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and wider noses. Furthermore, the soft-parts of living representatives of this type are distinctly un-Mediterranean.

The true answer to the question, “What is the origin of the western European Alpines?” cannot yet be given. But we may be reasonably certain that they are older than the Neolithic, that they may owe part, at least, of their reduced size of vault and face to mixture with Mediter­raneans, and that their round headedness possessed a strong genetic sur­vival value. At the moment, the theory of an Upper Palaeolithic survival, somewhat reduced in head and face size, seems the most reasonable.

8. Neolithic scandinavia

Let us next move to the center of the second area of maximum Meso­lithic survival—southern Scandinavia. Here the Neolithic cultures and techniques were late in arrival, and survived long enough to attain a considerable complexity, flourishing long after most of the rest of Europe was making common use of metal. The old Erteb^lle country of Denmark and southwestern Sweden became the seat of a dense population of suc­cessful farmers and cattle breeders, partly derived from the old fishing and hunting stock, and partly from new immigrants who brought with them new ways of living. This part of Scandinavia, in the Sub-Boreal period, which followed the Litorina, and which witnessed the develop­ment of the Neolithic, was eminently suited to agriculture and cattle raising, for the climate was drier than at present, and four Fahrenheit degrees warmer in mean annual temperature.⁸⁴

Neolithic impulses, when they eventually reached Scandinavia, prob­ably no earlier than 2500 B.C., came into this region from more than one direction. It is possible that Danubian influences, transferred through South German mediums, were felt by the Ertebjzflle moor-dwellers at the beginning, and also that Neolithic cultural movements came directly to Scandinavia from South Russia. However, the first movement which can be traced with certainty was that of the Megalithic immigrants. These came by sea from the south and west, probably for the most part from the British Isles, although some may have come from Brittany as well. They brought with them not only the habit of erecting impressive burial monu­ments, but also agriculture and animal husbandry, which they may have been the first to introduce as a basic source of food supply, although Neolithic techniques may have come from the east and south before them.

The Megalithic invaders found a strong, settled population of fishermen and hunters, located mostly on the coasts, who apparently did not prevent them from establishing their farms and trading stations. The archaeo-

80. Shetelig, Falk, and Gordon, Scandinavian Archaeology, p. 53. Much of this intro­ductory material is based on their book.

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logical record furthermore makes it certain that the aborigines were neither driven out nor destroyed, but survived to form an important ele­ment in the eventual Danish population.

The forms of the abundant megalithic monuments, in combination with weapon types, provide a scale for Neolithic chronology. After a tombless period characterized by round-poled axes, dolmens were built first, followed by passage graves, under specific influence from Brittany via Holland; and by Long Barrows brought, as a trait, from England by sea.

In the later part of the dolmen period and the beginning of the passage grave epoch, a new group invaded Scandinavia from the east and south­east, probably initially attracted by the rich supply of amber in Jutland. These were the so-called Battle-Axe people, who were simply our old friends the Corded people under their alternate name. Their route lay from Holstein up through Schleswig to Jutland, and only later did they reach the Danish archipelago, and Sweden. Having come from Germany, it is doubtful if they represented a pure Corded racial strain; this became less pure through blending with their predecessors in Scandinavia, the Megalithic and Kitchen-Midden peoples. The burial form of the resultant amalgam was the stone cist, a Megalithic-Corded compromise, with the corridor tombs and Battle-Axe single graves as prototypes.

During the entire Neolithic, almost all of Norway, as well as central and northern Sweden, remained in a food-gathering stage of culture, although Neolithic axes and other objects were traded to them from the south. There can be little doubt that ta a large extent the northern hunters were direct descendants of Mesolithic, and hence of Late Palaeolithic, man. Many traits of their so-called Arctic culture have survived until recent times.

Without the knowledge of Neolithic movements and continuities pro­vided by the careful work of the Scandinavian archaeologists, and with­out a previous study of the Neolithic racial situation in other parts of Europe, it would be difficult to interpret the human remains from the Danish and Swedish sites, since this is racially the most complex and most mixed section of the continent. The concept of Scandinavia as the home of a pure Nordic race or of any other single group during the Neolithic is a completely false one.

