II.] HISTORIC TIMES AND PEOPLES. 33 



roundings are well worth the attention of those anthropologists 

 who attach little importance to anything except the osseous frame- 

 work. " We recognise the fact that each of these groups belongs 

 to a definite zone, a geographical province in which we have 

 to seek the centre of their origin, or rather of their present 

 specialised forms." He also quotes Bastian's remark that in order 

 to discover this centre we should not travel beyond the typical 

 geographical groups, lest in the search for absolute beginnings we 

 may again be plunged into the mythologies. 



This fear has now been removed by Dr Dubois' discovery, and 

 in other respects Ehrenreich's essay may be accepted as a timely 

 corrective of the somewhat extravagant and contradictory views 1 

 current, especially in France and Italy, on the supreme and even 

 exclusive importance of the craniological factor. We shall have to 

 return to the battle of the long-heads and the round-heads. It 

 will then be seen that too much importance need not be attached 

 to discussions, which threaten again to involve ethnological studies 

 in the chaos from which they were rescued by the establishment of 

 evolutionary principles towards the middle of the nineteenth 

 century. 



It seems obvious that in dealing with the difficult question of 

 " Man Past and Present " light should be sought in 

 all quarters. We cannot afford to neglect any of classification!" 

 the factors entering into the problem of human 

 origins and later developments. Hence in the broad groupings, 

 which are- here adopted, and which are based on the treatment of 

 the Primary Divisions in the second part of the Ethnology, 

 due weight is given to all available data physical and mental 



1 How antagonistic they are may be judged from the attitude of Prof. 

 Sergi, leader of the Italian school, towards M. de Lapouge, founder of the 

 new French craniology, all of whose views regarding skull modifications are 

 summarily dismissed as "fantastic," while his own belief in the persistence of 

 skull types is reiterated in the strongest language. " Lapouge is unfortunately 

 bitten by the Ligurian brachycephalism [the theory that the Ligurians were 

 round-headed]... but all the theories advanced by him on the development 

 of cranial forms from prehistoric to present time I hold without more ado 

 to be fantastic" ( Ur sprung des Mittelldndischen Stammes, Leipzig, 1897, 

 P- 63). 



K - 3 



