Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/327

Rh in the British Isles during the same epoch. France was apparently very unevenly populated. In all the uplands, especially the central plateau of Auvergne and in the Alps, human remains are less abundant, although when occurring being of the same decidedly long-headed type—this, be it remembered, in those sterile uplands where to-day, as we have shown, one of the roundest-headed populations in the world resides. Less easy to summarize is the evidence from Germany, but the scattered investigations all point the same way. As for Spain, northern Africa, and Scandinavia, the earliest types seem to have always been identical in head form with the ones there living to-day, decidedly dolichocephalic. Nor is there in Russia any contradiction of this law, as Bogdanov has shown.

Assuming it as proved, therefore, that the head form of the first population of Europe was of this quite uniform type, what do we know of its other physical characteristics? This concerns the second half of our primary proposition. That is to say, may we decide to which branch of the living long-headed race it belonged; that of the tall, blond Teuton or of the shorter-statured, dark-complexioned Mediterranean type? It is a matter of no small moment to settle this if possible. Unfortunately, we can prove nothing directly concerning the complexion, for of course all traces of hair have long since disappeared from the graves of this early period. Presumptively, the type was rather brunette than blond, for in the dark color of hair and eye it would approach the foundation tints of all the rest of the human race. The light hair and blue eye of northern Europe are nowhere found in any appreciable proportion elsewhere, save perhaps among the Ainos in Japan, an insignificant people, too few in numbers and too remote to affect the generalization. If, therefore, as all consistent students of natural history hold to-day, the human races have evolved in the past from some common root type, this predominant dark color must be regarded as the more primitive. It is not permissible for an instant to suppose that ninety-nine per cent of the human species has varied from a blond ancestry, while the flaxen-haired Teutonic type alone has remained true to its primitive characteristics.

We are strengthened in this assumption that the earliest Europeans were not only long-headed, but also dark-complexioned, by various points in our inquiry thus far. "We have proved the prehistoric antiquity of the living Cro-Magnon type in southwestern France, and we saw that among these peasants the prevalence of black hair and eyes is very striking. And again in our last article,