The total of Neolithic skulls from Scandinavia is well over two hun­dred; ⁸⁶ of these nearly three-fourths come from Denmark. Only one repre­

⁸⁵ Principal sources:

Fiirst, C. M., Z^ur Kraniologie der Schwedischen Steinzeit.

Nielsen, H. A., ANOH, 1905, 1911, 1915.

Retzius, A., Crania Suecica.

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sents Norway, and this is a heavy-boned specimen, with strong browridges, a mesocephalic vault, mesorrhine nose, and low orbits; apparently a par­tial or complete Mesolithic survival.

In both the Swedish and Danish series, two main, mutually contrasting types are found. One is a very long, quite narrow, cranium of moderate height; with projecting occiput, parallel side walls, moderate browridges, a moderately sloping forehead, which is usually quite broad; a moderate upper face height coupled with a narrow breadth; mesoconch orbits of square form sloping downward at the outer corners; and a mesorrhine or leptorrhine nasal aperture. This type of skull, which comprises some thirty-nine per cent of the Swedish series, and five per cent of the Danish, was early recognized by Fiirst as a counterpart of the British Long Barrow race, which occurs more frequently in Britain in unmixed form. In the Danish Long Barrow tombs of purely British type, the skull form is also iden­tically British.⁸⁶ Most of the people of this type in Neolithic Scandinavia must have come by the western sea route around Britain; some, however, may have arrived overland from southern Russia in pre-Corded times.

This Megalithic form is not, however, the only long-headed type dis­cernible among Scandinavian Neolithic long-heads; individual crania of Corded type with longer faces and higher vaults are not uncommon. A mean stature of 172 cm. for the long-headed skeletons ⁸⁷ shows that the racial types involved were tall, taller than either the Long Barrow mean from England or that of the Corded group from Silesia and Bohemia. But this excess of stature cannot be taken to indicate a strong admixture in this type of Palaeolithic long heads, for the dimensions of the vault are not comparable, and the face is very narrow—as with both Megalithic and Corded crania elsewhere.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to follow the progress of these long heads through the different types and stages of Neolithic cultural development. Dolmen burials and those in corridor tombs have been classed together in Denmark—and may be contrasted with profit only with the skeletons from the later cist graves. In both groups there has been much mixture between long- and round-headed forms; a mean cranial index of 77 in each case indicates an intermediate condition. Since the brachycephalic element in each is probably the same, and apparently present in equal quantities, we may compare the two groups with some validity. The cist- grave crania are higher vaulted, longer and generally larger faced, and longer nosed than the Megalithic ones. In all diverging characters, the cist grave skulls differ from their Megalithic predecessors in a Corded di­

⁸⁶ Five crania from Danish Long Barrows.

⁸⁷ Pearson’s formula, M ~ 172.4 cm. Nielsen’s figure is 173.4 cm., based on Ma- nouvrier’s tables.

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rection. Therefore, we are led to believe that a true Corded racial ele­ment did play a perceptible part in the formation of the Neolithic Danish population, and did not appear merely as sporadic individual specimens.

In Sweden, out of twenty-four male crania found in passage graves, only one was brachycephalic; for the most part a pure Long Barrow type is represented.⁸⁸ In the later cist graves, a much stronger brachycephalic element had entered. On the whole, the Swedish material runs more strongly to both extremes than that from Denmark (see Appendix I, cols. 18, 19); forty-nine per cent of the Swedish skulls are considered mix­tures between the long- and round-headed forms; while in Denmark these total eighty-seven per cent. In Sweden, the round heads are concentrated in Skane, in the southwestern part of the country; in Denmark, they are commonest on the islands of Zealand, Laaland, and Falster. The long­heads were particularly prevalent in central Sweden and in Jutland and the islands of Funen and Langeland. Brachycephaly, therefore, is centered around the Copenhagen region, and particularly the islands, which would naturally permit the greatest survival of people who derived their suste­nance from the sea.

