Passing of the Great Race — The Mediterranean Race

V THE MEDITERRANEAN RACE

The Mediterranean subspecies formerly called the Iberian is a relatively small, light boned, long skulled race, of brunet coloring, becoming even swarthy in certain portions of its range.

Throughout Neolithic times and possibly still earlier it seems to have occupied, as it does to-day, all the shores of the Mediterranean including the coast of Africa from Morocco on the west to Egypt on the east.

The Mediterraneans are the western members of a subspecies of man which forms a substantial part of the population of Persia, Afghanistan, Baluchistan and Hindustan with perhaps a southward extension into Ceylon.

The Aryanized Afghan and Hindu of northern India speak languages derived from Old Sanskrit and are distantly related to the Mediterranean race.

Aside from a common dolichocephaly these peoples are entirely distinct from the Dravidians of south India whose speech is agglutinative and who show strong evidence of profound mixture with the ancient Negrito substratum of southern Asia.

Everywhere throughout the Asiatic portion of its range the Mediterranean race overlies an even more ancient Negroid race.

These Negroids still have representatives among the Pre-Dravidians of India, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Sakai of the Malay Peninsula and the natives of the Andaman Islands.

This Mediterranean subspecies at the close of the Paleolithic spread from the basin of the Inland Sea northward by way of Spain throughout westernmost Europe including the British Isles and, before the final expansion of the Alpines, was widely distributed up to and, possibly, touching the domain of the Nordic dolichocephs.

The Mediterraneans did not cross the Alps from the south but spread around the mountains.

In attaining to Britain from Spain by way of Central France it is probable that they swept with them Paleolithic remnants from the ancient centre of population in the Auvergne district.

In all this vast range from the British Isles to Hindustan, it is not to be supposed that there is absolute identity of race.

Certain portions, however, of the populations of the countries throughout this long stretch do show in their physique clear indications of descent from a Neolithic race of a common original type, which we may call Proto-Mediterranean.

Quite apart from inevitable admixture with late Nordic and early Paleolithic elements, the brunet type of Englishman has had perhaps ten thousand years of independent evolution during which he has undergone selection due to the climatic and physical conditions of his northern habitat.

The result is that he has specialized far away from the Proto-Mediterranean race which contributed his blood originally to Britain while it was, probably, still part of continental Europe.

At the other end of their range in India this race, the Mediterraneans, have been crossed with Dravidians and with Pre-Dravidian Negroids.

They have also had imposed upon them other ethnic elements which came over through the Afghan passes from the northwest.

The resultant racial mixture in India has had its own line of specialization.

Residence in the fertile but unhealthy river bottoms, the direct rays of a tropic sun and competition with the immemorial autochthones have unsparingly weeded generation after generation until the existing Hindu has little in common with the ancestral Proto-Mediterranean.

It is to the Mediterranean race in the British Isles that the English, Scotch and Americans owe whatever brunet characters they possess.

In western Europe, wherever it exists, it appears to underlie the Alpine race and, in fact, wherever this race is in contact with either the Alpines or the Nordics it would seem to represent the more ancient stratum of the population.

So far as we know this Mediterranean type never existed in Scandinavia and all brunet elements found there can be attributed to introductions in the Bronze Age or in historic times.

Nor did the Mediterranean race ever enter or cross the high Alps as did the Nordics at a much later date on their way to the Mediterranean basin from the Baltic coasts.

The Mediterranean race with its Asiatic extensions is bordered everywhere on the north of its enormous range from Spain to India by round skulls but there does not seem to be as much evidence of mixture between these two subspecies of man as there is between the Alpines and the Nordics.

Along its southern boundary the Mediterraneans are in contact with either the long skulled Negroes of Africa or the ancient Negrito population of southern Asia.

In Africa this race has drifted southward over the Sahara and up the Nile Valley and has modified the blood of the Negroes in both the Senegambian and equatorial regions.

Beyond these mixtures of blood, there is absolutely no relationship between the Mediterranean race and the Negroes.

The fact that the Mediterranean race is long skulled as well as the Negro does not indicate relationship as has been suggested.

