Giuseppe Sergi (1841-1936)
Giuseppe Sergi (1841-1936) foi um antropólogo, biólogo, psicólogo que, na transição dos séculos XIX e XX, defendeu a existência de uma variedade humana mediterrânea da espécie euro-africana - a chamada "Raça Mediterrânea".
Os mais importantes contributos teóricos no domínio da antropologia de G. Sergi surgiram em obras como Varietà umane. Principio e metodo di classificazione (1893) e, especialmente, em The Mediterranean Race: a study of the origin of European Peoples (1901).
No prefácio a The Mediterranean Race, em Fevereiro de 1901, G. Sergi resumiu em nove pontos as suas principais conclusões:
"(1) As populações primitivas da Europa, depois do Homo Neanderthalensis, tiveram origem em África; estes constituíam toda a população da época neolítica.
(2) A bacia do Mediterrâneo foi o principal centro de movimento a partir do qual as migrações africanas atingiram o centro e o norte da Europa.
(3) Do grande tronco africano formaram-se três variedades, de acordo com diferentes condições telúricas e geográficas: uma peculiarmente africana, permanecendo no continente onde se originou, outra a mediterrânica que ocupava a bacia daquele mar; e um terceiro, o nórdico, que atingiu o norte da Europa. Estas três variedades são os três grandes ramos de uma espécie, a que chamo Eurafricana, porque ocupou, e ainda ocupa, grande parte dos dois continentes de África e da Europa.
(4) Estas três variedades humanas nada têm de comum com as chamadas raças arianas; é um erro sustentar que os alemães e os escandinavos, dolicocéfalos louros ou de cabeça comprida (dos tipos Reihengraber e Viking) são arianos, sendo antes eurafricanos da variedade nórdica.
(5) Os arianos são de origem asiática e constituem uma variedade das espécies euro-asiáticas; as características físicas dos seus esqueletos são diferentes das dos eurafricanos.
(6.) A civilização primitiva dos eurafricanos é afro-mediterrânica, tornando-se por fim afro-europeia.
(7) A civilização micénica teve origem na Ásia e foi transformada pela difusão no Mediterrâneo.
(8) As duas civilizações clássicas, grega e latina, não eram arianas, mas mediterrânicas. Os arianos eram selvagens quando invadiram a Europa: destruíram em parte a civilização superior das populações neolíticas e não poderiam ter criado a civilização greco-latina.
(9) No decurso das invasões arianas, as línguas das espécies eurafricanas na Europa foram transformadas na Itália, na Grécia e noutros lugares, celta, alemã, eslava, etc., sendo ramos genuínos da língua ariana; noutros casos, as línguas arianas sofreram uma transformação, conservando alguns elementos das línguas conquistadas, como no Neocéltico de Gales."
Tendo por base os estudos de antropologia física, Giuseppe Sergi reagia assim ao "Germanismo" - teoria que tentava provar que os germânicos, procedentes da Escandinávia, seriam os primitivos arianos, como defendiam Theodor Pösche (Die Arier - Ein beitrag zur historischen anthropologie, Jena, 1878) e Karl Penka (Die Herkunft der Arier, Viena, 1886) - considerando que os escandinavos pertenciam à variedade nórdica da espécie euro-africana.
Para G. Sergi, a variedade mediterrânea constituía uma mescla que ainda se podia subdividir em quatro ramos: (1) os líbios ou berberes, (2) os lígures, (3) os pelasgos e (4) os ibéricos. A variedade mediterrânea seria volátil e instável mas mais criativa e imaginativa do que a nórdica, o que, segundo Sergi, explicava as suas antigas conquistas culturais e intelectuais.
António Sardinha, no ensaio "O Sul contra o Norte", publicado em À sombra dos Pórticos (Lisboa, 1927), refere-se à estirpe mediterrânea identificada por Giuseppe Sergi ao contestar as afinidades púnicas ou semíticas de iberos e de berberes, atribuídas por Basilio Teles aos portugueses do Sul. Para Sardinha, o lusitano era "parente próximo - saído do mesmo tronco" - do tipo "líbio" da estirpe mediterrânica:
"Nada, de resto, mais oposto ao tipo «cartaginês», semita e adventício nas suas marcadas tendências sociais do que o tipo «africano», ou «líbio», - comunitário, agrícola e guerrilheiro. O tipo «africano», ou «líbio», da estirpe mediterrânea classificada por [Giuseppe] Sergi, entre outros especialistas, é parente próximo do lusitano, - ramo saído do mesmo tronco. E tanto na sua monogamia instintiva como nas dshemas, ou assembleias deliberativas, em que institucionalmente se exprime, podemos encontrar sem esforço a origem da família e do município nos habitantes da Península, tonificados, evidentemente, mais tarde pela acção depuradora do Cristianismo." [negritos acrescentados]
Em O Valor da Raça (1915), Sardinha não fundara num critério étnico as origens da nação portuguesa portuguesa, atribuindo-a antes a uma instituição e ao espírito que a vivifica - ao município e ao localismo. Em "O Sul contra o Norte", Sardinha voltou a abordar as questões étnicas do ambiente intelectual da sua época, colocando uma vez mais a tónica em aspectos institucionais e sociais. Ao explicar a expansão portuguesa dos séculos XV e XVI, Sardinha concluiu na base dos elementos coligidos por Alberto Sampaio no seu estudo sobre o Norte marítimo, recusando contaminar o cerne da sua interpretação com o elemento étnico. Palavras de António Sardinha:
"A circunstância de Alberto Sampaio, - olvidado dos ensinamentos de Martins Sarmento - , considerar a nacionalidade portuguesa, «originada não pela atração duma mesma raça, nem pelas condições idênticas de terreno», e sim como «o resultado duma conquista, é que impediu o autor de As «vilas» do norte de Portugal de abranger totalmente o problema. No centralismo inevitável de Lisboa não se denunciava, de maneira alguma, uma anterior sobrevivência semita. A raça, desde as colinas verdejantes do Minho e Lima até aos confins ensoalhados do Algarve, era a mesma em toda a parte, falando até a mesma linguagem. Descendente do antigo habitante lusitano, o Cristianismo a caldeou e unificou tão fortemente que, separada durante séculos pela divisão político-religiosa da Península, a sua identidade manteve-se indestrutível, como não tardaremos em reconhecer. O que nos esgotava, o que nos consumia em Lisboa, - na Lisboa de Quatrocentos e Quinhentos, - não traduzia, por isso, uma submissão da pátria autóctone a qualquer revivescência hereditária, alheia à sua formação colectiva. Lisboa sofria as fatais consequências da nossa hegemonia nos mares, tornando-se um foco de cosmopolitismo dissolvente. É, pois, um facto social, - e não um facto étnico, o que há a considerar em semelhante fenómeno. Lamentavelmente equivocado, não o reputou assim Alberto Sampaio. Como homenagem à sua obra, inspirada sempre na mais alta intenção nacionalista, ousamos opôr-lhe esta despretensiosa retificação." (pp. 28-29; negrito acrescentado).
Em "O Sul contra o Norte", Sardinha acolhe a classificação antropológica de Giuseppe Sergi, mas para se situar na linha de Rocha Peixoto, Martins Sarmento, Antón y Fernandiz, Giménez Soler, Otto Meltzer, escrevendo em conclusão: "Não há Norte contra o Sul, - nem Sul contra o Norte! Há na sua bela homogeneidade moral e social o Portugal de todos nós" (À sombra dos Pórticos, Lisboa, 1927, p. 55).
Bibliografia
Os mais importantes contributos teóricos no domínio da antropologia de G. Sergi surgiram em obras como Varietà umane. Principio e metodo di classificazione (1893) e, especialmente, em The Mediterranean Race: a study of the origin of European Peoples (1901).
No prefácio a The Mediterranean Race, em Fevereiro de 1901, G. Sergi resumiu em nove pontos as suas principais conclusões:
"(1) As populações primitivas da Europa, depois do Homo Neanderthalensis, tiveram origem em África; estes constituíam toda a população da época neolítica.
(2) A bacia do Mediterrâneo foi o principal centro de movimento a partir do qual as migrações africanas atingiram o centro e o norte da Europa.
(3) Do grande tronco africano formaram-se três variedades, de acordo com diferentes condições telúricas e geográficas: uma peculiarmente africana, permanecendo no continente onde se originou, outra a mediterrânica que ocupava a bacia daquele mar; e um terceiro, o nórdico, que atingiu o norte da Europa. Estas três variedades são os três grandes ramos de uma espécie, a que chamo Eurafricana, porque ocupou, e ainda ocupa, grande parte dos dois continentes de África e da Europa.
(4) Estas três variedades humanas nada têm de comum com as chamadas raças arianas; é um erro sustentar que os alemães e os escandinavos, dolicocéfalos louros ou de cabeça comprida (dos tipos Reihengraber e Viking) são arianos, sendo antes eurafricanos da variedade nórdica.
(5) Os arianos são de origem asiática e constituem uma variedade das espécies euro-asiáticas; as características físicas dos seus esqueletos são diferentes das dos eurafricanos.
(6.) A civilização primitiva dos eurafricanos é afro-mediterrânica, tornando-se por fim afro-europeia.
(7) A civilização micénica teve origem na Ásia e foi transformada pela difusão no Mediterrâneo.
(8) As duas civilizações clássicas, grega e latina, não eram arianas, mas mediterrânicas. Os arianos eram selvagens quando invadiram a Europa: destruíram em parte a civilização superior das populações neolíticas e não poderiam ter criado a civilização greco-latina.
(9) No decurso das invasões arianas, as línguas das espécies eurafricanas na Europa foram transformadas na Itália, na Grécia e noutros lugares, celta, alemã, eslava, etc., sendo ramos genuínos da língua ariana; noutros casos, as línguas arianas sofreram uma transformação, conservando alguns elementos das línguas conquistadas, como no Neocéltico de Gales."
Tendo por base os estudos de antropologia física, Giuseppe Sergi reagia assim ao "Germanismo" - teoria que tentava provar que os germânicos, procedentes da Escandinávia, seriam os primitivos arianos, como defendiam Theodor Pösche (Die Arier - Ein beitrag zur historischen anthropologie, Jena, 1878) e Karl Penka (Die Herkunft der Arier, Viena, 1886) - considerando que os escandinavos pertenciam à variedade nórdica da espécie euro-africana.
Para G. Sergi, a variedade mediterrânea constituía uma mescla que ainda se podia subdividir em quatro ramos: (1) os líbios ou berberes, (2) os lígures, (3) os pelasgos e (4) os ibéricos. A variedade mediterrânea seria volátil e instável mas mais criativa e imaginativa do que a nórdica, o que, segundo Sergi, explicava as suas antigas conquistas culturais e intelectuais.