From every standpoint it seems indicated that this brachycephalic ele­ment in the population is associated with the preagricultural midden dwellers. Yet we know from our scanty list of Mesolithic remains that the basic element of that time was probably a long-headed, Brunn-like Up­per Palaeolithic European survival. Many skulls of large, square-jawed brachycephalic type appeared toward the end of the Mesolithic or begin­ning of the Neolithic in Denmark and northern Germany. Most of them have been assigned, largely through caution, to the Neolithic rather than to the preceding food-gathering period. Such are the skulls from Kiel, from Plau, from Spandau, and numerous other sites.⁸⁹

Whatever their date, they resemble the brachycephalic crania of un­disputed Neolithic age very closely. The latter, in turn, are sufficiently numerous for accurate racial evaluation. The Danish and Swedish brachy­cephalic people were tall, with a mean of 168.2 cm.,⁹⁰ and heavy boned. Their skulls are large, high vaulted, and with lengths greater than those common to most crania of equal index. The browridges are usually heavy, the foreheads often sloping, the lambdoid region is flattened often, the occipital region more rarely. The face is short and wide; the orbits square and moderately low; the nasal skeleton often prominent; the nasal index

87. Fiirst, op. cit.

Retzius, op. cit.

88. Aichel, O,, Der deutsche Mensch.

Clarke, J. G., The Mesolithic Age in Northern Europe.

Kossinna, Gustav, Ursprung und Verbreitung der Germanen, MannusB, #6a, 1928,

90. Pearson’s formula, 170.7 cm. by Manouvrier’s tables*

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usually leptorrhine or mesorrhine; the lower jaw heavy, wide, and angu­lar. There seems little reason to dispute the conclusion that this type of skull is closely related to that found at Ofnet, Bavaria, in the Mesolithic; and that it is at least strikingly similar to the Upper Palaeolithic brachy­cephals from Afalou bou Rummel in Algeria, to which the Ofnet crania have already been compared. Individual Scandinavian crania can be matched with others from Afalou.

Brachycephalic crania are not infrequent in the Neolithic graves of central and southern Germany, in which we have already found them mixed with long-headed varieties. The same is also true of Poland. In the southwest, the Danish brachycephalic type, commonly given the name of the site Borreby, is found as far from its apparent center as Belgium, where the three crania of Sclaigneux are probably marginal representatives.⁹¹ In the absence of further knowledge, one cannot definitely state that this brachycephalic type was the principal one of the Erteb0lle kitchen-midden period, or that it was not. But it seems most reasonable to suppose that it was native to southern Germany during most of the Mesolithic, with ex­tensions westward and eastward; and that at some time during the Late Mesolithic or initial Neolithic it filtered into northern Germany and the coastal zone from Belgium to Denmark and southern Sweden where it survived the Megalithic and Corded invasions, and where it is still present today.

It is interesting that in the whole stretch of the European continent in which Neolithic invaders blended culturally with the previous Mesolithic population, from southern France to Sweden, some form of brachycephal should appear. This northern Borreby type is different from the Alpine of France, Switzerland, and Belgium in a number of ways. The vaults are higher, the orbits somewhat lower, the faces larger, the jaws heavier. Whereas the French crania are usually globular, many of the Borreby ones resemble modern planoccipital types in angularity of vault form. The Borreby people, while shorter than their longer-headed companions, were quite tall; the Alpines, frequently taller than theirs, were shorter than the northern brachycephals. One is tempted to interpret the differ­ence partly in terms of the types with which each mixed; a Megalithic and Corded mixture with an Upper Palaeolithic brachycephalic type would have a quite different result from that of a Danubian or Spanish small Mediterranean strain with the latter. In either case, we still may ask: What became of the long-headed Palaeolithic element which accompanied the brachycephals both in western Europe and northern Africa?

But this problem is far from solution; we have established the presence

90. Virchow, R., AFA, vol. 6, 1873, pp. 85-118. In Virchow’s article skull #3 is the subject of a misprint. The length should read 175 mm., the breadth 151 mm.

