Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/335

Rh map of cephalic index published in the March number of our series. Thus do we discover the complexity of the problem. Even if the old philologists were right in tracing European languages to a primitive home in western Asia, a point which is generally denied to-day, there would still be no possible solution as to which of these two Asiatic types were entitled to the name Aryan. Probably the Hindu would have been adopted for this honor; he is kith and kin physically of the Mediterranean race to which the Semites, Greeks, and Romans belong. But how about our proof that this type is the most primitive in Europe, persisting in situ from the stone age! Whence came the Aryan civilization then? The question is too broad to be settled here and now. We may return to it later.

The only point which the discovery of a broad area in western Asia occupied by an ideal Alpine type settles, is that it emphasizes the affinities of this peculiar race. It is no proof of direct immigration from Asia at all. It does, however, lead us to turn our eyes eastward when we seek for the origin of the broad-headed type. The wedge-shaped area of present Alpine occupation in Europe vaguely points to an original ethnic base of supplies somewhere in this direction. It could not lie westward, for everywhere along the Atlantic the race slowly disappears, so to speak. Neither does its original source lie in central Europe, for its greatest representation lies in the Slavic countries east of Vienna and Berlin. That the Alpine type approaches all the other human millions on the Asiatic continent, in the head form especially, but in hair color and stature as well, also prejudices us in the matter, just as the increasing long-headedness and extreme brunetteness of our Mediterranean race led us previously to derive it from some type parent to that of the African negro. These points are then fixed: the roots of the Alpine race run eastward; those of the Mediterranean type toward the south.

Before we leave this question we must clear up a peculiar difficulty. If the Alpine broad-headed race entered western Europe with sufficient momentum to carry it clear across to the British Isles, up into Norway, down into Spain, intruding between and finally separating the more primitive long-headed population into two distinct groups, why is it everywhere to-day so relegated to the mountainous and infertile areas? This is especially true wherever it comes in contact with the Teutonic race in the north. It is one of the most striking results of our entire inquiry thus far, this localization of the Alpine type in what we have termed areas of isolation. One is at a loss to account for this apparent turning back of a tide of prehistoric immigration. The Teutonic race must once have yielded ground before the invader; our prehistoric stratification shows it. Why has it now turned the tables and reoccupied all