172 WORLD-POWER AND EVOLUTION 



depended upon intermarriage with their neighbors, the greatest 

 percentage of blond Jews ought to be found in such places as 

 northern Germany where the Germans are fair, while the per- 

 centage should be much smaller in places like Galicia where the 

 non- Jewish population is dark. Yet such is by no means the case. 

 In fact, the reverse is more nearly true. I emphasize this point 

 because the complexion is one of the characteristics which most 

 clearly indicates racial mixture. Everyone knows how a strain 

 of white blood shows itself in a Negro, or a strain of Italian blood 

 in an Anglo-Saxon family. If the complexion does not indicate 

 intermarriage "between the Jews and their neighbors, it is hard 

 to believe that much mixture of the races has taken place. 



The question of stature, unlike that of complexion, will not help 

 us much in determining whether the variability of the Jews is due 

 to intermarriage or to environment. The Mediterranean Jews 

 are shorter than those of central Europe, but this may be due 

 equally well to climate, to intermarriage, or to economic condi- 

 tions. In central and eastern Europe the Jews are systematically 

 a little shorter than their Gentile neighbors. This may arise 

 either from some racial inheritance dating to remote times or from 

 economic conditions. Poverty, indoor occupations such as tailor- 

 ing, and life in villages instead of on farms are quite enough to 

 account for the relative shortness of the Jews. But how about 

 the fact that the Jews vary in height almost exactly as do their 

 Gentile neighbors? Where the Gentiles are tall, as Fishberg's 

 tables show, the Jews are also tall, although not quite equal to 

 the others. This looks like an effect of economic conditions in 

 some cases, but not in all. Although the most poverty-stricken 

 regions such as Galicia show the shortest stature for both Jews 

 and Gentiles, the taller statures do not show so obvious a relation 

 to economic conditions. 



When we consider the form of the head, we find ourselves con- 

 fronted by a most puzzling problem. So far as we are aware the 

 shape of people's heads cannot be influenced by their food, their 



