CHAPTER V
Intermixture of Races
Defoe, in his Trueborn Englishman, outlines a factor of great importance in degeneracy.[133] Race intermixture is much more common than is generally believed, owing to that ethnologic error consequent on the discovery of Sanscrit, which tests race by speech. Keane[134] excellently explodes this error by the following table:
| Peoples. | Race. | Speech. | ||
| English | Kelto-Teutonic | Teutonic | ||
| Scotch | Kelto-Teutonic | Teutonic | ||
| Cornish | Siluro-Kelto-Teutonic | Teutonic | ||
| Irish (West) | Siluro-Kelto-Teutonic | Keltic | ||
| Welsh | Siluro-Kelto-Teutonic | Keltic | ||
| French | Ibero-Kelto-Teutonic | Italic | ||
| Spanish | Ibero-Keltic | Italic | ||
| Germans | Slavo-Kelto-Teutonic | Teutonic | ||
| Bohemians | Kelto-Teuto-Slavonic | Slavonic | ||
| Russians (many) | Finno-Slavonic | Slavonic | ||
| Hungarians | Ugro-Slavonic | Slavonic | ||
| Bulgarians | Ugro-Teuto-Slavonic | Finnic | ||
| Prussians (East) | Letto-Teuto-Slavonic | Teutonic | ||
| Rumanians | Italo-Slavo-Illyric | Italic | ||
| Italians | Liguro-Kelto-Italic | Italic |
Profoundly mixed as this table indicates European races to be, it is far from representing the full extent of race mingling. The primitive worship of the Slavonic Czernebog by the Saxons in England demonstrates a Slavonic strain, derivable, as Kiernan[135] remarks, from their contact with the Wends of the Baltic. Not merely are the Aryan races of Europe mixed together, but the blood of all has a pre-Aryan and a Turanian dash. In Great Britain, as Taylor[136] and others have shown, the Iberian type is found in Wales and Scotland as well as elsewhere, though in lesser degree. These admixtures date back to palæolithic times when, although, as Keane remarks, the predominant type of skull was dolicocephalic (or long-headed), the brachycephalic (or round-headed type) had begun to appear in America, then connected by land with both Africa and Europe. In the subsequent neolithic time, while the type is at first generally brachycephalic, it soon becomes mesatocephalic (mixed long and round-headed), pure brachycephals and dolicocephals becoming rare. Vogt went so far as to maintain that were the three chief anthropoid apes developed further, two dolicocephalic and one brachycephalic type of man would result; the first two from the chimpanzee and gorilla, the last from the orang. The orang descendant would have long arms and red hair. The chimpanzee descendant would be of small size, dark colour with slender bones and jaws. The gorilla race would have massive chest, big bones, massive jaws and teeth. These three types appear in Great Britain and Ireland and traces of their blood are still detectable in living men. Sir Walter Scott draws an excellent picture of the “orang” type in Rob Roy, whose hero, according to reliable tradition, represented the Pict type. Gomme[137] has lately shown that these races persisted long enough to stamp their savage beliefs on coming races and intermingled with them. The Neolithic race in Great Britain was dark, of feeble build, short stature, with dolicocephalic skulls. This race remained to the historic period, as the Silures in Great Britain and the Firbolgs in Ireland. It had high cheek-bones and oblique eyes, as Kiernan[138] points out. Towards the middle of the neolithic period this race was conquered by a brachycephalic, tall, long-armed, muscular race, with florid complexion and yellowish or red hair.[139] Scott’s Rob Roy is an example of this type. A third race of fair complexion with prognathous face, dolicocephalic skulls, of tall stature, great bones, great chest development and massive jaws, later invaded Great Britain. While these races resemble Vogt’s hypothetical descendants of the anthropoid apes, it should be stated that there is not the slightest evidence for this line of descent. Writers who ignore these race characteristics have often brought serious criticism and even discredit on the doctrine of degeneracy. Lombroso, starting from the correct premise, that wide departure from the race type is evidence of degeneracy, erroneously cites in illustration Virchow’s departure from the German type, Byron’s departure from the English type, O’Connell’s dolicocephalic departure from the mesatocephalic Irish type, and Robert Bruce’s neanderthaloid departure from the Scandinavian type. As Kiernan has shown,[140] Virchow, as his name denotes, is a German-speaking Slavonic Wend; Byron was a Celto-Scandinavian Scotchman; O’Connell was born in a district conquered by the tall dolicocephalic race which invaded Ireland. The Bruce type of skull is still found among the purer Norwegians, Frisians, Swedes, and Danes, and was common just before his day and just after, as has been shown by Taylor.
