The Aryanized Afghan and Hindu of northern India speak languages derived from Old Sanskrit and are distantly related to the Mediterranean race. Aside from a common dolichocephaly these peoples are entirely distinct from the Dravidians of south India whose speech is agglutinative and who show strong evidence of profound mixture with the ancient Negrito substratum of southern Asia.
Everywhere throughout the Asiatic portion of its range the Mediterranean race overlies an even more ancient Negroid race. These Negroids still have representatives among the Pre-Dravidians of India, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Sakai of the Malay Peninsula and the natives of the Andaman Islands.
This Mediterranean subspecies at the close of the Paleolithic spread from the basin of the Inland Sea northward by way of Spain throughout westernmost Europe including the British Isles and, before the final expansion of the Alpines, was widely distributed up to and, possibly, touching the domain of the Nordic dolichocephs. The Mediterraneans did not cross the Alps from the south but spread around the mountains. In attaining to Britain from Spain by way of Central France it is probable that they swept with them Paleolithic remnants from the ancient centre of population in the Auvergne district.
In all this vast range from the British Isles to Hindustan, it is not to be supposed that there is absolute identity of race. Certain portions, however, of the populations of the countries throughout this long stretch do show in their physique clear indications of descent from a Neolithic race of a common original type, which we may call Proto-Mediterranean.
Quite apart from inevitable admixture with late Nordic and early Paleolithic elements, the brunet type of Englishman has had perhaps ten thousand years of independent evolution during which he has undergone selection due to the climatic and physical conditions of his northern habitat. The result is that he has specialized far away from the Proto-Mediterranean race which contributed his blood originally to Britain while it was, probably, still part of continental Europe.
At the other end of their range in India this race, the Mediterraneans, have been crossed with Dravidians and with Pre-Dravidian Negroids. They have also had imposed upon them other ethnic elements which came over through the Afghan passes from the northwest. The resultant racial mixture in India has had its own line of specialization. Residence in the fertile but unhealthy river bottoms, the direct rays of a tropic sun and competition with the immemorial autochthones have unsparingly weeded generation after generation until the existing Hindu has little in common with the ancestral Proto-Mediterranean.
It is to the Mediterranean race in the British Isles that the English, Scotch and Americans owe whatever brunet characters they possess. In western Europe, wherever it exists, it appears to underlie the Alpine race and, in fact, wherever this race is in contact with either the Alpines or the Nordics it would seem to represent the more ancient stratum of the population.
So far as we know this Mediterranean type never existed in Scandinavia and all brunet elements found there can be attributed to introductions in the Bronze Age or in historic times. Nor did the Mediterranean race ever enter or cross the high Alps as did the Nordics at a much later date on their way to the Mediterranean basin from the Baltic coasts.
The Mediterranean race with its Asiatic extensions is bordered everywhere on the north of its enormous range from Spain to India by round skulls but there does not seem to be as much evidence of mixture between these two subspecies of man as there is between the Alpines and the Nordics.
Along its southern boundary the Mediterraneans are in contact with either the long skulled Negroes of Africa or the ancient Negrito population of southern Asia. In Africa this race has drifted southward over the Sahara and up the Nile Valley and has modified the blood of the Negroes in both the Senegambian and equatorial regions.