101

7. The eastern source areas: south, central, and north

North of the Pyrenees, the Neolithic population of Europe was im­mediately derived not only from Africa, but also from the east. In order to understand the racial complications of trans-Pyrenean Europe in the Neolithic, we must converge from a different quarter. The eastern source areas, and their possible routes into Europe, may be divided into three: (a) Crete and the Aegean Islands, thence by sea to Greece, and to Italy, and from Greece, northward by land into Macedonia, (b) From Anatolia over the Bosporus into the Balkans, and thence up the Vardar and down the Morava into the Danube above the Iron Gates, (c) Around the north­ern shore of the Black Sea, and perhaps of the Caspian Sea as well, then the steppes of southern Russia into the plains which reach through Poland to Germany, and into the Danube Valley.

1. Our knowledge of the physical type in Greece during the Neolithic is confined to one small, narrow, female skull of Mediterranean type, from Arcadia,³⁵ which, as we shall soon see, is perfectly consistent with the racial picture farther north, although it is not very likely ³⁶ that racial movements passed northward from this quarter at that time. Crete, whose civilization was rooted in the Neolithic, is unknown racially until the Bronze Age.

The Neolithic inhabitants of Italy probably came from the east in large measure by sea, although some may have entered from other directions, as from North Africa by way of Malta and Sicily, around the Tyrrhenian Sea from Catalonia, and down over the Alps from the north.

It is also very likely that Mesolithic types, containing an earlier Palaeo­lithic increment, survived in Italy into the Neolithic, for, until the arrival Df metal, Italy and its islands formed an area of relative isolation from the main racial and cultural currents which affected Europe as a whole.

Although Aeneolithic or Copper Age skeletons from Italy are abundant, those dating from Neolithic time are rare.³⁷ All that have been found ³⁸ (51) are long-headed, and of Mediterranean type. Three skulls from the Ligurian cave of Arena Candide which are very large and of great length, may represent, at least in part, an Upper Palaeolithic survival of Early Aurignacian type, or an invasion of the tall Mediterranean type usually identified with the megalith-builders. It will be more profitable, however, to defer the study of racial types in early Italy and her islands until our discussion of the Copper and Bronze Age population, when we shall have something more definite and extensive with which to work.

86. Fiirst, Carl M., LUA, NF. Avd 2, Bd. 28, #13, 1932.

88. Fewkes, V. J., Goldman, H., Ehrich, R. W., BASP, #9, 1933, p. 18.

86. Sergi, G., Europa, pp. 270-289.

87. With the exception of one microcephalic skull, op. cit., p. 279.

THE RACES OF EUROPE

2. The second eastern source area from which Neolithic invaders may have entered Europe is that of the Anatolian plateau—to what ex­tent the Danubian peasants were derived from these highlands is a matter of dispute among archaeologists which we shall do well not to enter. At any rate, no Neolithic skeletal remains have yet been found there, and the metal period sites which have been studied are later than those in Mesopo­tamia. Farther east, at a site called Zizernakaberd in Armenia, the brain case of a tall man (172 cm.) with apparently Upper Palaeolithic affinities, resembling Murzak Koba, may have been buried in the earliest Neo­lithic time.⁸⁹ This one specimen from Armenia is small evidence, and we still do not know what kind of people lived in Anatolia at the time when the first farmers pioneered up the valley of the Danube.

3. The third eastern source area, and perhaps the most important of the three in the total peopling of Europe in the Neolithic and later, is the grassy plain extending from Poland across Ukraine and Bessarabia, north of the Black Sea and Caucasus, across to the Caspian, and beyond into Turkestan. Here the evidence of Neolithic man is considerably better than in the other two.

On the eastern side of the Caspian, near the modern border between Russian territory and Iran, are the three famous Kurgans, or mounds, of Anau. The earliest cultural horizon found in this site, Anau I of the north mound, probably dates from 3500 to 3000 B.C., on a conservative estimate. This level, which is largely but not purely Neolithic, contained a number of human skeletons,⁴⁰ most of which were those of children.

