THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 169 



of the Rhone-Rhine-Erankfort route. They are, no doubt, par- 

 tially in the right; but the mere geographer would rather be in- 

 clined to side with Jacques.* He doubts whether entirely artificial 

 causes, even mediaeval persecutions, would be quite competent for 

 so large a contract. There is certainly some truth in Harkavy's 

 theory, so obly championed by Ikof (1884), that a goodly propor- 

 tion of these Jews came into Poland by a direct route from the East. 

 Most Jewish scholars had placed their first appearance in southern 

 and eastern Russia, coming around the Black Sea, as early as the 

 eighth century. Ikof, however, finds them in the Caucasus and 

 Armenia one or two centuries before Christ. Then he follows them 

 around, reaching Ruthenia in the tenth and eleventh centuries, arriv- 

 ing in Poland from the twelfth to the fourteenth. The only diffi- 

 culty with this theory is, of course, that it leaves the language of 

 the Polish Jews out of consideration. This is, in both Poland and 

 Galicia, a corrupted form of German, which in itself would seem to 

 indicate a western origin. On the other hand, the probabilities, 

 judging from our graphic representation, would certainly empha- 

 size the theory of a more general eastern immigration directly from 

 Palestine north of the Black and Caspian Seas. The only remain- 

 ing mode of accounting for the large center of gravity in Russia is 

 to trace it to widespread conversions, as the historic one of the 

 Khozars. Whichever one of these theories be correct — and there is 

 probability of an equal division of truth among them all — enough 

 has been said to lead us geographically to suspect the alleged purity 

 of descent of the Ashkenazim Jew. Let us apply the tests of phys- 

 ical anthropology. 



Stature. — A noted writer, speaking of the sons of Judah, ob- 

 serves : " It is the Ghetto which has produced the Jew and the Jewish 

 race; the Jew is a creation of the European middle ages; he is the 

 artificial product of hostile legislation." This statement is fully 

 authenticated by a peculiarity of the Israelites which is everywhere 

 noticeable. The European Jews are all undersized; not only this, 

 they are more often absolutely stunted. In London they are about 

 three inches shorter than the average for the city. "Whether they 

 were always so, as in the days when the Book of Numbers (xiii, 33) 

 described them " as grasshoppers in their own sight," as compared 

 with the Amorites, sons of Anak, we leave an open question. We are 

 certain, however, as to the modern Jew. He betrays a marked con- 

 stancy in Europe at the bodily height of about five feet four inches 

 (1.63 metre) for adult men. This, according to the data afforded 

 by measurements of our recruits during the civil war, is about the 

 average of American youth between the ages of fifteen and sixteen, 



* 1891. 