An overemphasis of the importance of the skull shape as a somatological character can easily mislead and characters other than skull proportions must be carefully considered in determining race.

From a zoological point of view Africa north of the Sahara is now and has been since early Tertiary times a part of Europe.

This is true both of animals and of the races of man.

The Berbers of north Africa to-day are racially identical with the Spaniards and south Italians while the ancient Egyptians and their modern descendants, the fellaheen, are merely well-marked varieties of this Mediterranean race.

The Egyptians fade off toward the west into the so-called Hamitic peoples (to use an obsolete name) of Libya, and toward the south the infusion of Negro blood becomes increasingly great until we finally reach the pure Negro.

On the east in Arabia we find an ancient and highly specialized subdivision of the Mediterranean race, which has from time out of mind crossed the Red Sea and infused its blood into the Negroes of east Africa.

To-day the Mediterranean race forms in Europe a substantial part of the population of the British Isles, the great bulk of the population of the Iberian Peninsula, nearly one-third of the population of France, Liguria, Italy south of the Apennines and all the Mediterranean coasts and islands, in some of which like Sardinia it exists in great purity.

It forms the substratum of the population of Greece and of the eastern coast of the Balkan Peninsula.

Everywhere in the interior of the Balkan Peninsula, except in eastern Bulgaria and parts of Rumania, it has been replaced by the South Slavs and by the Albanians, the latter a mixture of the ancient Illyrians and the Slavs.

In the British Isles the Mediterranean race represents the Pre-Nordic population and exists in considerable numbers in Wales and in certain portions of England, notably in the Fen districts to the northeast of London.

In Scotland it is far less marked, but has left its brunetness as an indication of its former prevalence and this dark hair and eye color is very often associated with tall stature.

This is the race that gave the world the great civilizations of Egypt, of Crete, of Phœnicia including Carthage, of Etruria, of Mycenæan Greece, of Assyria and much of Babylonia.

It gave us, when mixed and invigorated with Nordic elements, which probably predominated in the upper and ruling classes and imposed their guidance upon the masses, the most splendid of all civilizations, that of ancient Hellas, and the most enduring of political organizations, the Roman state.

To what extent the Mediterranean race entered into the blood and civilization of Rome, it is now difficult to say, but the traditions of the Eternal City, its love of organization, of law and military efficiency, as well as the Roman ideals of family life, of loyalty and truth, point clearly to a northern rather than to a Mediterranean origin, although there must have been some Alpine strains mixed in with the Nordic element.

The struggles in early Rome between Latin and Etruscan and the endless quarrels between patrician and plebeian may have arisen from this existence in Rome, side by side, of two distinct and clashing races, probably Nordic and Mediterranean respectively.

The Roman busts that have come down to us often show features of a very Anglo-Saxon cast but with a somewhat round head.

The Romans were short in stature in comparison with the nations north of the Alps and in the recently discovered battlefield of the Teutoburgian Forest where Varus and his legions perished in the reign of Augustus the skeletons of the Romans, identified by their armor, were notably smaller and slighter than were those of the German victors.

The indications on the whole point to a Nordic aristocracy in Rome with some Alpine elements.

The Plebs, on the other hand, was largely Mediterranean and Oriental and finally in the last days of the Republic ceased to contain any purely Roman blood.

The northern qualities of Rome are in sharp contrast to the less European traits of the classic Greeks, whose volatile and analytical spirit, lack of cohesion, political incapacity and ready resort to treason all point clearly to southern and eastern affinities.

While very ancient, located for probably ten thousand years in western and southern Europe, and even longer on the south shore of the Mediterranean, nevertheless this subspecies cannot be called purely European.

Its occupation of the north coast of Africa and the west coast of Europe can be traced everywhere by its beautifully polished stone weapons and tools.

The megalithic monuments also, which are found in association with this race, may mark its line of advance in western Europe, although they extend beyond the range of the Mediterraneans into the domain of the Scandinavian Nordics.

These huge stone structures were chiefly sepulchral memorials and are very suggestive of the Egyptian funeral monuments.

