58 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



and affiliations have yet to be determined. The third may be re- 

 garded as the aboriginal occupiers of western Europe. Wherever 

 the members of this race are found they all possess the same general 

 skull-form. They are the primitive long-headed people of this 

 region. All conform more or less closely to the so-called "river-bed" 

 type of men. This and the Mediterranean type are one and the 

 same. It was the term by which these palaeolithic men were first 

 known to us because the earliest skeletal remains we secured of them 

 were found in the ancient beds of the rivers of England and France. 

 Keith's critical examination of their cranial characters has made 

 them very well known to us. Later, when so many remains of this 

 type were found in the lands bordering on the Mediterranean Sergi 

 suggested the name "Mediterranean" race for them, by which 

 term they are now commonly known, notwithstanding the fact that we 

 are now aware that this type of man was characteristic not only of 

 the river beds of England and France and the Mediterranean shores, 

 but also of the whole of western Europe^ — of Spain, of Switzerland, 

 of north Germany and of Scandinavia. It had reached even to the 

 shores of North Africa for the most ancient of the Egyptian stock 

 must be classed as members of this same palaeolithic race. 



Ripley sees in the Berbers of North Africa the purest repre- 

 sentatives of this race today. If his contention is sound then Sergi 's 

 claim that the Mediterranean race is of African origin, whose original 

 home, he thinks, was the region of the Great Lakes, is not without 

 justification, for the Berbers are plainly a people of mixed descent, 

 blending in themselves the characters of both negro and Asiatic. 

 Such an origin satisfactorily explains why we find Africanoid char- 

 acters in the hair of the modern European races. It also accounts 

 for the strong negroid characters seen in the Cro-Magnon race, in 

 particular those types from the Grimaldi caves. Viewed in this 

 light we can follow Keith in his opinion that the Grimaldi skeletons 

 need not be regarded as other than aberrant forms of the general 

 Cro-Magnon type. These negroid affinities are not by any means 

 confined to these two Grimaldi skeletons. They are seen in the 

 limbs of the race generally. It has been found that their tibiae or 

 leg-bones were relativelyl ong and their humeri or upper arm-bones 

 short. These characters are common among negroid peoples today, 

 but no other of the European peoples, save the Cro-Magnons, ex- 

 hibit them. In modern Europeans the radius of the forearm is about 

 seventy-four per cent, of the humeral or upper arm. In modern 

 negroes it reaches to seventy-nine per cent. The radius of the Grim- 

 aldi lad is also seventy-nine per cent. ; that of the woman is eighty-five 



