24. Caucasian Races
Three of the four Caucasian races live, in whole or part, in Europe; the fourth consists of the Hindus.[6] The three European races are the Nordic, the Alpine, and the Mediterranean. Some authorities recognize a greater number, but all admit at least these three. They occupy horizontal belts on the map. Beginning with the Nordic and ending with the Mediterranean they may be described as successively darker skinned, darker eyed, darker haired, and shorter in stature. The Alpine race, which lies between the two others, is however more than a mere transition; for it is broad headed, whereas the Nordic and Mediterranean are both narrow or long headed. The Nordic type is essentially distributed around the Baltic and North seas. The Mediterranean race occupies the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, in Asia and Africa as well as in Europe. In ancient times it seems to have prevailed everywhere along these coasts. At present the Balkan peninsula and Asia Minor are mostly occupied by broad headed peoples of more or less close affinity to the Alpines. This Alpine race is perhaps less homogeneous than the two others. A central Frenchman, a Serb, a Russian, and an Armenian are clearly far from identical (§ [30]). They have enough in common, however, to warrant their being put in the one larger group.
It must be clearly understood that these races have nothing to do with the modern political nationalities of Europe. Northern Germany is prevailingly Nordic, southern Germany, Alpine. Northern Italy is Alpine, the rest of the peninsula Mediterranean. All three races are definitely represented in France. The average north Frenchman stands racially nearer to the north German than to his countryman from central France, whereas the latter links up in physical type with the south German. Nationality is determined by speech, customs, religion, and political affiliations. Its boundary lines and those of race cut right across one another.
The British Isles did not escape the process of race blending that has gone on in Europe for thousands of years. The bulk of the blood of their inhabitants during the past thousand years has been Nordic, but there is an Alpine strain, and most authorities recognize a definite “Iberian,” that is, Mediterranean element. The first settlers in America carried this mixture across the Atlantic, and through the years immigration has increased its compositeness. Scandinavians and north Germans have added to the Nordic component in the population of the United States; south Germans, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, and Jews to the Alpine; the Italians have injected a definite Mediterranean element. The Negro alone has not been admitted into the make-up of our white society; but the reverse holds: a considerable and growing percentage of the “colored” people in the United States are from one-sixteenth to fifteen-sixteenths Caucasian.
The Hindu is in the main a narrow headed, dark skinned Caucasian, not very different from the Mediterranean. When he entered India he probably found there an aboriginal population which may have been Negroid but more likely was related to the Australians or perhaps constituted a dark proto-Caucasian or Indo-Australian race. A fairly thorough intermixture has taken place in India during the last three thousand years, with the result that the originally pure Caucasian type of the Hindu has been somewhat modified, while most of the less numerous or less vigorous aboriginal population has become submerged. The definite Caucasian type is best preserved in the north; the traces of the dark skinned aboriginal race are strongest in southern India.