To the west of them, and merged with them, lie the Alpines, also characterized by dark, but not straight, hair, dark eyes, relatively short stature, and round skulls. These Alpines are thrust like a wedge into Europe between the Nordics and the Mediterraneans, with a tip that reaches the Atlantic Ocean. Those of western Europe are derived from one or more very ancient waves of round-skulled invaders from the East, who probably came by way of Asia Minor and the Balkans, but they have been so long in their present homes that they retain little except their brachycephalic skull-shape to connect them with the Asiatic Mongols.
South of the Himalayas and westward in a narrow belt to the Atlantic, and on both sides of the Inland Sea, lies the Mediterranean race, more or less swarthy-skinned, black-haired, dark-eyed, and long-skulled.
On the northwest, grouped around the Baltic and North Seas, lies the great Nordic race. It is characterized by a fair white skin, wavy hair with a range of color from dark brown to flaxen, light eyes, tall stature, and long skulls.
These races show other physical characters which are definite but difficult to describe, such as texture of skin and cast of features, especially of the nose. The contrast of mental and spiritual endowments is equally definite, but even more elusive of definition.
It is with the action and interaction of these three groups, together with internal civil wars, that recorded history deals.
While, so far as we know, these three races have occupied their present relative positions from the beginning, there have been profound changes in their distribution.
The two essential phenomena, however, are, first, the retreat of the Nordic race westward from the Grasslands of western Asia and eastern Europe to the borders of the Atlantic, until it occupies a relatively small area on the periphery of Eurasia.
The second phenomenon is of equal importance, namely, the more or less thorough Nordicizing of the westernmost extensions of the other two races, namely, the Mediterranean on the north coast of the Inland Sea, who have been completely Aryanized in speech, and have been again and again saturated with Nordic blood, and the even more profound Nordicization in speech and in blood of the short, dark, round-skulled inhabitants of central Europe, from Brittany through central France, southern Germany, and northern Italy into Austrian and Balkan lands. So thorough has been this process that the western Alpines have at the present time no separate race consciousness and are to be considered as wholly European.
As to the Alpines of eastern and central Europe, the Slavs, the case is somewhat different. East of a line drawn from the Adriatic to the Baltic the Nordicizing process has been far less perfect, although nearly complete as to speech, since all the Slavic languages are Aryan. Throughout these Slavic lands, great accessions of pure Mongoloid blood have been introduced within relatively recent centuries.
East of this belt of imperfectly Nordicized Alpines we reach the Asiatic Alpines, as yet entirely untouched by western blood or culture. These groups merge into the Mongoloids of eastern Asia.