ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE LA.ST TWENTY YEARS. 557 



pleasant to be able to trace the history of a whole tribe whenever a «kull 

 is found, but unfortunately we are too often confronted with such com- 

 plicated variations that we lose all data for making- out the nationality. 

 But in an island of the Pacific Ocean, which possesses much more scieu- 

 titic interest than political im[)ortance, we find an analogy to animal 

 races, viz : races of men, developed in circumscribed surroundings, with 

 definite characteristics, easily pointed out, who represented a distinct 

 type. Much to our regret this can be done only very infrequently in 

 the case of continental tribes or nations. To determine the question of 

 nationality with regard to a European would take many days. 



Permit me to emphasize right here that Ave as anthropologists have 

 little right to thrust into the foreground the idea of nationality, in a 

 narrow sense of the word. We know that every- nationality, take for 

 instance, the German or the Slavonic, is of a composite character, and 

 that no one can say, on the spur of the moment, from what original 

 stock either may have been developed. We usually call the Germans 

 blonde and the Slavonians brunette, yet just as great variations in this 

 respect can be fouml among the Germans as among Slavonians. In- 

 deed, northern, southern, eastern, and western groups of either nation 

 present such a large number of variations that it is just as difficult to 

 assert that the Germans came from a common stock, as is the case with 

 the Slavonians. Consanguinity and heredity have been urged an ex- 

 planation of these differences, but it has been proven that certain Sla- 

 vonic gTOU[ts are more nearly related to the Germans than to their own 

 Slavonic brethren. If we comi)are the blonde element among the Poles 

 and Galicians with the brunette Slavonians of the south, it is found 

 that they not only differ with res[)ect to color of skin, of eyes, and of 

 hair, but also in a very marked degree in the structure of their skull ; 

 so much so indeed that the former show a greater affinity to our Ger- 

 man tribes than to the Slavonian. In Northern Germany matters are 

 still more intricate. There, in some of the old burial fields, skulls are 

 found which might l)e called Germanic, were it not that they clearly 

 ])ossess Slavonic added character, so that for the present at least these 

 fields must be considered Slavonic burial places. To make the case still 

 stronger, there are found in the famous grave-rows (Reihengriiber) of 

 tlie period of the Franks or of the Merovingians, with their character- 

 istic ornaments and weapons, skulls which very distinctly present the 

 peculiarities of the Germanic type. Corresponding to these in an an- 

 thropological sense, a large number of graves have been opened in the 

 east of Germany where similar types of skulls are found; but these are 

 lacking in Prankish peculiarities and are characterized by Slavonic 

 marks. Greater contrasts than these can not be imagined. 



It is at present an impossibility and probably will be for all times to 

 trace back to a common type either the Slavoni(! or the German tribes. 

 When we compare the short and thick skulls of our Alemannic brethren 

 with the long and low skulls of the Frisians and Hanoverians, it is evi- 



