Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/204

 Numbers.—As to the actual numbers of Slavs in Europe and the inseparable Asiatic provinces of Russia, our figures are not as precise or uniformly up-to-date as desirable. In Austria-Hungary in particular the German and Magyar governments have, as well known, for decades now made it impossible to obtain anything like a just census of the Slavic population. Nevertheless there are sufficient data and knowledge of conditions to enable us to arrive at close approximations, which, with the numerical strength of other European groups, are given in the following columns:

Admixture of Blood.—According to all indications the Slavs began and for a long period of time remained, physically as well as otherwise, a homogeneous or but slightly mixed group. But once they commenced to spread from their original territory and through several invasions of parts of their territory from outside, they encountered various non-Slav populations, with all of which in the course of events they mixed to a greater or lesser degree.

Thus, to the north they absorbed much of the otherwise related Lithuanian and Lett elements, and a proportion of Scandinavians (Variags, Swedes). Farther north and northeast they penetrated extensively and mixed with the eurasic Finnic and Ugro-Finnic groups which occupied these regions before them. To the east, southeast and over nearly all of southern Russia, they were in centuries-long contact and struggles with various eurasic populations belonging for the most part to the Turco-Tartar strain (Scythian, Chazar, Hun, Kuman, Petcheneg, Bulgar and Tatar groups), and assimilated a large portion of these. Here they also came in contact with the Mongols who, in their turn, left traces of their admixture. Over southwestern Russia they were in prolonged contact with the invading Nordic Goths and some related groups and these also left some remnants. In the northwest and west the Slavs probably incorporated some Germanic elements, but here it was where the Slavs themselves suffered a great absorption. In the center they remained relatively pure, except in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, where some German mixture developed. Over the ancient Pannonia, Dacia, and the more modern Rumania, it was again the Slavs that merged into other populations. Finally in the south they assimilated the remnants of the Balkan Thraco-Illyrians, and mixed with Latins, Greeks, Turks, Kumans, Albanians and Kuco-Vlachs or Balkan Rumanians.

All of these admixtures could not but leave effects, which are more or less manifest today in the different Slav groups. They are most marked among some of the Bulgarians, and perhaps among the Ukrainians, the Russians in the Ugro-Finnic territory, and the Cossacks; but excepting limited localities they were in no case sufficient to obscure the general physical and mental Slav type of the population. Individuals however, who resemble more a Norseman, Finn, Tartar, German, Italian, or Turk, than a pure Slav, are, especially in some localities, not uncommon.

General Characteristics of the Slavs (A) Physical.—The prevalent somatic Slav type is characterized by medium to above medium stature, good chest, neck, back and limb development, relatively broad (subbrachy—to brachycephalic) head, medium broad to rather broad and not sharply or finely chiseled face, concave to straight medium broad nose, medium to slightly above medium lips, well developed strong teeth, dental arches and chin, and a tendency to some largeness or prominence of the cheek bones. Among the men there may also be