THE RACES OF EUROPE

of the French Basques nor their relatively high incidence of blondism can be wholly explained as local acquisitions. The Basques* as a whole, represent an ancient and subsequently specialized mixture of Mediter­raneans and Atlanto-Mediterraileans with partially blond Dinarics, and it is just as possible that different Basque sub-groups differed originally in amount of Dinaric blood as that the modern Spanish Basques have been altered through Spanish mixture.

Both the Atlanto-Mediterranean and Dinaric elements mentioned were present as early as the Copper Age in North Central Spain, where they were partially identified with the early Bell Beaker culture. The Keltic Iron Age racial type of Britain, which the living Spanish Basques so closely resemble, was produced originally in southern Germany from a combination of Nordics with Bell Beaker or other Dinarics, and im­ported into England where Mediterranean and Atlanto-Mediterranean elements, as well as some Bronze Age Dinaric factors, were already present. The mixture of similar ingredients in different places produces similar results. Seen in the light of modern physical anthropology, the Basques are still interesting, and perhaps romantic, but no longer mysteri­ous.

10. The gypsies

Within the greater confines of the Mediterranean race must be placed one people of non-European origin, the Gypsies. The Romanies, the Tziganes, the children of Little Egypt, are believed, on authoritative grounds, to be the descendants of one or more pariah tribes of northwestern India who for some unknown reason began to wander westward before or about the turn of the present millennium, at about the same time that Lief Erikson was discovering America.¹³⁶

They are believed to have travelled across Iran into Armenia, and thence into the Asiatic territory of the Byzantine Empire, where they ar* rived at some time between 1100 and 1200 a.d.; their first appearance in Europe cannot be traced back earlier than 1300 a.d. A second wave passed again through Persia and the Armenian highlands, but turned southwestward into Syria, Egypt, and North Africa. The language of

136. See Gaster, M., article “Gipsies,” Encyclopaedia Britannic a, thirteenth edition.

Lebzelter, V., MAGW, vol. 52, 1922, pp. 23-42, contains an historical summary as well as anthropometric data*

Other anthropometric sources include:

Gluck, L., WMBH, vol. 5, 1897, pp. 403-433.

Karpetes, B., MAGW, vol. 21, 1891, pp. 31-33.

Kopernicki, I., AFA, vol. 5, 1872, p. 267.

Marie, A., and MacAuliffe, L., CRAS, vol. 172, 1921, pp. 49-50.

Pittard* E., Anth, vol. 13, 1902, pp. 321-328; vol. 15, 1902, pp. 177-187; BSAL, vol. 22, 1904, pp. 207-217; Les Ptuples Aes Balkans.

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the European Gypsies is basically Indian, a derivative of Sanskrit or Prakrit, but it contains also words picked up in transit through Persia and Armenia, Words of other languages, Greek, Rumanian, Magyar, give evidence of passage through European countries. In each country the Gypsy speech has adapted itself to the language of the non-Gypsy inhabitants; in the far periphery, in England and in Spain, it has be­come no more than a half-language with as many local as Romany words, as any reader of George Borrow will recognize.¹³⁷

In the Balkans and Hungary some of the Gypsies were made landed serfs under the jurisdiction of nobles and churchmen, others were given special charter to wander; these latter practiced the trades of tinkers, wood carvers, gold panners, and minstrels, while their women exercised from their first appearance their calling of sorceresses and fortune-tellers. Although nomadic from the beginning, the Gypsies were not especially concerned with horse breeding and horse trading in eastern Europe; it was only in the west, where regulations and restrictions kept them on the move, that this specialty was developed.

After about a century in eastern Europe, some of them began to wander westward, and arrived in Germany in 1417, France in 1427, and England in about 1500 a.d. Some passed on through the Basque Provinces into Spain, others spread northward as far as Sweden and Finland. All said that they came from “Little Egypt,” and must go to Rome to expiate some sin of their ancestors. At this time they already travelled in wagons, whereas those in the east had arrived as dwellers in black tents. It is possible that the spread of the Turks in southeastern Europe had impelled this movement westward, but if so, the Gypsies rode into greater trials and persecutions than those they were fleeing. From about 1600 a.d. onward, their treatment in western Europe was often barbarous.