They date back to the first knowledge of the manufacture and use of bronze tools by the Mediterranean race.

They occur in great numbers, size and variety along the north coast of Africa and up the Atlantic seaboard through Spain, Brittany and England to Scandinavia.

It is admitted that the various groups of the Mediterranean race did not speak in the first instance any form of Aryan tongue and we know that these languages were introduced into the Mediterranean world by invaders from the north.

In Spain the language of the Nordic invaders was Celtic and is believed to have nearly died out by Roman times.

Its remnants and the ancient speech of the natives were in turn superseded, along with the Phœnician spoken in some of the southern coast towns, by the Latin of the conquering Roman.

Latin mixed with some small elements of Gothic construction and Arabic vocabulary forms to-day the basis of modern Portuguese, Castilian and Catalan.

The native Mediterranean race of the Iberian Peninsula quickly absorbed the blood of these Celtic-speaking Nordic Gauls, just as it later diluted beyond recognition the vigorous physical characters of the Nordic Vandals, Suevi and Visigoths.

A certain amount of Nordic blood still persists to-day in northern Spain, especially in Galicia and along the Pyrenees, as well as generally among the upper classes.

According to classic writers there were light and dark types in Spain in Roman times.

The Romans left no evidence of their domination except in their language and religion; while the earlier Phœnicians on the coasts and the later swarms of Moors and Arabs all over the peninsula, but chiefly in the south, were closely related by race to the native Iberians.

That portion of the Mediterranean race which inhabits southern France occupies most of the territory of ancient Languedoc and Provence and it was these Provençals who developed and preserved during the Middle Ages the romantic civilization of the Albigensians, a survival of classic culture which was drowned in blood by a crusade from the north in the thirteenth century.

In northern Italy only the coast of Liguria is occupied by the Mediterranean race.

In the valley of the Po the Mediterraneans predominated during the early Neolithic but with the introduction of bronze the Alpines appear and round skulls to this day prevail north of the Apennines.

About 1100 B. C.

the Nordic Umbrians and Oscans swept over the Alps from the northeast, conquered northern Italy and introduced their Aryan speech, which gradually spread southward.

The Umbrian state was afterward overwhelmed by the Tyrrhenians or Etruscans, who were of Mediterranean race and who, by 800 B. C.

had extended their empire northward to the Alps and temporarily checked the advance of the Nordics.

In the sixth century B. C.

new swarms of Nordics, coming this time from Gaul and speaking Celtic dialects, seized the valley of the Po and in 382 B. C.

these Gauls, heavily reinforced from the north and under the leadership of Brennus, stormed Rome and completely destroyed the Etruscan power.

From that time onward the valley of the Po became known as Cisalpine Gaul.

Mixed with other Nordic elements, chiefly Gothic and Lombard, this population persists to this day, and is the backbone of modern Italy.

A continuation of this movement of these Gauls, or Galatians as the Greek world called them, starting from northern Italy occurred a century later when these Nordics suddenly appeared before Delphi in Greece in 279 B.

C.

and then crossed into Asia Minor and founded the state called Galatia, which endured until Christian times.

South Italy until its conquest by Rome was Magna Græcia and the population to-day retains many Pelasgian Greek elements.

It is among these classic remnants that artists search for the handsomest specimens of the Mediterranean race.

In Sicily also the race is purely Mediterranean in spite of the admixture of types coming from the neighboring coasts of Tunis.

These intrusive elements, however, were all of kindred race.

Traces of Alpines in these regions and on the adjoining African coast are very scarce and wherever found may be referred to the final wave of round skull invasion which introduced bronze into Europe.

In Greece the Mediterranean Pelasgians speaking a Non-Aryan tongue were conquered by the Nordic Achæans, who entered from the northeast according to tradition prior to 1250 B. C.

probably between 1400 and 1300 B.

C.

Doubtless there were still earlier waves of these same Nordic invaders as far back as 1700 B. C.

, which was a period of general unrest and migration throughout the ancient world.

The Nordic Achæans and Mediterranean Pelasgians as yet unmixed stand out in clear contrast in the Homeric account of the ten year siege of Troy, which is generally assigned to the date of 1194 to 1184 B. C.