António Sardinha, no ensaio "O Sul contra o Norte", publicado em À sombra dos Pórticos (Lisboa, 1927), refere-se à estirpe mediterrânea identificada por Giuseppe Sergi ao contestar as afinidades púnicas ou semíticas de iberos e de berberes, atribuídas por Basilio Teles aos portugueses do Sul. Para Sardinha, o lusitano era "parente próximo - saído do mesmo tronco" - do tipo "líbio" da estirpe mediterrânica:
"Nada, de resto, mais oposto ao tipo «cartaginês», semita e adventício nas suas marcadas tendências sociais do que o tipo «africano», ou «líbio», - comunitário, agrícola e guerrilheiro. O tipo «africano», ou «líbio», da estirpe mediterrânea classificada por [Giuseppe] Sergi, entre outros especialistas, é parente próximo do lusitano, - ramo saído do mesmo tronco. E tanto na sua monogamia instintiva como nas dshemas, ou assembleias deliberativas, em que institucionalmente se exprime, podemos encontrar sem esforço a origem da família e do município nos habitantes da Península, tonificados, evidentemente, mais tarde pela acção depuradora do Cristianismo." [negritos acrescentados]
Em O Valor da Raça (1915), Sardinha não fundara num critério étnico as origens da nação portuguesa portuguesa, atribuindo-a antes a uma instituição e ao espírito que a vivifica - ao município e ao localismo. Em "O Sul contra o Norte", Sardinha voltou a abordar as questões étnicas do ambiente intelectual da sua época, colocando uma vez mais a tónica em aspectos institucionais e sociais. Ao explicar a expansão portuguesa dos séculos XV e XVI, Sardinha concluiu na base dos elementos coligidos por Alberto Sampaio no seu estudo sobre o Norte marítimo, recusando contaminar o cerne da sua interpretação com o elemento étnico. Palavras de António Sardinha:
"A circunstância de Alberto Sampaio, - olvidado dos ensinamentos de Martins Sarmento - , considerar a nacionalidade portuguesa, «originada não pela atração duma mesma raça, nem pelas condições idênticas de terreno», e sim como «o resultado duma conquista, é que impediu o autor de As «vilas» do norte de Portugal de abranger totalmente o problema. No centralismo inevitável de Lisboa não se denunciava, de maneira alguma, uma anterior sobrevivência semita. A raça, desde as colinas verdejantes do Minho e Lima até aos confins ensoalhados do Algarve, era a mesma em toda a parte, falando até a mesma linguagem. Descendente do antigo habitante lusitano, o Cristianismo a caldeou e unificou tão fortemente que, separada durante séculos pela divisão político-religiosa da Península, a sua identidade manteve-se indestrutível, como não tardaremos em reconhecer. O que nos esgotava, o que nos consumia em Lisboa, - na Lisboa de Quatrocentos e Quinhentos, - não traduzia, por isso, uma submissão da pátria autóctone a qualquer revivescência hereditária, alheia à sua formação colectiva. Lisboa sofria as fatais consequências da nossa hegemonia nos mares, tornando-se um foco de cosmopolitismo dissolvente. É, pois, um facto social, - e não um facto étnico, o que há a considerar em semelhante fenómeno. Lamentavelmente equivocado, não o reputou assim Alberto Sampaio. Como homenagem à sua obra, inspirada sempre na mais alta intenção nacionalista, ousamos opôr-lhe esta despretensiosa retificação." (pp. 28-29; negrito acrescentado).
Em "O Sul contra o Norte", Sardinha acolhe a classificação antropológica de Giuseppe Sergi, mas para se situar na linha de Rocha Peixoto, Martins Sarmento, Antón y Fernandiz, Giménez Soler, Otto Meltzer, escrevendo em conclusão: "Não há Norte contra o Sul, - nem Sul contra o Norte! Há na sua bela homogeneidade moral e social o Portugal de todos nós" (À sombra dos Pórticos, Lisboa, 1927, p. 55).
Bibliografia
- 1858 - L'origine dei fenomeni psichici e loro significazione biologica, Milano, Fratelli Dumolard.
- 1888 - La Psychologie [ 1888_-_sergi_-_la_psychologie_phi.pdf ]
- 1894 - Principi di Psicologie: Dolore e Piacere; Storia Naturale dei Sentimenti, Milano, Fratelli Dumolard.
- 1893 - Varietà umane. Principio e metodo di classificazione
- 1894 - The Varieties of the Human Species. Washington: The Smithsonian Institution.
- 1898 - Arii e Italici; attorno all' Italia preistorica, con figure dimonstrative,Torino, Frateli Bocca. [ 1898_-_sergi_-_arii_e_italici.pdf ]
- 1900 - Specie e varietá umane, Torino, Frateli Bocca. [ 1900_-_sergi_-_specie_e_varieta_umane.pdf ]
- 1903 - Gli Arii - [ 1903_-_sergi_-_gli-arii_-_europa_-_asia.pdf ]
- 1901 - The Mediterranean Race: a study of the origin of European Peoples, 1ª ed., em italiano, 1895; edição alemã em 1897. Em 1901, a edição em língua inglesa veio a ser a mais completa: London & New York, Walter Scott - Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909). [1901_-_sergi_-_mediterranean_race.pdf ]
- 1911 - "Differences in Customs and Morals and their Resistance to Rapid Change," Papers on Inter-racial Problems. London, P. S. King and Son.
- 1911 - L' Uomo - [ 1911_-_sergi_-_luomo.pdf ]
- 1919 - Italia, le origini: anthropologia - cultura e civiltà [1919_-_sergi_-_italia_-_antropologia.pdf ]
- O Declínio das Nações Latinas - defendeu que os europeus do Norte desenvolveram o estoicismo, a tenacidade e a autodisciplina devido ao clima frio, estando mais bem adaptados para ter sucesso nas culturas e economias modernas.
1936 - The Britons. Este seu último livro procurou traçar a ascensão do Império Britânico até à componente mediterrânica da população britânica.
The Mediterranean Race: a study of the origin of European Peoples
[ 1901_-_sergi_-_mediterranean_race.pdf ]
[ 1901_-_sergi_-_mediterranean_race.pdf ]
THE MEDITERRANEAN RACE
CHAPTER I.
THE PHASES OF INDO-GERMANISM.
The Early Phase. —Whenever there has been any
attempt to explain the origin of civilization and of
the races called Aryan, whether in the Mediterranean
or in Central Europe, all archaeologists, linguists, and
anthropologists have until recent years been domi-
nated by the conviction that both civilization
and peoples must have their unquestionable cradle in Asia.
It is well known that this conviction has been largely
determined by the discovery of Sanscrit, which has served
as a foundation for the comparative study of
the languages called Aryan, Indo-European, and also
Indo-Germanic. Thus “Arya” was assumed to be the
centre of dispersion, at all events in part, according to
primitive ideas of Biblical source transported from the
valley of Mesopotamia to the Hindu Kusch, and
Europe became an Asiatic colony into which civili-
sation had been imported together with its population.
I need not refer to the scientific enthusiasm pro
[2]
duced by the study of Indian books and of com-
parative philology, nor to the eminent men who
employed their intellect and activity in building up
a literature which honours every European country.
I will only recall that, as in earlier times it was
believed that every tongue was derived from Hebrew,
so it was now believed that European tongues, with
the exception of a few classed among other linguistic
families, were all derived from one mother tongue
together with those of the Asiatic group; and it
appeared that Sanscrit, more than its sister tongues,
inherited the maternal characters in form and sound.
It was not long before these principles were applied
to European ethnology and anthropology. Civilisa¬
tion was supposed to come from Asia, the cradle of
the Aryan speech and people, the centre of dispersion
of European nations. European peoples in various
troops, and at various successive periods, had set
out from the common Asiatic centre and established
themselves in their different seats in Europe, bearing
with them a common patrimony of language and
civil and religious institutions; there were thus
various distinct groups, like the Italo-Greeks, the
Celts, the Letto-Slavs, the Germans, originally con¬
stituting a single people with the Asiatic group of
Indo-Iranians.
According to the more general opinion, the Aryans
had invaded Europe from east to west, and then from
north to south, subjugating the primitive and savage
peoples they met with in the course of their occupa¬
tion. During various pauses, of different length,
before reaching their final destinations, they had
begun to vary and diverge in language and other
social manifestations, constituting so many distinct
[3]
varieties of the original single stock. The Italo-
Greeks would thus have been united during their
first pause in Europe, and would have had language,
religion, and customs in common; then they would
have separated into two quite distinct groups, occupy¬
ing their definite seats in the two peninsulas of the
Mediterranean, Italy and Greece, where, finally, each
group would have become a distinct and charac¬
teristic people, an Aryan variety.
Thus it happened that Greeks and Italians were
two distinct peoples, whose common origin and com¬
mon patrimony of language and civilisation were
concealed by the appearance of new and special
forms arising in their own peculiar seats. The same
phenomenon was supposed to have occurred in the
case of the other European groups, Slavonic, Celtic,
and Germanic, and of the Asiatic or Indo-Iranian
groups. All these peoples, developing separately, and
varying in their development according to region,
became strangers to each other; it was Sanscrit, with
the series of studies to which it gave rise, which un¬
veiled the intimate relationship between languages so
diverse and peoples so remote. Some, like Fick, have
even wished to show that these European peoples are
only a single people with many languages, which
must be regarded as dialects of a single national
tongue. When that is admitted, the two classic
peoples of antiquity, Greeks and Latins, are essen¬
tially Aryans, and their civilisation is wholly of
Aryan character.
But Indo-Germanism was not satisfied with these
results, which were regarded as unquestionable; it
invaded other regions and peoples at first excluded
from the Indo-European stock, and attempted to
[4]
reduce the ancient relic of Iberian language, Basque,
to the Aryan root, as well as Armenian. Nor
was that enough: a language which appeared
mysterious, and was so far indecipherable, must
also be brought into the Indo-Germanic field, and
extraordinary mental efforts (it is enough to refer to
Corssen) were made to reconstruct Etruscan grammar
according to Aryan morphology.
Anthropology, meanwhile, investigating the physi¬
cal characters of European peoples, though without
studying them deeply or completely, made it clear
that between ancient Italians, Greeks, Celts, Ger¬
mans, and Slavs there were profound and character¬
istic differences which showed clearly that they could
not all belong together to the same human root; that
there might be linguistic relationship without blood
relationship, and that various peoples might have a
common civilization without having a common origin.
Thus anthropology sought out the characteristics of
European peoples on its own account, independently
of linguistics and its results; but on coming to the
study of origins it could not neglect linguistic,
archaeological, and historical studies as auxiliaries
to its own efforts as regards the most ancient epochs
of humanity. Palæ-ethnology and palæ-anthropology
were born of the research into fossil man in Europe and
elsewhere; the first of these, especially, soon adapted
itself to the results acquired by linguistics, and looked
towards the east as the cradle of European peoples
and their civilization.
Thus Indo-Germanism led to almost entire forget¬
fulness of the most ancient civilizations of the earth,
those born in the valleys of the Euphrates and the
Tigris, and in the valley of the Nile; no influence was
[5]
granted to them over Greco-Roman classic civilization,
almost none anywhere in the Mediterranean; Asiatic
Indians were sought as the bearers of civilisation in
Egypt, and Indo-Germans in Northern Africa and
Western Asia.
The New Phase. —This enthusiastic period of
Indo-Germanism was followed by another period
with other characters which, in a more or less
modified form, has lasted to the present day.
When it was recognised that the peoples of
Aryan tongue and civilisation are not anthropolo¬
gically a single stock, the idea arose that among
these one must represent the authentic and original
Aryan stock, while the other peoples must merely
have been Aryanised, receiving their language and
civilisation from the first. But in the working out of
this inquiry, and the special and general investigations
regarding the various manifestations of Aryan civili¬
sation, some doubts arose among linguists and philo¬
logists as to the Asiatic origin of the European stock ;
in some, indeed, doubt grew to a conviction that
Asia was not the cradle of the Aryans. Latham,
Benfey, and Geiger were the first to think of a
European origin for the Aryans. To-day the old
hypothesis of the immigration from Asia into Europe
is still maintained by a few of the eminent original
upholders of the eastern origin, who, like Max Müller
to the last, are unwilling to abandon their ancient
convictions; later archaeologists and linguists, philolo¬
gists and palæ-ethnologists, have supported the theory
of a European origin with keen enthusiasm, while
among anthropologists there is either doubt or tacit
acquiescence.
If the populations speaking Aryan languages
[6]
derived from one people with one mother tongue
constitute distinct families, as they undoubtedly do,
which is the Aryan population, or the genuine Aryan
stock, in which the movement of Aryan civilisation
arose? What do the other populations possessing
Aryan language and civilisation represent? Where
is the centre or cradle of the primitive Aryan stock?
These problems closely touch the populations and
civilisation of the Mediterranean, because the two
classic peoples of antiquity, who exerted the greatest
influence on the ancient and modern worlds, belong
to the Mediterranean; it is necessary, therefore, to
discuss these problems, at all events briefly, before
coming to others which more directly concern the
Greek and Italian peoples and their civilisation.
But it may not be useless to point out, first of all,
that from the analytic studies and criticisms bearing
on the Indo-European linguistic patrimony a fact
emerges which is worthy to be noted, since it seems
to me to be of capital importance in the solution of
the anthropological problems of Europe. In the
early days of the study of the Indo-European
languages it was accepted as a demonstrated fact
that the vocabulary of all the Aryan tongues was
common, at all events in its more fundamental parts,
including the elementary cognitions useful to human
life; that all the elements that subserve social life,
the family, primitive religion, inventions, useful arts,
were indicated in the various Indo-European languages
by words of common origin; that the traditions of
the common country, and the animals, plants, and
metals employed in primitive conditions, might be
read in the spoken or written linguistic documents.
