February ii, 1915} 



NATURE 



659 



Celtic-speakingf people — the British "Celtic fringe" — 

 belongs to a very different European stock. 



The anthropological history of Italy is not unlike 

 that of France. \'ery few remains of the people who 

 lived in Italy before the dawn of the Neolithic period 

 are known, but such as have been found lead us to 

 believe that the early inhabitants were long-headed 

 and apparently members of the dark-haired stock 

 which inhabited the lands surrounding the Mediter- 

 ranean — members of Prof. Sergi's "Mediterranean 

 Race." Italy, like France, was apparently invaded 

 from the flanks and passes of the .Alps. In some of 

 the graves of Lombardy, belonging to a later phase 

 of the Neolithic period, we find skulls of a short- 

 headed people. Some of these have the massive faces, 

 the great supra-orbital ridges and the peculiar occipital 

 flattening which characterise the Bronze-age invaders 

 of Britain — but others, apparently the more numerous 

 —are of the true Alpine type, the type which has left 

 its influence on France. Long before the Etruscans 

 and Romans had risen into prominence, the round- 

 heads had permeated the northern half of Italy. I 

 have lately examined the collection of crania which 

 Dr. Niccolucci gathered from ancient Etruscan and 

 Roman tombs — they are preserved in the Museum of 

 the Royal College of Surgeons ; fully a fifth of them 

 manifest distinct traces of a round-headed ancestrj*. 

 Collections of modern Italian crania show that the 

 population has become increasingly brachycephalic 

 since Roman times. In that Italy does not stand 

 alone ; it has been so with the population of France, 

 Germany, Russia, .\ustria, and Greece. The anthro- 

 pological surveys which have been carried out by Dr. 

 Ridolfo Livi on army recruits drawn frorr* all parts of 

 Italy prove that in the southern half of the country 

 the long-headed, dark-haired Mediterranean race is 

 still the dominant population. But northern Italy is 

 eminently round-headed. 



It is generally agreed that the ancient Greeks were 

 long-headed, and were members of the Mediterranean 

 race, but apparently before they reached the heyday 

 of their civilisation and of their power, a wave of 

 round-heads had already penetrated the Balkan penin- 

 sula and reached the shores of the Mediterranean. 

 The vast majority of the peoples inhabiting the Balkan 

 Peninsula and the Austrian Empire manifest a high 

 degree of brachycephaly. It was not always so along 

 the valley and across the plains of the Danube. For 

 instance. Prof. Toldt, of Vienna, did not find a single 

 round-head in a collection of skulls gathered from 

 ancient graves in upper Austria ; 80 per cent, of the 

 modern population is round-headed. So far as we 

 can yet judge, the Danube \'alley, in its width and 

 length, was inhabited bv a long-headed population in 

 the Neolithic period. There is, however, an exception 

 - — the skull discovered fully thirty years ago by Prof, 

 von Luschan at Nagy-sap, in Hungary, deeply 

 embedded in the loess of the Danube, and presum- 

 ably pre-Neolithic in date. Apparently before the 

 Neolithic period had ended the round-heads of the 

 true .\lpine type began to penetrate the modern 

 bounds of the Austrian Empire. The inrush of Ger- 

 man-speaking peoples in post-Roman times did not 

 stay the growing dominancy of the round-heads. 

 Prof. Matiegka, of Prague, found that the remains 

 of people buried in Bohemia during the ninth century 

 A.D. yielded 14 per cent, of brachycephalic skulls, those 

 of the sixteenth century yielded 70 per cent. ; modern 

 grav'es 85 per cent. The diverse peoples of the 

 Austrian Empire — they are really more diff^erentiated 

 in speech than in racial t}.pe — have thus become 

 dominated by a round-headed stock in comparatively 

 recent times. 



NO. 2363, VOL. 94] 



North of the Carpathians the story is the same. 

 On the plains of Russia there are numerous mounds 

 or tumuli — "kurgans" — containing the remains of 

 ancient Russians. Seventy years ago Russian anthro- 

 pologists began to investigate these mounds; thev 

 found from their contents that some of them dated 

 back to the Neolithic period, others were of the 

 Bronze age. They found, too, that the people buried 

 ; in the older mounds were of the long-headed type — 

 I not unlike the men whose remains lie in our long 

 [ barrows. The best modern representatives of this 

 • type are the inhabitants of Scandinavia — I shall speak 

 of this form as the Scandinavian type. I have 

 examined lately a series of accurate casts — forty in 

 number — made from skulls found in these ancient 

 Russian mounds. Twenty-seven of these are of the 

 Scandinavian tvoe ; only eight of them are round- 

 headed. Of these eight, five show the features of our 

 invaders of the Bronze age — the massive face, the 

 strongly marked supra-orbital ridges, the flattened 

 occiput. The remaining three are more of the .\lpine 

 type. The vast majority of the people within the 

 bounds of European Russia are now brachycephalic; 

 only in those Baltic provinces which lie to the south 

 of the Gulf of Finland has the ancient Scandinavian 

 type succeeded in surviving. In Finland, itself, the 

 Scandinavian t}pe has been replaced by the modem 

 brachycephalic Finn. So far as we have gone the 

 western parts of Russia afford the most probable 

 cradle for the British invaders of the Bronze period. 

 The anthropological history of Germany is veri- 

 similar to that of western Russia. To the eye of the 

 anthropologist the modern German Empire falls into 

 three very distinct, but ver\' uneqjal parts. There is, 

 in the first place, the western or coastal area — em- 

 bracing Oldenburg, Holstein, Hanover, and parts of 

 Westphalia, where the Scandinavian or .\nglo-Saxon 

 form of head is still the dominant type. From the 

 evidence afforded by ancient graves, we have no doubt 

 that the coastal or western German does represent 

 the Neolithic population of Germany, and he does not 

 differ materially from the ancient long-headed native 

 of western Russia. Then there is the second or 

 southern area, including Bavaria, W'urtemberg, 

 Baden, and the upper areas of the Rhine Valley. The 

 modern population of these lands is eminently brachy- 

 cephalic. .Anthropologists are agreed in regarding 

 them as typical representatives of the .Mpine race. 

 When and how the change in head-form was effected 

 in South Germany we do not know definitely, but 

 ancient graves, even down to the time of the dis- 

 ruption of the Roman Empire, yield skulls of the long 

 or Scandinavian t}-pe. Bavaria, W'urtemberg, and 

 Baden have undergone a revolution in head-form, not 

 unlike that which has overtaken the .Austrian Empire 

 and France. In all of them the primitive population 

 has become ".Alpinised." In the remaining part of 

 the German Empire — the part which may be described 

 as Prussian, and which contains at least two-thirds of 

 the total population of the Empire — a transformation 

 in head-form has occurred, very similar to that which 

 has overtaken the earlier inhabitants of Russia. 

 German anthropologists have made no attempt to 

 estimate the extent to which the modern Prussian 

 population has assumed the Russian or Slav form of 

 head, nor has any special endeavour been made to 

 ascertain when the change took place. Prof. W'elcker 

 of Halle, found that out of a small collection of thirtv 

 German skulls eighteen were brachycephalic. In an 

 ancient Prussian cemetery which had been used be- 

 tween the ninth and twelfth centuries, 30 per cent, of 

 the skulls were of the long type and 18 per cent, of the 

 round. Four centuries ago Vesalius regarded flatten- 



