THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 463 



the contact of two distinct cultures is to produce stratification. 

 The common people become the conservators of the old ; the 

 upper classes hold to the new. It is a case of folklore and super- 

 stition versus progressive ideas. Here, as in respect of language, 

 arts and customs become reliable as a test of race only when 

 found fixed in the soil or in some other way prevented from mi- 

 gration. 



Furthermore, let us not attach too much importance to the 

 statements of historical and classical writers in their accounts of 

 migrations and of conquests. We should beware of the travelers' 

 tales of the ancients. Pliny describes a people of Africa with no 

 heads and with eyes and mouth in the breast a statement which 

 to the anthropologist appears to be open to the suspicion of exag- 

 geration. Even when conquest has undoubtedly taken place, it 

 does not imply a change of physical type in the region affected. 

 We are dealing with great masses of men near the soil to whom 

 it matters little whether the emperor be Macedonian, Roman, or 

 Turk. Till comparatively recent times the peasantry of Europe 

 were as little affected by changes of dynasty as the Chinese people 

 have been touched by the recent war in the East. To them per- 

 sonally, victory or defeat meant little except a change of tax- 

 gatherers. 



In this connection it should be borne in mind that conquest 

 often affected but a small area of each country namely, its rich- 

 est and most populous portions. The foreigner seldom pene- 

 trated the outlying districts. He went, as did the Spaniards in 

 South America, where gold was gathered in the great cities. 

 France, as we know, was affected very unevenly by the Roman 

 conquest. It was not the portion nearest to Rome, but the rich- 

 est though remote one, which yielded to the Roman rule to the 

 greatest extent. At all events, the Roman colonists in Gaul and 

 Brittany have disappeared, to leave no trace. The Vandals in 

 Africa have left no sign neither hide nor hair, in a literal sense 

 nor is there evidence of the long English rule in Aquitaine. 

 The Burgundian kingdom was changed merely in respect to its 

 rulers ; and spots in Italy like Benevento, ruled by the Lombards 

 for five hundred years, are to-day precisely like all the region 

 round about them. 



The truth is that migrations or conquests to be physically 

 effective must be domestic and not military. Colonization must 

 take place by wholesale, and it must include men, women, and 

 children. The Roman conquests seldom proceeded thus, in sharp 

 contrast to the people of the East, who migrated in hordes, colo- 

 nizing incidentally on the way. England was not affected by her 

 Roman invasion, nor until the Teutons came by thousands. In 

 anthropology as in jurisprudence, possession is nine points of 



