5Q2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



This doctrine of a Mediterranean race depends upon the tacit as- 

 sumption made by the physical anthropologists that identity or simi- 

 larity of type means identity of race. Yet this assumption does not 

 bear the test of scientific examination, for it assumes that only those 

 who are sprung from a common stock can be similar in physical struc- 

 ture, and coloration, and it leaves altogether out of sight the effects of 

 environment in changing racial types, and that, too, in no long time. 

 The change in the type of the American of New England from that of 

 his English ancestor and his approximation to the hatchet face and 

 thin scraggy beard of the Eed Indian have long been remarked, whilst 

 the Boers of South Africa, in less than 150 years, have quite lost the 

 old Dutch build, and become a tall weedy race. The effects of climatic 

 conditions are very patent amongst the native peoples of the New 

 World. The Iroquois of the temperate parts (lat. 40°-45°) of North 

 America were a tall, rather light-complexioned race, but as we keep 

 moving south and approach the equator, their kindred tribes grow 

 somewhat darker in complexion and more feeble in physique, except 

 where they live at a considerable altitude, for of course altitude acts in 

 the same way as latitude. When once we pass below the equator the 

 physique keeps steadily improving until we come to the Pampas In- 

 dians, a vigorous race who defied all the efforts of the Spaniards to 

 subdue them; and finally we meet the Patagonians (lat. 40°-53°), a 

 fine, tall, light-complexioned race, who form in the south the counter- 

 part of the Iroquois and their closely allied tribes in the north. 



The same law, as is well known, can be seen at work in Europe. 

 Starting from the Mediterranean, we meet in the lower parts a melan- 

 ochrous race; but gradually, as we advance upwards, the population as 

 a whole is growing less dark, until finally, along the shores of the 

 Baltic, we meet the tallest and most light-complexioned race in the 

 world. Of course it has been explained that the change in pigmenta- 

 tion, as we advance from south to north, is due to the varying propor- 

 tions in the admixture of the blond race of the north with the melan- 

 ochrous of the south. But it is difficult to believe that the movements 

 up or down of the people from the southern side of the Alps, or of 

 those from the shores of the Baltic, have been so nicely proportioned 

 as to give the general steady change from north to south in coloration 

 without the aid of some other force. The case of America, which I 

 have just cited, is in itself enough to raise a suspicion that climatic 

 influences are at work all the time, and that environment is in reality 

 the chief factor in the variation of both stature and pigmentation from 

 the Mediterranean to the Baltic. The white race of the north is of 

 the same proximate ancestry as the dark-complexioned peoples of the 

 northern shores of the Mediterranean. I have already argued else- 

 where that, as the ice-sheet receded, mankind kept pressing farther 