But all this common patrimony has continually
[7]
diminished when subjected to criticism, and has
been reduced to a few elements. Hence it appears --
or so at least it seems to me that we must interpret
the linguistic phenomena — that among all the peoples
of Aryan tongue the language was an importation,
learned and assimilated by each people according to
its own habitual phonetic conditions, which con¬
stituted the physiological laws of its primitive
pronunciation; whence were derived change and
transformation according to these laws, which were
different for each people. The phenomenon is not
new, and seems to me precisely similar to that
produced by the importation of the Latin tongue
into Gaul, Spain, and other countries, where the
populations, possessing their own languages, in
assimilating Latin talked it as the phonetic and
physiological conditions of their own tongue demanded,
— thus giving birth to the various Romance tongues.
At this distance of time it is difficult to ascertain
what people originally possessed the Aryan speech
and civilisation, and propagated it or imposed it on
other European peoples of different physical type.
But it seems to me impossible to admit that a people
among whom the language is more fragmentary than
in others, and the civilisation still in a rudimentary
state, can have been that which originally carried
both speech and civilisation to peoples who afterwards
became famous in history for their political and civil
greatness. How far we are today from those posi¬
tions which were regarded as unquestionable by Pictet,
Max Müller, Bopp, Pott, and others, may be clearly
seen in the recent works of Schrader and others.
Such considerations may serve to show that these
problems are not simple and isolated, but various,
[8]
complicated, and bound together, and that their
solution depends on the united and convergent
researches of ethnological and anthropological
science; archaeological and linguistic investigations,
carried on separately, can never, in my opinion, reach
decisive and sure results.
The second phase of Indo-Germanism is therefore
still determined by the fact that linguists and
historians, ethnologists and anthropologists, have
entered the field to show the European origin of the
Aryan stock, although the name Aryan no longer
befits a people having origin in Europe. The more
enthusiastic, in settling this great problem, have
brought together in a compact phalanx all the
arguments offered by archaeology, linguistics, and
anthropology, and have engaged with confidence in
the struggle. In spite of the divergence of results,
both as regards the physical type of the primitive
Aryan stock and the localisation of its centre of
origin and dispersion, many agree in believing that
the Aryan peoples of the Mediterranean, the Greeks
and Italians, emigrated into their two peninsulas
from the centre or the north of Europe, conquering
and subjugating the first inhabitants, to whom they
imparted their speech and civilisation.
It may be useful to examine some of the argu¬
ments which appear a convincing demonstration to
those who are unprepared to meet them or surprised
by their vivacity.
Germanism. -- I mean by “Germanism” the theory
which attempts to prove that the Germans are the
primitive Aryans; Pösche and Penka (1) are the boldest
1. Th. Pösche, Die Arier, Jena, 1878; C. Penka, Die Herkunft der
Arier, Wien, 1896.
[9]
upholders of the view that sees the fair race every¬
where. “The fair race is found from the Arctic
Ocean to the Sahara, from the Atlantic to Lake
Baikal and the Indus; the southern shore of the
North Sea is their centre of diffusion; there is the
chief station of the fair race; and from these shores
of the Baltic they moved in all directions.” Thus
wrote Pösche; but Penka, who equally recognized
the extension of the fair race, only found it as an
exception in regions remote from the centre of origin,
and sought to justify the rarity of the type by
climatic conditions to which the fair Aryans could
not adapt themselves and so disappeared. If this
argument may in some degree hold good for extreme
climates like those of Scandinavia and Africa,
Central and Southern Europe and India, it scarcely
holds good for the difference between Central
Europe and the Mediterranean, between Germany,
Italy, and Greece, or between Bavaria, Wiirtemberg,
Prussia, and the Baltic regions.
The fair races speaking an Indo-Germanic tongue,
like the Celts, Germans, and Slavs, wrote Pösche,
have subjugated the non - Indo - Germanic brown
races and imposed their language and civilisation
upon them; even though the fair race was small in
number, it has acted in the same manner as when
“the ancient fair Indo-Germans attacked the Finns,
subjugated them, made them prisoners by thousands,
reduced them to slavery, and little by little in¬
corporated them.” Thus the fair-haired people, a
pure Indo-Germanic race for Pösche, Penka, and
others, reached Greece and Italy, subjugated their
primitive brown populations, and gave them their
own Aryan speech and civilisation. In Homer and
[10]
in traditions these writers believe they find traces
of the dominion of the fair-haired lords of these
lands.
Thus the hypothesis that the fair race is the
primitive and authentic Aryan race is more than a
theory for these writers; it is a thesis, and the proofs
of the thesis always set out from the presupposition
that the Aryans are fair. Penka also maintains that
Scandinavia has been the cradle and centre of
diffusion of the fair race, the characteristics of which
are white skin, blue eyes, high stature, and an elon¬
gated or dolichocephalic head. The arguments may
be summarized in the following propositions: (1)
the type of the inhabitants of Scandinavia is identical
with the physical type of the pure Aryans; (2) this
type has persisted unchanged in that peninsula from
prehistoric times; (3) the Aryan type is identical with
the palaeolithic type of Central Europe; (4) the fauna
and flora of Scandinavia are in harmony with linguis¬
tic results as to the place of origin of the Aryans;
(5) the Stone Age in Scandinavia corresponds to
the culture of the primitive Aryan race before its
expansion.
If we look into Penka’s arguments we soon dis¬
cover that between two of them — the persistence
of the Scandinavian type and the identity of the
Aryan type with the palaeolithic type of Central
Europe — there is no agreement, but contradiction.
The Neanderthal type is for Penka the palaeolithic
type; now between this and the Teutonic dolicho¬
cephalic type, which for German authors is that of
the Reihengraber, there is an enormous difference;
one might even say an abyss lies between them.
The difference is so great that Virchow considers
[11]
the Neanderthal skull pathological, (1) Davis explained
it by synostosis, while, indeed, it seems to me normal
only because it is found at Brux and at Spy in un¬
changed form, without pathological signs. It would
seem that for Penka dolichocephaly is enough to
show the identity of the Quaternary and the Germanic
types, but in that case all dolichocephalic skulls,
even Australian, might be considered Indo-Germanic.
Penka, indeed, feels constrained to admit develop¬
ment, and the transformation of the Neanderthaloid
type into the Germanic, which contradicts his
principle of the persistency of type, accepted for the
Scandinavian type. There is, however, no middle
path. Either the Scandinavian type is the per¬
sistent primitive Aryan type, in which case the
palaeolithic type of Central Europe is not Aryan,
or the palaeolithic type is primitive, and then the
Scandinavian type is derived, and consequently not
persistent, but recent. There is another fact against
Penka’s assertions, i.e., the contemporaneous occur¬
rence of the untransformed Aryan Neanderthaloid
type with the transformed Aryan Scandinavian type,
if it is true, as it unquestionably is, that the two forms
still persist. (2)
Since, however, the fact of the persistence of
cranial types is now assured in anthropology, and
since the persistency of the Neanderthal type, now
1. On the ground that the Neanderthal skull, as well as the other
bones of the skeleton, revealed a number of pathological changes,
Virchow reached the conclusion that we are here in presence of an
individual specimen which cannot be regarded as typical of a race until
confirmed by further discoveries. (Zeischrift für Ethnologie, 1S72,
p. 157; also ib., 1S94, p. 427.)
2. See in my Specie a Varietà Umane; “Gli abitanti primitivi di
Europa,” 1900.
[12]
rare and disappearing, has been shown, it is im¬
possible to admit that the Aryan type is palae¬
olithic in the sense understood by Penka.
But let us examine more closely the so-called
Germanic type, which ought to be fair, of high
stature, with blue eyes, and elongated head. Let
us see how it is distributed in its own country, in
Germany and the neighbouring regions, which are
now Germanic lands. In order to be brief, I will
simply transcribe the exact summary of the labours
of German anthropologists made by Moschen, when
speaking of the modern population of Germany with
special reference to the origin of the Trentine popula¬
tion (1):—“The old doctrine of the dolichocephaly of
the modern Germans had already been attacked by
Welcker, (2) who summed up the results of his researches
on this subject in the following words : ‘ The modern
Germans are in part brachycephalic, in part ortho-
cephalic, never (speaking here of averages) dolicho¬
cephalic;’ and he added that ‘if the primitive
Germanic stock was dolichocephalic, we must say
that the Germans of old Germanic stock are only
found in insignificant numbers in Germany.’ Later
researches have shown that the present populations
of southern Germany are in great part brachycephals,
among whom mesocephals are rare and dolichocephals
quite isolated. Only in Central and Northern Germany
are dolichocephals found more or less numerously, and
they only become prevalent in the extreme north,
in Denmark and Sweden. Let us examine a few
1. “I Caratteri fisici e le origini dei Trentini,” Arch. per
l'Antropologia, Florence, 1892.
2. Ueber Wachsthum und Ban des Menschlicken Schädels, Leipzig,
1862, p. 65; and “ Kran. Mittheilungen,” in Archiv fur Anlh.,
Lid. i., 1866, pp. 149-150.
[13]
figures. In the Tyrol, Holl (1) has found among 1820
skulls examined in various valleys only 33 dolicho-
cephals, representing 1.8 per cent., while the meso-
cephals are in a proportion of 14.9 per cent., and the
brachycephals (with the hyper-brachycephals) in that
of 83.2 per cent.; while Ranke (2) found among 100
skulls of Anterium, near Bolzano, no dolichocephals,
10 mesocephals, and 90 brachycephals; and among 100
skulls of the valley of Eno, near Innsbruck, again
no dolichocephals, 23 mesocephals, and 77 brachy¬
cephals. In upper and lower Austria and in the
Salzburg district, Zuckerkandl (3) measured 300 skulls;
the dolichocephals were in the proportion of 2.7
per cent., the mesocephals 23 per cent., and the
brachycephals 74.3 per cent. In southern Bavaria,
of some 100 skulls measured by Ranke, the dolicho¬
cephals were in the minute proportion of 0.8 per
cent., the mesocephals 16.3 per cent., the brachy¬
cephals 82.9 per cent. (4) In southern Baden, of
100 modern skulls of which Ecker has published
measurements, there were no dolichocephals, and
the brachycephals were in the proportion of 84
per cent. (5) In northern Bavaria, Ranke measured
250 skulls, of which 12 per cent, were dolicho¬
cephals, 20 per cent, mesocephals, and 68 per
cent, brachycephals. In Friesland, Virchow found
18 per cent, dolichocephals, 51 per cent, meso-
1. “Ueber die ini Tirol vorkommenden Schadelformen,” Mitth.
Anthrop. Gesell. Wien, Bd. xv., Heft 2.
2. Beitrdge zur phys. Anlhrop. der Bayern,” Mtinchen, 1SS3, p. 94,
tab. xi.-xii.
3. “Beitrage zur Craniologie der Deutschen in Ocsterr.,” Mitth.
Anth. Gesell. Wien, 1883.
4. Beitrdge, etc., pp. 22-23.
5. Crania Germanics merid. occid., Freiburg, 1865-
[14]
cephals, and 31 per cent, brachycephals. Among 83
Danish skulls Schmidt found 57 per cent, dolicho-
cephals, 37 per cent, mesocephals, and 5 per cent,
brachycephals. According to Retzius1 and Ecker,2
dolichocephaly predominates among the modern
Swedes, in every respect agreeing with the skulls
of the ancient Franks of the Reihengraber.”
From the statistics of colour of hair and eyes in
Austria, Switzerland, and Germany,3 it appears that
“ the brown area extends from the west of Austria
through Switzerland (fair 11.1 per cent., brown 25.7
per cent.), Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, and Alsace-
Forraine, hence in all southern Germany, where the
frequency of blonds varies from 18.4 to 24.5 per cent,
and of brunets from 25.2 to 19.2 per cent. In
central Germany the blonds gradually increase in
a northerly direction, varying from 25.3 to 32.5 per
cent., while the brunets gradually diminish in the
same direction, varying from 18.22 to 13.2 per cent.
It is only in northern Germany that the blonds
decidedly predominate, varying from 33.5 to 43.3
per cent., while the brunets vary between 12.1 and
6.9 per cent.” In the whole German empire, according
to Virchow’s statistics, the blonds are, on the average,
31.8 per cent., the brunets 14.05 per cent., and the
mixed type 54 15 per cent.
