Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/42

10 and absorption of miscellaneous races and nationalities as we see in this country.

Because the Celtic, Teutonic, Slavic, Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and Persian tongues seem to belong to a single linguistic system, it used to be assumed that those peoples formed the white or Aryan or Caucasian race, and that they had once lived together in a common home whence they had spread through Europe and western Asia. But it is now realized that there are marked racial differences between peoples speaking "Aryan" or Indo-European languages, and that some Aryan-speaking peoples are akin in physical type to other peoples who do not speak an Aryan language at all. Language, in short, seems the only common bond between the "Aryans."

The division of the peoples of Europe into races which is current at present is as follows: Three main European physical types are recognized and are named after their original habitat or the place where the type is at present to be found in its purest state. These are the Northern race, the Mediterranean race, and the Alpine race. All are white men, but the Northerners are fair and tall with long heads or skulls—a type found at its purest in the Scandinavian countries and on the north shore of Germany and the east coast of Great Britain facing those countries. The Mediterranean type is best seen in Spain and southern Italy, and is short and dark, but long-headed like the Northerners. To this Mediterranean race, too, belong the Berbers of North Africa. The Alpine race comes midway between the other two in respect to stature and color, but is broad-skulled, unlike either of them. The Celts and the Slavs are largely of this type, though its especial home is in the highlands of Europe that stretch east and west between the Mediterranean world and the north. In many countries one naturally sees fusions of these races, but there are to-day or were in the Middle Ages several peoples whose race, language, and customs defy attempts at classification, such as the Basques of the extreme southwest of France and