Counting Gypsies is the most arduous known form of census taking, and no estimates as to their numbers can be accurate. There are perhaps nearly a million of them in the world, allowing at least 100,000 on either side for a probable error. Of these, over half a million are said to live in Rumania and Hungary. Spain has about 40,000, Italy over 30,000, and Russia nearly 60,000. Probably at least 150,000 live in Bulgaria, Mace­donia, and Yugoslavia, while France has but 2000, Germany the same number, and the British Isles about 12,000. The total outside Europe, including Asia, Africa, America, and Australia, would perhaps amount to about 200,000.

The eastern European Gypsies have for the most part settled down,

¹³⁷ The reader, if he does not already know them, is invited to join the great company of Borrovians by acquainting himself with The Romano Lavo-Lil, Lavengro, The Romany Rye_p and The Btbfe in Spain*

THE RACES OF EUROPE

and many have lost their language. In Hungary less than 10,000 are still nomadic. In studying the racial characters of the European Gypsies, it will be necessary to distinguish between the nomads, who have in some countries preserved their original racial type with some degree of purity, and the settled Gypsies who have mixed extensively with the non-Gypsy population.

The most noticeable physical trait of the Gypsies, remarked every­where from their first appearance to the present, is their dark pigmentation. In skin color this is often so dark as to exclude them, in popular estima­tion, from membership in the white race. Out of 52 Hungarian Gypsies Weisbach found 38, or 73 per cent, to have brown or brownish skin color; the others, light brown to yellowish. Gluck, in a group of 66 from Bosnia, found 30, or 45 per cent, dark brown; 6, or 9 per cent, brown; 27, or 41 per cent, light brown; and only three light in a European sense. Lebzelter, with observations on the skin colors of 36 from Serbia, finds 6 brown, 29 yellowish, or yellowish-white, and one olive or brunet- white. Nomadic Gypsies noticed by the author in Albania seemed to be all or nearly all brown, nearer dark brown than light; the sedentary Gypsies of Tirana are also, as a rule, brown-skinned, although light­skinned individuals occur among them.

There can be little doubt that when the Gypsies arrived in Europe they were all or nearly all brown-eyed; today some 90 per cent of Hun­garian and Serbian Gypsies still have unmixed brunet irises, with the majority dark brown to black. The head hair and the beard, as well, are almost always black among pure Gypsies, fine in texture, very thick on the head, and uniformly straight. Wavy hair seems to occur only among Gypsy-European hybrids. In all groups studied in Hungary and southeastern Europe, there are a few individuals with medium brown, light brown, or even blond hair, but these may with little doubt be con­sidered mixtures.

The purest nomadic Gypsy groups are all short-statured, with means of 161 cm. to 164 cm.; the Hungarian Gypsies are taller, with a mean of 166.5 cm.; the “black” Bosnian Gypsies, living in a country of tall people, have a mean of 168 cm., while the “white” or palpably mixed Bosnian Gypsies, with a mean of 173 cm., are nearly as tall as the Bosnians them­selves. In France they attain a stature of 166 cm., as high as that for Frenchmen, or higher; in England they are presumably nearly as tall as the English, as are the Stanleys and Coopers who live in America.

The purer groups of Gypsies have head length means of 188 to 190 mm., and breadths of 145 mm. or slightly over; their cephalic index means range from 76 among Black Bosnian Gypsies to 79 among those of Hungary. In France it is also 79, extraordinarily low for people living

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in so brachycephalic a country. The heads of the Gypsies are usually low-vaulted, with a mean auricular height of about 120 mm.; their faces are small, with a total face height mean of 120 mm., a bizygomatic of 135 mm., and minimum frontal and bigonial means of 106 mm. Their facial index, 88, lies on the border of mesoprosopy and lepto- prosopy, and their nasal index, 63, is leptorrhine. Their nasal dimen­sions, 52 mm. by 33 mm., are absolutely small. The nasal profile is, as a rule, straight.

In all facial features, as well as in their metrical position, the unmixed Gypsies are standard members of a small Mediterranean racial type; they could not have acquired this constant racial character anywhere between the Indus Valley and Hungary, since all Mediterranean forms encountered on the way are different. The nomadic Gypsies of Hungary, Rumania, and the Balkans, are still largely of this type; the sedentary Gypsies are gradually merging into the populations that surround them.

In western Europe the Gypsy is a hybrid, growing less Indian as one moves westward. The English Gypsies, in fact, to whose numbers have been added vagrant Englishmen, are in many cases hardly to be distin­guished from the latter. The English Gypsies of America, who have given up horses for automobiles and who now sell the baskets made by Passama- quoddy Indians, look in some instances little different from brunet Yankees, although their English blood was accreted in England rather than in America. We have also in our country, however, many families of Balkan Gypsies, who retain their complete gypsy racial character, and who still wear their colorful clothing and jewelry, although they sleep in trailers rather than in caravans.

