NO. 13 SOVIET ANTHROPOLOGY — FIELD 1/5 



subjects using the Turkish language and inhabiting the AnatoHan 

 Plateau. They are characterized by more than medium height and 

 by many (40.0 percent) light-eyed individuals. This admixture is 

 particularly strong among the liektashi, Kizilbash, and Aizar tribes, 

 all of them living in isolation, according to Arutiunov. Dixon is in- 

 clined to attribute this to the admixture of the invaders from the 

 north, the Scythians and Cimmerians. On the other hand, these tribes 

 are not characterized by the doliciioccphaly of the Scythians and are, 

 on the contrary, strongly brachyccphalic. This may be due to artificial 

 cranial deformation which, according to von Luschan in 1911, is 

 widely practiced among the Takhtadzhis. On the other hand, the 

 dolichocephaly in this case may have been absorbed by the brachy- 

 cephaly characterizing the peoples of the "X'orderasiatische Kassc." 

 According to Dixon the most brachycephalic group here is the Turk- 

 ish city population of the Anatolian Plateau ; the villagers occupy an 

 intermediary position ; the largest admixture of long-headed indi- 

 viduals is found among the nomadic peoples, who Dixon ccjnsiders to 

 be the descendants of the Turkoman invaders of the eleventh century. 

 However, Eliseev's measurements in 1891, quoted by Dixon in 

 support of this conclusion, do not bear it out. 



Eliseev, remarking on the 20.0-percent admixture of dolichocephaly 

 among the Anatolian Turks, shows their craniological heterogeneity. 

 Eliseev states that the greatest percentage of dolichocephaly was found 

 among the city dwellers (32.6 percent), less among the villagers 

 (26.0 percent), and least among the nomads (3.5 percent). Eliseev 

 thought that the Turkomans were typical brachycephals. According 

 to him, the Turkoman nomads in Anatolia have retained the greatest 

 purity of the original brachyccphalic Turki types ; they do not inter- 

 marry with any other tribes. The villagers, and particularly the city 

 dwellers, are less rigorous in this respect. They may have obtained 

 their dolichocephaly from marrying Kurdish and Arabic women."' 



The question is then raised whether all the Osmanli Turks are 

 related genetically to the Seljuk-Turkomans, and whether there is 

 not present among the Turks of the Anatolian Plateau an admixture 

 of other, later invaders coming, for example, from the north through 

 the Caucasus? 



The answer to this question cannot be given until it is known 

 whether all Turkish tribes wandering on the Anatolian Plateau are 



*^ The opposite phenomenon was to have been expected of the Turkomans 

 who were originally dolichocephalic . . . tlic purity of dolichocephaly would be 

 best preserved among the nomadic tribes; Turkomans settling in cities would 

 absorb brachycephaly of the "Vordcrasiatische Rassc" (L. V. O.) 