1. “ Ueber die Sch'adelformen der Nordbewohnern,” Eth. Schriften,
Stockholm, 1864, pp. 1-24.
2. Op. cit., pp. 30-91.
3. “ Gesammtbericht iiber die von der deutschen anthr. Gesell.
veranlassten Erhebungen iiber die Farbe der Haut, der Haare und der
Angen,” etc., Archiv f. Anthr., xvi , 1S86, von R. Virchow;
Kollmann, “Die statist; Erhebungen,” etc., Denkschriften Gesell.
fur Naturwiss, xxviii., Basel, 1881 ; Schimmer, “Erhebungen fiber
die Farbe, etc., bei den Schulkindern Oesterreichs,” Mitth. Anthr.
Gesell. Wien, 1884.
[15]
It is worth while to consider some of Virchow’s
opinions, concerning facts of so much weight, both
regarding the physical characters of the skull and the
external characters of colour of skin, eyes, and hair.
At the Congress of German Anthropologists at
Dresden in 1874, Virchow spoke regarding the ex¬
tension of brachycephalic skulls in historical and prc-
historical times.(1) He discussed a Finnic theory
which he seemed disposed to accept, and he formu¬
lated the problem as follows: “ Can we anywhere
find traces, either in ancient or modern times, of a
Finnic population, and are the Finnic or Lapponic
types, or, as is said in France, the Esthonic, those that
stand at the basis of the development of the actual
population ? ” At the end of a long discussion Vir¬
chow was disposed to admit that the Finns have
contributed to the brachycephaly of the north and
the Ligurians to that of the south. A little later,
discussing in a special work (2) the facts of German
anthropology, he said: “No one has proved that all
Germans possess the same cranial form, or, in other
words, that they formed a single nation, like the more
pure type that we see among the Suevi and the
Franks.” He admits, that is, that various types have
formed the Germanic people. At the Congress of
Karlsruhe, in 1885, he again expressed his opinion
when presenting the results of the inquiry into colour
of hair and eyes. (3) In order to explain the large
proportion of brunets in Germany he proposes three
hypotheses: (1) two stocks entered Germany, one
1. Archiv f. Anthrop., Bd. vii.
2. Beiträge zurphysischen Anthrop. der Deutschen, etc., Berlin, 1877,
p. 361.
3. “ Gcsammtbericht,” etc, Archiv f. Anth., xvi., 1SS6.
[16]
fair, the other dark, so that the population was mixed
from the first; this theory he does not accept; (2)
the fair was transformed by Darwinian methods ; but
this transformation is not possible, because there is
not sufficient difference of physical conditions be¬
tween northern and southern Germany to produce
such a change ; it is known that other German
anthropologists, such as Roll1 and Ranke,2 have
mistakenly admitted such a possibility; (3) there has
been a varied and continuous mixture of types
belonging to various populations. Virchow believes
that mixture can establish a race, that a fair popula¬
tion can become dark by mixture, and vice versa.
Thus the Celts had much influence ; we know, he
says, that where the Celts entered the population is
dark; “ I am prepared to believe,” he adds, “ that
the primitive Celtic, like the primitive Italic, popula¬
tion was not formed of blond but of brunet Aryans.”
These doubts and difficulties expressed by Virchow
concerning the minority of the fair dolichocephalic
race in Germany suffice to show how fantastic are the
easy demonstrations of Posche and Penka. Virchow
himself asks if the supposed authentic German type
is not disappearing. And these two authors wish to
show that this is what is happening. Penka, as I
have said, believes that the pure Germanic type has
diminished in Germany, and is only exceptionally
found in southern Europe, in Italy and Greece,
because it has not withstood the climate of those
regions. We may leave aside Italy and Greece, the
climate of which is not liable to destroy the Germanic
or any other race ; if, however, we consider Germany
1. “ Ueber die im Tirol,” etc., op. cit.
2. Beiträge, etc., op. cit., p. 123.
[17]
itself we cannot reasonably grant that the climate of
Bavaria and Wiirtemberg is not adapted to the Ger¬
manic race, and I need not contest so improbable a
statement.
It seems to me that the existence of a pure Ger¬
manic stock cannot be demonstrated, whether in
prehistoric or in protohistoric times. We do not find
in Germany a pure dolichocephalic race, tall, fair,
numerous, diffused widely throughout Europe ; we
find instead a mixed population of varying type in
all the prehistoric graves of German territory.
Von Holder, the author of a work on Wiirtemberg
skulls which is of fundamental importance in the
study of Teutonic anthropology,1 has found a series
of the most diverse types, Germanic, Turanian, Sar-
matian, pure and mixed, in his opinion, with no
predominant Germanic type. Lissauer finds a mix¬
ture of forms among ancient Prussian skulls, while
Virchow, who has examined a vast number of skulls
from old Germanic graves, finds the most varying
shapes among the primitive population of Germanic
soil.2
Why, then, affirm that the dolichocephalic type is
disappearing, or has disappeared, when in reality it
has never predominated on Germanic soil? Virchow
never said a truer thing when he affirmed that the
Germans have shown various types of skulls from the
first, and were never a homogeneous nation with a
1. Zusammenstellung der in Würtemberg vorkommenden Schadel-
fonnen, Stuttgart, 1876.
2. Cf. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Bd. x., Lissauer, “ Crania Prussica,”
ind. cef. 63-86; Bd.-xii., Virchow, “Alte Berliner Schadel,” ind. cef.
78-86; id., “ Schadel von Neuestadter Felde,” ind. cef. 6S-85; xiii.,
id., “Schadel von Eicha (Thuring.),” ind. cef. 80-S6; id., “Von
Spandau,” ind. cef. 78.6-83, etc.
[18]
pure type that might be found among the Suevi and
the Franks. I believe that I am in the right, since my
opinion is founded on anthropological and historical
data, when I affirm that at their origin the Germans
were not a distinct people from the Celts or from the
Slavs, with both of whom they were always united
and often confused. The Franks of the fifth century
were a northern people, less mixed in earlier times,
and hence appearing somewhat more uniform in the
graves of the Rhine district at a rather late epoch.
The Alleged Homeric Evidence. — These brief con¬
siderations seem to me to be sufficient to show that
since it is difficult to find the Germans in their own
home we cannot expect to find them as an Aryan
stock in Greece and Italy, subjugating the dark
populations and creating the two great Mediter¬
ranean civilisations, Hellenic and Latin, also called
Aryan ; still less can we connect them with the more
ancient Mycenaean or Aegean civilization, as it is
to-day called. The disappearance of the Germanic
type among the Mediterranean populations, assumed
by Penka, is a necessity imposed by the fact that this
type is sought in vain where it is supposed to have
dominated, except as a sporadic element easy to
explain through the course of ages by the immigra¬
tion of races or families or individuals.
But I cannot pass in silence the supposed testimony
to the presence of the fair type in Greece, and to its
superiority over the darker population, furnished by
the Homeric poems, in which, it is affirmed, the
heroes and gods are described as of the fair type
with blue eyes. I have made a special investigation
into this point and here present the results.
In Homer Athena is glaukopis; glankos means
[19]
blue, like the sea and the unclouded sky; it is also
equivalent to phoberos, terrible (of the eyes); the
olive is glaukos also, and Athena is the guardian
of the olive; it also means shining, and is said of
the dawn and the stars. In Athena’s case glmikopis
means that her eyes are brilliant and terrible.
Empedocles uses glaukopis of the moon, and it is
even doubtful if in Homer it ever means blue.
Apollo in Homer is chrysaoros, that is to say
bearing a golden sword; the title of “fair” is later;
xanthos is never used of Apollo in Homer, and if
he were fair it would be like the sun. Apollo with
golden hair, chrysokoman, is found in Euripides
and Athenaeus, as “ fair Dionysus ” is found also in
Euripides, that is to say at a much later time.
Xanthos means a reddish fairness, and also brown.
Artemis is eustephanos; there is nothing as to being
fair.
Aphrodite is chryse, golden, that is to say, brilliant,
splendid, not fair.
Demeter is xanthe, fair, it is true, but we must
remember that Demeter (Ceres) is the symbol of
harvest, fair like the spike of corn, as of Poseidon
(Neptune), who is kyanochaites, that is to say with
bluish, blackish, even black hair, like the dark and
deep waves of ocean; kyanos is black, blue-black,
violet, in Homer sometimes blacker than melas.
In Demeter, therefore, the title of fair is only a
symbol for the colour of harvest.
Eos, the dawn, is chrysothronos, rhododaktylos,
krokopeplos, because the colour of dawn is golden,
rosy, and red.
Thetis, on the other hand, is argyropeza, re., with
silver feet, the foaming wavelets of the sea.
[20]
Hera (Juno) is chrysothronos, leukolenos, eukomos,
and Kalypsos is only eukomos; neither is fair.
Achilles, however, is xanthos like Rhadamanthus;
but xanthos means not only fair, but also chestnut,
brown, and bees are xanthai.
It results from this analysis that in Homer none
of the divinities are fair in the ethnographic sense
of the word; only Achilles and Rhadamanthus
might be considered fair if we accept the word
xanthos in its later sense. No other hero is described
as fair.
In regard to the Homeric expressions in heroic
narratives relating to the men of a previous age
confronted with contemporaries,1 no one can fail
to recognise that it is always usual to magnify past
times and celebrated heroes.
The Romans had also their Flavi, which indicates
that fair persons were uncommon, and required a
special name, but does not indicate that the Ger¬
manic type was considered aristocratic or dominant.
I could bring forward a wealth of facts to show
that what I have just stated regarding the anthro¬
pological characters of the Homeric gods and heroes
may also be said, and with more reason, of the types
of Greek and Roman statuary which, though in the
case of divinities they may be conventionalised, do
not in the slightest degree recall the features of a
northern race; in the delicacy of the cranial and
facial forms, in smoothness of surface, in the absence
of exaggerated frontal bosses and supra-orbital arches,
in the harmony of the curves, in the facial oval, in
the rather low foreheads, they recall the beautiful and
harmonious heads of the brown Mediterranean race.
1. Iliad, v. 304, xii. 583, xx. 287.
[21]
\\ inkelmann noted the correspondence between the
types of Italian art and the population, and wrote
that in the finest districts of Italy one met few of
these roughly outlined faces of uncertain or defective
expression such as are met so often on the other side
of the Alps; on the contrary, the features are distinct
and vivacious, and the forms of the face large and
full, with all the features in harmony. (1)
Thus we are not able to see any sound evidence
in the Greek and Latin peoples to indicate that a
northern race dominated the two peninsulas in primi¬
tive times; the idea is an illusion of Indo-Germanism.
Celts or Lithuanians ?—As a variant of Indo-Ger¬
manism we are confronted by Celtism, maintained
chiefly by the French, as a reaction against the
theory of the superiority and supremacy of the blond
Germanic type. Mortillet, Ujfalvy, and others, have
maintained that the bearers of European neolithic
civilisation were the Celtic brachycephals, not the
German dolichocephals; and Ujfalvy has justly
observed that the superiority of a race consists
not merely in physical energy and restlessness, but
in pre-eminence of mental faculty, showing itself in
artistic and intellectual genius, as in the Greeks and
Latins. I would add that a race cannot even be said
to be physically superior if it is unable to resist the
mild climate of the Mediterranean, but disappears as
required by Penka’s theory.
This opinion coincides, in great part, with that
of Taylor, who contests the right of the blond
dolichocephalic Germanic stock to represent the
original Aryan race which bore language and civilisa¬
tion to other peoples. Taylor, indeed, contests that
1. Geschichte der Kunst, Stuttgart, 1847, vol. i., Bk. i., p. 33.
[22]
right also to the Celts, but he concedes much to them
since he regards brachycephaly as a character of great
superiority.(1)
He maintains that the Lithuanians, whom he
believes, not quite accurately, to be brachycephalic,
are the authentic primitive Aryans, and that from
them the Celto-Latins received their language, and
with it the Aryan civilisation. His arguments are in
large part linguistic, but also ethnological and anthro¬
pological. He believes he has proved that the
neolithic population of the pile-dwellings of southern
Germany and Switzerland and northern Italy may
be identified with the brachycephalic ancestors of
the race he calls Celto-Latin.