All of the children were dolichocephalic, and apparently of Mediter­ranean type. One adult female, found with them, was the same. She was mesocephalic, with a cranial index of 76, and her skull shows a minimum of bony relief. The forehead projects forward, the glabella is almost absent, the nasal root high, and the nasal profile apparently straight; the orbits are mesoconch, and the facial bones delicate.

Another adult, in this case a male, is represented by a mandible and certain facial bones below nasion. Again a Mediterranean type is indi­cated, orthognathous, with a strong lower jaw, and a small nose which was moderately leptorrhine. This specimen, the female, and the children, al­though hardly a series, are sufficient to show us that this southwestern corner of Turkestan was inhabited by agricultural, animal-breeding,

• Vishnevsky, B. N., MAGW, vol. 64, 1934, pp. 102-111.

40. Mollison, T., “Some Human Remains Found in the North Kurgan, Anau,” in Pumpelly, R., Explorations in Turkestan, vol. 2, pp. 449-463.

Sergi, G., “Description of Some Skulls from the North Kurgan, Anau,” ibid., pp. 445- 448; ASRA, #13, 1917, pp. 305-321.

Warner, Langdon, “Report on Skeletons Excavated at Anau,” in Pumpelly, R., op. cit., p. 484.

103

pottery-making people of general Mediterranean type in the second half of the fourth millennium B.C., as early as the predynastic period in Mesopo­tamia.

Long bones from the following level in the North Kurgan show varia­tions in stature—with two males at 170 and 161 cm., respectively, and a female at 149 cm.

A post-Neolithic skull from the South Kurgan, probably of the third millennium, is, like the others, dolichocephalic. It has a low, sharply curved forehead, no browridges, small zygomatic arches, and apparently considerable prognathism; ⁴¹ but an exact racial diagnosis of it cannot be made.

Returning to the Neolithic material, we may be sure that it all belongs to some branch of the Mediterranean race, but, with the present evidence, which does not contain a single complete adult male specimen, we cannot hope to distinguish the skeletal sub-variety.

In the grasslands of European Russia, south of the forest belt, a racial continuity with Anau extends westward into the Ukraine. One of the earliest sites which show this connection is located at Mariupol near the mouth of the Kalmins River on the shore of the Sea of Azov.⁴² Here, an unstated number of skeletons, lying in rows and covered with red ochre, was found in association with apparently Early Neolithic implements, and a quantity of bone, shell, and tusk objects. Although the typology of the artefacts is early, we do not know the date, but the absence of pottery would presumably argue against a late assignment.

No measurements of these skeletons have been published, but the de­scription is sufficient to show that a Mediterranean type, perhaps similar to that found at Anau, is probably involved. The stature was ^c4slightly above the medium height of today,” ⁴³ which would place it in the upper 160’s; the bones of the extremities are elongated, the hands narrow and long. The skulls are small, and in all cases dolicho- or mesocephalic.

Neolithic crania from southwestern Russia and the adjacent segment of Poland are not numerous, but are clearly differentiated racially.⁴⁴ They belong to two types; a high-vaulted, moderately broad-nosed dolicho- to mesocephal, associated with short stature, 160 cm. or less, in the males. This type, which carries the Anau form to the west, is the most numerous,

40. From a poorly oriented photograph given Sergi by Pumpelly and published by the former, without measurements. Sergi, G., ASRA, vol. 13, 1907, pp. 305-321.

41. Makarenko, N., ESA, vol. 9, 1934, pp. 135-153.

48. Ibid., p. 140.

44. Bogdanov, A. P., AAM, vol. 3, 1879, part 1, p. 305.

Czarnowski, S. J., Swiatowit, vol. 3, 1901, pp. 75-84.

Levit’kyj, I., AntrM, vol. 2, 1928, pp. 192-222; ZVAK, vol. 1, 1930, pp. 159-178.

Sailer, K., AAnz, vol. 2, 1925, pp. 26-46.

Zabrowski, S., BMSA, ser. 5, vol. 2, 1901, pp. 640-666.