Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

results calculates an even higher percentage of black hair (over 2%) "either within or astride of the Highland frontier. Except Paisley, there is not a single instance south of the Forth, nor one between the Spey and the Firth of Tay. Surely there is something 'racial' here." Beddoe's map, constructed from Gray and Tocher's statistics, clearly indicates the distribution of racial types.

The work carried on in Wales for a number of years by H. J. Fleure and T. C. James[1264] has produced some extremely interesting results. The chief types (based on measurements and observations of head, face, nose, skin, hair and eye colour, stature, etc.) fall into the following groups.

"The fundamental type is certainly the long-headed brunet of the moorlands and their inland valleys. He is universally recognised as belonging to the Mediterranean race of Sergi and as dating back in this country to early Neolithic times." The cephalic index is about 78, with high colouring, dark hair and eyes, and stature rather below the average. A possible mixture of earlier stocks is shown in a longer-headed type (c.i. about 75), with well-marked occiput, very dark hair and eyes, swarthy complexion, and average stature (about 1690 mm. = 5 ft. 6-1/2 ins.). Occasionally in North Wales the occurrence of lank black hair, a sallow complexion and prominent cheekbones suggests a "Mongoloid" type; and a type with small stature, black, closely curled hair and a rather broad nose has negroid reminiscences. The Plynlymon moorlands contain a "nest" of extreme dolichocephaly and an unusually high percentage of red hair. Nordic-Alpine type, with cephalic index mainly between 76 and 81. This group includes (a) a "local version of the Nordic type" occurring at Newcastle Emlyn and in South and South-West Pembrokeshire with fair hair and eyes, usually tall stature and great strength of brow, jaw and chin; (b) a heavier variant on the Welsh border, often with cephalic index above 80, and extremely tall stature; (c) the Borreby or Beaker-Maker type, broad-headed and short-faced with darker pigmentation, probably a cross between Alpine and Nordic, characteristic of the long cleft from Corwen via Bala to Tabyllyn and Towyn. Dark bullet-headed short thick-set men of the general type denoted by the term Alpine or more exactly perhaps by the term Cevenole are found, though not commonly, in North Montgomeryshire valleys. Powerfully built, often intensely dark, broad-headed, broad-faced, strong and square jawed men are characteristic of the Ardudwy coast, the South Glamorgan coast, Newquay district (Cardiganshire) and elsewhere.

The authors observe that Type 1 with its variations contributes "considerable numbers to the ministries of the various churches, possibly in part from inherent and racial leanings, but partly also because these are the people of the moorlands. The idealism of such people usually expresses itself in music, poetry, literature and religion rather than in architecture, painting and plastic arts generally. They rarely have a sufficiency of material resources for the latter activities. These types also contribute a number of men to the medical profession.... The successful commercial men, who have given the Welsh their extraordinarily prominent place in British trade (shipping firms for example) usually belong to types 2 or 4, rather than to 1, as also do the majority of Welsh members of Parliament, though there are exceptions of the first importance. The Nordic type is marked by ingenuity and enterprise in striking out new lines. Type 2 (c) in Wales is remarkable for governmental ability of the administrative kind as well as for independence of thought and critical power" (p. 119).

We have now all the elements needed to unravel the ethnical tangle of the present inhabitants of the British Isles. The astonishing prevalence everywhere of the moderately dolicho heads is at once explained by the absence of brachy immigrants except in the Bronze period, and these could do no more than raise the cephalic index from about 70 or 72 to the present mean of about 78. With the other perhaps less stable characters the case is not always quite so simple. The brunettes, representing the Mediterranean type, certainly increase, as we should expect, from north-east to south-west, though even here there is a considerable dark patch, due to local causes, in the home shires about London[1265]. But the stature, almost everywhere a troublesome factor, seems to wander somewhat lawlessly over the land.

Although a short stature more or less coincides with brunetteness in England and Wales, and the observations in Ireland are too few to be relied on, no such parallelism can be traced in Scotland. The west (Inverness and Argyllshire), though as dark as South Wales, shows an average stature of 1.73 m. to 1.74 m. (5 ft. 8 ins. to 5 ft. 8-1/2 ins.), which is higher than the average for the whole of Britain. And South-west Scotland, where the type is fairly dark, contains the tallest population in Europe, if not in the world. Ripley suggests either that "some ethnic element of which no pure trace remains, served to increase the stature of the western Highlanders without at the same time conducing to blondness; or else some local influences of natural selection or environment are responsible for it[1266]"; and he hints also that the linguistic distinction between Gaels and Brythons may have been associated with physical variation.

The English tongue need not detain us long. Its qualities, illustrated in the noblest of all literatures, are patent to the world[1267], indeed have earned for it from Jacob Grimm the title of Welt-Sprache, the "World Speech." It belongs, as might be anticipated from the northern origin of the Teutonic element in Britain, to the Low German division of the Teutonic branch of the Aryan family. Despite extreme pressure from Norman French, continued for over 200 years (1066-1300), it has remained faithful to this connection in its inner structure, which reveals not a trace of Neo-Latin influences. The phonetic system has undergone profound changes, which can be only indirectly and to a small extent due to French action. What English owes to French and Latin is a very large number, many thousands, of words, some superadded to, some superseding their Saxon equivalents, but altogether immensely increasing its wealth of expression, while giving it a transitional position between the somewhat sharply contrasted Germanic and Romance worlds.

