199

tinctive style of realistic art in gold repouss6e. These representations in­clude a number of portraits of Scythians in very realistic and life-like poses. They show a well-defined type of heavily bearded, long-haired men with prominent, often convex, noses. The browridges are moderately heavy, the eyes deep set. These faces are strikingly reminiscent of types common among northwest Europeans today, in strong contrast to those shown in the art of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Hittites, which are definitely Near Eastern. The face, therefore, is definitely Nordic, while the body build looks often thick-set and very muscular, but this may be due to the clothing, which includes baggy trousers and jackets with full sleeves. The pointed caps which they wear and the long hair make it impossible to form a useful opinion of their head form, but this is unnecessary, since we may soon discover it from reference to the cranial material. Persian representa­tions of Saka show exactly the same type, depicted by the followers of an entirely different school of art, and hence this type cannot have been an unfounded convention.

There is, in the anthropometric literature, sufficient data to permit the reconstruction of the Scytho-Sarmatian cranial type or types. The most extensive group, and that which may be used as a basic series, is Doni£i^Js collection of seventy-seven Scythian crania from kurgans of Bessarabia, which was one of the favored Scythian pasture lands during the height of their domination.⁵⁷ (See Appendix I, col. 37.) The fifty-seven male crania of this series are not homogeneous, but fall into two types, a long-headed and a round-headed, with the former greatly in the majority.

The means of these Scythian skulls show them to be low mesocephals of moderate cranial dimensions, but with a low vault height. The cranial means are, in fact, almost identical with those of the Keltic series from France and the British Isles. They resemble the Aunjetitz and Hallstatt skulls only as much as the Keltic series mentioned resemble these latter. They are, furthermore, metrically identical with the previously studied skulls from the Minussinsk region of southern Siberia, which may have been contemporaneous with them.

One of the peculiarities of the Scythian skulls is a low mesene upper facial index, lower than that of the Kelts or of the Minussinsk people. Doniti has shown, however, that this low upper facial index is mostly asspciated with the brachycephalic element in the group, and the same is true of many of the chamaeconch and mesorrhine skulls. When the brachycephalic element is eliminated, therefore, one finds these skulls to be narrower faced, and narrower nosed, and to fit more nearly into a central European Nordic category. Other series of Scythian crania from southern Russia and from the Caucasus show the same general

67. Doniti, a., Crania Scythica, mssr, ser. 3, Tomul X, Mem. 9, Bucharest, 1935.

THE RACES OF EUROPE

characteristics as th$t of Donici’s type series, but are in most cases purely dolichocephalic, which leads one to suppose that the brachyce­phalic element in the Rumanian skulls may have been at least partly of local origin.⁶⁸

Other collections of Scythian crania vary in their mean cranial indices from 72 to 77. Those from the Kiev government, a Scythian center, have a mean of 73.⁶⁹ A series of eighteen Sarmatian crania from the Volga, although otherwise the same as the others, has a cranial index of 80.3.⁶⁰ However, one hesitates to consider this typical of the Sarmatians as a whole, since both the Alans ⁶¹ and the early Ossetes ⁶² were long headed. The former preserved the original Scythian Nordic type until the ninth century ajd.

Of especial interest is a rich kurgan in the Royal Scythian burial dis­trict,⁶³ near Alexandropol; this was one of the most imposing kurgans of Russia, not only for its size but for the quantities of gold placed with the dead king, and of animals sacrificed for his convenience. The kurgan con­tained five skulls in the primary interment; one of these was a large male of Corded type.⁶⁴ Another is a brachycephal with a vault especially wide behind, with a broad face and a narrow nose, resembling a Turkish or perhaps a Bell Beaker type; two are narrow skulls of the normal Scythian Nordic variety, while the fifth, that which occupied the king’s chamber, is of moderate size, long headed, with a low vault, sloping forehead, a high, prominent nose, and wide flaring zygomatic arches. The malars are large, and there is, in this respect, a slight mongoloid suggestion. One may not, however, on this evidence alone, identify the Royal Clan with Turks or Mongols.

We know very little of the stature of the Scythians. Nine male skeletons from the Polish Ukraine, associated with crania of standard Scythian type, have a mean of over 170 cm.⁶⁵

It is tempting to find the origin of the Scythians in the previous popula­tion of the southern Russian plain. A series of Bronze Age crania from the lower Volga region is identical, at least in indices, with the later Scythian group, and so is that from the Ukrainian Urnfields. Three

86. Donifci is of this opinion. He finds the same brachycephalic type in a collection of skulls from an early Moldavian monastery.

⁶⁰ Debetz, G., Ann. Lab. Anth. Th. Vovk. Acad. Sc. Ukraine, T. Ill, Kiev, 1930, quoted by Donifci.

60. Same.

61. Jendyk, R., Kosmos, vol. 55, 1906, sec. 1-2.

62. Ivanovsky, A. (after Donifci), TILE, vol. 71, Moscow, 1891.

3. Baer, C. E. von, AFA, vol. 10, 1878, pp. 215-231.

^u Another pronouncedly Corded cranium of Scythian origin was published by Majewski, E., in Swiatowit, vol. 9, 1911, pp. 87-88.

66. Talko-Hryncewicz, J., Przyczynek do poznania, Swiata Kurhanowego Ukrainy.