Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/334

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318
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

swept away out to the point of Brittany, where it has held its own to this day. The central plateau of France, in fact, was peopled by it, perhaps for the first time.[1] The intrusive type seems also to have with difficulty entered Spain, for, as we have shown, the population of the mountainous northwest provinces is even at this present day less purely Iberian in type by reason of it.[2] One spot alone south of the Mediterranean Sea was perceptibly affected by it; recent evidence from the island of Gerba off Tunis proving such colonization to have taken place.[3] In Italy we are certain as to the extension of the Alpine type down into the peninsula. The existing population of the Po basin was submerged entirely, with the inherited result that the broad-headedness of the peasantry to-day becomes less frequent across Tuscany until it vanishes somewhat north of Rome.[4] In the eastern half of Europe the occupation was complete; whether primary or not it is impossible to state. In Austria at least, a long-headed people probably antedated it.[5] We only know that the broad-headed Slavic populations extend to-day uninterruptedly across from the Baltic to the Black Sea, apparently becoming purer as we proceed eastward.

What right have we for the assertion that this infiltration of population from the east—it was not a conquest, everything points to it as a gradual peaceful immigration, often merely the settlement of unoccupied territory—marks the advent of an overflow from the direction of Asia? The proof of this rests largely upon our knowledge of the people of that continent, especially of the Pamir region, the western Himalayan highlands. Curiously enough, just here on the "roof of the world," where Max Müller and the early philologists placed the primitive home of Aryan civilization, a human type prevails which tallies almost exactly with our ideal Alpine or Celtic European race. The researches of de Ujfalvy,[6] Topinard, and others localize its peculiar traits over a vast territory hereabouts. The Galchas, Tadjiks, and their fellows are gray-eyed, dark-haired, stocky in build, with cephalic indexes ranging above 86 for the most part. Be it noted, these people are not Hindus, those whom Max Müller held to be modern representatives of our primitive common ancestor. The Hindus are rather akin to our long-headed Mediterranean race. The basin of the Ganges is as different anthropologically from the Himalayan highlands as that of the Rhône is from the Swiss or Italian Alps. This was emphasized in our world


  1. Salmon, 1895, and Hervé, 1896, have well summarized the evidence for France.
  2. Hoyce Sainz and Aranzadi, 1892, and Jaxques, 1888.
  3. Bertholon, 1897
  4. Zampa, 1891, is best on this.
  5. Matiegka, 1890
  6. Les Aryens au Nord et au Sud de l'Hindou-Kouch, Paris, 1896. For other peoples of India, consult Risley.