Whatever may be thought of the ancients, the modern Greeks are strongly brunet in all respects. Ornstein ('79) found less than ten per cent of light hair, although blue and gray eyes were characteristic of rather more than a quarter of his seventeen hundred and sixty-seven recruits. This accords with expectation, for among the Albanians, next neighbors and most intrusive aliens in Greece, light eyes are quite common. Weisbach's ('82) data confirm this, ninety-six per cent of his Greeks being pure brunets.[18] In stature these people are intermediate between the Turks and the Albanians and Dalmatians, which latter are among the tallest of Europeans. In facial features Nicolucci's early opinion seems to be confirmed, that the Greek face is distinctively orthognathous—that is to say, with a vertical profile, the lower parts of the face being neither projecting nor prominent. The face is generally of a smooth oval, rather narrow and high, especially as compared with the round-faced Slavs. The nose is thin and high, perhaps more often finely chiseled and straight in profile. The facial features seem to be well demonstrated in the classic statuary, although it is curious, as Stephanos observes, that these ideal heads are distinctly brachycephalic. Either the ancient sculptors knew little of anthropology, or else we have again a confirmation of our assertion that, however conscious of their peculiar facial traits a people may be, the head form is a characteristic whose significance is rarely recognized.
Linguistically the pure Slavs in the Balkan states comprise only the Serbo-Croatians and the Albanians (see map), dividing between them the ancient territory of Illyria. This western half of the peninsula, rugged and remote, has been relatively little exposed to the direct ravages of either Finnic or Turkish invaders. Especially is this true of Albania. Nearly all authorities since Hahn are agreed in identifying these latter people—who call themselves Skipetars, by the way—as the modern representatives of the ancient Illyrians. They are said to have been Slavonized by the Serbo-Croatians, who have been generally regarded as descendants of the settlers brought by the Emperor Heraclius from beyond the Save. This he is said to have done in order to repopulate the lands devastated by the Avars and other Slavs who, Procopius informs us, first appeared in this region in the sixth century of our era. The settlers imported by Heraclius came, we are told, from two distant places: Old Servia, or Sorabia, placed by Freeman in modern Saxony; and Chrobatia, which, he says, lies in southwestern Poland. According to this view, the Serbo-Croatians are an offshoot from the northern Slavs, being divided from them to-day by the intrusive Hungarians, while the Albanians alone are truly indigenous to the country.
The recent political fate of these Illyrian peoples has been quite various, the Albanians alone preserving their independence continually under the merely nominal rule of the Turks. Religion, also, has affected these Slavs in various ways. Servia owes much of its present peace and prosperity to the practical elimination of the Moslems. Bosnia is still largely Mohammedan, with about a third of its people, according to White ('86), still professing that religion. The significance of this is increased, since it was mainly the upper classes in Bosnia, according to Freeman, who embraced the religion of Islam in order to preserve their power and estates. The conversion was not national, as in the case of the Albanians. Thus social and religious segregation work in harmony to produce discord. With multitudes of Jews monopolizing the commerce of the country and the people thus divided socially as well as in religion, the political unrest in Bosnia certainly seems to require the strong arm of Austrian suzerainty to preserve order.
Whatever the theory of the historians as to origins may be, to the anthropologist the modern Illyrians—Serbo-Croatians and Albanians alike—are physically a unit. Two characteristics render this ethnic group distinctive: first, that it comprises some of the tallest men in the world, comparing favorably with the Scotch in this respect; and, secondly, that the Illyrians tend to be among the broadest-headed people known. In general, it would appear that the people, of Herzegovina and northern Albania possess these traits to the most notable degree, while both in the direction of the Save and Danube and of the plains of Thessaly and Epirus they have been attenuated by intermixture. Presumably also toward the east among the Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace these characteristics diminish in intensity. Thus, for example, while the Herzegovinians, measured by Weisbach, yielded an average stature of five feet nine inches, the Bosnians were appreciably shorter; and the Dalmatians and Albanians were even more so. Nevertheless, as compared with the Greeks, Bulgars, Turks, or Roumanians, even the shortest of these Slavs stood high. From this specific center outward, especially around the head of the Adriatic Sea, over into Venetia, spreads the influence of this giantism. It confirms, as we have said, the classical theory of an Illyrian cross among the Venetians, extending well up into the Tyrol.
As for the second trait, the exaggerated broad-headedness, it too, like the tallness of stature, seems to center about Herzegovina and Montenegro. Thus at Scutari, in the corner of Albania near this last-named country, Zampa[19] found a cranial index of 89; in Herzegovina the index upon the living head ranges above 87. It would be difficult to exceed this brachycephaly anywhere in the world. The square foreheads and broad faces of the people correspond in every way to the shape of the heads. Its significance appears immediately on comparison with the long oval faces of the Greeks.
One more trait of the Balkan Slavs remains for us to note. The people are mainly pure brunets, as we might expect, but they seem to be less dark than either the Greeks or the Turks. Especially among the Albanians are light traits by no means infrequent. In this respect the contrast with the Greeks is apparent, as well as with the Dalmatians along the coast and the Italians in the same latitude across the Adriatic. Weisbach found nearly ten per cent of blond and red hair among his Bosnian soldiers, while about one third of the eyes were either gray or blue. The Herzegovinians are even lighter than the Bosnians, almost as much so as the Albanians. From consideration of these facts it would appear as if the harsh climate of these upland districts had been indeed influential in setting off the inland peoples from the Italian-speaking Dalmatians along the coast. For among the latter brunetness certainly increases from north to south, conformably to the general rule for the rest of Europe. In the interior, blondness apparently moves in the contrary direction, culminating in the mountain fastnesses of northern Albania and the vicinity. On the whole, we find also in this trait of brunetness competent evidence to connect these Illyrians with the great body of the Alpine race farther to the west. We have another illustration of its determined predilection for a mountainous habitat, in which it stoutly resists all immigrant tendencies toward variation from its primitive type.
The Osmanli Turks, who politically dominate the Balkan Peninsula, notwithstanding their numerical insignificance, are mainly distinctive among their neighbors by reason of their speech and religion. Turkish is the westernmost representative of a great group of languages, best known, perhaps, as the Ural-Altaic family.[20] This comprises all those of northern Asia even to the Pacific Ocean, together with that of the Finns in Russian Europe. Its members are by no means unified physically. All varieties of type are included within its boundaries, from the tall and blond one which we may call Finnic, prevalent about the Baltic; to the squat and swarthy Kalmucks and Kirghez, to whom we have in a physical sense applied the term Mongols. The Turkish branch of this great family of languages is to-day represented in eastern Europe by two peoples, whom we may roughly distinguish as Turks and Tatars.[21] The term Tatar, it should be observed, is entirely of European invention, like the similar word Hungarian. The only name recognized by the Osmanli themselves is that of Turk. This, by the way, seems quite aptly to be derived from a native root meaning "brigand," according to Chantre. They apply the word Tatar solely to the north Asiatic barbarians. By general usage this latter term, Tatar, has to-day become more specifically applied by ethnologists to the scattered peoples of Asiatic descent and Turkish speech who are mainly to be found in Russia and Asia Minor.