Amongst the Romance peoples, that is, the French, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Rumanians, many Swiss and Belgians, who were entirely assimilated in speech and largely in their civil institutions to their Roman masters, the paramount position, a sort of international hegemony, has been taken by the French nation since the decadence of Spain under the feeble successors of Philip II. The constituent elements of these Gallo-Romans, as they may be called, are much the same as those of the British peoples, but differ in their distribution and relative proportions. Thus the Iberians (Aquitani, Pictones, and later Vascones), who may perhaps be identified with the neolithic long-heads[1268], do not appear ever to have ranged much farther north than Brittany, and were Aryanised in pre-Roman times by the P-speaking Celts everywhere north of the Garonne. The prehistoric Teutons again, who had advanced beyond the Rhine at an early period (Caesar says antiquitus) into the present Belgium, were mainly confined to the northern provinces. Even the historic Teutons (chiefly Franks and Burgundians) penetrated little beyond the Seine in the north and the present Burgundy in the east, while the Vandals, Visigoths and a few others passed rapidly through to Iberia beyond the Pyrenees.

Thus the greater part of the land, say from the Seine-Marne basin to the Mediterranean, continued to be held by the Romanised mass of Alpine type throughout all the central and most of the southern provinces, and elsewhere in the south by the Romanised long-headed Mediterranean type. This great preponderance of the Romanised Alpine masses explains the rapid absorption of the Teutonic intruders, who were all, except the Fleming section of the Belgae, completely assimilated to the Gallo-Romans before the close of the tenth century. It also explains the perhaps still more remarkable fact that the Norsemen who settled (912) under Rollo in Normandy were all practically Frenchmen when a few generations later they followed their Duke William to the conquest of Saxon England. Thus the only intractable groups have proved to be the Basques[1269] and the Bretons, both of whom to this day retain their speech in isolated corners of the country. With these exceptions the whole of France, save the debateable area of Alsace-Lorraine, presents in its speech a certain homogeneous character, the standard language (langue d'oil[1270]) being current throughout all the northern and central provinces, while it is steadily gaining upon the southern form (langue d'oc[1270]) still surviving in the rural districts of Limousin and Provence.

But pending a more thorough fusion of such tenacious elements as Basques, Bretons, Auvergnats, and Savoyards, we can scarcely yet speak of a common French type, but only of a common nationality. Tall stature, long skulls, fair or light brown colour, grey or blue eyes, still prevail, as might be expected, in the north, these being traits common alike to the prehistoric Belgae, the Franks of the Merovingian and Carlovingian empires, and Rollo's Norsemen. With these contrast the southern peoples of short stature, olive-brown skin, round heads, dark brown or black eyes and hair. The tendency towards uniformity has proceeded far more rapidly in the urban than in the rural districts. Hence the citizens of Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles and other large towns, present fewer and less striking contrasts than the natives of the old historical provinces, where are still distinguished the loquacious and mendacious Gascon, the pliant and versatile Basque, the slow and wary Norman, the dreamy and fanatical Breton, the quick and enterprising Burgundian, and the bright, intelligent, more even-tempered native of Touraine, a typical Frenchman occupying the heart of the land, and holding, as it were, the balance between all the surrounding elements.

In Spain and Portugal we have again the same ethnological elements, but also again in different proportions and differently distributed, with others superadded--proto-Phoenicians and later Phoenicians (Carthaginians), Romans, Visigoths, Vandals, and still later Berbers and Arabs. Here the Celtic-speaking mixed peoples mingled in prehistoric times with the long-headed Mediterraneans, an ethnical fusion known to the ancients, who labelled it "Keltiberian[1271]." But, as in Britain, the other intruders were mostly long-heads, with the striking result that the Peninsula presents to-day exactly the same uniform cranial type as the British Isles. Even the range (76 to 79) and the mean (78) of the cephalic index are the same, rising in Spain to 80 only in the Basque corner. As Ripley states, "the average cephalic index of 78 occurs nowhere else so uniformly distributed in Europe" except in Norway, and this uniformity "is the concomitant and index of two relatively pure, albeit widely different, ethnic types--Mediterranean in Spain, Teutonic in Norway[1272]."

In other respects the social, one might almost say the national, groups are both more numerous and perhaps even more sharply discriminated in the Peninsula than in France. Besides the Basques and Portuguese, the latter with a considerable strain of negro blood[1273], we have such very distinct populations as the haughty and punctilious Castilians, who under an outward show of pride and honour, are capable of much meanness; the sprightly and vainglorious Andalusians, who have been called the Gascons of Spain, yet of graceful address and seductive manners; the morose and impassive Murcians, indolent because fatalists; the gay Valencians given to much dancing and revelry, but also to sudden fits of murderous rage, holding life so cheap that they will hire themselves out as assassins, and cut their bread with the blood-stained knife of their last victim; the dull and superstitious Aragonese, also given to bloodshed, and so obdurate that they are said to "drive nails in with their heads"; lastly the Catalans, noisy and quarrelsome, but brave, industrious, and enterprising, on the whole the best element in this motley aggregate of unbalanced temperaments. The various aspects of Spanish temperament are regarded by Havelock Ellis[1274] as manifestations of an aboriginally primitive race, which, under