856 



NA TURE 



[December 15. 1923 



employed in their compounding. The Eskimo, one of 

 the most distinctive races of mankind, and marked by 

 unmistakable Mongolian features, has noihing of the 

 Mongol in him, according to Prof. Dixon, but is com- 

 pounded from the types which make up the peoples 

 of Western Europe, namely, the Mediterranean, 

 Caspian, and Ural types. To the fashioning of English- 

 men all the original eight primary types of mankind 

 have been employed, including, of course, the Mongol, 

 the pro to-Negroid, and the proto-Australian. 



Prof. Dixon came by his discovery in the simplest 

 way possible. To recognise members of his original 

 types, in any race or people whatsoever, he employed 

 three measurements of the skull, its length, width, 

 and height, and two of the nose, its height and width. 

 If the head, according to his standard, was long and 

 low and the nose broad, then the individual with such 

 proportions, no matter what the colour of the skin, 

 texture of the hair, proportion of the body, and general 

 appearance might be, was a proto-Australoid ; but if 

 the nose was narrow, this alters the case : the individual 

 is a Mediterranean. But if the head was long and high 

 and the nose narrow, then the individual possessing 

 such proportions must be placed in another category, 

 that of the Caspian archetype. In discussing the 

 distribution of the proto-Australoid type in Europe, 

 Prof. Dixon proves its presence in Germany in neolithic 

 times by citing two skulls of that date with particularly 

 wide noses. In his table (p. 477) the width of the nose 

 is given as 23 mm., the height as 48 mm., and the 

 proportion of width to height as 57-9 per cent. But 

 if the reader will work the sum out, he or she will find 

 it is not 57'9 but 47-9 per cent. On this slip in his 

 arithmetic Prof. Dixon builds his hypothesis of a 

 proto-Australoid stock in neolithic Europe. In other 

 cases his arithmetic may be right, but his methods and 

 inferences have just as little foundation in fact as in 

 the former case. Why, every anthropologist knows 

 of families where one brother, on Prof. Dixon's scale, 

 would be a proto-Negroid, another a Caspian, another 

 a Mediterranean or Ural, while among the sisters of 

 the same family might be found representatives of his 

 remaining types. 



To make quite clear the methods pursued by the 

 professor of anthropology in Harvard University, let 

 us suppose that the history of the various makes and 

 tj'pes of motor-car is unknown, and that Prof. Dixon has 

 undertaken to discover how the various t)T)es have 

 come into existence. If he applied the method which 

 he has employed to unravel the history of human Xj^ts,, 

 he would measure the length, breadth, and height of 

 the body of each tj'pe of car and the width and height 

 of the bonnet, and with these measurements to work 

 on would deduce the history- of each make of car. 



NO. 2824, VOL. 112] 



Essential points concerning the engine, the gearing, 

 steering, the system of ventilation and lubrication, and 

 all the essential details which go to the proper working 

 of a car, are to be passed unnoted. Wlien the matter 

 is put in this way, even those who regard cranial 

 measurements as sacrosanct will understand the value 

 to be attached to Prof. Dixon's account of the evolution 

 of human races. 



(3) In Dr. Donald A. Mackenzie's pages we have 

 Western Europe pictured as a corridor leading from 

 Egypt, or some adjacent part of Africa or Asia, to 

 Britain. In ancient times there passed along this 

 corridor a continuous procession of various types of 

 men, each carrying its peculiar customs and beliefs. 

 The Cromagnon people, in Dr. Mackenzie's accoimt, 

 head the procession ; they came from east of the Nile, 

 and brought to Europe and to England the religious 

 beliefs of their native land. They were followed by the 

 " Solutreans," who, we are told, came from about 

 Somaliland. After them came the " Magdalenians," 

 the " Azilians," and the " Tardenoisians." The 

 Magdalenians, we are informed, were really Cromagnon 

 people. The only folk who did not come the usual 

 way and from the usual source were the " Magle- 

 mosians " ; they came from Siberia to the Baltic, 

 and brought the dog to Europe ; they were blonds of 

 the Nordic type. So far as the writer knows, only 

 one fragmentary skull of the Baltic kitchen-midden 

 people (the Maglemosians) has so far been found ; 

 we know nothing of a Nordic people in Siberia in early 

 neolithic times ; there are not half-a-dozen human 

 skeletons, or fragments of skeletons, which can be 

 ascribed to people who made the Azilian and Tar- 

 denoisian tj^pes of weapons or implements. We really 

 know nothing of these people whom Dr. Mackenzie 

 has made to move so briskly towards Britain in ancient 

 times. 



Perhaps it will be fairest to let him speak for himself : 



" For a long period, extending over many centuries, 

 the migration ' stream ' from the continent appears 

 to have been continuously flowing. The carriers of 

 neolithic culture were in the main Iberians of Mediter- 

 ranean racial type — the descendants of the Azilian- 

 Tardenoisian peoples who used bows and arrows, and 

 broke up the Magdalenian ciN-ilisation of Cromagnon 

 man in Western and Central Europe. This race 

 appears to have been characterised in north and north- 

 east Africa. ' So striking,' writes Prof. Elliot Smith, 

 ' is the family likeness between the early neolithic 

 people of the British Isles and the Mediterranean and 

 the bulk of the population, both ancient and modem, 

 of Eg^'pt and East Africa, that the description of the 

 bones of an early Briton of that remote epoch might 

 apply in all essential details to an inhabitant of 

 Somaliland ' " (p. 126). 



For the latter part of his statement Dr. Mackenzie 



