NEW TYPES AMONG MEN 173 



occupation, or their social and economic condition. Nor can we 

 see how climatic selection could weed out one type of head as it 

 weeds out one type of complexion. In fact, the shape of the head 

 has been supposed to be one of the most stable racial character- 

 istics and to be one of the most invariable features of man's 

 physical inheritance. Yet the heads of the Jews appear to vary 

 in harmony with those of the people who live around them. Look 

 at this little table adapted from Fishberg. It shows the width 

 of the head in percentages of the length, that is, the cephalic 

 index. The first column shows the index for Jews and the second 

 for the non-Jews who live in the same region. A high index, it 

 will be remembered, means a broad head. 



A few scattered facts from Holland, where the cephalic index 

 of the country as a whole is not far from 80, indicate that the 

 Jews also have a lower index than any given in the table. In 

 North Africa, where the people are very long-headed with an 

 index not far from 76, only four measurements of Jews are avail- 

 able, but they average 75.8. When it is remembered that accord- 

 ing to Ripley the cephalic index of the races of Europe varies 

 from 73 to 87, it will be seen that the differences indicated in the 

 third column of the table are slight. Fishberg, following the 

 ordinary canons of anthropology, attempts to explain this as 

 the result of intermarriage. He thinks that there must have been 

 so many illicit unions of Hebrew women with Gentile men that 



