Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/514

510 to environment, as the horses of the Pampas when brought up into the mountainous regions of Chile and Peru rapidly change their physical type. Physical anthropologists have already maintained that the round head of the Mongolian has been developed in the high altitude of the Altai. If that be so, there is no reason why a similar phenomenon should not have taken place in the Alpine region, in Albania, Anatolia and wherever else in mountain areas brachycephaly has been found in more than sporadic examples, which, of course, may well be due to migrations or importation of slaves. But I am far from suggesting that altitude is the only cause of brachycephaly.

The evidence, then, as far as it goes, points to the same conclusion as that to which we came as regards pigmentation, and it may eventually be proved that just as each area has its own type of coloration, so also has it its own osteological character. In support of this I may point out that recently Dr. William Wright, Hunterian lecturer, has come to the conclusion from his craniological investigations that the brachycephalic Alpine race was evolved on European soil, whilst Dr. C. S. Myers has been led by his researches on Egyptian skulls to conclude that, "in spite of the various infiltrations of foreign blood in the past, modern Egypt contains a homogeneous population which gradually shifts its average character as we proceed southwards from the shores of the Mediterranean to Nubia beyond the First Cataract."

It is not impossible that Alpine environment may have acted upon the shape of the skull of the ox as well as that of man. We know from the examination of the fauna of the lake dwellings of Switzerland that the Celtic ox (Bos longifrons) was there the common type, and its descendants still continue to be the typical breed along the Alpine chain. This ox is characterized by its strongly developed occipital region and its small horns curved forward and inward. As it differs so essentially from the urus (Bos primigenius) and from the long-horned cattle of the Mediterranean lands, it seems not unlikely that the peculiar cranial formation may have been evolved under mountainous environment.

It is now clear that differences in the shape of the skull and in the color of the skin, hair and eyes can not be at all implicitly relied on as criteria of race. The defenders of the non-Aryan character of the dark races of Greece, Italy, Spain, France and the British Isles have now to depend on two arguments only, one of which is linguistic, the other sociological. It is admitted that it is very difficult to point to any non-Aryan survivals in the vocabularies of the languages of these countries, and it is also admitted that in them all the tense system of the Aryans has been taken over in its entirety. Neither Kretschmer nor any one else has ventured to affirm that there is any survival of non-Aryan syntactical forms in Greek, the language of all others in