(Lowell Institute Lectures, 1896.)
By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. D.,
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
SUPPLEMENT.—THE JEWS (continued).
Tradition has long divided the Jewish people into two distinct branches: the Sephardim, or southern, and the Ashkenazim, or north, European. Mediæval legend among the Jews themselves traced the descent of the first from the tribe of Judah; the second, from that of Benjamin. The Sephardim are mainly the remnants of the former Spanish and Portuguese Jews. They constitute in their own eyes an aristocracy of the nation. They are found primarily to-day in Africa; in the Balkan states, where they are known as Spagnuoli; less purely in France and Italy. A small colony in London and Amsterdam still holds itself aloof from all communion and intercourse with its brethren. The Ashkenazim branch is numerically far more important, for the German, Russian, and Polish Jews comprise over nine tenths of the people, as we have already seen in our preceding article.
Early observers all describe these two branches of the Jews as very different in appearance. Vogt, in his Lectures on Man, assumes the Polish type to be descended from Hindu sources, while the Spanish alone he held to be truly Semitic. Weisbach[11] gives us the best description of the Sephardim Jew as to-day found at Constantinople. He is slender in habit, he says; almost without exception the head is "exquisitely" elongated and narrow, the face a long oval; the nose hooked and prominent, but thin and finely chiseled; hair and eyes generally dark, sometimes, however, tending to a reddish blond. This rufous tendency in the Oriental Jew is emphasized by many observers. Dr. Beddoe[12] found red hair as frequent in the Orient as in Saxon England, although later results do not fully bear it out.[13] This description of a reddish Oriental type corresponds certainly to the early representations of the Saviour; it is the type, in features, perhaps, rather than hair, painted by Rembrandt—the Sephardim in Amsterdam being familiar to him, and appealing to the artist in preference to the Ashkenazim type. This latter is said to be characterized by heavier features in every way. The mouth, it is alleged, is more apt to be large, the nose thickish at the end, less often clearly Jewish, perhaps. The lips are full and sensual, offering an especial contrast to the thin lips of the Sephardim. The complexion is swarthy oftentimes, the hair and eyes very constantly dark, without the rufous tendency which appears in the other branch. The face is at the same time fuller, the breadth corresponding to a relatively short and round head.
Does this contrast of the traditional Sephardim and Ashkenazim facial types correspond to the anthropometric criteria by means of which we have analyzed the various populations of Europe? And, first of all, is there the difference of head form between the two which our descriptions imply?[14] And, if so, which represents the primitive Semitic type of Palestine? The question is a crucial one. It involves the whole matter of the original physical derivation of the people, and the rival claims to purity of descent of the two branches of the nation. In preceding papers we have learned that western Asia is quite uniformly characterized by an exceeding broad-headedness, the cephalic index—that is to say, the breadth of the head in percentage of the length from front to back—often rising to 86. This is especially marked in Asia Minor, where some of the broadest and shortest crania in the world are to be found. The Armenians, for example, are so peculiar in this respect that their heads appear almost deformed, so flattened are they at the back. A head of the description appears in the case of our Jew from Ferghanah on our second portrait page, [344]. On the other hand, the peoples of African or negroid derivation form a radical contrast, their heads being quite long and narrow, with indices ranging from 75 to 78. This is the type of the living Arab to-day. Its peculiarity appears in the prominence of the occipital region in our Arab and other African portraits. Scientific research upon these Arabs has invariably yielded harmonious results. From the Canary Islands,[15] all across northern Africa,[16] to central Arabia itself,[17] the cephalic indices of the nomadic Arabs agree closely. They denote a head form closely allied to that of the long-headed Iberian races, typified in the modern Spaniards, south Italians, and Greeks. It was the head form of the ancient Phœnicians and Egyptians also, as has recently been proved beyond all question.[18] Thus does the European Mediterranean type shade off in head form, as in complexion also, into the primitive anthropological type of the negro. The situation being thus clearly defined, it should be relatively easy to trace our modern Jews, if, indeed, as has so long been assumed, they have remained a pure and undefiled race during the course of their incessant migrations. We should be able to trace their origin if they possess any distinctive head form, either to the one continent or the other, with comparative certainty.
| Authority. | Place. | Number. | Cephalic Index | |
| Lombroso, 1894 a | Turin, Italy. | 112 | 82.0 | |
| Weisbach, '77 | Balkan states. | 19 | 82.2 | |
| Majer and Kopernicki, '77 | Galicia. | 316 | 83.6 | |
| Blechmann, '82 | W. Russia. | 100 | 83.2 | |
| Stieda, '83 (Dybowski) | Minsk, Russia. | 67 | 82.2 | |
| Ikof, '84 | Russia. | 120 | 83.2 | |
| Ikof, '84 | Constantinople. | 17 crania | 74.5 | |
| Ikof, '84 | Crimea. | 30 crania (Karaim). | 83.3 | |
| Majer and Kopernicki,'85 | Galicia. | 100 | 81.7 | |
| Jacobs, '90 | England. | 363 | 80.0 | |
| Jacobs, '90 | England (Sephardim). | 51 | ||
| Talko-Hyrncewicz, '92 | Lithuania. | 713 | ||
| Chantre, '95 | Caucasia. | 34 | 85.0 | |
| Weissenberg, '95 | South Russia. | 100 | 82.5 | |
| Weissenberg, '95 | South Russia. | 50 women. | 82.4 | |
| Glück, '96 | Bosnia (Spagnuoli). | 55 | 80.1 | |
| Livi, '96 | Italy. | 34 | 81.6 | |
| Elkind, '97 | Poland. | 325 | { | Men, 81.9 Women, 82.9 |
| Deniker, '98 | Daghestan. | 19 | 87.0 | |
During the last quarter of a century about twenty-five hundred Jews have submitted their heads to scientific measurement. These have naturally for the most part been taken from the Great Russian and Polish branch; a few observers, as Lombroso, Ikof, Jacobs, Glück, and Livi, have taken observations upon a more or less limited number from southern Europe. For purposes of comparison we have reproduced in our footnote a summary of all the results obtained thus far. Inspection of the table shows a surprising uniformity. Ikof's limited series of Spagnuoli from Constantinople, and that of the Jews from Caucasia and Daghestan, are the only ones whose cephalic index lies outside the limits of 80 to 83. In other words, the Jews, wherever found in Europe, betray a remarkable similarity in head form, the crania being considerably broader than among the peoples of Teutonic descent. As we know, the extremes of head form in Europe, measured by the cephalic index, extend from 74 to 89; we thus observe that the Jews take a place rather high in the European series. They are about like the northern French and southern Germans. More important still, they seem to be generally very closely akin in head form to the people among whom they reside. Thus, in Russia and Poland scarcely an appreciable difference exists in this respect between Jews and Christians. The same is true in Turin, while in the direction of Asia our Jews are as bullet-headed as even the most typical Armenians and Caucasians round about them.
African Semitic Types.