FIG. 90.—Same subject as Fig. [89], seen in profile.
The period extending from the second to the sixth century of the Christian era comprises the great historic epoch of the “migrations of peoples.” In this period we see the Slavs spreading in all directions: towards the Baltic, beyond the Elbe, into the basin of the Danube and beyond, into the Balkan peninsula; this movement determined that of the Germans, who invaded the south-east of England (Angles, Saxons, Jutes), Belgium, the north-east of France (Franks), Switzerland, and Alsace (Alemanni), the south of Germany (Bavarians), and spread even beyond the Alps (Longobards). The Celts in their turn pushed the Iberians farther and farther into the south-west of France and Spain, while the Italo-Celts absorbed little by little the rest of the Etruscans and Ligurians. Towards the end of this period a final wave of invasion, that of the Huns (fifth century), the Avars (sixth), and other allied tribes, once more threw Europe into a state of perturbation; they spread out into the plains of Champagne, then drew back, severed the Slavs into two groups (northern and southern), and subsided in the plains of Hungary, already partly occupied for several centuries by the Dacians. Almost at the same time the Bulgarians removed from the banks of the Volga to both sides of the Danube. After the sixth century other ethnic movements, less general, but not less important, occurred in every part of Europe. In the eighth or ninth century the invasion of the Varecks (Scandinavians or Letts?) took place in the north-west of Russia. In the ninth century the Hungarians, pushed by the tribes of the Pechenecks and the Polovtsis who invaded the south of Russia, crossed the Carpathians and settled in the valley of the Tissa. From the ninth or tenth century, the Normans or Northmen (Danes, Scandinavians) established themselves in the north and east of the British Isles as well as the north of France, a part of which still bears their name. Almost at the same time (tenth to eleventh century) the Arabs made themselves masters of the Iberian peninsula, of Southern Italy and Sicily; they maintained their position to the south of the Guadalquivir until the fifteenth century. In the twelfth century the Germans drove back the western Slavs to the banks of the Vistula, which led to the expansion of the eastern Slavs towards the north-east at the expense of the Finnish tribes. In the thirteenth century came the Mongols, or rather the Turco-Mongolian hordes; they occupied the whole of Russia (as far as Novgorod in the north), and penetrated into Europe as far as Liegnitz in Silesia. They soon withdrew from Western Europe, but remained until the fifteenth century in the east of Russia, and even until the eighteenth century in the Crimea and the steppes of southern Russia. Finally, the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries witnessed the invasion of the Osmanli Turks into the Balkan peninsula, Hungary, and even into lower Austria, as well as the migrations of the Little Russians into the upper basin of the Dnieper. About the sixteenth century began the definite movement of the Little Russians towards the steppes of Southern Russia, and the slow but sure march of the Great Russians beyond the Volga, the Ural mountains, and farther, into Siberia—a movement which continues in our own time. We can only mention other migrations or colonisations of a more limited range, that of the Illyrians and Albanians into Southern Italy, that of the Germans in Hungary and Russia, etc., as well as the arrival of non-European peoples, Gypsies and Jews, who are scattered at the present day among all the nations of our continent.
II.—EUROPEAN RACES OF THE PRESENT DAY.
Setting out from the fact that the peoples or nations of Europe, like those of the rest of the earth for the matter of that, are formed of the intermixture in varying proportions of different races or varieties (see the Introduction), I have endeavoured, by grouping the exact characters, carefully abstracted from many million individuals, relating to stature, form of head, pigmentation, and other somatic particulars, to determine the constituent elements of these intermixtures. I have thus succeeded in distinguishing the existence of six principal and of four secondary races, the combinations of which, in various proportions, constitute the different “European peoples” properly so called, distinct from the peoples of other races, Lapp, Ugrian, Turkish, Mongolian, etc., which are likewise met with in Europe.[370]
Here, in short, are the characters and geographical distribution of those races which, in order to avoid every interpretation drawn from linguistic, historical, or nationalist considerations, I describe according to their principal physical characters, or for the sake of brevity, according to the geographical names of the regions in which these races are best represented or least crossed.
FIG. 91.—Young Sussex farmer. Dolichocephalic, fair. Northern race.
(After Beddoe.)
We have in Europe, to begin with, two fair-haired races, one dolichocephalic, of very tall stature (Northern race), and another, sub-brachycephalic, comparatively short (Eastern race). Then four dark-haired races: two of short stature, one of which (Ibero-insular) is dolichocephalic, the other (Cevenole or Western) brachycephalic; and two of high stature, of which one is sub-dolichocephalic (Littoral), the other brachycephalic (Adriatic). Among the four secondary races two have a relation to the fair-haired race, while the two others may be considered as intermediate between the fair and dark-haired races (see [Map 2]). I now give a few details respecting these races.