The so-called blondness of the hairy Ainus of the northern islands of Japan seems to be due to a trace of what might be called Proto-Nordic blood. In hairiness these people are in sharp contrast with their Mongoloid neighbors but this is a generalized character common to the highest and the lowest races of man. The primitive Australoids and the highly specialized Scandinavians are among the most hairy populations in the world. So in the Ainus this somatological peculiarity is merely the retention of a primitive trait. The occasional brown or greenish eye and the sometimes fair complexion of the Ainus are, however, suggestive of Nordic affinities and of an extreme easterly extension of Proto-Nordics at a very early period.

The skull shape of the Ainus is dolichocephalic or mesaticephalic, while the broad cheek bones indicate a Mongolian cross as among the Esquimaux. The Ainus, like many other small, mysterious peoples, are probably merely the remnants of one of the early races that are fast fading into extinction. The division of man into species and subspecies is very ancient and the chief races of the earth are the successful survivors of a long and fierce competition. Many species, subspecies and races have vanished utterly, except for reversional characters occasionally found in the larger races.

The only Nordics in Asia Minor, so far as we know, were the Phrygians who crossed the Hellespont about 1400 B. C. as part of the same migration which brought the Achæans into Greece, the Cimmerians who entered by the same route and also through the Caucasus about 650 B. C. and still later, in 270 B. C., the Gauls who, coming from northern Italy through Thrace, founded Galatia. So far as our present information goes little or no trace of these invasions remains in the existing populations of Anatolia. The expansions of the Persians and the Aryanization of their empire and the conquests of the Nordics east and south of the Caspian-Aral Sea, will be discussed in connection with the spread of Aryan languages.

XI
RACIAL APTITUDES

Such are the three races, the Alpine, the Mediterranean and the Nordic, which enter into the composition of European populations of to-day and in various combinations comprise the great bulk of white men all over the world. These races vary intellectually and morally just as they do physically. Moral, intellectual and spiritual attributes are as persistent as physical characters and are transmitted substantially unchanged from generation to generation. These moral and physical characters are not limited to one race but given traits do occur with more frequency in one race than in another. Each race differs in the relative proportion of what we may term good and bad strains, just as nations do, or, for that matter, sections and classes of the same nation.

In considering skull characters we must remember that, while indicative of independent descent, the size and shape of the head are not closely related to brain power. Aristotle was a Mediterranean if we may trust the authenticity of his busts and had a small, long skull, while Humboldt’s large and characteristically Nordic skull was equally dolichocephalic. Socrates and Diogenes were apparently quite un-Greek and represent remnants of some early race, perhaps of Paleolithic man. The history of their lives indicates that each was recognized by his fellow countrymen as in some degree alien, just as the Jews apparently regarded Christ as, in some indefinite way, non-Jewish.

Mental, spiritual and moral traits are closely associated with the physical distinctions among the different European races, although like somatological characters, these spiritual attributes have in many cases gone astray. Enough remain, however, to show that certain races have special aptitudes for certain pursuits.

The Alpine race is always and everywhere a race of peasants, an agricultural and never a maritime race. In fact they only extend to salt water at the head of the Adriatic and, like all purely agricultural communities throughout Europe, tend toward democracy, although they are submissive to authority both political and religious being usually Roman Catholics in western Europe. This race is essentially of the soil and in towns the type is mediocre and bourgeois.

The coastal and seafaring populations of northern Europe are everywhere Nordic as far as the shores of Spain and among Europeans this race is pre-eminently fitted for maritime pursuits. Enterprise at sea during the Middle Ages was in the hands of Mediterraneans just as it was originally developed by Cretans, Phœnicians and Carthaginians but after the Reformation the Nordics seized and occupied this field almost exclusively.

The Nordics are, all over the world, a race of soldiers, sailors, adventurers and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organizers and aristocrats in sharp contrast to the essentially peasant and democratic character of the Alpines. The Nordic race is domineering, individualistic, self-reliant and jealous of their personal freedom both in political and religious systems and as a result they are usually Protestants. Chivalry and knighthood and their still surviving but greatly impaired counterparts are peculiarly Nordic traits, and feudalism, class distinctions and race pride among Europeans are traceable for the most part to the north.