Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/70

58 One or two points on this map deserve mention, after noting the general contrast between northern and southern Germany. Observe how sharp the transition from light to dark becomes all around the mountainous boundaries of Bohemia. Here we pass suddenly from Germanic into foreign territory; for the Bohemian Czechs are truly Slavic in origin as in speech. One wonders if it is purely chance that so accentuated a brunette spot occurs about Prague. That is the capital city, the nucleus of the nation. As for the German-speaking Austrians, they are in no wise distinguishable in pigmentation from the Slovaks, Slovenes, Czechs, or other Slavic neighbors all about them. The second point which we would emphasize is the striking way in which blondness seems to have trickled down, so to speak, through Würtemberg, and even as far as the Swiss frontier. We have already called attention to this in a preceding article. It will bear repetition here. The Rhine Valley bears no relation to it. At first sight, the infiltration seems to have taken place directly across country. Closer inspection shows that it coincides with other evidence derived from the study of the head form in the same district. Especially noteworthy are the peculiarities of Franconia (Franken), the southern edge of which appears as the light-dotted area on our map on page 61. This Franconian long-headed district extends over nearly the whole basin of the Main River well into Bavaria, and, as our map shows, up along the Neckar. It constitutes by far the clearest case of wholesale Teutonic colonization south of the Baltic plain. This is probably the cause of the wedge of blondness upon our large map. Historians tell us the Franks were Teutons, and here is where they first settled.

It is interesting to observe how this Teutonization of Franconia, manifested in our map of brunette traits, tallies with geographical probability. Here is just where we should be led to expect a settlement in any case. Turn back for a moment to our map of physical geography. As the invaders pushed southward, they would naturally avoid the infertile uplands bordering Bohemia, and on the west the difficult, heavily forested Rhenish plateau. Each of these wings of the German upland are of a primitive geological formation, agriculturally unpropitious, especially as compared with Thüringen—rugged, but well watered and kindly, as it is. Suppose our Teutonic tribes to ascend the Weser and its affluents, the Fulda and Werra, or perhaps the narrow gully of the Rhine to Mainz. There would be little to tempt them to turn back to the wooded country, either of Hesse or Thüringen. What was more natural, however, than that sedimentation should take place on reaching the fertile valley of the Main? Its basin, light dotted on our map, with that of the