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of brachycephals in the earliest Neolithic horizons in various parts of western Europe, in each case in connection with a strong Mesolithic cul­tural survival. We must await further evidence from the mysterious Mesolithic for an answer.

(13) NEOLITHIC INHABITANTS OF THE NORTHERN FORESTS

From the Baltic to the Urals stretches a belt of forests and swamps, crossed by many rivers, which long formed a shelter for primitive hunters and fishers, while the steppes to the south were overrun by successive groups of farmers and pastoral nomads from the earliest Neolithic until modern historical times. This northern cultural backwater forms environ­mentally a westward extension of the vast Siberian expanse of tundra and taiga; since early pre-Slavic days it has been the home of various tribes of Finns, some of whom once led, on European soil, a life much like that of the Siberian Ostiaks and Voguls of recent centuries.

In the Neolithic time-expanse, in the general European sense, the in­habitants of these forests lived by hunting and stream-fishing, in a manner reminiscent of their Maglemose predecessors. A few cultural innovations filtered northward from the agricultural lands, and among these was pot­tery, decorated by comb-impressions and other characteristic marks which render it easy to identify. Within the last few years there has been much discussion about this combed pottery, for it has been found in a more or less continuous band from Finland across Russia into Siberia, and then again at various points across the northern forest region of North America to the Atlantic. A school is rapidly forming which believes that this type is circumpolar and boreal, non-agricultural, and associated with the hunting and fishing peoples of the entire north. An impressive roster of archaeological authorities, including Kossina, Ailio, and Childe, believes that in Europe it was associated with an early Finno-Ugrian forest people, the direct ancestors of the various Finnish groups of today.⁹²

The skeletal evidence from the Neolithic of this forest belt, while not abundant, is sufficient to show that racial uniformity did not characterize this widespread cultural province. Fifteen crania from the Neolithic of the shores of Lake Ladoga ⁹³ are almost equally divided into two types; a normal South Russian dolichocephal, presumably of the extreme long­headed type, with narrow face and nose; and a mesocephal which does indeed have a Finnish appearance in the modern sense. Skulls of the latter type are characterized by low orbits, short, broad noses, and wide faces, which as individual examples exceed the accompanying brain case in width. This face and head form bears a certain Cr6-Magnon-like

⁹² Childe, V. G., “Adaptation to the Postglacial forest on the North Eurasiatic Plain,” in McCurdy, G. G., Early Man.

⁸⁸ Bogdanov, A. P., 1B82; from Sailer, K., AAnz, 1925.

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implication, and may indeed indicate descent from some eastern Upper Palaeolithic form as yet undiscovered.

At Salis Roje, in Livonia on the Gulf of Riga, another collection of thirty-one Neolithic crania is even more varied.⁹⁴ This includes not only the types present at Lake Ladoga, but also a short-statured, brachycephalic form, with a long face, slight prognathism, high orbits, and a broad nose. Morphologically, there is said to be a mongoloid appearance to these crania. This adds, therefore, a third element to the northern forest popu­lation during the Neolithic.

Farther to the east, at Volosovo on the bank of the Oka River, a sub- brachycephalic skull from the same cultural horizon would apparently fit into the Finn-like Ladogan category.⁹⁵ Across the Urals in Siberia, the essentially European character of the Comb-Pottery people comes grad­ually to an end. A female skull from Bazaiha ⁹⁶ in the Krasnoyarsk district resembles the Salis Roje brachycephalic type, but has a narrow, prominent nose. This specimen has been likened to a form typical of modern Turko- Tartar women. Farther to the east, one encounters a hyperbrachyce- phalic, fully mongoloid skull from Kokui on the Transbaikal railroad,⁹⁷ and beyond that the extensive and carefully studied Neolithic series from Lake Baikal, the main type of which Debetz finds identical with the crania of modern Tungus.⁹⁸

In summarizing this material, we shall not dispute the opinion of the archaeologists who have concerned themselves with this special field that the participants in the comb-ceramic hunting and fishing culture of northern Russia and the forests to either side were the cultural ancestors of some, at least, of the modern Finno-Ugrian-speaking peoples. But the racial aspect of the problem is far from simple; at least three elements were present; an extremely long-headed Mediterranean form with southern connections; a Cr6-Magnon-like broad-faced, low-orbitted mesocephal, filling most closely the requirements of an ideal modern Finnish type; and a small-statured brachycephal with a long face and high orbits, which in some instances is at least partly mongoloid. As will be seen later, the sub- brachycephalic element in the Danubian population was probably related to these non-Mediterranean forest types.

