The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history

by Madison Grant

To sum up, this map shows the expansion from central Asia of the round skull Alpines across central Europe, submerging, in the south and west, the little, dark, long skulled Mediterraneans of Neolithic culture, while at the same time they pressed heavily upon the Nordics in the north and introduced Bronze culture among them.

This development of the Alpines at the expense of the Mediterraneans had a permanent influence in western Europe, but in the north their impress was of a more temporary character. It is probable that in the first instance they were able to conquer the Nordics by reason of the superiority of bronze weapons to stone hatchets. But no sooner had they imparted the knowledge of the manufacture and use of metal weapons and tools to the Nordics than the latter turned on their conquerors and completely mastered them, as appears on the next map.

The Expansion of the Pre-Teutonic Nordics, 1800–100 B. C.

The second map (Pl. II) of the series shows the shattering and submergence of the green Alpine area by the pink Nordic area. It will be noted that in Italy, Spain, France and Britain the solid green and the green dots have steadily declined and in central Europe the green has been torn apart and riddled in every direction by pink arrows and pink dots, leaving solid green only in mountainous and infertile districts. This submergence of the Alpines by the Nordics was so complete that their very existence was forgotten until in our own day it was discovered that the central core of Europe was inhabited by a short, stocky, round skulled race originally from Asia. To-day these Alpines are gradually recovering their influence in the world by sheer weight of numbers. On this map the green Alpine area is shown to be everywhere shrinking except in the countries around the Carpathians and the Dnieper River, where the Sarmatians and Wends are located. It was in this district that the Slavic-speaking Alpines were developing. Simultaneously with this expansion toward the west, south and east of the continental Nordics, the Scandinavian or Teutonic tribes appear on the scene in increasing numbers, as shown by the red area and red arrows, pressing upon and forcing ahead of them their kinsmen on the mainland.

The pink arrows in Spain show the invasion of Celtic-speaking Nordics, closely related to the Nordic Gauls who a little earlier had conquered France. This same wave of Nordic invasion crossed the Channel and appears in the pink dots of Britain and Ireland, where the intruders are known as Goidels. These early Nordics were followed some centuries later by another wave of kindred peoples who were known as Brythons or Cymry in Britain and as Belgæ on the continent. These Cymric Belgæ or Brythons probably represented the mixed descendants of the earliest Teutons who crossed from Scandinavia and had adopted and modified the Celtic languages spoken by the continental Nordics. These Cymric-speaking Nordics drove before them the earlier Gauls in France and the Goidels in Britain, but their impulse westward was very likely caused by the oncoming rush of pure Teutons from Scandinavia and the Baltic coasts.

In Italy the pink arrows entering from the west show the route of the invading Gauls, who occupied the country north of the Apennines and made it Cisalpine Gaul, while the arrows entering Italy from the northeast show the earlier invasions of the Nordic Umbrians and Oscans, who introduced Aryan speech into Italy. Farther east in Greece and the Balkans, the pink arrows show the routes of invasion of the Achæans and the kindred Phrygians of Homer as well as the later Dorians and Cimmerians. In the region of the Caucasus, the routes of the invading Persians are shown and, north of the Caspian Sea, the line of migration of the Sacæ from the grasslands of southern Russia toward the east. In the inset map in the upper right corner is shown the expansion of these Nordics into Asia, where the Sacæ and closely related Massagetæ occupied what is now Turkestan and from this centre swarmed over the mountains of Afghanistan into India and introduced Aryan speech among the swarming millions of that peninsula.

In the northern part of the main map the expansion of the Teutonic Nordics is shown, with the Goths in the east and Saxons in the west of the red area, but the salient feature is the expansion of the pink at the expense of the green and the ominous growth of the red area centring around Scandinavia in the north.

The Expansion of the Teutonic Nordics and Slavic Alpines, 100 B. C. to 1100 A. D.

This map (Pl. III) shows the yellow area greatly diminished in central and northern Europe, while it retains its supremacy in Spain and Italy as well as on the north coast of Africa. In the latter areas the green dots have nearly vanished and have been replaced by pink and red dots. In central Europe the green area is still more broken up and reduced to a minimum. In the Balkans and eastern Europe, however, two large centres of green, north and south of the Danube respectively, represent the expanding power of the Slavic-speaking Alpines. The pink area of the continental Nordics is everywhere fading and is on the point of vanishing as a distinctive type and of merging in the red. The expansion of the Teutonic Nordics from Scandinavia and from the north of Germany is now at its maximum and they are everywhere pressing through the Empire of Rome and laying the foundations of the modern nations of Europe. The Vandals have migrated from the coasts of the Baltic to what is now Hungary, then westward into France and finally, after occupying for a while southern Spain, under pressure of the kindred Visigoths to northern Africa, where they established a kingdom which is the sole example we have of a Teutonic state on that continent. The Visigoths and Suevi laid the foundations of Spain and Portugal, while the Franks, Burgundians and Normans transformed Gaul into France.