To maintain this position it was necessary to
create an anthropological theory, and this Canon
Taylor has done. He assumes that the Ligurians
are brachycephalic, as indeed is still erroneously
believed by German and French anthropologists;
Romans and Umbrians, most of the Italic popula¬
tion, together with the Hellenic stock, are declared
to be brachycephalic. According to Taylor, the
brachycephals are the superior race ; thus he writes :
—“ Virchow, Broca, and Calori agree that the brachy¬
cephalic or ‘Turanian’ skull is a higher form than
the dolichocephalic. The most degraded of existing
races, such as the Australians, Tasmanians, Papuas,
Veddahs, Negroes, Hottentots, and Bosjemen, as well
as the aboriginal forest tribes of India, are typically
dolichocephalic; while the Burmese, the Chinese,
the Japanese, and the natives of Central Europe
are typically brachycephalic. The fact that the
1. Isaac Taylor, The Origin of the Aryans, Contemporary Science
Series, London, 1889.
[23]
Accadians, who belonged to the Turanian race, had,
some 7000 years ago, attained a high stage of
culture, from which the civilisation of the Semites
was derived, is a fact which makes it more probable
that the language and civilisation of Europe was
derived from the brachycephalic rather than from
the dolichocephalic race.”1 Now, all this is fanciful,
and it is not necessary to confute it; moreover, the
Latins and other Italic peoples, the Greeks and
the Egyptians, are for the most part dolichocephalic.
I remember that shortly after the publication of his
book, Canon Taylor visited me at the Gabinetto di
Antropologia ; I had not yet overcome the surprise
produced by a book in which—however valuable it may
be in other respects—the facts were on this point so
changed, and I led him into the Museum and showed
him the ancient Roman and Etruscan heads, for the
most part dolichocephalic, and then conducted him
to the Prehistoric Museum to point out that in the
Ligurian skeletons of Finalmarina the heads are
elongated and not brachycephalic. ITe was surprised,
but I do not know if he was convinced, for those who
are not accustomed to the direct observation of facts
are more impressed by ideas, especially when on
these ideas they have erected an elaborate edifice.
In this respect Taylor has surpassed Posche and
Penka.
The Western Asiatic Origin. — Archaeologists, it
seems to me, reveal a defect in their methods for
investigating the origins and diffusion of a civilisation
when they take little or no account of the physical
characters of the peoples among whom the civilisation
is found; historians maintain the same defect, and
1. Origin of the Aryans, p. 241.
[24]
both alike are content with ethnic names and pass
over the physical characters of nations, or else trust
to language, most often a deceptive method of recog¬
nising a race or a people. The difficulties surrounding
the question of the origin and diffusion of the /Egean
or Mycenaean civilisation becomes greater when we
are ignorant of the race that produced it, its exten¬
sion, origin, and dispersion. To believe that two
peoples belong to two different stocks because they
have different languages and unlike civilisations is
often a mistake ; and to believe that two peoples are
of the same stock because their languages and civilisa¬
tions are similar or related may also be a mistake.
The Mediterranean is a sphinx with various faces,
and to solve its enigma we need to know the stock or
stocks that have peopled it.
I shall attempt the anthropological solution of this
enigma in the following pages. It may first, however,
be well to refer to a recent dogmatic attempt to solve
this problem which shows how necessary it is that all
the scientific methods, ethnographical, archaeological,
anthropological, linguistic, as well as geographical,
should converge in the solution of the problem of the
origin and diffusion of Mediterranean civilisation. I
refer to the attempt of Padre C.esare de Cara in his
work on the Hethei-Pelasgi.1 The chief object of
this investigation is to show that a very ancient
people, neither of Aryan nor Semitic origin, from time
immemorial occupied Syria and Asia Minor, and
thence in various successive migrations peopled
Greece and Italy^, bearing with them their own native
civilisation as it existed in Asia and afterwards in
1. Gli Hethei-Pelasgi: Ricerche di Storia e di Archeologia Orientale,
Greca ed Italiana, Rome, 1894.
[25]
the AEgean. This is the Pelasgic people of ancient
history and Greco-Italian tradition, in Asia Minor
and Syria, Eteo, Hetheo, or Idittite, as it is variously
written; thus the Hetheo-Pelasgic people would be a
single stock with two names, one Asiatic and primi¬
tive, Ivhatti, Kheti, Hethei, as it was known to the
Assyro-Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the Hebrews,
corresponding to its national name in its own tongue;
the other name derived and in a Greek form, signify¬
ing wandering or colonial Hethei. Early Greek and
Italian civilisation would thus be born in Western
Asia and exported by the primitive Hethei in their
migration. This people, or rather confederation of
peoples in this author’s opinion, possessing a vast
dominion not only in Asia Minor up to the Euphrates,
but in Colchis, the Euxine, in Scythia, would be
neither Aryan nor Semitic, but Hamitic, having a
common origin with the Egyptians and Babylonians,
both of Hamitic origin according to this author, like
many African peoples. They would have possessed
neither Semitic language nor civilisation, and would
have alike preceded the Semites in Phoenicia, thus
being pre-Phoenician, and the Hellenes in Greece.
Accepting this centre of diffusion, the author stops at
the Italian peninsula, when he finds the Pelasgians,
and goes no further westward to the Iberian
peninsula. Pelasgic traditions stop there also, and
other racial names are found, Ligurian and Iberian,
as in northern Africa the Libyans, a people belong¬
ing, as we shall see, to the primitive Mediterranean
stock. Thus De Cara’s study does not suffice to
give any explanation of the civilisation which we
find in primitive days to the west of Italy and in
northern Africa, nor of the origin of the people in
[26]
these regions, where the author does not appear to
find the Hethei-Pelasgi. He reaches his conclusions
by the study of the recent discoveries in the Asiatic
East and in Egypt, as well as of the recent discovery,
in Troy, Cyprus, and Crete, of pre-Hellenic Greece
and prehistoric Italy; he places all this wealth of
archaeological knowledge in relationship with the
historical traditions and the mythologies of the
ancient Greek and Latin writers and with the in¬
scriptions on the Egyptian monuments, recording the
peoples with whom the Egyptians came in contact.
In all this De Cara shows wonderful intellectual
ability, unusual courage in the interpretation of
Hittite monuments, and, above all, a method which,
I believe, will be of great use In the future in the
interpretation of the Hittite language—that is to say,
the comparison of what is believed to be the Hittite
language with ancient Egyptian as two branches of
the same stock, which he calls Hamitic. Thus he
attempts to explain all the names of towns, rivers,
districts in Asia Minor, now Grecianised, not by com¬
parison with Aryan or Semitic languages, but with
Egyptian. Frequently the explanation seems suc¬
cessful, in other cases forced ; although it is probable
that he has often abused etymological resem¬
blance, it seems to me that he has opened the right
road, and that he has revealed the method of de¬
ciphering the mysteries of Mediterranean ethnography.
Indo-Germanism, however, receives a heavy blow, in
my opinion, in so far as it is the theory hitherto
adopted to interpret the most ancient civilisation of
the Mediterranean basin.
But among the great difficulties which De Cara has
to overcome in maintaining that the Hittites have
[27]
appeared from the east, bearing their original civilisa¬
tion towards the west, is that of explaining how it is
that in the west, including Greece and Italy, no indi¬
cation can be discovered of Hittite writing and art;
hitherto, in fact, it has been impossible to find that
either the mysterious and indecipherable Hittite in¬
scriptions, or the bas-reliefs on the rocks, as in Asia
Minor and Syria, in the slightest degree suggest any
common origin for AEgean and Hittite civilisations.1
De Cara thus has to reject any influence of Assyro-
Babylonian art on that of the Hittites, making it an
independent art, which seems impossible ; it appears
to me that there is more Mesopotamian art among the
Hittites than Hittite art in the Mediterranean. If
Cyprus contains elements of Hittite civilisation, and
many elements of Mesopotamian origin,2 this is not
surprising on account of its geographical position.
But of this I shall have to speak later.
I cannot agree, therefore, with this distinguished
writer concerning the Asiatic origin of the Mediter¬
ranean peoples, but I recognise that he has brought
about a new phase of the problem of Mediterranean
civilisation and its creators, and that his opinions
have many points of contact with the inductions I
shall here have to bring forward.
1. Reinach has already brought forward this objection.
2. De Cara, “Cipro,” Civiltà Catlolica, Nos. 1070 e 1072, Rome,
1895; Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, die Bibel und Homer, Berlin, 1893.
CHAPTER I.
THE PHASES OF INDO-GERMANISM.
The Early Phase. —Whenever there has been any
attempt to explain the origin of civilization and of
the races called Aryan, whether in the Mediterranean
or in Central Europe, all archaeologists, linguists, and
anthropologists have until recent years been domi-
nated by the conviction that both civilization
and peoples must have their unquestionable cradle in Asia.
It is well known that this conviction has been largely
determined by the discovery of Sanscrit, which has served
as a foundation for the comparative study of
the languages called Aryan, Indo-European, and also
Indo-Germanic. Thus “Arya” was assumed to be the
centre of dispersion, at all events in part, according to
primitive ideas of Biblical source transported from the
valley of Mesopotamia to the Hindu Kusch, and
Europe became an Asiatic colony into which civili-
sation had been imported together with its population.
I need not refer to the scientific enthusiasm pro
[2]
duced by the study of Indian books and of com-
parative philology, nor to the eminent men who
employed their intellect and activity in building up
a literature which honours every European country.
I will only recall that, as in earlier times it was
believed that every tongue was derived from Hebrew,
so it was now believed that European tongues, with
the exception of a few classed among other linguistic
families, were all derived from one mother tongue
together with those of the Asiatic group; and it
appeared that Sanscrit, more than its sister tongues,
inherited the maternal characters in form and sound.
It was not long before these principles were applied
to European ethnology and anthropology. Civilisa¬
tion was supposed to come from Asia, the cradle of
the Aryan speech and people, the centre of dispersion
of European nations. European peoples in various
troops, and at various successive periods, had set
out from the common Asiatic centre and established
themselves in their different seats in Europe, bearing
with them a common patrimony of language and
civil and religious institutions; there were thus
various distinct groups, like the Italo-Greeks, the
Celts, the Letto-Slavs, the Germans, originally con¬
stituting a single people with the Asiatic group of
Indo-Iranians.
According to the more general opinion, the Aryans
had invaded Europe from east to west, and then from
north to south, subjugating the primitive and savage
peoples they met with in the course of their occupa¬
tion. During various pauses, of different length,
before reaching their final destinations, they had
begun to vary and diverge in language and other
social manifestations, constituting so many distinct
[3]
varieties of the original single stock. The Italo-
Greeks would thus have been united during their
first pause in Europe, and would have had language,
religion, and customs in common; then they would
have separated into two quite distinct groups, occupy¬
ing their definite seats in the two peninsulas of the
Mediterranean, Italy and Greece, where, finally, each
group would have become a distinct and charac¬
teristic people, an Aryan variety.
Thus it happened that Greeks and Italians were
two distinct peoples, whose common origin and com¬
mon patrimony of language and civilisation were
concealed by the appearance of new and special
forms arising in their own peculiar seats. The same
phenomenon was supposed to have occurred in the
case of the other European groups, Slavonic, Celtic,
and Germanic, and of the Asiatic or Indo-Iranian
groups. All these peoples, developing separately, and
varying in their development according to region,
became strangers to each other; it was Sanscrit, with
the series of studies to which it gave rise, which un¬
veiled the intimate relationship between languages so
diverse and peoples so remote. Some, like Fick, have
even wished to show that these European peoples are
only a single people with many languages, which
must be regarded as dialects of a single national
tongue. When that is admitted, the two classic
peoples of antiquity, Greeks and Latins, are essen¬
tially Aryans, and their civilisation is wholly of
Aryan character.
But Indo-Germanism was not satisfied with these
results, which were regarded as unquestionable; it
invaded other regions and peoples at first excluded
from the Indo-European stock, and attempted to
[4]
reduce the ancient relic of Iberian language, Basque,
to the Aryan root, as well as Armenian. Nor
was that enough: a language which appeared
mysterious, and was so far indecipherable, must
also be brought into the Indo-Germanic field, and
extraordinary mental efforts (it is enough to refer to
Corssen) were made to reconstruct Etruscan grammar
according to Aryan morphology.
