September 3, 1891] 



NATURE 



431 



portion of 75 : lOO the dolichocephalic, the proportion of 

 85 : 100 the bracbycephalic type. The extremes are 70 : 100 

 and 90 : lOO. 



If we examine any large collection of skulls, we have not 

 much difiiculiy in arranging them under these three classes ; but 

 if, after we have done this, we look at the nationality of each 

 skull, we find the most hopeless confusion. Pruner Bey, as 

 Peschel tells us in his " Volkerkunde," has observed bracby- 

 cephalic and dolichocephalic skulls in children born of the same 

 mother ; and if we consider how many women have been carried 

 nway into captivity by Mongolians in their inroads into China, 

 India, and Germany, we cannot feel surprised if we find some 

 longheads among the roundheads of those Central Asiatic 

 hordes. 



Only we must not adopt the easy expedient of certain 

 anthropologists who, when they find dolichocephalic and 

 bracbycephalic skulls in the same tomb, at once jump to the 

 couclusion that they must have belonged to two different races. 

 When, for instance, two dolichocephalic and three bracby- 

 cephalic skulls were discovered in the same tomb at Alexanderpol, 

 we were told at once that this proved nothing as to the 

 simultaneous occurrence of different skulls in the same family ; 

 nay, that it proved the very contrary of what it might seem to 

 prove. It was clear, we were assured, that the two dolicho- 

 cephalic skulls belonged to Aryan chiefs and the three bracby- 

 cephalic skulls to their non-Aryan slaves, who were killed and 

 buried with their masters, according to a custom well known to 

 Herodotus. This sounds very learned, but is it really quite 

 straightforward ? 



Besides the general division of skulls into dolichocephalic, 

 bracbycephalic, and mesocephalic, other divisions have been 

 undertaken, according to the height of the skull, and, again, 

 according to the maxillary and the facial angles. This latter 

 division gives us orthognathic, progn.ithic, and mesognathic 

 skulls. 



La-tly, according to the peculiar character of the hair, we may 

 distinguish two great divisions, the people with woolly hair 

 {Ulotriches) 3.nd people with smooth hair {Lissolriches). The 

 former are subdivided into Lophocomi, people with tufts of hair, 

 and Eriocomi, or people with fleecy hair. The latter are divided 

 into Euthycomi, straight-haired, and Euploca mi {not. Euplocomic, 

 wavy-haired, as Brinton gives it), wavy-haired. It has been 

 shown that these peculiarities of the hair depend on the peculiar 

 form of the hair-tuhes, which, in cross-sections, are found to be 

 either round or elongated in different ways. 



Now all these classifications, to which several more might be 

 added, those according to the orbits of the eyes, the outlines of 

 the nose, the width of the pelvis, are by themselves extremely 

 useful. But few of them only, if any, run strictly parallel. It 

 has been said that all dolichocephalic races are prognathic, and 

 have woolly hair. I doubt whether this is true without excep- 

 tion ; but, even if it were, it would not allow us to draw any 

 genealogical conclusions from it, because there are certainly 

 many dolichocephalic people who are not wholly-haired, as, for 

 instance, the Eskimos ( Brinton 's *' Races of People," p. 249). 



Now, let us consider whether there can be any organic con- 

 nection between the shape of the skull, the facial angle, the 

 conformation of the hair, or the colour of the skin on one side, 

 and what we call the great families of language on the other. 

 That we speak at all may rightly be called a work of nature, opera 

 naturale, as Dantesaid long ago ; but that we speak thus or thus, 

 cosi o cosi, that, as the same Dante said, depends on our pleasure 

 — that is our work. To imagine, therefore, that as a matter of 

 necessity, or as a matter of fact, dolichocephalic skulls have 

 anything to do with Aryan, mesocephalic with Semitic, or bracby- 

 cephalic with Turanian speech, is nothing but the wildest 

 random thought ; it can convey no rational meaning whatever. 

 We might as well say that all painters are dolichocephalic, and 

 all musicians bracbycephalic, or that all lophocomic tribes work 

 in gold, and all lissocomic tribes in silver. 



If anything must be ascribed to prehistoric times, surely the 

 differentiation of the human skull, the human hair, and the 

 human skin, would have to be ascribed to that distant period. 

 No one, I believe, has ever maintained that a mesocephalic 

 skull was split or differentiated into a dolichocephalic and a 

 bracbycephalic variety in the bright sunshine of history. 



