| CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE[[2]] | ||
|---|---|---|
| METALS | ||
| Later Iron | ||
| La Tène Culture | Europe | 500 B. C.—Roman times |
| Early Iron | ||
| Hallstatt Culture | Europe | 1500–500 B. C. |
| Orient | 1800–1000 B. C. | |
| Bronze | Western and northern Europe | 1800–500 B. C. |
| Orient | 3000–2000 B. C. | |
| NEOLITHIC | ||
| Late Neolithic Copper, Eneolithic | 3000–2000 B. C. | |
| Typical Neolithic | Swiss lake dwellings, Robenhausian culture | 5000 B. C. |
| Early Neolithic | Campignian culture | 7000 B. C. |
| UPPER PALEOLITHIC | ||
| Postglacial | Caves and shelters: | |
| Azilian-Tardenoisian Nordic-Maglemose Furfooz-Grenelle race Proto-Mediterranean race | 10,000–7000 B. C. | |
| Magdalenian Cro-Magnon race | 16,000–10,000 B. C. | |
| Solutrean Brünn-Předmost race Cro-Magnon race | 25,000–16,000 B. C. | |
| Aurignacian Cro-Magnon race | ||
| MIDDLE PALEOLITHIC | ||
| IV. Glaciation | ||
| Würm | Mousterian Neanderthal race Caves and shelters | 50,000–25,000 B. C. |
| LOWER PALEOLITHIC | ||
| III. Interglacial | ||
| Riss-Würm | Acheulean, river terraces | 75,000 B. C. |
| Chellean, river terraces | 100,000 B. C. | |
| Pre-Chellean and Mesvinian, river terraces | 125,000 B. C. 150,000 B. C. | |
| EOLITHIC | ||
| III. Glaciation | ||
| Riss | 200,000–150,000 B. C. | |
| II. Interglacial | ||
| Mindel-Riss | Heidelberg Man | 350,000–200,000 B. C. |
| II. Glaciation | ||
| Mindel | 400,000–350,000 B. C. | |
| I. Interglacial | ||
| Günz-Mindel | 475,000–400,000 B. C. | |
| Glaciation | ||
| Günz | Pithecanthropus | 500,000–475,000 B. C. |
[2]. After Henry Fairfield Osborn, 1915.
IV
THE ALPINE RACE
The Alpine race is clearly of Eastern and Asiatic origin. It forms the westernmost extension of a widespread subspecies which, outside of Europe, occupies Asia Minor, Iran, the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush. In fact the western Himalayas were probably its original centre of evolution and radiation and among its Asiatic members is a distinct subdivision, the Armenoids.
The Alpine race is distinguished by a round face and correspondingly round skull which in the true Armenians has a peculiar sugarloaf shape, a character which can be easily recognized. The Alpines must not be confounded with the slit-eyed Mongols who centre around Thibet and the steppes of north Asia. The fact that both these races are round skulled does not involve identity of origin any more than the long skulls of the Nordics and of the Mediterraneans require that they be both considered of the same subspecies, although good anthropologists have been misled by this parallelism. The Alpines are of stocky build and moderately short stature, except sometimes where they have been crossed with Nordic elements. This race is also characterized by dark hair, except where there has been a strong Nordic admixture as in south Germany and Switzerland. In Europe at the present time the eye, also, is usually dark but sometimes grayish. The ancestral Proto-Alpines from the highlands of western Asia must, of course, have had brunet eyes and very dark, probably black, hair. Whether we are justified in considering gray eyes as peculiar to populations of mixed Alpine and Nordic blood is difficult to determine, but one thing is certain, the combination of blue eyes and flaxen hair is never Alpine.
The European Alpines retain very little evidence of their Asiatic origin except the skull shape and have been in contact with the Nordic race so long that in central and western Europe they are everywhere saturated with the blood of that race. Many populations now considered good Germans, such as the majority of the Würtembergers, Bavarians, Austrians, Swiss and Tyrolese are merely Nordicized Alpines.
While the Swiss are to-day neither tall nor long-headed, their country was thoroughly conquered early in the Christian era by the Nordic Alemanni who entered from the Rhine Valley. The exodus of soldiers from the forest cantons throughout the Middle Ages to fight as mercenaries in France and Italy gradually drained off this Nordic element until the chief evidence of its former existence lies to-day in the large amount of blondness among the Swiss. With the loss of this type the nation has ceased to be a military community.
The first appearance in Europe of the Alpines dates from the Azilian Period when it is represented by the Furfooz-Grenelle race. There were later several invasions of this race which entered Europe from the Asia Minor plateaux, by way of the Balkans and the valley of the Danube, during Neolithic times and, also, at the beginning of the Bronze Age. It appears also to have passed north of the Black Sea, as some slight traces have been discovered there of round skulls which long antedate the existing population but the Russian brachycephaly of to-day is of much later origin and is due mainly to the eastward spread of Alpines from the regions of the Carpathians since the first centuries of our era.
This race in its final expansion far to the northwest ultimately reached Norway, Denmark and Holland and planted among the dolichocephalic natives small colonies of round skulls, which still exist. These colonies are found along the coast and while of small extent are clearly marked. On the southwestern seaboard of Norway these round heads are dark and relatively short.
When this invasion reached the extreme northwest of Europe its energy was spent and the invaders were soon forced back into central Europe by the Nordics. The Alpines at this time of maximum extension about 1800 B. C. crossed into Britain and a few reached Ireland and introduced bronze into both these islands. As the metal appears about the same time in Sweden it is safe to assume that it was introduced by this invasion.