610 ANNUAL EEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



spread over a vast territory, the great plain of northern Europe, 

 extending over northern Germany and the north of France, between 

 the Ural Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. ^ 



Finally, we must not forget here to recall the name of Madame CI. 

 Royer, who likewise asserted, in 1872, that the blond Europeans did 

 not come from Asia. (Congr^s d' Anthropologic et d'Archeologie 

 prehistorique de Bruxelles, 1872, and various communications to the 

 Societe d'Anthropologie.) 



Most of the writers since Cuno have assigned a very limited terri- 

 tory for the origin of the Aryans. Thus Poesche, who relies exclusively 

 on the influence of environment to account for the light color of the 

 first blond Europeans, places their cradle ''in the heart of European 

 Russia, in the marshy districts of Rokitno, washed by the Pripet, the 

 Berezina, and the Dnieper Rivers, where nature is tinted with 

 albinism, where the people are blond, where the animals are robed in 

 white, where the leaves and the bark of the trees are faded, where 

 reigns that terrible disease of the hau", Polish plica." ^ 



But although climatic conditions may modify the organism, yet it 

 can not be admitted that the blonds are a species of albinos, with 

 whom Pcesche seems to compare them ; on the contrary, albinism is an 

 anomaly which is not at all clue to the influence of the climate. 



Schrader assunies south Russia as the cradle of the Aryans; Penka 

 and Wilser sa}^' it was Scandinavia; Kossinna claims that it is the 

 western inclosure of the Baltic, Scandinavia in the south, Denmark 

 and Germany in the northeast, as far as rnegaUths or ceramics are 

 found; while for Michelis it is a region inclosed between the Danube 

 on the southwest, the Carpathian Mountains on the north, and the 

 Dnieper on the east. But all these territories thus outlined, aside 

 from those of Cuno and Kossinna, are much too small. For it must 

 have rec[uired an immense territor}^ to bring forth the numerous 

 blond peoples which followed one upon the other in Europe, in pre- 

 historic as well as in historic times. On the other hand, none of 

 these investigators indicate the stem from which the blond Euro- 

 peans sprung, and it is just that subject which we propose here to 

 investigate on the exclusive basis of anthropology. 



THE BLONDS IN HISTORY. 



The first blonds of history are the Celts; and the first historian to 

 use the name KeX-oc (Keltos) was Herodotus, about 440 B. C; 

 though the word Celtic, KeXxiKT) (Keltike), for designating the 

 country, was already employed by Hecateus (of Milet), about 500 

 B. C. ' 



>Cuno, Forschungcn im Gcbiete der Alten Volkerkunde. Berlin, 1871. 



2 Pcesche. Die Arier, ein Beitrag ziir historischen Anthropologic, Jena, 1878. The theory of this author 

 has been already discussed in 1884 by Ufjalvy in a communication to the society, entitled "Les opinions 

 rdcemment emiscs en AUemagne surle berceau des Aryans." 



