Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/364

350 Lapps. And it is to be observed that this type prevails increasingly to the eastward, among the central Asiatic populations.

The population of the British Islands, at the present time, offers the two extremes of the tall blond and the short brunet types. The tall blond long-heads resemble those of the continent; but our short brunet race is long-headed. Brunet broad-heads, such as those met with in the central European highlands, do not exist among us. This absence of any considerable number of distinctly broad-headed people (say with the cephalic index above 81 or 82) in the modern population of the United Kingdom is the more remarkable, since the investigations of the late Dr. Thurnam, and others, proved the existence of a large proportion of, tall broad-heads among the people interred in British tumuli of the Neolithic age. It would seem that these broad-skulled immigrants have been absorbed by an older long-skulled population; just as, in south Germany, the long-headed Alemanni have been absorbed by the older broad-heads. The short brunet long-heads are not peculiar to our islands. On the contrary, they abound in western France and in Spain, while they predominate in Sardinia, Corsica, and south Italy, and, it may be, occupied a much larger area in ancient times.

Thus, in the area which has been under consideration, there are evidences of the existence of four races of men: (1) blond longheads of tall stature, (2) brunet broad-heads of short stature, (3) Mongoloid brunet broad-heads of short stature, (4) brunet longheads of short stature. The regions in which these races appear with least admixture are—(1) Scandinavia, north Germany, and parts of the British Islands; (2) central France, the central European highlands, and Piedmont; (3) arctic and eastern Europe, central Asia; (4) the western parts of the British Islands and of France; Spain, south Italy. And the inhabitants of the regions which lie between these foci present the intermediate gradations, such as short blond long-heads, and tall brunet short-heads and long-heads which might be expected to result from their intermixture. The evidence at present extant is consistent with the supposition that the blond long-heads, the brunet broad-heads, and the brunet long-heads have existed in Europe throughout historic times, and very far back into prehistoric times. There is no proof of any migration of Asiatics into Europe, west of the basin of the Dnieper, down to the time of Attila. On the contrary, the first great movements of the European population of which there is any conclusive evidence is that series of Gaulish invasions of the east and south, which ultimately extended from north Italy as far as Galatia in Asia Minor.

It is now time to consider the relations between the phenomena of racial distribution, as thus defined, and those of the