But let us, for the sake of argument, assume that in prehistoric 

 times all dolichocephalic people spoke Aryan, all mesocephalic, 

 Semitic, all bracbycephalic, Turanian languages : how would 

 !hat help us ? 



NO. 1 140, VOL. 44] 



So long as we know anything of the ancient Aryan, Semitic^ 

 and Turanian languages, we find foreign words in each of them. 

 This proves a very close and historical contact between them. 

 For instance, in Babylonian texts of 3000 n.c. there is the word 

 sittdhu for cloth made of vegetable fibres, linen. That can only 

 be the Sk. siiuihu, the Indus, or saindhava what comes from 

 the Indus. It would be the same word as the Homeric aivSiiv, 

 fine cloth (" Physical Religion," p. 87). In Egyptian we find 

 so many Semitic words that it is difficult to say whether they 

 were borrowed or derived from a common source. I confess I 

 am not convinced, but Egyptologists of high authority assure us 

 that the names of several Aryan peoples, such as the Sicilians 

 and Sardinians, occur in the fourteenth century B.C., in the 

 inscriptions of the time of Menephtbah I, Again, as soon as 

 we know anything of the Turanian languages — Finnish, for 

 instance — we find them full of Aryan words. All this, it may 

 be said, applies to a very recent period in the ancient history of 

 humanity. Still, we have no access to earlier documents, and 

 we may fairly say that this close contact which existed then 

 existed, probably, at an earlier time also. 



If, then, we have no reason to doubt that the ancestors of the 

 people speaking Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian languages, lived 

 in close proximity, would there not have been marriages between 

 them so long as they lived in peace, and would ihey not have 

 killed the men and carried off the women in time of war? 

 What, then, would have been the effect of a marriage between a 

 dolichocephalic mother and a bracbycephalic father? The 

 materials for studying this question of inetissage, as the French 

 call it, are too scanty as yet to enable us to speak with confi- 

 dence. But whether the paternal or the maternal type prevailed, 

 or whether their union gave rise to a new permanent variety, 

 still it stands to reason that the children of a dolichocephalic 

 captive woman might be found, after fifty or sixty years, spea'.c- 

 ing the language of the bracbycephalic conquerors. 



It has been the custom to speak of the early Aryan, Semitic, 

 and Turanian races as large swarms — as millions pouring from 

 one country into another. It has been calculated that these 

 early nomads would have required immense tracts of meadow 

 land to keep their flocks, and that it was the search for new 

 pa tures that drove them, by an irresistible force, over the whole 

 inhabitable earth. 



This may have been so, but it may also have not been so. 

 Anyhow, we have a right to suppose that, before there were 

 millions of human beings, there were at first a few only. W^e 

 have been told of late that there never was a first man ; but we 

 may be allowed to suppose, at all events, that there were at one 

 time a few first men and a few first women. If, then, the 

 mixture of blood by marriage and the mixture of language in 

 peace or war took place at that early time, when the world was 

 peopled by some individuals, or by some hundreds, or by some 

 thousands only, think what the necessary result would have 

 been. It has been calculated that it would only require 600 

 years to populate the whole earth with the descendants of one 

 couple, the first father being dolichocephalic and the first mother 

 bracbycephalic. They might, after a time, all choose to speak 

 an Aryan language, but they could not choose their skulls, but 

 would have to accept them from nature, whether dolichocephalic 

 or bracbycephalic. 



Who, then, would dare at present to lift up a skull and say 

 this skull must have spoken an Aryan language, or lift up a 

 language and say this language must have been spoken by a 

 dolichocephalic skull ? Yet, though no serious student would 

 any longer listen to such arguments, it takes a long time before 

 theories that were maintained for a time by serious students, 

 and were then surrendered by them, can be completely eradi- 

 cated. I .shall not touch to-day on the hackneyed question of 

 the " home of the Aryans " except as a warning. There are 

 two quite distinct questions concerning the home of the Aryans. 

 ^ When students of philology speak of Aryans, they mean by 

 Aryas nothing but people speaking an Aryan language. They 

 afiirm nothing about skulls, skins, hair, and all the rest. Arya 

 with them means speakers of an Aryan language. When, on 

 the contrary, students of physiology speik of dolichocephalic, 

 orthognathic, euthycomic people, they speak of their physio- 

 logical characteristics only, and affirm nothing whatever about 

 language. 



It is clear, therefore, that the home of the Aryas, in the proper 

 sense of that word, can be determined by linguistic evidence 

 only, while the home of a blue-eyed, blond-haired, long-skulled, 

 fair-skinned people can be determined by physiological evidence 



