Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/762

738 languages much nearer the Teutonic than the Celtic branch. This Celto-Slavic theory, affirmed by the French anthropologists, mainly on the ground of similarity of head form, is generally sustained by the Germans on the basis of their investigations of relative brunetteness among school children. These have all tended to show that the Slavonized portions of Germany and Austria were darker than the 'purely Teutonic ones.

The native anthropologists are divided in theory as to the type of their Slavic ancestors. No one pretends to question the facts in the case; the divergence of opinion is merely as to which stratum of population, which region, or which social class of the two we have described, is entitled to claim the honored title. Thus Anutchin, Tarenetsky Talko-Hryncewicz, Olechnowicz, Kopernicky, Pic, Ikof, and Janczuk identify the modern broad-headed population as a Slavic invader of originally Finnic territory; while Bogdanof, Zograf, and especially Niederle, represent the claims of the extinct Kurgan people to the honored name of Slav. Leroy--Beaulieu seems to represent a popular tendency in favor of this latter view. For our own part, we rather incline to agree with Matiegka that it is a question which the craniologists are not competent to settle. That the Alpine (Celtic) racial type of western Europe is the best claimant for the honor seems to us to be the most logical inference, especially in the light of studies of the living aborigines of Russia, to which we must now turn.

Three ethnic elements are generally recognized as component parts of the Russian people—the Slav, the Finn, and the MongolTatar. The last two lie linguistically outside the family of related peoples which we call Aryans, the only other non-Aryan language in Europe being the Basque. In any classification of them, according to their physical characteristics, we must, however, set aside all the evidences of language as untrustworthy. To admit them as a basis of classification would involve us at once in inextricable confusion. These tribes have all been more or less nomadic for ages