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crania of the same region in which they are found. One may state def­initely they are not of Keltic type, and these people had apparently not mixed to any extent with the Boii who had preceded them and from whom Bohemia derived its name. Like the Boii, however, the Thuringians were not destined to remain long on Bohemian soil, for this fertile plain which had been subjected to constant farming since the beginning of the Danu­bian Neolithic was soon to be taken permanently by the Slavs in the early period of their great expansion.

The Germanic settlement of Austria, including the Tyrol, was a com­plicated process, involving the Alemanni, the Bajuvars, the Lombards, and the Goths. The Alemanni were the earliest, and the Bajuvars the most important. In the mountains, the Lombards settled the southern Tyrolese valleys, the Bajuvars those to the north. In the mean­while, the Huns contributed a mongoloid element, diluted through mixture with the Gepidae. During the seventh century, the picture was further complicated by a temporary Slavic expansion which may have left human traces in certain of the Tyrolese valleys. Throughout all this turmoil, the Romanized Rhaetians still maintained their ethnic in­tegrity in the remoter spots, as is witnessed by the survival of Ladino speech.

A study of the Austrian crania of the centuries of Germanic settlement, including for the most part those of Bajuvars, shows them to have been largely Nordic, of the usual northern type.⁹⁴ A small series of special in­terest is that of 26 Lombard crania from two sites: from Nikitsch in the Oberpullendoff district of Burgenland, and Vinzen, near Regensburg, in Lower Austria; both dating from the fifty year interval which the Lom­bards spent north of the mountains before their final burst into Italy in 568 a.d.⁹⁶ Eight skulls are those of the usual Germanic variety of Nordics, with some exceptionally tall- and large-skulled individuals, while five others ranging in cranial index from 77 to 93, show in their flat faces and broad nasal bones clear traces of mongoloid mixture. A single male, in the Nikitsch series, was strikingly different from the others; a short-statured Armenoid or Dinaric, with typical brachycephalic skull, occipital flatten­ing, sloping forehead, and other Near Eastern features. He was obviously a stranger incorporated into the composite Lombard camp, either a local Dinaric or an Asiatic. In earlier times, the Romans had stationed both

^M Geyer, E., MAGW, vol. 61, 1931, pp. 162-194.

Hell, M., WPZ, vol. 19, 1932, pp. 175-193.

Merlin, H., MAGW, vol. 16, 1886, pp. 1-7.

Muller, G., MAGW, vol. 66, 1936, pp. 345-355.

Seraczin, A., MAGW, vol. 54, 1929, pp. 323-332.

Vram, u., rdar, vol. 9, 1903, pp. 151-159.

06 Miiller, g., loc. Cit.

THE RACES OF EUROPE

Syrians and Scotchmen in the Tullnerfeld as garrisons;⁹⁶ hence the ethnic heterogeneity in this region was chronic.

The culmination of the overland expansion of the Germans in the south­west was the conquest of Gaul by the Franks. Marching from the middle and upper Rhineland, they followed the river valleys across Belgium and into the valleys of the Seine and Marne, which became the seat of their political activities. When they arrived in this region, they were still pagan, which was an advantage, for under the leadership of Clovis they were able to embrace the currently popular brand of Christianity. This helped them to win favor with the Romans, and was an important factor in their success. The Gepidae and Vandals, who had become Christian much earlier, belonged to the schismatic Arian sect which was then in disfavor.

These German invaders brought into France and Belgium little which was new in the way of material culture, and the continuity of the older tradition shows clearly that a racial change in the total population, south of the Flemish plain where Frankish is still spoken, could not have been complete. During the four centuries of Frankish rule in France and in the hilly provinces of Belgium the language of the common people, which remained a form of Latin, prevailed over the speech of the conquerors, with the result that the national language reemerged as a Romance tongue. This sequence of linguistic events stands in striking contrast to the situation in England, where Keltic, which had never been completely downed by Latin as in France, gave way rapidly and permanently before Germanic speech.

There are enough regional skeletal series of the Frankish period in France and Belgium to permit some study of their local characters. The skeletal remains from Boulogne ⁹⁷ and other towns along the English channel are all long-headed and of an Anglo-Saxon racial type, which confirms the historical record that these regions were settled by seafaring Saxons rather than by Franks. The coastal distribution of Saxon place names in Nor­mandy and eastern Brittany supports this identification. On the opposite frontier of France, at Collognes, near the western end of Lake Geneva,⁹⁸ the descendants of the Burgundians had become brachycephalic, and al­most indistinguishable from their Neolithic predecessors who had lived at Vaureal, a few kilometers away.

Aside from these marginal and collateral groups, the Franks themselves did not differ greatly from place to place. The most extensive Belgian series is that from Cipley in Hainaut, that of France is Mrs. Wallis’s series drawn from most of the Frankish territory in the northern part of

98 Lebzelter, V., and Thalmann, g., zfrk, vol. 1, 1935, pp. 274-288.

97 Hamy, e. T., Anth, vol. 4, 1893, pp. 513-534; vol. 19, 1908, pp. 47-68.

9B \/f DCAP «,«*. A Q 1GCI7 «« A

215

the country." (See Appendix I, col. 45.) These series show clearly that the Franks were a moderately variable group, but differing as a whole from the basic North German type from which they were presumably derived. Although individuals belonged to this type, the Franks as a whole re­sembled the Keltic peoples who had occupied Belgium and northern France before them. This resemblance included the common possession of a cranial index of about 76, and a cranial vault height of 132 mm. No particular difference can be found between the Merovingian Franks and the local Kelts in cranial dimensions or form, except for one important fact: instead of falling between the Kelts and the other Germans, in many metrical criteria the Franks slightly exceed the Kelts themselves. This is true of facial and cranial vault indices. The stature of the Franks, furthermore, is on a Gaulish level, with a mean of 166 cm. for males from Belgium, and indications that in France it was even lower.

The conclusion to be drawn from this comparison is that the Franks acquired their Keltic-like major physical form in the Rhineland, or the southwestern part of Germany in general, before the Saxons drove them to France and to the Low Countries. Here, whatever mixture took place between them and the previously installed Keltic population made little or no racial difference. This conclusion is supported by the evidence from Baden, that the Alemanni had likewise, from the beginning of their so­journ in southwestern Germany, succumbed to Keltic mixture. Except along the Channel coast, the Germanic invasions of France and south­eastern Belgium furnished nothing novel to the ultimate racial composition of these countries. That of the Kelts, on the other hand, reenforced by these Merovingians, was of some importance.

The summary of our information concerning the racial origins and dis­persion of the early Germanic peoples may be stated briefly and simply. At the beginning of the local Iron Age, a new people, bearing a Hallstatt type of culture, entered northwestern Qermany and Scandinavia. These invaders were of the usual central European Nordic type associated in earlier centuries with the Illyrians. Through mixture with the local blend of Megalithic, Corded, and Borreby elements, these newcomers gave rise to a special sub-type of Nordic which was characterized by a larger vault and face, a heavier body build, and a skull form on the borderline be­tween dolicho- and mesocephaly.

The Germanic tribes that wandered over Europe during the period of migrations belonged essentially to this new type. Exceptions were the Alemanni and Franks, who, in southwestern Germany, assumed a Keltic

⁹⁹ Houz6, E., BSAB, vol. 32, 1913, pp. cix-cxl, for 44 males and 35 females from Cip- ley. Mrs. Wallis’s series, measured in the Mus6e Broca and the Mus6e d’Historie Naturelle, consists of 136 males and 66 females.