Leaving aside for the moment the Lapps, to whom I shall return, there does not appear to have been at any time a really pigmy race in Europe, so far as any discoveries which have been made up to the present time show. Professor Topinard, whose authority upon this point cannot be gainsaid, informs me that the smallest race known to him in Central Europe is that of the pre-historic people of the Lozère, who were Neolithic troglodytes, and are represented probably at the present day by some of the peoples of South Italy and Sardinia. Their average stature was about five feet two inches. This closely corresponds with what is known of the stature of the Platycnemic race of Denbighshire, the Perthi-Chwareu. Busk[A] says of them that they were of low stature, the mean height, deduced from the lengths of the long bones, being little more than five feet. As both sexes are considered together in this description, it is fair to give the male a stature of about five feet two inches,[B] It also corresponds with the stature assigned by Pitt-Rivers to a tribe occupying the borders of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire during the Roman occupation, the average height of whose males and females was five feet two and a half inches and four feet ten and three-quarter inches respectively.
[Footnote A: Jour. Ethn. Soc., 1869-70, p. 455.]
[Footnote B: Since these pages were printed, Prof. Kollmann, of Basle, has described a group of Neolithic pigmies as having existed at Schaffhausen. The adult interments consisted of the remains of full-grown European types and of small-sized people. These two races were found interred side by side under precisely similar conditions, from which he concludes that they lived peaceably together, notwithstanding racial difference. Their stature (about three feet six inches) may be compared with that of the Veddahs in Ceylon. Prof. Kollmann believes that they were a distinct species of mankind.]
Dr. Rahon,[A] who has recently made a careful study of the bones of pre-historic and proto-historic races, with special reference to their stature, states that the skeletons attributed to the most ancient and to the Neolithic races are of a stature below the middle height, the average being a little over five feet three inches. The peoples who constructed the Megalithic remains of Roknia and of the Caucasus, were of a stature similar to our own. The diverse proto-historic populations, Gauls, Franks, Burgundians, and Merovingians, considered together, present a stature slightly superior to that of the French of the present day, but not so much so as the accounts of the historians would have led us to believe.
[Footnote A: Recherches sur les Ossements Humaines, Anciens et Préhistonques. Mém. de la Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris, Sér, ii. tom. iv. 403.]
It remains now to deal with two races whose physical characters are of considerable importance in connection with certain points which will be dealt with in subsequent pages, I mean the Lapps and the Innuit or Eskimo.
The Lapps, according to Karonzine,[A] one of their most recent describers, are divisible into two groups, Scandinavian and Russian, the former being purer than the latter race. The average male stature is five feet, a figure which corresponds closely with that obtained by Mantegazza and quoted by Topinard. The extremes obtained by this observer amongst men were, on the one hand, five feet eight inches, and on the other four feet four inches. As, however, in a matter of this kind we have to deal with averages and not with extremes, we must conclude that the Lapps, though a stunted race, are not pigmies, in the sense in which the word is scientifically employed.
[Footnote A: L'Anthropologie, ii. 80.]
The Innuit or Eskimo were called by the original Norse explorers "Skraelingjar," or dwarfs, a name now converted by the Innuit into "karalit," which is the nearest approach that they are able to make phonetically to the former term. They are certainly, on the average, a people of less than middle stature, yet they can in no sense be described as Pigmies. Their mean height is five feet three inches. Nansen[A] says of them, "It is a common error amongst us in Europe to think of the Eskimo as a diminutive race. Though no doubt smaller than the Scandinavian peoples, they must be reckoned amongst the middle-sized races, and I even found amongst those of purest breeding men of nearly six feet in height."
[Footnote A: Eskimo Life, p. 20.]