"PROFESSOR RIDGEWAY AND RACIAL 

 ORIGINS": A REPLY 



By WILLIAM RIDGEWAY, Sc.D., F.B.A., LL.D., Litt.D. 



Disney Professor of ArchcBology a /id Brer e ton Reader in Classics in the University of Ca/nb ridge 



In my address to the Anthropology Section of the British 

 Association in 1908 I attempted to show that many of the chief 

 errors which impede the scientific study of Man, which lead to 

 the maladministration of alien races and beget blunders of the 

 gravest issue in our own social legislation, are due in no small 

 degree to man's pride in shutting his eyes to the fact that he is 

 controlled by the same laws as the rest of the animal kingdom. 

 My arguments excited considerable comment at the time and 

 since, in this country, on the Continent and in America, evoking 

 favourable comments from not a few leading scientific men and 

 some tirades from gentlemen of Socialistic views. Only one 

 systematic attempt to refute my doctrines has been made, an 

 article by Mr. Bernard Houghton, I.C.S., which appeared in 

 Science Progress for October 1909. 



Foremost in importance amongst the problems relating to 

 Man now being discussed by physical anthropologists is the 

 stratification of populations in Europe. It had, before I wrote, 

 generally been held as an article of faith that Europe was first 

 peopled by a non-Aryan race. Of course it is difficult for us 

 to say what were the physical characteristics and language of 

 Palaeolithic man, for, apart from a certain number of skulls, our 

 evidence for him is entirely confined to his implements of 

 flint found in the river-gravels, caves, and on plateaux. But 

 when we come to Neolithic Man the problem becomes less 

 hopeless. It has been generally held that the first Neolithic 

 men in Europe, whether they were descended or not from their 

 Palaeolithic predecessors, had long skulls, but were not Aryans; 

 that later on came a migration of short-skulled people from Asia, 

 who spread along Central Europe to France, becoming what is 

 commonly termed the Alpine, by some the Ligurian and by 

 others the Celtic race ; later these two primitive non-Aryan 



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