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In the population of the Bolognese there is a strong prevalence of Alpine and Dinaric types, especially the former, but approximately one-third of the population is long-headed or nearly so. Among this third, Nordics are not uncommon, but the most important element is a tall, slender, brunet, long-faced type, with a thin, straight or convex nose, and thin lips. It is a variant of the Atlanto-Mediterranean, with some of the Cappadocian facial features brought from western Asia by early navigators, including the Etruscans. Associated with this type is a frequent obliquity of the eye slits, which are very long; highly arched eyebrows and full malars. The beauty of Bolognese women is proverbial, and the type described above is to a certain extent responsible for this reputation. It is com­mon elsewhere in northern Italy as well, and was often portrayed by Renaissance painters. This type is also found as a minor element in the Tyrol, where it seems to form a basic part of the Dinaric racial complex.

No country in Europe in which one language and one cultural tradition prevail shows a greater diversity of race between its southern and its northern extremities than does Italy. The binding element which is com­mon to all sections is the Alpihe, which has reemerged from obscure be­ginnings through a superstructure composed of Dinaric, Nordic, and various kinds of Mediterranean accretions. Italy stands on the fence between the Alpine and Mediterranean worlds.

3. The living slavs

1. Czechs and Wends

Owing to the geographical distribution of living Slavic-speaking peoples, it seems advisable to divide them into four groups, to be treated separately and, as nearly as possible, seriatim. These are the central and western Slavs, including the Czechs, Slovaks, and Wends; the northern and eastern Slavs, from the Poles across Russia to Siberia; the southern Slavs, living almost entirely in Jugoslavia, and the Bulgars, who will be treated with other peoples of the Balkans. It will be recalled that the Slavs, the last of the great Indo-European-speaking peoples to expand, were, like all of the others who had preceded them, primarily Nordic in race. Like all of the others they were destined to lose in varying degrees this original racial identification.

The republic of Czechoslovakia, with its pre-Munich population of some 15,000,000 was, until the events of October, 1938, one of the most ethnically varied of the post-war nations of central and eastern Europe. Only 50 per cent of its population was Czechish, and the other half was composed as follows: Germans, 23 per cent; Slovaks, 16 per cent; Mag­yars, 5 per cent; Ruthenians, 4 per cent; and Jews and all others, the

THE RAGES OF EUROPE

remainder.⁷⁹ The Czechs themselves are confined largely to Bohemia and Moravia. They are descendants of the early Slavic immigrants who pushed aside or absorbed earlier Keltic and Germanic settlers, and who, in the shelter of their mountain-hemmed plain, have resisted the Ger­manic thrust to the east, which began in the twelfth century and which since has almost surrounded them. Owing to this Germanic contact and to their isolation from the rest of the Slavic world, the Czechs are cul­turally western European, at least in outward respects, and have developed into a highly industrialized modern nation.

The pre-Christian Slavic grave material from Bohemia is almost entirely dolichocephalic. Although the principal racial type represented is Nordic, the early Bohemians, like the rest of the Slavs, included a minority of broad-nosed, low-orbitted individuals. Some of their crania, furthermore, were unusually large and heavy.⁸⁰ Very few centuries passed, however, before the racial character of the Christianized Bohemians began to undergo a radical change.⁸¹ Only in the sixth century a.d. was the Slavic settlement of Bohemia complete; by the ninth the mean cranial index of the Czechs had risen from 75 or 76 to 77; by the eleventh or twelfth century it had reached 78. In the early sixteenth century it had reached only 80 or 81, but after the great plague of 1520 it began to climb rapidly, so that in the seventeenth century it had risen to 83.5, and in the eighteenth to 85. This complete alteration of head form in Bohemia is one of the most marked and best-documented phenomena of its kind in the racial history of the world. Most of it happened in modern times, under the eyes of writers and historians, but it remained virtually if not entirely unnoticed until the central European craniologists, well within the last fifty years, brought it to light. As in southern Germany, the change in­volved not merely the shape of the cranial vault, but facial and nasal measurements as well. There can be little doubt that the same causes and the same mechanisms operated in both regions.

The living Czechs are, in a metrical sense, typically Alpine, and the Alpine race is, by the observation of individuals, seen to be the commonest

⁷⁹ Census of 1930. It is too soon after the Peace of Munich to obtain accurate figures on the population components of what remains.

⁸⁰ See Chapter VI, section 7, for an exposition of early Slavic racial history.

⁸¹ Czekanowski, J., AnthPr, vol. 10, 1932, pp. 200-207.

Hellich, B., Praehistoricke lebky v &cMch ze Sb'trky Musea Kralovstvi &skeho.

Maty, J., AnthPr, vol. 3, 1925, pp. 156-176.

Matiegka, J., MAGW, vol. 23, 1893, pp. 93-94; Crania Bohemica; AnthPr, vol. 2,

1924. pp. 183-210; vol. 4, 1926, pp. 163-219; RCA, vol. 2, 5, #42, 1896; also review in AFA, vol. 25, 1898, pp. 150-154.

Niederle, L., MAGW, vol. 22, 1897, pp. 82-85.

Pexiederova, M. R., AnthPr, vol. 9, 1931, pp. 276-319.

Szombathy, J., MAGW, vol. 52, 1922, p. 20.