TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 907 
which the earlier continuity of Europe and North Africa asserted itself in the 
imperial economy. At one time, what is now Morocco and what is now 
Northumberland, with all that lay between them on both sides of the Pyrenees, 
found their administrative centre on the Mosel. 
It is not for me to dwell on the many important questions affecting the physio- 
logical sides of ethnography that are bound up with these old geographical relations. 
I will, however, at least call attention to the interesting, and in many ways 
original, theory put forward by Professor Sergi in his recent work on the ‘ Mediter- 
ranean Race.’ 
Professor Sergi is not content with the ordinary use of the term ‘ White Race.’ 
He distinguishes a distinct ‘brown’ or ‘brunette’ branch, whose swarthier com- 
plexion, however, and dark hair bear no negroid affinities, and are not due to any. 
‘intermixture on that side. This race, with dolichocephalic skulls, amongst which 
certain clearly defined types constantly repeat themselves, he traces throughout 
the Mediterranean basin, from Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor, through a large part 
of Southern Europe, including Greece, Italy, and the Iberic peninsula, to the 
British islands. It is distributed along the whole of North Africa, and, according 
to the theory propounded, finds its original centre of diffusion somewhere in the 
parts of Somaliland. 
It may be said at once that this grouping together into a consistent system of 
ethnic factors spread over this vast yet inter-related area—the heart of ‘ Eurafrica’— 
presents many attractive aspects. The ancient Greek might not have accepted 
-kinship even with ‘the blameless Ethiopian,’ but those of us who may happen 
to combine a British origin with a Mediterranean complexion may derive a certain 
ancestral pride from remote consanguinity with Pharaoh. They may even be 
willing to admit that ‘the Ethiopian’ in the course of his migrations has done 
much to ‘change his skin.’ 
In part, at least, the new theory is little more than a re-statement of an ethno- 
graphic grouping that commands a general consensus of opinion. From Thurnam’s 
time onwards we have been accustomed to regard the dolichocephalic type found in 
-the early Long Barrows, and what seem to have been the later survivals of the 
same stock in our islands, as fitting on to the Iberian element in South-western 
Europe. The extensive new materials accumulated by Dr. Garson have only served 
“to corroborate these views, while further researches have shown that the character- 
istic features of the skeletons found in the Ligurian caves, at Cro Magnon and 
-elsewhere in France, are common to those of a large part of Italy, Sicily, and 
Sardinia, and extend not only to the Iberic group, but to the Guanche interments 
-of the Canary Islands. 
The newly correlated data unquestionably extend the field of comparison; but 
‘the theories as to the original home of this ‘ Mediterranean race’ and the course 
of its diffusion may be thought to be still somewhat lacking in documentary 
evidence. They remind us rather too closely of the old ‘ Aryan’ hypothesis, in 
which we were almost instructed as to the halting places of the different detach- 
ments as they passed on their way from their Central Asian cradle to rearrange 
themselves with military precision, and exactly in the order of their relationship, 
in their distant European homes. The existing geological conditions are made 
- the basis of this migratory expansion from Ethiopia to Ireland ; parallel streams 
move through North Africa and from Anatolia to Southern Europe. One cardinal 
fact has certainly not received attention, and that is, that the existing evidence of 
this Mediterranean type dates much further back on European soil than even in 
ancient Egypt. 
Professor Sergi himself has recognised the extraordinary continuity of the 
cranial type of the Ligurian caves among the modern population of that coast. 
But this continuity involves an extreme antiquity for the settlement of the 
-4 Mediterranean Race’ in North-western Italy and Southern France. The cave 
interments, such as those of the Finalese, carry back the type well into Neolithic 
_times. But the skeletons of the Baoussé Roussé caves, between Mentone and 
Ventimiglia, which reproduce the same characteristic forms, take us back far 
behind any stage of culture to which the name of Neolithic can be properly applied. 
3.N 2 