Anthropology, meanwhile, investigating the physi¬
cal characters of European peoples, though without
studying them deeply or completely, made it clear
that between ancient Italians, Greeks, Celts, Ger¬
mans, and Slavs there were profound and character¬
istic differences which showed clearly that they could
not all belong together to the same human root; that
there might be linguistic relationship without blood
relationship, and that various peoples might have a
common civilization without having a common origin.
Thus anthropology sought out the characteristics of
European peoples on its own account, independently
of linguistics and its results; but on coming to the
study of origins it could not neglect linguistic,
archaeological, and historical studies as auxiliaries
to its own efforts as regards the most ancient epochs
of humanity. Palæ-ethnology and palæ-anthropology
were born of the research into fossil man in Europe and
elsewhere; the first of these, especially, soon adapted
itself to the results acquired by linguistics, and looked
towards the east as the cradle of European peoples
and their civilization.
Thus Indo-Germanism led to almost entire forget¬
fulness of the most ancient civilizations of the earth,
those born in the valleys of the Euphrates and the
Tigris, and in the valley of the Nile; no influence was
[5]
granted to them over Greco-Roman classic civilization,
almost none anywhere in the Mediterranean; Asiatic
Indians were sought as the bearers of civilisation in
Egypt, and Indo-Germans in Northern Africa and
Western Asia.
The New Phase. —This enthusiastic period of
Indo-Germanism was followed by another period
with other characters which, in a more or less
modified form, has lasted to the present day.
When it was recognised that the peoples of
Aryan tongue and civilisation are not anthropolo¬
gically a single stock, the idea arose that among
these one must represent the authentic and original
Aryan stock, while the other peoples must merely
have been Aryanised, receiving their language and
civilisation from the first. But in the working out of
this inquiry, and the special and general investigations
regarding the various manifestations of Aryan civili¬
sation, some doubts arose among linguists and philo¬
logists as to the Asiatic origin of the European stock ;
in some, indeed, doubt grew to a conviction that
Asia was not the cradle of the Aryans. Latham,
Benfey, and Geiger were the first to think of a
European origin for the Aryans. To-day the old
hypothesis of the immigration from Asia into Europe
is still maintained by a few of the eminent original
upholders of the eastern origin, who, like Max Müller
to the last, are unwilling to abandon their ancient
convictions; later archaeologists and linguists, philolo¬
gists and palæ-ethnologists, have supported the theory
of a European origin with keen enthusiasm, while
among anthropologists there is either doubt or tacit
acquiescence.
If the populations speaking Aryan languages
[6]
derived from one people with one mother tongue
constitute distinct families, as they undoubtedly do,
which is the Aryan population, or the genuine Aryan
stock, in which the movement of Aryan civilisation
arose? What do the other populations possessing
Aryan language and civilisation represent? Where
is the centre or cradle of the primitive Aryan stock?
These problems closely touch the populations and
civilisation of the Mediterranean, because the two
classic peoples of antiquity, who exerted the greatest
influence on the ancient and modern worlds, belong
to the Mediterranean; it is necessary, therefore, to
discuss these problems, at all events briefly, before
coming to others which more directly concern the
Greek and Italian peoples and their civilisation.
But it may not be useless to point out, first of all,
that from the analytic studies and criticisms bearing
on the Indo-European linguistic patrimony a fact
emerges which is worthy to be noted, since it seems
to me to be of capital importance in the solution of
the anthropological problems of Europe. In the
early days of the study of the Indo-European
languages it was accepted as a demonstrated fact
that the vocabulary of all the Aryan tongues was
common, at all events in its more fundamental parts,
including the elementary cognitions useful to human
life; that all the elements that subserve social life,
the family, primitive religion, inventions, useful arts,
were indicated in the various Indo-European languages
by words of common origin; that the traditions of
the common country, and the animals, plants, and
metals employed in primitive conditions, might be
read in the spoken or written linguistic documents.
But all this common patrimony has continually
[7]
diminished when subjected to criticism, and has
been reduced to a few elements. Hence it appears --
or so at least it seems to me that we must interpret
the linguistic phenomena — that among all the peoples
of Aryan tongue the language was an importation,
learned and assimilated by each people according to
its own habitual phonetic conditions, which con¬
stituted the physiological laws of its primitive
pronunciation; whence were derived change and
transformation according to these laws, which were
different for each people. The phenomenon is not
new, and seems to me precisely similar to that
produced by the importation of the Latin tongue
into Gaul, Spain, and other countries, where the
populations, possessing their own languages, in
assimilating Latin talked it as the phonetic and
physiological conditions of their own tongue demanded,
— thus giving birth to the various Romance tongues.
At this distance of time it is difficult to ascertain
what people originally possessed the Aryan speech
and civilisation, and propagated it or imposed it on
other European peoples of different physical type.
But it seems to me impossible to admit that a people
among whom the language is more fragmentary than
in others, and the civilisation still in a rudimentary
state, can have been that which originally carried
both speech and civilisation to peoples who afterwards
became famous in history for their political and civil
greatness. How far we are today from those posi¬
tions which were regarded as unquestionable by Pictet,
Max Müller, Bopp, Pott, and others, may be clearly
seen in the recent works of Schrader and others.
Such considerations may serve to show that these
problems are not simple and isolated, but various,
[8]
complicated, and bound together, and that their
solution depends on the united and convergent
researches of ethnological and anthropological
science; archaeological and linguistic investigations,
carried on separately, can never, in my opinion, reach
decisive and sure results.
The second phase of Indo-Germanism is therefore
still determined by the fact that linguists and
historians, ethnologists and anthropologists, have
entered the field to show the European origin of the
Aryan stock, although the name Aryan no longer
befits a people having origin in Europe. The more
enthusiastic, in settling this great problem, have
brought together in a compact phalanx all the
arguments offered by archaeology, linguistics, and
anthropology, and have engaged with confidence in
the struggle. In spite of the divergence of results,
both as regards the physical type of the primitive
Aryan stock and the localisation of its centre of
origin and dispersion, many agree in believing that
the Aryan peoples of the Mediterranean, the Greeks
and Italians, emigrated into their two peninsulas
from the centre or the north of Europe, conquering
and subjugating the first inhabitants, to whom they
imparted their speech and civilisation.
It may be useful to examine some of the argu¬
ments which appear a convincing demonstration to
those who are unprepared to meet them or surprised
by their vivacity.
Germanism. -- I mean by “Germanism” the theory
which attempts to prove that the Germans are the
primitive Aryans; Pösche and Penka (1) are the boldest
1. Th. Pösche, Die Arier, Jena, 1878; C. Penka, Die Herkunft der
Arier, Wien, 1896.
[9]
upholders of the view that sees the fair race every¬
where. “The fair race is found from the Arctic
Ocean to the Sahara, from the Atlantic to Lake
Baikal and the Indus; the southern shore of the
North Sea is their centre of diffusion; there is the
chief station of the fair race; and from these shores
of the Baltic they moved in all directions.” Thus
wrote Pösche; but Penka, who equally recognized
the extension of the fair race, only found it as an
exception in regions remote from the centre of origin,
and sought to justify the rarity of the type by
climatic conditions to which the fair Aryans could
not adapt themselves and so disappeared. If this
argument may in some degree hold good for extreme
climates like those of Scandinavia and Africa,
Central and Southern Europe and India, it scarcely
holds good for the difference between Central
Europe and the Mediterranean, between Germany,
Italy, and Greece, or between Bavaria, Wiirtemberg,
Prussia, and the Baltic regions.
The fair races speaking an Indo-Germanic tongue,
like the Celts, Germans, and Slavs, wrote Pösche,
have subjugated the non - Indo - Germanic brown
races and imposed their language and civilisation
upon them; even though the fair race was small in
number, it has acted in the same manner as when
“the ancient fair Indo-Germans attacked the Finns,
subjugated them, made them prisoners by thousands,
reduced them to slavery, and little by little in¬
corporated them.” Thus the fair-haired people, a
pure Indo-Germanic race for Pösche, Penka, and
others, reached Greece and Italy, subjugated their
primitive brown populations, and gave them their
own Aryan speech and civilisation. In Homer and
[10]
in traditions these writers believe they find traces
of the dominion of the fair-haired lords of these
lands.
Thus the hypothesis that the fair race is the
primitive and authentic Aryan race is more than a
theory for these writers; it is a thesis, and the proofs
of the thesis always set out from the presupposition
that the Aryans are fair. Penka also maintains that
Scandinavia has been the cradle and centre of
diffusion of the fair race, the characteristics of which
are white skin, blue eyes, high stature, and an elon¬
gated or dolichocephalic head. The arguments may
be summarized in the following propositions: (1)
the type of the inhabitants of Scandinavia is identical
with the physical type of the pure Aryans; (2) this
type has persisted unchanged in that peninsula from
prehistoric times; (3) the Aryan type is identical with
the palaeolithic type of Central Europe; (4) the fauna
and flora of Scandinavia are in harmony with linguis¬
tic results as to the place of origin of the Aryans;
(5) the Stone Age in Scandinavia corresponds to
the culture of the primitive Aryan race before its
expansion.
If we look into Penka’s arguments we soon dis¬
cover that between two of them — the persistence
of the Scandinavian type and the identity of the
Aryan type with the palaeolithic type of Central
Europe — there is no agreement, but contradiction.
The Neanderthal type is for Penka the palaeolithic
type; now between this and the Teutonic dolicho¬
cephalic type, which for German authors is that of
the Reihengraber, there is an enormous difference;
one might even say an abyss lies between them.
The difference is so great that Virchow considers
[11]
the Neanderthal skull pathological, (1) Davis explained
it by synostosis, while, indeed, it seems to me normal
only because it is found at Brux and at Spy in un¬
changed form, without pathological signs. It would
seem that for Penka dolichocephaly is enough to
show the identity of the Quaternary and the Germanic
types, but in that case all dolichocephalic skulls,
even Australian, might be considered Indo-Germanic.
Penka, indeed, feels constrained to admit develop¬
ment, and the transformation of the Neanderthaloid
type into the Germanic, which contradicts his
principle of the persistency of type, accepted for the
Scandinavian type. There is, however, no middle
path. Either the Scandinavian type is the per¬
sistent primitive Aryan type, in which case the
palaeolithic type of Central Europe is not Aryan,
or the palaeolithic type is primitive, and then the
Scandinavian type is derived, and consequently not
persistent, but recent. There is another fact against
Penka’s assertions, i.e., the contemporaneous occur¬
rence of the untransformed Aryan Neanderthaloid
type with the transformed Aryan Scandinavian type,
if it is true, as it unquestionably is, that the two forms
still persist. (2)
Since, however, the fact of the persistence of
cranial types is now assured in anthropology, and
since the persistency of the Neanderthal type, now
1. On the ground that the Neanderthal skull, as well as the other
bones of the skeleton, revealed a number of pathological changes,
Virchow reached the conclusion that we are here in presence of an
individual specimen which cannot be regarded as typical of a race until
confirmed by further discoveries. (Zeischrift für Ethnologie, 1S72,
p. 157; also ib., 1S94, p. 427.)
2. See in my Specie a Varietà Umane; “Gli abitanti primitivi di
Europa,” 1900.
[12]
rare and disappearing, has been shown, it is im¬
possible to admit that the Aryan type is palae¬
olithic in the sense understood by Penka.
But let us examine more closely the so-called
Germanic type, which ought to be fair, of high
stature, with blue eyes, and elongated head. Let
us see how it is distributed in its own country, in
Germany and the neighbouring regions, which are
now Germanic lands. In order to be brief, I will
simply transcribe the exact summary of the labours
of German anthropologists made by Moschen, when
speaking of the modern population of Germany with
special reference to the origin of the Trentine popula¬
tion (1):—“The old doctrine of the dolichocephaly of
the modern Germans had already been attacked by
Welcker, (2) who summed up the results of his researches
on this subject in the following words : ‘ The modern
Germans are in part brachycephalic, in part ortho-
cephalic, never (speaking here of averages) dolicho¬
cephalic;’ and he added that ‘if the primitive
Germanic stock was dolichocephalic, we must say
that the Germans of old Germanic stock are only
found in insignificant numbers in Germany.’ Later
researches have shown that the present populations
of southern Germany are in great part brachycephals,
among whom mesocephals are rare and dolichocephals
quite isolated. Only in Central and Northern Germany
are dolichocephals found more or less numerously, and
they only become prevalent in the extreme north,
in Denmark and Sweden. Let us examine a few
1. “I Caratteri fisici e le origini dei Trentini,” Arch. per
l'Antropologia, Florence, 1892.
