The recent article by Parsons entitled “Anthropological Observations on German Prisoners of War,” contains an interesting reference, on p. 26, to the resurgence of Alpine types in central Europe.
CHAPTER IV. THE ALPINE RACE
134 : 1. There seem to have been at least three distinct types of Alpines, one with a broad head and developed occiput typical of western Europe, a second with a flat occiput and a high crown, represented by such peoples as the Armenoids of Asia Minor, and a third, of which little notice has been taken, except by such men as Zaborowski (2) and Fleure and James, pp. 137 seq. This third type is encountered here and there in nests which “stretch at least from southern Italy to Ireland, by way of the Straits of Gibraltar and across France by the dolmen line.” Fleure and James may be quoted for the following discussion. “Questions naturally arise as to the homologies of this type, and its distribution beyond the line here mentioned. If we had the type in Britain, by itself, we should be inclined to connect it with the general population of Central Europe, the dark, broad-headed Alpine type. We should, however, retain a little hesitation about this, as our type is sometimes of extraordinary strength of build and, while often fairly short, it is occasionally outstandingly tall; moreover, the hair is frequently quite black, and this is not on the whole an Alpine character. But, when we note the coastal distribution of this type, our hesitation is much increased, for the Alpine type has spread typically along the mountain flanks and its characteristic rarity in Britain is evidence of how little it has followed the sea.
“We cannot but wonder also whether what Deniker calls the Atlanto-Mediterranean type is not a result of averaging these dark broad-heads with the true Mediterranean type.
“Seeking further distributional evidence, we find that the dark broad-heads are highly characteristic of Dalmatia and may be an old-established stock, but it would appear that this region is famous for the height of the heads there, and our type is not specially high-headed. Broad-head brunets do, however, occur farther east in Asia Minor, the Ægean, and Crete, for example. Many are certainly hypsicephalic, but in others it seems that the brow and head are moderate and the forehead rather rectangular, as in our type....
“It is interesting that there should be evidence of our dark broad-heads beyond the Irish end of the line now discussed, the line of intercourse which Déchellette thinks must be older than the Bronze Age. The chief evidences for the type beyond Ireland are:
“1. Ripley (p. 309) shows that a dark, broad-headed element is present in Shetland, West Caithness, and East Sutherland. This is sometimes called the Old Black Breed.
“2. Arbo finds the coast and external openings of the more southerly Norwegian fjords have a broad-headed population, whereas the inner ends of the fjords and the interior are more dolichocephalic. The broad-heads stretch from Trondhjemsfjord southward, and from their exclusively coastwise distribution he supposes them to have come across from the British Isles.
“The population is darker than the rest of Norway and its area of distribution, as Dr. Stuart Mackintosh has kindly pointed out to us, is, like that of the same type in the British Isles, characterized by a pelagic climate.”
Von Luschan has fully discussed the Armenoid type in his Early Inhabitants of Western Asia, and with E. Petersen, in Reisen in Lykien, Milyas, und Kibyratis. A special study was made by Chantre in his Recherches anthropologiques dans l’Asie occidentale.