The same invasion that brought the Achæans into Greece brought a related Nordic people to the coast of Asia Minor, known as Phrygians.

Of this race were the Trojan leaders.

Both the Trojans and the Greeks were commanded by huge blond princes, the heroes of Homer—in fact, even the Gods were fair-haired—while the bulk of the armies on both sides was composed of little brunet Pelasgians, imperfectly armed and remorselessly butchered by the leaders on either side.

The only common soldiers mentioned by Homer as of the same race as the heroes were the Myrmidons of Achilles.

About the time that the Achæans and the Pelasgians began to amalgamate, new hordes of Nordic barbarians collectively called Hellenes entered from the northern mountains and destroyed this old Homeric-Mycenæan civilization.

This Dorian invasion took place a little before 1100 B. C.

and brought in the three main Nordic strains of Greece, the Dorian, the Æolian and the Ionian groups, which remain more or less distinct and separate throughout Greek history.

Among these Nordics the Dorians may have included some Alpine elements.

It is more than probable that this invasion or swarming of Nordics into Greece was part of the same general racial upheaval that brought the Umbrians and Oscans into Italy.

Long years of intense and bitter conflict follow between the old population and the newcomers and when the turmoil of this revolution settled down classic Greece appears.

What was left of the Achæans retired to the northern Peloponnesus and the survivors of the early Pelasgian population remained in Messenia serving as helots their Spartan masters.

The Greek colonies in Asia Minor were founded largely by refugees fleeing from these Dorian invaders.

The Pelasgian strain seems to have persisted best in Attica and the Ionian states.

The Dorian Spartans appear to have retained more of the character of the northern barbarians than the Ionian Greeks but the splendid civilization of Hellas was due to a fusion of the two elements, the Achæan and Hellene of Nordic and the Pelasgian of Mediterranean race.

The contrast between Dorian Sparta and Ionian Athens, between the military efficiency, thorough organization and sacrifice of the citizen for the welfare of the state, which constituted the basis of Lacedæmonian power, and the Attic brilliancy, instability and extreme development of individualism, is strikingly like the contrast between Prussia with its Spartan-like culture and France with its Athenian versatility.

To this mixture of races in classic Greece the Mediterranean Pelasgians contributed their Mycenæan culture and the Nordic Achæans and Hellenes contributed their Aryan language, fighting efficiency and the European aspect of Greek life.

The first result of a crossing of two such contrasted subspecies as the Nordic and Mediterranean races has repeatedly been a new outburst of civilization.

This occurs as soon as the older race has imparted to the conquerors its culture and before the victors have allowed their blood to be attenuated by mixture.

This process seems to have happened several times in Greece.

Later, in 338 B. C.

, when the original Nordic blood had been hopelessly diluted by mixture with the ancient Mediterranean elements, Hellas fell an easy prey to Macedon.

The troops of Philip and Alexander were Nordic and represented the uncultured but unmixed ancestral type of the Achæans and Hellenes.

Their unimpaired fighting strength was irresistible as soon as it was organized into the Macedonian phalanx, whether directed against their degenerate brother Greeks or against the Persians, whose original Nordic elements had also by this time practically disappeared.

When in its turn the pure Macedonian blood was impaired by intermixture with Asiatics, they, too, vanished and even the royal Macedonian dynasties in Asia and Egypt soon ceased to be Nordic or Greek except in language and customs.

It is interesting to note that the Greek states in which the Nordic element most predominated outlived the other states.

Athens fell before Sparta and Thebes outlived them both.

Macedon in classic times was considered quite the most barbarous state in Hellas and was scarcely recognized as forming part of Greece, but it was through the military power of its armies and the genius of Alexander that the Levant and western Asia became Hellenized.

Alexander with his Nordic features, aquiline nose, fair skin, gently curling light hair and mixed eyes, the left blue and the right very black, typifies this Nordic conquest of the Near East.