2. Ueber Wachsthum und Ban des Menschlicken Schädels, Leipzig,
1862, p. 65; and “ Kran. Mittheilungen,” in Archiv fur Anlh.,
Lid. i., 1866, pp. 149-150.
[13]
figures. In the Tyrol, Holl (1) has found among 1820
skulls examined in various valleys only 33 dolicho-
cephals, representing 1.8 per cent., while the meso-
cephals are in a proportion of 14.9 per cent., and the
brachycephals (with the hyper-brachycephals) in that
of 83.2 per cent.; while Ranke (2) found among 100
skulls of Anterium, near Bolzano, no dolichocephals,
10 mesocephals, and 90 brachycephals; and among 100
skulls of the valley of Eno, near Innsbruck, again
no dolichocephals, 23 mesocephals, and 77 brachy¬
cephals. In upper and lower Austria and in the
Salzburg district, Zuckerkandl (3) measured 300 skulls;
the dolichocephals were in the proportion of 2.7
per cent., the mesocephals 23 per cent., and the
brachycephals 74.3 per cent. In southern Bavaria,
of some 100 skulls measured by Ranke, the dolicho¬
cephals were in the minute proportion of 0.8 per
cent., the mesocephals 16.3 per cent., the brachy¬
cephals 82.9 per cent. (4) In southern Baden, of
100 modern skulls of which Ecker has published
measurements, there were no dolichocephals, and
the brachycephals were in the proportion of 84
per cent. (5) In northern Bavaria, Ranke measured
250 skulls, of which 12 per cent, were dolicho¬
cephals, 20 per cent, mesocephals, and 68 per
cent, brachycephals. In Friesland, Virchow found
18 per cent, dolichocephals, 51 per cent, meso-
1. “Ueber die ini Tirol vorkommenden Schadelformen,” Mitth.
Anthrop. Gesell. Wien, Bd. xv., Heft 2.
2. Beitrdge zur phys. Anlhrop. der Bayern,” Mtinchen, 1SS3, p. 94,
tab. xi.-xii.
3. “Beitrage zur Craniologie der Deutschen in Ocsterr.,” Mitth.
Anth. Gesell. Wien, 1883.
4. Beitrdge, etc., pp. 22-23.
5. Crania Germanics merid. occid., Freiburg, 1865-
[14]
cephals, and 31 per cent, brachycephals. Among 83
Danish skulls Schmidt found 57 per cent, dolicho-
cephals, 37 per cent, mesocephals, and 5 per cent,
brachycephals. According to Retzius1 and Ecker,2
dolichocephaly predominates among the modern
Swedes, in every respect agreeing with the skulls
of the ancient Franks of the Reihengraber.”
From the statistics of colour of hair and eyes in
Austria, Switzerland, and Germany,3 it appears that
“ the brown area extends from the west of Austria
through Switzerland (fair 11.1 per cent., brown 25.7
per cent.), Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, and Alsace-
Forraine, hence in all southern Germany, where the
frequency of blonds varies from 18.4 to 24.5 per cent,
and of brunets from 25.2 to 19.2 per cent. In
central Germany the blonds gradually increase in
a northerly direction, varying from 25.3 to 32.5 per
cent., while the brunets gradually diminish in the
same direction, varying from 18.22 to 13.2 per cent.
It is only in northern Germany that the blonds
decidedly predominate, varying from 33.5 to 43.3
per cent., while the brunets vary between 12.1 and
6.9 per cent.” In the whole German empire, according
to Virchow’s statistics, the blonds are, on the average,
31.8 per cent., the brunets 14.05 per cent., and the
mixed type 54 15 per cent.
1. “ Ueber die Sch'adelformen der Nordbewohnern,” Eth. Schriften,
Stockholm, 1864, pp. 1-24.
2. Op. cit., pp. 30-91.
3. “ Gesammtbericht iiber die von der deutschen anthr. Gesell.
veranlassten Erhebungen iiber die Farbe der Haut, der Haare und der
Angen,” etc., Archiv f. Anthr., xvi , 1S86, von R. Virchow;
Kollmann, “Die statist; Erhebungen,” etc., Denkschriften Gesell.
fur Naturwiss, xxviii., Basel, 1881 ; Schimmer, “Erhebungen fiber
die Farbe, etc., bei den Schulkindern Oesterreichs,” Mitth. Anthr.
Gesell. Wien, 1884.
[15]
It is worth while to consider some of Virchow’s
opinions, concerning facts of so much weight, both
regarding the physical characters of the skull and the
external characters of colour of skin, eyes, and hair.
At the Congress of German Anthropologists at
Dresden in 1874, Virchow spoke regarding the ex¬
tension of brachycephalic skulls in historical and prc-
historical times.(1) He discussed a Finnic theory
which he seemed disposed to accept, and he formu¬
lated the problem as follows: “ Can we anywhere
find traces, either in ancient or modern times, of a
Finnic population, and are the Finnic or Lapponic
types, or, as is said in France, the Esthonic, those that
stand at the basis of the development of the actual
population ? ” At the end of a long discussion Vir¬
chow was disposed to admit that the Finns have
contributed to the brachycephaly of the north and
the Ligurians to that of the south. A little later,
discussing in a special work (2) the facts of German
anthropology, he said: “No one has proved that all
Germans possess the same cranial form, or, in other
words, that they formed a single nation, like the more
pure type that we see among the Suevi and the
Franks.” He admits, that is, that various types have
formed the Germanic people. At the Congress of
Karlsruhe, in 1885, he again expressed his opinion
when presenting the results of the inquiry into colour
of hair and eyes. (3) In order to explain the large
proportion of brunets in Germany he proposes three
hypotheses: (1) two stocks entered Germany, one
1. Archiv f. Anthrop., Bd. vii.
2. Beiträge zurphysischen Anthrop. der Deutschen, etc., Berlin, 1877,
p. 361.
3. “ Gcsammtbericht,” etc, Archiv f. Anth., xvi., 1SS6.
[16]
fair, the other dark, so that the population was mixed
from the first; this theory he does not accept; (2)
the fair was transformed by Darwinian methods ; but
this transformation is not possible, because there is
not sufficient difference of physical conditions be¬
tween northern and southern Germany to produce
such a change ; it is known that other German
anthropologists, such as Roll1 and Ranke,2 have
mistakenly admitted such a possibility; (3) there has
been a varied and continuous mixture of types
belonging to various populations. Virchow believes
that mixture can establish a race, that a fair popula¬
tion can become dark by mixture, and vice versa.
Thus the Celts had much influence ; we know, he
says, that where the Celts entered the population is
dark; “ I am prepared to believe,” he adds, “ that
the primitive Celtic, like the primitive Italic, popula¬
tion was not formed of blond but of brunet Aryans.”
These doubts and difficulties expressed by Virchow
concerning the minority of the fair dolichocephalic
race in Germany suffice to show how fantastic are the
easy demonstrations of Posche and Penka. Virchow
himself asks if the supposed authentic German type
is not disappearing. And these two authors wish to
show that this is what is happening. Penka, as I
have said, believes that the pure Germanic type has
diminished in Germany, and is only exceptionally
found in southern Europe, in Italy and Greece,
because it has not withstood the climate of those
regions. We may leave aside Italy and Greece, the
climate of which is not liable to destroy the Germanic
or any other race ; if, however, we consider Germany
1. “ Ueber die im Tirol,” etc., op. cit.
2. Beiträge, etc., op. cit., p. 123.
[17]
itself we cannot reasonably grant that the climate of
Bavaria and Wiirtemberg is not adapted to the Ger¬
manic race, and I need not contest so improbable a
statement.
It seems to me that the existence of a pure Ger¬
manic stock cannot be demonstrated, whether in
prehistoric or in protohistoric times. We do not find
in Germany a pure dolichocephalic race, tall, fair,
numerous, diffused widely throughout Europe ; we
find instead a mixed population of varying type in
all the prehistoric graves of German territory.
Von Holder, the author of a work on Wiirtemberg
skulls which is of fundamental importance in the
study of Teutonic anthropology,1 has found a series
of the most diverse types, Germanic, Turanian, Sar-
matian, pure and mixed, in his opinion, with no
predominant Germanic type. Lissauer finds a mix¬
ture of forms among ancient Prussian skulls, while
Virchow, who has examined a vast number of skulls
from old Germanic graves, finds the most varying
shapes among the primitive population of Germanic
soil.2
Why, then, affirm that the dolichocephalic type is
disappearing, or has disappeared, when in reality it
has never predominated on Germanic soil? Virchow
never said a truer thing when he affirmed that the
Germans have shown various types of skulls from the
first, and were never a homogeneous nation with a
1. Zusammenstellung der in Würtemberg vorkommenden Schadel-
fonnen, Stuttgart, 1876.
2. Cf. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Bd. x., Lissauer, “ Crania Prussica,”
ind. cef. 63-86; Bd.-xii., Virchow, “Alte Berliner Schadel,” ind. cef.
78-86; id., “ Schadel von Neuestadter Felde,” ind. cef. 6S-85; xiii.,
id., “Schadel von Eicha (Thuring.),” ind. cef. 80-S6; id., “Von
Spandau,” ind. cef. 78.6-83, etc.
[18]
pure type that might be found among the Suevi and
the Franks. I believe that I am in the right, since my
opinion is founded on anthropological and historical
data, when I affirm that at their origin the Germans
were not a distinct people from the Celts or from the
Slavs, with both of whom they were always united
and often confused. The Franks of the fifth century
were a northern people, less mixed in earlier times,
and hence appearing somewhat more uniform in the
graves of the Rhine district at a rather late epoch.
The Alleged Homeric Evidence. — These brief con¬
siderations seem to me to be sufficient to show that
since it is difficult to find the Germans in their own
home we cannot expect to find them as an Aryan
stock in Greece and Italy, subjugating the dark
populations and creating the two great Mediter¬
ranean civilisations, Hellenic and Latin, also called
Aryan ; still less can we connect them with the more
ancient Mycenaean or Aegean civilization, as it is
to-day called. The disappearance of the Germanic
type among the Mediterranean populations, assumed
by Penka, is a necessity imposed by the fact that this
type is sought in vain where it is supposed to have
dominated, except as a sporadic element easy to
explain through the course of ages by the immigra¬
tion of races or families or individuals.
But I cannot pass in silence the supposed testimony
to the presence of the fair type in Greece, and to its
superiority over the darker population, furnished by
the Homeric poems, in which, it is affirmed, the
heroes and gods are described as of the fair type
with blue eyes. I have made a special investigation
into this point and here present the results.
In Homer Athena is glaukopis; glankos means
[19]
blue, like the sea and the unclouded sky; it is also
equivalent to phoberos, terrible (of the eyes); the
olive is glaukos also, and Athena is the guardian
of the olive; it also means shining, and is said of
the dawn and the stars. In Athena’s case glmikopis
means that her eyes are brilliant and terrible.
Empedocles uses glaukopis of the moon, and it is
even doubtful if in Homer it ever means blue.
Apollo in Homer is chrysaoros, that is to say
bearing a golden sword; the title of “fair” is later;
xanthos is never used of Apollo in Homer, and if
he were fair it would be like the sun. Apollo with
golden hair, chrysokoman, is found in Euripides
and Athenaeus, as “ fair Dionysus ” is found also in
Euripides, that is to say at a much later time.
Xanthos means a reddish fairness, and also brown.
Artemis is eustephanos; there is nothing as to being
fair.
Aphrodite is chryse, golden, that is to say, brilliant,
splendid, not fair.
Demeter is xanthe, fair, it is true, but we must
remember that Demeter (Ceres) is the symbol of
harvest, fair like the spike of corn, as of Poseidon
(Neptune), who is kyanochaites, that is to say with
bluish, blackish, even black hair, like the dark and
deep waves of ocean; kyanos is black, blue-black,
violet, in Homer sometimes blacker than melas.
In Demeter, therefore, the title of fair is only a
symbol for the colour of harvest.
