It was a branch of tall Mongols, with a slight admixture of Alpines, that crossed into America from Asia and became the ancestors of the American Indians, who are of substantial height, often with prominent, almost hawklike noses and high cheek bones.
We might mention here the Malays, who are essentially Mongols and who pushed down into Indo-China and throughout the Malay Peninsula. There are many traces of their blood in Polynesia. This expansion was relatively recent and in those localities there are everywhere indications of earlier races, especially of the very ancient Negroid types known as Negritos. These Malays extended through the Philippines as far north as Japan, where they met and mingled with a stream of northern Mongoloid immigrants from Korea.
The Alpine domain at the present time extends from the center of France eastward in an ever widening wedge as far as the Himalayas. It includes the bulk of the population of Central France, North Italy, South Germany, Switzerland, the provinces of the recent Austrian Empire, and extends through the Balkan states, Russia, Asia Minor, and far into Asia. This race penetrated into and overran Central Europe during relatively recent times, probably at about the beginning of the Bronze Age, approximately 1800 B.C.
East and north of the Carpathians, about 400 A.D., the Alpines had a period of great expansion, chiefly at the expense of the Nordic race, whose distribution we shall discuss presently.
As the Nordic tribes moved into the Roman provinces, the lands they vacated were occupied by Alpine Slavs. All these movements may have been caused by the pressure from the east of Asiatic Mongols, who, like the Huns, were beginning their drive toward Europe. Our word slave coming from Slav reveals the social relation of these Alpines to West Europeans.
The westernmost of the Alpine Slavs were called Wends. In Charlemagne's time they occupied what is now Germany as far west as the Elbe. In its easternmost range these Alpines were called Turanians and were confused with the Mongols of Central Asia, who had again and again conquered them. The remnant of Wends in East Germany, the Bohemians, most Poles and South Slavs are all Alpines. The great mass of Russians are of this type, as well as the ancient Avars, Hunagars, Magyars, Cumans, and the Bulgars, all more or less mixed with Mongols. The Armenians are Alpines of an especially pronounced type and are probably descended from the ancient Hittites. The East European Alpines are saturated everywhere with Mongol blood, dating for the most part from their conquest by the Tatars during the thirteenth century.
The fact that Asia, north of the main mountain ranges, is pre-eminently the home of round skulls is very significant and suggests remote relationship between Alpine and Mongol.
The Alpine skull reaches a most extreme form among the Armenians, who have a very high skull, greatly flattened behind and somewhat like a sugar loaf in shape.
The division of the races of mankind based on long and round skulls is extremely ancient. We find both types among the fossil and semi-fossil skulls at the end of the Paleolithic.
The first definite appearance of round skulls mixed with long skulls is found in the burials at Offnet in Bavaria in the Azilian period at the very end of the Paleolithic, some twelve thousand years ago.