It is scarcely possible to-day to find in purity the physical traits of the ancient race in the Greek-speaking lands and islands and it is chiefly among the pure Nordics of Anglo-Norman type that there occur those smooth and regular classic features, especially the brow and nose lines, that were the delight of the sculptors of Hellas.

To what extent any of the blood of the ancient Hellenes flows in the veins of the Greeks of to-day is difficult to determine but it should be found, if anywhere, in Crete and in the Ægean Islands.

The modern Greek is trying to purify his language back to classic Ionian and to appropriate the traditions of the mighty Past, but to do this something more is needed than the naming of children after Agamemnon and Hecuba.

Even in Roman times, the ancient Greek of the classic period was little more than a tradition and the term Græculus given to the contemporary Hellenes was one of contempt.

Concerning the physical type of classic in contrast to Homeric Greece, we know that the Greeks were predominantly long-headed and of relatively short stature in comparison with the northern barbarians.

The modern Greeks are also relatively short in stature, but are moderately round-headed.

As to color these modern Greeks are substantially all dark as to eye and hair, with a somewhat swarthy skin.

Among Albanians and such Greeks as show blond traits light eyes are more than ten times as numerous as light hair.

The Albanians are members of the tall, round-headed Dinaric race and have distant relationship with the Nordics.

They may possibly represent an ancient cross between Nordics and Alpines and they constitute to-day a marked subdivision of the latter.

They resemble the Round Barrow brachycephs who entered Britain just before or at the opening of the Bronze Age and who are still scantily represented among the living English and Welsh.

This type called the Beaker Maker or Borreby type is characterized by a moderately round head and great stature, strength and considerable intellectual force.

The Albanian or Dinaric type was not, so far as we know, represented in ancient Greece although some modern archæologists have suggested that the Spartans were of this type.

We have as yet no evidence of the color, size and skull shape of the Spartans, but we do know that their Dorian ancestors claimed to have come from or through the mountains of northern Epirus (Albania).

The Dorian dialects are also said to be more closely related to modern Albanian—which is derived from the ancient Illyrian—than are the Ionian dialects.

The Spartan character, if that be any test of race, was heavy, slow and steady, and would indicate northern rather than Mediterranean antecedents.

Concerning modern Europe north of the Alps, culture came from the south and not from the east and to the Mediterranean subspecies is due the foundation of our civilization.

The ancient Mediterranean world was for the most part of this race; the long-sustained civilization of Egypt, which endured for thousands of years in almost uninterrupted sequence;

the brilliant Minoan Empire of Crete, which flourished between 3000 and 1200 B.

C.

and was the ancestor of the Mycenæan cultures of Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Sardinia; the mysterious Empire of Etruria, the predecessor and teacher of Rome; the Hellenic states and colonies throughout the Mediterranean and Black Seas; the maritime and mercantile power of Phœnicia and its mighty colony, imperial Carthage; all were the creation of this race.

The sea empire of Crete, when its royal palace at Cnossos was burned by the ‘sea peoples’ of the north, passed to Tyre, Sidon and Carthage and from them to the Greeks.

The early development of the art of navigation is to be attributed to this race and from them the North centuries later learned its maritime architecture.

Even though the Mediterranean race has no claim to the invention of the synthetic languages and though it played a relatively small part in the development of the civilization of the Middle Ages or of modern times, nevertheless to it belongs the chief credit of the classic civilization of Europe in the sciences, art, poetry, literature and philosophy, as well as the major part of the civilization of Greece and a very large share in the Empire of Rome.

In the Eastern Empire the Mediterraneans were the predominant factor under the guise of Byzantine Greeks.

Owing to the fact that our histories have been written under the influence of Roman orthodoxy and because in the eyes of the Frankish Crusaders the Byzantine Greeks were heretics, they have been regarded by us as degenerate cowards.

But throughout the Middle Ages Byzantium represented in unbroken sequence the Empire of Rome in the East and as the capital of that Empire it held Mohammedan Asia in check for nearly a thousand years.

When at last in 1453 the imperial city deserted by western Christendom was stormed by the Ottoman Turks and Constantine, last of Roman Emperors, fell sword in hand there was enacted one of the greatest tragedies of all time.