Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/357

 ASPECTS OF THE ARYAN QUESTION 343

predominance was at once social and numerical, or merely social, matters little. The civilization of a people is the creation of the master class, even if with the language it is shared by the slaves, the serfs, and the foreign element. Our solution of the Aryan question is, then, the identification, in the sense and in the degree indicated above, of the Aryan with H. Europaus.

This thesis differs at once from that of Penka, who regards the dolichocephalic-blond as having alone constituted the Aryan peoples, and from that of Mortillet and Topinard, who identify the Aryan race with the brachycephalics, attributing to these, also, the language and culture.

I regard the thesis of Penka as at fault, in that it assumes an absence — certainly very improbable — of social relations between the dolicho-blonds of the proto-Aryan epoch and the brachy- cephalics living with or near them. Penka and Wilser seek in

have antedated our era. It is to be added that migrations by a route north of the Caspian Sea were not exactly easy until an epoch tolerably near the historic period.

On the other hand, our brachycephalics are, in part, very closely related to those of Asia Minor, of Armenia, and of neighboring regions, as far as north Persia and the Pamir. These last, studied by Ujfalvy, are, moreover, according to their own tradi- tion.*;, colonists brought to Bactria by the Macedonians. These are the Galtchas in whom Topinard saw Savoyards retarded in their migration toward the west I

It is well to take this occasion to finish with another myth connected with the one we have been discussing. It is currently assumed that the yellow race is brachy- cephalic. This is an error which I have several times exposed, as has also my friend Ujfalvy, but it appears to have a tenacious hold upon life. The true H. Asiaticus, of small or medium stature, yellow skin, black hair, black oblique eyes, is dolicho- cephalic. It is the cross between this race and some form of Acrogonus that is brachycephalic. In fact, of the seven hundred millions of the yellow races not one- quarter are brachycephalic. Yellow populations whose index is as high as the aver- age of the brachycephalics of Europe are not numerous, and those with indices above 84 are comparatively rare. They consist of only a few tribes (Manchus, 84 ; Usbeks, 84; Kirghiz, 85; Kalmuks, 86). Their total number is not over three million. The yellow peoples of Siberia are usually below 80 or only slightly above it. The Ladikis of Pamir measured by Ujfalvy gave an average index of 77 for thirty-six individuals. Risley found an average of 80.7 for 388 mountaineers of Darjeeling. The people of Tibet are more dolichocephalic. Hagen found averages between 80 and 86.9 for numerous series of Malays, but the Malays are in part of another race. For 15,582 Chinese he found an average index of 81.7 — lower than those of France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Italy, and the Balkan peninsula.

There are, then, in China, and among the yellow race generally, relatively fewer brachycephalics than in Europe, and there, as here, the brachycephalics represent a foreign or intruding element.