As the intermingling of races began early, the question of the existence of pure races to-day, or even during the historic period, is an open one. The Hebrews have been comparatively pure since the return from the Captivity. Before that, as the history of Solomon’s foreign marriages demonstrates, they were a raceless chaos, the Semitic element predominating. Researches by Flinders Petrie[141] and others show that the Egyptians were a mixture of Turanians, Hamites, Aryan and Semite peoples imposed on a negroid basis. When these elements were finally fused, the race bred relatively true, although the lower classes tend to the negroid type and the higher to the Caucasic.
The Koreans, as Keane remarks, are a mixture of two primitive races, one white and one yellow. The Japanese, whose ancestors emigrated to Japan from Korea are, according to Topinard,[142] the product of the addition of three distinct types to that forming their Korean ancestors. The Caucasic to a small extent, the Polynesian to a greater, and the Malay to a still greater, are mixed with the original Korean.
The Chinese are neither a homogeneous people nor a pure race, albeit the relatively few Mantchus are dominant. The Aryan of India, on whom Max Müller laid such stress, is known to be, despite a rigid caste system, a non-Aryan race, feebly infused with a modicum of Aryan blood. The so-called “Gypsy” seems, of all the races of India, to have retained most Aryan speech and type as well as its original semi-nomadic waggon-journeying tendencies in the midst of settled civilisation. Ghetto seclusion long helped to preserve relative purity of race in the Jew, but despite vagabond surroundings the “Gypsy” has remained even purer.
Great as has been the mixture of even widely separated types like the three races described as mingling in Great Britain and Ireland, even greater admixture occurred in comparatively late historic times. The so-called Scotch-Irish (whose blood enters so largely into the dominant race of the United States) are, despite their speech (much more Teutonic and monosyllabic than English), as Kiernan[143] has shown, a raceless chaos of Gaelic and Cymric Celts, Lowland Scotch, French Huguenots, Danes (Celto-Teuto-Slaves),[144] Palatinate Germans, Magyars, English Puritans, Hollanders, Swedes, Protestant Italians, Poles, and Spaniards. The intermixture of the dark, small-boned, dolichocephalic, orthognathous (with in-drawn jaws) race first with the brachycephalic, prognathous, big-boned, red-haired race, and then with the dolichocephalic prognathous, deep-chested, big-boned, fair race, must have produced in the British Isles as marked variations in type as now occur from the admixture of the Indian and negro. These are especially noticeable in the Marshpee Indians of Cape Cod, the Long Island tribes and the “Red Bones” of South Carolina. The Marshpee tribe is an admixture of Anglo-Saxon, Portuguese, Indian, and negro. The Indian element, while still demonstrable, is lessening. Some of the older people still retain Indian characteristics. A girl of ten was negro in all respects except her hair. An adult whose mother was half white, half Marshpee, while the father is negro, had all the negro characteristics except the skin, which was Indian in type, and the jaws, which were slender. Another adult who had a negro great-grandfather, Marshpee mother, and a three-fourths Marshpee father, had large, negro-like jaws, Indian hair, skin, and cheek-bones. Another adult had a Portuguese maternal grandmother, negro grandfather, an Indian-white paternal grandmother and Indian-negro paternal grandfather. His hair, jaws, and nose were negro, his cheek-bones were high, his upper and lower jaws met so that the front teeth occluded.[145] The like condition obtains in the Long Island Indians, but to a less extent with the “Red Bones,” who, after the type was formed, avoided admixture with the negro.