Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/312

300 tribes, from the south the Mediterranean peoples; in France, just as in the Tyrol, as we have pointed out in a preceding paper. The phenomenon, according to this theory, is merely one of ethnic stratification.

A second explanation, much more far reaching in its prognosis, is, as we have said, sociological. The phenomenon is the outcome of a process of social selection, which rests upon racial or physical differences of temperament. This theory is advanced by Ammon of Baden, and his disciple Lapouge in France, in two very remarkable recent books. Briefly stated, it is this: In some undefined way the long-headed type of head form is generally associatadassociated [sic] with an energetic, adventurous temperament, which impels the individual to migrate in search of greater economic opportunities. The men thus physically endowed are more apt to go forth to the great cities, to the places where advancement in the scale of living is possible. The result is a constant social selection, which draws this type upward and onward, the broad-headed one being left in greater purity thereby in the isolated regions. Those who advocate this view do not make it necessarily a matter of racial selection alone. It is more fundamental. It concerns all races and all types within races. This is too comprehensive a topic to be discussed in this place; we shall hope to deal with it later. Personally, I think that it may be, and indeed is, due to a great process of racial rather than purely social selection. I do not think it yet proved to be other than this. The Alpine stock is more primitive, deeper seated in the land; the Teutonic race has come in afterward, overflowing toward the south, where life offers greater attractions for invasion. In so doing it has repelled or exterminated the Alpine type, either by forcible conquest or by intermixture, which racially leads to the same goal.

Before we proceed further let us examine the other physical traits a moment. The map of the distribution of brunetteness shows these several Alpine areas of isolation far less distinctly than the map of the cephalic index. It points to the disturbing influence of climate or of other environment. If the law conducing to blondness in mountainous areas of infertility were to hold true here as it appears to do elsewhere, this factor alone would obscure relations. Many of the populations of the Alpine areas should, on racial grounds, be darker than the Teutonic ones; yet, being economically disfavored, on the other hand, they tend toward blondness. The two influences of race and environment