undoubtedly mixed, they represent an intrusive people borne to southern Arabia by the sea, and have no connection with the original Mediterranean group which developed in the highlands. Evidence of their racial influence may be seen among the agricultural population of the coast, and to a certain extent in the southern towns, but as yet they seem to have exerted no in­fluence whatever on the plateau country. The barrier of a 10,000 foot escarpment and of a complete difference in climate seems to have sufficed to keep the coastal population from the plateau, while the plateau people, at the same time, have penetrated the unhealthy lowlands but little.

Within the Yemen plateau population it is possible for the careful ob­server to notice a differentiation between a number of sub-types. In the cities is concentrated a specialized and exaggeratedly Mediterranean population with shorter stature, narrower and lower heads, narrower faces and noses, and lighter skin color than the rest of the Yemenis. This city type seems to have been largely selected on an occupational basis, and represents the quintessence of the Mediterranean race. The country people, on the whole, are somewhat larger, somewhat broader-shouldered, and somewhat wavier or curlier in hair form.

Among the tribal and village sheikhs and the officers in the Imam’s army one frequently encounters tall, very long-headed, and long-faced examples of the Atlanto-Mediterranean type, which seems to form a socially selected variant in this group. The Nordic-looking people are usually confined to the social stratum from which civil officers and re­ligious men are drawn, and it is more than a coincidence that the ac-

to the fact that Europeans are more familiar with Yemeni sailors than with the more numerous highlanders. Previous anthropometric series of Yemenis include mostly coastal subjects.

See Cipriani, L., APA, vols. 60-61, 1930-31, pp. 138-163.

Leys, N. M., and Joyce, T. A., JRAI, vol. 43, 1913, pp. 195-267.

Mochi, A., APA, vol. 37, 1907, pp. 411-428.

Seligman, C. G., JRAI, vol. 47, 1917, pp. 211-237.

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knowledged descendants of the Prophet are lighter-skinned and show greater evidence of blondism than the rest of the population. There may perhaps have been a Nordic strain associated with the holy families who entered this region from the Hejaz in early post-Islamic times.

We have no data whatever from Asir, but it is likely that the inhabitants of this mountain province resemble those of the Yemen highlands in large measure. In the Hejaz, there is almost no material,⁵ but a few words may be said on the basis of personal observation. Today the city people who derive rich profits from the pilgrim trade and who inhabit mostly Jidda, Mekka, Taif, and Medina are as motley and heterogeneous a group as one would find in Port Said or Honolulu. Thousands of Javanese, of Chinese Moslems, of Bokharis from Turkestan, and of Indian Moslems as well as of African negroes, have been attracted to the holy places and have remained there. The permanent population of these cities is prob­ably less than half Arab. So far these foreign elements have not greatly mixed with the indigenous people, and the old families have kept them­selves aloof from these foreign strains, but the importance of the new­comers in the future cannot be exaggerated. The Hejaz will eventually be the seat of a greatly mixed and blended population, drawn from the three primary racial groups of white, negroid, and mongoloid.

Members of the old Hejaz families seem to fall, in many cases, into a clearly differentiated type which, in its extreme form, may be described without difficulty. Its members are men of medium to tall stature; they are broad shouldered, long-bodied, heavy of weight, and of a constitu­tional type which tends to an excess of both muscle and fat. Their heads are large and mesocephalic to brachycephalic, their faces are both broad and long, their noses frequently large-tipped and fleshy. The chin is prominent and the mandible strong. Their hair is dark brown to black, the beard heavy, and the eye color characteristically brown, although light eyes are by no means uncommon. .

Although this Alpine-looking Hejaz type may not yet be established on a scientific basis,⁶ its existence will be confirmed by readers who are acquainted with the people of this region. It seems very likely that men of this general type went to North Africa with the early Moslem invasions, for this type is frequent among the aristocratic families in North African cities, particularly in Fez, in contrast with the rest of the population which is almost exclusively dolichocephalic. What the origin of this hypotheti­cal type may be, it would be foolish to consider without some metrical

⁶ Mochi, A., APA, vol. 37, 1907, pp. 411-428, gives raw data for a series of 12 Arabs from Jidda.

6. Mochi’s series of 12 Arabs from Jidda has a mean stature of 168 cm., a G. I. of 79.4, a bizygomatic of 132 mm., and a nose breadth of 37 mm.