(19) CONCLUSIONS

The main conclusions to be drawn from the foregoing study of the Mediterranean World, in its stretch, a quarter of the way around the globe, from India to the Atlantic, may, be expressed simply and briefly. In this zone the Mediterranean race is the one predominant human genetic factor. It abuts on the Veddoid group to the southeast, the negroid to the southwest, and the world of the descendants of hybrid Upper Palaeolithic hunters on the north and on the west.

The Mediterranean race, excepting those partially depigmented branches which escaped early to the north of the Mediterranean home­lands and whose descendants we have already studied, is characteristi­cally brunet, but in varying degrees, and when unmixed with Veddoids or negroids carries a minor mutative tendency to blondism.

The early divisions of the Mediterranean race noted in the skeletal material from as far back as the fourth millennium B.C. are still valid.

THE RACES OF EUROPE

These divisions may be separated on several bases; notably, stature, degree of dolichocephaly, and facial cast, which is most easily expressed in terms of the nasal profile.

The Mediterraneans living in Asia are characterized, in varying degrees, by a prominence of the upper facial segment and by a convexity of nasal profile; those in Africa and Europe by a straighter facial plane, and a straight nasal profile. The Asiatic Mediterraneans tend to concurrence of eyebrows and heaviness of beard; those in Africa and Europe to a separation of the eyebrows over glabella, and a moderate beard and body hair development.

Historically, short Mediterraneans seem to have preceded tall ones in their wanderings out of typically Mediterranean territory. In view of the known antiquity of the tall varieties, this must be interpreted in terms of geographical position rather than of developmental se­quence.

From the metrical standpoint the Mediterranean race is remarkably homogeneous. Different branches of the Mediterranean race, widely separated in time and space, may be identical or nearly identical in all measurable characters, but may differ profoundly in such superficial (in the literal sense) racial criteria as skin color, hair color, eye color, and hair form. Pigmentation, within the wider Mediterranean groups, is of little value in the estimation of long-range racial associations. The pigment map of Europe is truly a map of glaciation, and the racial types found within the inner zone of blondism have little in common other than a paucity of melanin. The Corded element in the Nordic, as it is isolated, is blue-eyed and brown-haired; its Asiatic counterpart is brown­eyed and black-haired. The Nordic proper and the smaller Mediterranean element in it which we call Danubian is ash-blond haired and gray- or mixed-eyed; its Mediterranean counterparts elsewhere are brown-haired and brown-eyed. Similarly the Atlanto-Mediterranean strain among the Irish and Scots is blue-eyed, although the hair color remains in many instances dark; here iris and skin depigmentation may have progressed in advance of the non-functional hair pigment. What it is that has made these races partially or fully blond, no one at present knows. But we do know that some of the changes must have taken place within the last five thousand years, since the separation of some of the blond branches of the Mediterranean race from their brunet counterparts cannot go back much farther.

The accretion of a small amount of negroid blood by the Mediterranean stock causes a frizziness of hair form; a darkening of skin color, which becomes extremely variable; a broadening of the nasal breadth; an in­crease in interorbital and biorbital dimensions; and often an increase in

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facial and nasal lengths, as well as a tendency to nasal profile convexity. Vault dimensions and body dimensions change little.

The accretion of Veddoid blood causes a reduction in the head size, a tendency toward brachycephaly, an increase in browridges and in bizygomatic breadth, a narrowing of the lower face, expecially of the mandible, a narrowing of the nasal and orbital region, and a prominence of the nose. Especially noticeable is the acquisition of thick ringlet curls as an almost exclusive hair form.

The accretion of northern Palaeolithic blood of the Afalou variety causes an increase in bodily bulk, in heaviness of bone, in relative trunk size, and in head size. It causes a broadening of the head and face, and especially an increase in the size and prominence of the mandible. It causes the acquisition of a tendency toward blue-eyed, brown- or rufous­haired blondism, with freckling, A comparable action has already been observed upon the Nordic branch of the Mediterranean race in northern Europe and in Ireland.

What happens to the Mediterranean race when it is fused with central European and central Asiatic Alpine strains, and with mongoloid strains on the plains of central Asia, will be studied in the following chapter.