(14) CONCLUSIONS

The survey of the white race during Neolithic times, which has required the wholesale examination of a large number of skeletal remains and their

" Virchow, R, ZFE, vol. 9, 1877, p. 412. Also, Sailer, K*> AAnz, 1925.

⁹⁶ Pavlov, A., RAJ, vol. 16, 1927, p. 56. See also Ouvarov, A. S., Archaeologie de la Russie.

^wDus, AF, vol. 1, 1923, pp. 72-78. Also, Sailer, K., AAnz, 1925.

87. Dus, ibid. Sailer, ibid. ⁹⁸ Debetz, G., RAJ, vol. 19, 1930, pp. 7-50.

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placing in space, time, and cultural settings, has led to a number of definite conclusions, some of which are as final as anything can be in the present state of physical anthropology, and others which are admittedly both tentative and tenuous.

The Neolithic manner of living differs radically from that of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic man, since it involves the production of food by agriculture and animal husbandry. The plants and animals themselves are not of European origin, but are native for the most part to western Asia. Neo­lithic civilization had probably begun in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and pos­sibly the Indus Valley by 5000 b.c. The people who discovered or in­vented this control over nature probably belonged to the purely sapiens branch of the white race in the larger sense, including a group of related dolicho- or mesocephalic types which did not form part of the more spe­cialized European and North African Upper Palaeolithic group, although they were closely related to such generalized forms as Galley Hill and Combe Capelle.

Members of this larger racial group invaded Europe from several quar­ters, starting in the latter part of the fourth millennium b.c. Their principal avenues of approach were from North Africa through Spain, from the Mediterranean to western Europe by sea, across the South Russian plains, and up the Danube Valley. The Danubian migration may have been fed by streams from north of the Black Sea, from Anatolia by way of the Bosporus, from southern Anatolia and points farther south and east by way of Greece, or by some combination of these three. The exact source or sources of the Danubian migration remain to be determined. Another avenue was to Greece and Italy from the east by sea.

The invaders may be divided into a number of sub-types. First, there is a basic cleavage into a short-statured, sexually undifferentiated, relatively small-headed and frequently mesocephalic variety which fits most closely the specifications of the Mediterranean race in the more commonly used sense of that term. There were three groups of Neolithic culture bearers who belonged principally if not entirely fo this type: the Danubians; the farmers and swineherds who moved westward along the fertile coastal regions of North Africa, and over into Spain and thence northward to France and Switzerland; and the sea-borne settlers of Italy, and probably also of Greece. The Danubians are distinguished by a particularly high cranial vault and high nasal index; the western branch by a lower vault and narrower nose. To the latter class belonged also the ancient Egyptians.

The other half of the Neolithic Mediterranean race is noted for tall stature and a more extremely dolichocephalic skull form. This variety was found in East Africa; it was also common in early Mesopotamia and

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Iran, while the Egyptians belonged more nearly to the smaller Mediter­ranean variety. This tall, longer-headed half of the race is longer faced, narrower nosed, and less delicate in bony structure than the other. It also seems to fall closer to such possible prototypes as Galley Hill and Combe Capelle from the Palaeolithic.

This tall branch is again sub-divided. One sub-branch, with moderate vault and face heights, travelled, in all likelihood, by sea from the eastern Mediterranean to Gibraltar, around Spain, and up to western France, Britain, and Scandinavia. In the last two countries, and especially in the British Isles, it contributed an important element to the population. It is not easy to find the prototype of this Megalithic group; some of the Meso­potamians seem to have been very close to it metrically, and some East Africans as well; we shall later find evidence of it on the shores of the Black Sea. For the moment we can only postulate that it came from some as yet unidentified part of southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, or north­eastern Africa.

