Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/72

60 law, that the severity of climate and poverty of environment in mountainous districts exert a depressing influence upon stature, the Bavarian Alps and the Böhmerwald contain a population distinctly above the general average in the great plateau south of Regensburg. (See map of physical geography.) This is all the more extraordinary, since these mountaineers are Alpinely broad-headed and relatively brunette to an extreme. It would be a highly discouraging combination did we not remember that the great Bavarian plateau is itself of considerable altitude; even then one is led to suspect that some process of selection has been at work to compass such a result. For if we turn to the Black Forest, we there find our racial law holds good. Wolfach, from which our portrait type was taken, exemplifies it completely. Here, on the high plateau known as Die Baar, the average stature falls below five feet four inches, the lowest recorded, I believe, in the empire.

Two great events in the history of northern Europe have profound significance for the anthropologist. The first is the marvelous expansion of the Germans, about the time of the fall of Rome; the second is the corresponding immigration of Slavic hordes from the east. Both of these were potent enough to leave results persistent to this day.

We know nothing of the German tribes until about 100 Suddenly they loom up in the north, aggressive foes of the Romans. For some time they were held in check by the stubborn resistance of the legions, until finally, when the restraining hand of Rome was withdrawn, they spread all over western Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries of our era. Such are the well-known historic facts. Let us see what archæology may add to them. The first investigators of ancient burial grounds in southern Germany unearthed two distinct types of skulls. The round-headed variety was quite like that of the modern peasantry roundabout. The other dolichocephalic type was less frequent, but strongly marked in places. An additional feature of these latter was noted at once. They were generally found in burial places of a peculiar kind. An easterly sloping hill was especially preferred, on which the skeletons lay feet toward the rising sun—probably a matter of religious importance. The bodies were also regularly disposed in long rows, side by side, a circumstance which led Ecker to term them Reihengräber, or row-graves. Other archæologists, by a study of the personal effects in the graves, succeeded in identifying these people with the tall, blond Teutonic invaders from the north. Such graves are found all through Germany as far north as Thüringia. They bear