Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/642

620 to be most prevalent in Tkessaly and Attica; while broadheadedness, so characteristic, as we shall see, of the Albanians and other Slavs, is more accentuated toward the north, especially in Epirus. About Corinth also, where Albanian intermixture is common, the cephalic index rises above 83. The Peloponnesus has probably best preserved its early dolichocephaly, as we should expect. In Thessaly alone are the modern Greeks as purely Mediterranean as in classic times. There can be no doubt that in Asia Minor at least, the word Greek is devoid of any racial significance. It merely denotes a man who speaks Greek, or else one who is a Greek Catholic, converted from Mohammedanism. Greek, like Turk, has become entirely a matter of language and religion, as these people have intermingled. Thus in the southwest of Asia Minor, where Semitic influences have been strong, von Luschan makes the pregnant observation that the Greeks, in the main, look like Jews and speak Turkish. Hero, then, is proof positive that no Greeks of pure Mediterranean descent remain to represent the primitive Hellenic type in that region. But it is equally certain that in the main body of the Greeks at home in Greece, the original racial traits are still in the ascendant. The smoothly oval and long faces in our two Greek portraits are surely of Mediterranean type. To this, the ideal form, the purest elements in the nation still tend to revert.

Whatever may be thought of the ancients, the modern Greeks are strongly brunet in all respects. Ornstein ('79) found less than ten per cent of light hair, although blue and gray eyes were characteristic of rather more than a quarter of his seventeen hundred and sixty-seven recruits. This accords with expectation, for among the Albanians, next neighbors and most intrusive aliens in Greece, light eyes are quite common. Weisbach's ('82) data confirm this, ninety-six per cent of his Greeks being pure brunets. In stature these people are intermediate between the Turks and the Albanians and Dalmatians, which latter are among the tallest of Europeans. In facial features Nicolucci's early opinion seems to be confirmed, that the Greek face is distinctively orthognathous—that is to say, with a vertical profile, the lower parts of the face being neither projecting nor prominent. The face is generally of a smooth oval, rather narrow and high, especially as compared with the round-faced Slavs. The nose is thin and high, perhaps more often finely chiseled and straight in profile. The facial features seem to be well demonstrated in the classic statuary, although it is curious, as Stephanos observes, that these ideal heads are distinctly brachycephalic. Either the ancient sculptors knew little of