The other sub-branch, characterized by an extremely high cranial vault and a very long face and nose, moved westward from the plains of southern Russia and Poland into central and western Europe. The mem­bers of this group, who were culturally associated with Corded pottery, performed a different part in Neolithic history from that of the Danubians. They were not peasants, but traders and presumably warriors. Their final destinations were southern and central Germany, especially Saxony and Thuringia, and southern Scandinavia. From a late center in the Rhine- lands, they were destined to play an important part in subsequent metal age prehistory.

The Neolithic population of Europe did not wholly consist of these various invaders just described, although they perhaps made up the more numerous element in the whole. In the western and northern fringes, away from the gates of entry, earlier peoples of Mesolithic and even Palaeolithic tradition remained. In Spain, Portugal, and Italy small Mediterranean types of pre-Neolithic or Early Neolithic dating may well have blended with the invaders in large numbers, but since the two ele­ments would have been much the same it is impossible to determine the proportions of each.

In France, Switzerland, and Belgium a major survival of Mesolithic cultural factors into the Neolithic is accompanied by a large brachy­cephalic increment, which is indubitably related to, and in some degree ancestral to, the modern Alpine race. Farther north, from Belgium to Sweden and particularly in the Danish archipelago, one finds, under similar circumstances of cultural survival, a numerous brachycephalic element, called the Borreby type, which is somewhat different from the

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ancestral Alpine form farther south. The northern brachycephals were larger headed and definitely higher vaulted and wider faced; with taller stature, heavier limb bones, and in many cases heavy browridges, wide jaws, and low orbits. The shape of the skull is sometimes angu­lar, while that of the Alpines is perhaps more often globular, although this difference does not apply to all individuals and should not be over­stressed.

Both the Alpine and the Borreby types bear strong resemblances to the few known brachycephalic examples of Upper Palaeolithic crania. The Borreby type in particular resembles those from Afalou bou Rummel in Algeria. Both also resemble the Mesolithic skulls from Ofnet in Bavaria. There can be little doubt that brachycephalic man in western Europe was not a Neolithic importation but a Mesolithic survival. It is pos­sible that these two types evolved from Palaeolithic man by some process which involved the disappearance or absorption of the normal, long­headed and numerically more important element. It is also possible that they came into Europe during the Mesolithic from some source or sources unknown. The Mesolithic is still so much of a blank in the racial sense that almost any movement might have taken place without detection.

Northern Britain, parts of Ireland, Norway, and the north of Sweden formed an area of isolation during the entire Neolithic, into which the ideas and products of civilization gradually and only partially seeped. We do not know, from contemporary evidence, that Palaeolithic man of the type already indicated in the same regions during the Mesolithic, survived in these spots through the Neolithic, but later evidence will make that assumption reasonable.

The forests of northern Europe east of Scandinavia were inhabited by a hunting and fishing people who formed part of a general circumpolar cultural group which probably extended with little technical change across Siberia to the Pacific, and may have influenced North America. In the European and western Siberian segment of this belt, eminent au­thority opines on cultural grounds that the Neolithic inhabitants were the direct ancestors of an element in the modern Finno-Ugrians physically, although not necessarily linguistically. The skeletal remains from this region, while few, yet reveal the presence of at least three separate types; a presumably Corded variety of Mediterranean; a Palaeolithic-looking mesocephal with low orbits and a wide face, which does simulate an ele­ment common among the modern Finns; and an incipiently or partially mongoloid brachycephal, with high orbits, a long face, and a prominent nose, resembling certain modern central Asiatic Turks.

The racial history of Europe in the Neolithic, therefore, is a problem in

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the balance between new racial streams of relatively uniform type which poured in from the south and east, and older, residual elements which sur­vived or suffered amalgamation in the west and north. It again reveals the marginal character of Europe in the racial as well as cultural sense, and shows the necessity of a greater knowledge of race in Asia and in Africa if we are to understand our own origins.