The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history

by Madison Grant

The Maximum Expansion of the Alpines with Bronze Culture, 3000–1800 B. C.

The first map (Pl. I) shows the distribution of these races at the close of the Neolithic, as well as their later expansion. It also indicates the sites of earlier cultures. The distribution of megaliths in Asia Minor on the north coast of Africa and up the Atlantic seaboard through Spain, France and Britain to Scandinavia is set forth. These great stone monuments were seemingly the work of the Mediterranean race using, however, a culture of bronze acquired from the Alpines. The map also shows the sites throughout Russia of the kurgans, or ancient artificial mounds, distribution of which seems to correspond closely with the original habitat of the Nordics.

In southwestern France there is indicated the area where the Cro-Magnon race persisted longest and where traces of it are still to be found. The site is shown of the type station of the latest phase of the Paleolithic known as the Mas d’Azil—a great cavern in the eastern Pyrenees from which that period took its name of Azilian.

At the entrance of the Baltic Sea is also shown the type station of the Maglemose culture which flourished at the close of the Paleolithic and was probably the work of early Nordics.

In the centre of the district occupied by the Alpines is located Robenhausen, the most characteristic of the Neolithic lake dwelling stations and also the Terramara stations in which a culture transitional between the Neolithic and the bronze existed. In the Tyrol the site is indicated of the village of Hallstatt, which gave its name to the first iron culture.

The site of La Tène at the north end of Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland is also shown. From this village the La Tène Iron Age takes its name.

The difficulty of depicting the shifting of races during twelve centuries is not easily overcome, but the map attempts to show that at the close of the Neolithic all the coast lands of the Mediterranean and of the Atlantic seaboard up to Germany and including the British Isles were populated by the Mediterranean race, in addition, of course, to remnants of earlier Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, who probably, at that date, still formed an appreciable portion of the population.

The yellow arrows indicate the route of the migrations of Mediterranean man, who appears to have entered Europe from the east along the African littoral. But the main invasions passed up through Spain and Gaul into the British Isles, where from that time to this they have formed the substratum of the population. In the central portion of their range these Mediterraneans were swamped by the Alpines, as shown by the spreading green, while in northern Gaul and Britain the Mediterraneans were submerged afterward by Nordics, as appears on the later maps.

The arrows and routes of migration shown on the yellow area of this map indicate changes which occurred during the Neolithic and perhaps earlier, but the pink and red arrows in the northern and southeastern portions represent migrations which were in full swing and in fact were steadily increasing during the entire period involved. The next map shows these Nordics bursting out of their original homeland in every direction and in their turn conquering Europe.

Between these two races, the Mediterranean and the Nordic, there entered a great intrusion of Alpines, flowing from the highlands of western Asia through Asia Minor and up the valley of the Danube throughout central Europe and thence expanding in every direction. Forerunners of these same Alpines were found in western Europe as far back as the closing Azilian phase of the Paleolithic, where they are known as the Furfooz-Grenelle race and are thus contemporary in western Europe with the earliest Mediterraneans.

During all the Neolithic the Alpines occupied the mountainous core of Europe, but their great and final expansion occurred at the close of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Period, when a new and extensive Alpine invasion from the region of the Armenian highlands brought in the Bronze culture. This last migration apparently followed the routes of the earlier invasions and, in the extreme southwest, it even reached Spain in small numbers, where its remnants can still be found in the Cantabrian Alps. The Alpines occupied all Savoy and central France, where from that day to this they constitute the bulk of the peasant population. They reached Brittany and to-day that peninsula is their westernmost outpost. They crossed over in small numbers to Britain and some even reached Ireland. In England they were the men of the Round Barrows, but nearly all trace of this invasion has vanished from the living population.

The Alpines also reached Holland, Denmark and southwestern Norway and traces of their colonization in these countries are still found.

The author has attempted to indicate the lines of this Alpine expansion by means of the solid green spreading over central Europe and Asia Minor, with outlying dots showing the outer limits of the invasion. Black arrows proceeding from the east denote its main lines and routes. Those Alpines who crossed the Caucasus passed through southern Russia and a side wave of the same migration passed down the Syrian coast to Egypt and along the north coast of Africa, entering Italy by way of Sicily. The last African invasion left behind it the Giza round skulls of Egypt. This final Alpine expansion taught the other races of Europe, both Mediterranean and Nordic, the art of metallurgy.

The Nordics apparently originated in southern Russia, but long before the Bronze Period they had spread northward across the Baltic into Scandinavia, where they specialized into the race now known as the Scandinavian or Teutonic. On the map the continental Nordics are indicated by pink and the Nordics of Scandinavia are shown in red. At the very end of the period covered by this map, these Scandinavian Nordics were beginning to return to the continent. The routes of these migrations and their extent are indicated by red arrows and circles respectively.

To sum up, this map shows the expansion from central Asia of the round skull Alpines across central Europe, submerging, in the south and west, the little, dark, long skulled Mediterraneans of Neolithic culture, while at the same time they pressed heavily upon the Nordics in the north and introduced Bronze culture among them.

This development of the Alpines at the expense of the Mediterraneans had a permanent influence in western Europe, but in the north their impress was of a more temporary character. It is probable that in the first instance they were able to conquer the Nordics by reason of the superiority of bronze weapons to stone hatchets. But no sooner had they imparted the knowledge of the manufacture and use of metal weapons and tools to the Nordics than the latter turned on their conquerors and completely mastered them, as appears on the next map.