Eos, the dawn, is chrysothronos, rhododaktylos,
krokopeplos, because the colour of dawn is golden,
rosy, and red.
Thetis, on the other hand, is argyropeza, re., with
silver feet, the foaming wavelets of the sea.
[20]
Hera (Juno) is chrysothronos, leukolenos, eukomos,
and Kalypsos is only eukomos; neither is fair.
Achilles, however, is xanthos like Rhadamanthus;
but xanthos means not only fair, but also chestnut,
brown, and bees are xanthai.
It results from this analysis that in Homer none
of the divinities are fair in the ethnographic sense
of the word; only Achilles and Rhadamanthus
might be considered fair if we accept the word
xanthos in its later sense. No other hero is described
as fair.
In regard to the Homeric expressions in heroic
narratives relating to the men of a previous age
confronted with contemporaries,1 no one can fail
to recognise that it is always usual to magnify past
times and celebrated heroes.
The Romans had also their Flavi, which indicates
that fair persons were uncommon, and required a
special name, but does not indicate that the Ger¬
manic type was considered aristocratic or dominant.
I could bring forward a wealth of facts to show
that what I have just stated regarding the anthro¬
pological characters of the Homeric gods and heroes
may also be said, and with more reason, of the types
of Greek and Roman statuary which, though in the
case of divinities they may be conventionalised, do
not in the slightest degree recall the features of a
northern race; in the delicacy of the cranial and
facial forms, in smoothness of surface, in the absence
of exaggerated frontal bosses and supra-orbital arches,
in the harmony of the curves, in the facial oval, in
the rather low foreheads, they recall the beautiful and
harmonious heads of the brown Mediterranean race.
1. Iliad, v. 304, xii. 583, xx. 287.
[21]
\\ inkelmann noted the correspondence between the
types of Italian art and the population, and wrote
that in the finest districts of Italy one met few of
these roughly outlined faces of uncertain or defective
expression such as are met so often on the other side
of the Alps; on the contrary, the features are distinct
and vivacious, and the forms of the face large and
full, with all the features in harmony. (1)
Thus we are not able to see any sound evidence
in the Greek and Latin peoples to indicate that a
northern race dominated the two peninsulas in primi¬
tive times; the idea is an illusion of Indo-Germanism.
Celts or Lithuanians ?—As a variant of Indo-Ger¬
manism we are confronted by Celtism, maintained
chiefly by the French, as a reaction against the
theory of the superiority and supremacy of the blond
Germanic type. Mortillet, Ujfalvy, and others, have
maintained that the bearers of European neolithic
civilisation were the Celtic brachycephals, not the
German dolichocephals; and Ujfalvy has justly
observed that the superiority of a race consists
not merely in physical energy and restlessness, but
in pre-eminence of mental faculty, showing itself in
artistic and intellectual genius, as in the Greeks and
Latins. I would add that a race cannot even be said
to be physically superior if it is unable to resist the
mild climate of the Mediterranean, but disappears as
required by Penka’s theory.
This opinion coincides, in great part, with that
of Taylor, who contests the right of the blond
dolichocephalic Germanic stock to represent the
original Aryan race which bore language and civilisa¬
tion to other peoples. Taylor, indeed, contests that
1. Geschichte der Kunst, Stuttgart, 1847, vol. i., Bk. i., p. 33.
[22]
right also to the Celts, but he concedes much to them
since he regards brachycephaly as a character of great
superiority.(1)
He maintains that the Lithuanians, whom he
believes, not quite accurately, to be brachycephalic,
are the authentic primitive Aryans, and that from
them the Celto-Latins received their language, and
with it the Aryan civilisation. His arguments are in
large part linguistic, but also ethnological and anthro¬
pological. He believes he has proved that the
neolithic population of the pile-dwellings of southern
Germany and Switzerland and northern Italy may
be identified with the brachycephalic ancestors of
the race he calls Celto-Latin.
To maintain this position it was necessary to
create an anthropological theory, and this Canon
Taylor has done. He assumes that the Ligurians
are brachycephalic, as indeed is still erroneously
believed by German and French anthropologists;
Romans and Umbrians, most of the Italic popula¬
tion, together with the Hellenic stock, are declared
to be brachycephalic. According to Taylor, the
brachycephals are the superior race ; thus he writes :
—“ Virchow, Broca, and Calori agree that the brachy¬
cephalic or ‘Turanian’ skull is a higher form than
the dolichocephalic. The most degraded of existing
races, such as the Australians, Tasmanians, Papuas,
Veddahs, Negroes, Hottentots, and Bosjemen, as well
as the aboriginal forest tribes of India, are typically
dolichocephalic; while the Burmese, the Chinese,
the Japanese, and the natives of Central Europe
are typically brachycephalic. The fact that the
1. Isaac Taylor, The Origin of the Aryans, Contemporary Science
Series, London, 1889.
[23]
Accadians, who belonged to the Turanian race, had,
some 7000 years ago, attained a high stage of
culture, from which the civilisation of the Semites
was derived, is a fact which makes it more probable
that the language and civilisation of Europe was
derived from the brachycephalic rather than from
the dolichocephalic race.”1 Now, all this is fanciful,
and it is not necessary to confute it; moreover, the
Latins and other Italic peoples, the Greeks and
the Egyptians, are for the most part dolichocephalic.
I remember that shortly after the publication of his
book, Canon Taylor visited me at the Gabinetto di
Antropologia ; I had not yet overcome the surprise
produced by a book in which—however valuable it may
be in other respects—the facts were on this point so
changed, and I led him into the Museum and showed
him the ancient Roman and Etruscan heads, for the
most part dolichocephalic, and then conducted him
to the Prehistoric Museum to point out that in the
Ligurian skeletons of Finalmarina the heads are
elongated and not brachycephalic. ITe was surprised,
but I do not know if he was convinced, for those who
are not accustomed to the direct observation of facts
are more impressed by ideas, especially when on
these ideas they have erected an elaborate edifice.
In this respect Taylor has surpassed Posche and
Penka.
The Western Asiatic Origin. — Archaeologists, it
seems to me, reveal a defect in their methods for
investigating the origins and diffusion of a civilisation
when they take little or no account of the physical
characters of the peoples among whom the civilisation
is found; historians maintain the same defect, and
1. Origin of the Aryans, p. 241.
[24]
both alike are content with ethnic names and pass
over the physical characters of nations, or else trust
to language, most often a deceptive method of recog¬
nising a race or a people. The difficulties surrounding
the question of the origin and diffusion of the /Egean
or Mycenaean civilisation becomes greater when we
are ignorant of the race that produced it, its exten¬
sion, origin, and dispersion. To believe that two
peoples belong to two different stocks because they
have different languages and unlike civilisations is
often a mistake ; and to believe that two peoples are
of the same stock because their languages and civilisa¬
tions are similar or related may also be a mistake.
The Mediterranean is a sphinx with various faces,
and to solve its enigma we need to know the stock or
stocks that have peopled it.
I shall attempt the anthropological solution of this
enigma in the following pages. It may first, however,
be well to refer to a recent dogmatic attempt to solve
this problem which shows how necessary it is that all
the scientific methods, ethnographical, archaeological,
anthropological, linguistic, as well as geographical,
should converge in the solution of the problem of the
origin and diffusion of Mediterranean civilisation. I
refer to the attempt of Padre C.esare de Cara in his
work on the Hethei-Pelasgi.1 The chief object of
this investigation is to show that a very ancient
people, neither of Aryan nor Semitic origin, from time
immemorial occupied Syria and Asia Minor, and
thence in various successive migrations peopled
Greece and Italy^, bearing with them their own native
civilisation as it existed in Asia and afterwards in
1. Gli Hethei-Pelasgi: Ricerche di Storia e di Archeologia Orientale,
Greca ed Italiana, Rome, 1894.
[25]
the AEgean. This is the Pelasgic people of ancient
history and Greco-Italian tradition, in Asia Minor
and Syria, Eteo, Hetheo, or Idittite, as it is variously
written; thus the Hetheo-Pelasgic people would be a
single stock with two names, one Asiatic and primi¬
tive, Ivhatti, Kheti, Hethei, as it was known to the
Assyro-Babylonians, the Egyptians, and the Hebrews,
corresponding to its national name in its own tongue;
the other name derived and in a Greek form, signify¬
ing wandering or colonial Hethei. Early Greek and
Italian civilisation would thus be born in Western
Asia and exported by the primitive Hethei in their
migration. This people, or rather confederation of
peoples in this author’s opinion, possessing a vast
dominion not only in Asia Minor up to the Euphrates,
but in Colchis, the Euxine, in Scythia, would be
neither Aryan nor Semitic, but Hamitic, having a
common origin with the Egyptians and Babylonians,
both of Hamitic origin according to this author, like
many African peoples. They would have possessed
neither Semitic language nor civilisation, and would
have alike preceded the Semites in Phoenicia, thus
being pre-Phoenician, and the Hellenes in Greece.
Accepting this centre of diffusion, the author stops at
the Italian peninsula, when he finds the Pelasgians,
and goes no further westward to the Iberian
peninsula. Pelasgic traditions stop there also, and
other racial names are found, Ligurian and Iberian,
as in northern Africa the Libyans, a people belong¬
ing, as we shall see, to the primitive Mediterranean
stock. Thus De Cara’s study does not suffice to
give any explanation of the civilisation which we
find in primitive days to the west of Italy and in
northern Africa, nor of the origin of the people in
[26]
these regions, where the author does not appear to
find the Hethei-Pelasgi. He reaches his conclusions
by the study of the recent discoveries in the Asiatic
East and in Egypt, as well as of the recent discovery,
in Troy, Cyprus, and Crete, of pre-Hellenic Greece
and prehistoric Italy; he places all this wealth of
archaeological knowledge in relationship with the
historical traditions and the mythologies of the
ancient Greek and Latin writers and with the in¬
scriptions on the Egyptian monuments, recording the
peoples with whom the Egyptians came in contact.
In all this De Cara shows wonderful intellectual
ability, unusual courage in the interpretation of
Hittite monuments, and, above all, a method which,
I believe, will be of great use In the future in the
interpretation of the Hittite language—that is to say,
the comparison of what is believed to be the Hittite
language with ancient Egyptian as two branches of
the same stock, which he calls Hamitic. Thus he
attempts to explain all the names of towns, rivers,
districts in Asia Minor, now Grecianised, not by com¬
parison with Aryan or Semitic languages, but with
Egyptian. Frequently the explanation seems suc¬
cessful, in other cases forced ; although it is probable
that he has often abused etymological resem¬
blance, it seems to me that he has opened the right
road, and that he has revealed the method of de¬
ciphering the mysteries of Mediterranean ethnography.
Indo-Germanism, however, receives a heavy blow, in
my opinion, in so far as it is the theory hitherto
adopted to interpret the most ancient civilisation of
the Mediterranean basin.
But among the great difficulties which De Cara has
to overcome in maintaining that the Hittites have
[27]
appeared from the east, bearing their original civilisa¬
tion towards the west, is that of explaining how it is
that in the west, including Greece and Italy, no indi¬
cation can be discovered of Hittite writing and art;
hitherto, in fact, it has been impossible to find that
either the mysterious and indecipherable Hittite in¬
scriptions, or the bas-reliefs on the rocks, as in Asia
Minor and Syria, in the slightest degree suggest any
common origin for AEgean and Hittite civilisations.1
De Cara thus has to reject any influence of Assyro-
Babylonian art on that of the Hittites, making it an
independent art, which seems impossible ; it appears
to me that there is more Mesopotamian art among the
Hittites than Hittite art in the Mediterranean. If
Cyprus contains elements of Hittite civilisation, and
many elements of Mesopotamian origin,2 this is not
surprising on account of its geographical position.
But of this I shall have to speak later.
I cannot agree, therefore, with this distinguished
writer concerning the Asiatic origin of the Mediter¬
ranean peoples, but I recognise that he has brought
about a new phase of the problem of Mediterranean
civilisation and its creators, and that his opinions
have many points of contact with the inductions I
shall here have to bring forward.
1. Reinach has already brought forward this objection.
2. De Cara, “Cipro,” Civiltà Catlolica, Nos. 1070 e 1072, Rome,
1895; Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, die Bibel und Homer, Berlin, 1893.
