ANTHROPOLOGY OF EASTERN EUROPEAN JEWS 287 



conditions to a certain extent. It also proves that poverty, 

 privation and underfeeding could only reduce a few centimeters 

 of their height, but was not potent enough to deface the effects 

 of race ; could not make the Jews in every country of about 

 the same average height. It is therefore safe to explain these 

 differences in stature of the Jews, as caused by the infusion into 

 their veins of non-Jewish blood. All the evidence available 

 tends to exclude environment as the sole cause, and that inter- 

 marriage, open or clandestine with non-Jews, accounts for the 

 fact that the Jews in Little-Russia, Bukowina and Roumania, 

 etc., taller than the Jews in Galicia, Poland, etc. They are 

 taller in the named countries because the indigenous races in 

 the named countries, the Little-Russians, Ruthenians, Rouma- 

 nians, etc., are taller. How far this holds good can be seen from 

 Table VIII showing the stature of the Jews in various Eastern 

 European countries, and in the diagrams showing the curv^es of 

 these figures. It is also attested by the figures in the same table 

 showing the distribution of the classes of stature among Jews 

 and non-Jews. As long as it can not be conclusively proven 

 that the Jews in Roumania and Little- Russia are more often en- 

 gaged in outdoor occupations, or are economically superior to 

 those in Galicia and Poland, we will find the best explanation 

 for the fact that the larger percentage of tall Jews in the former 

 countries, and the larger percentage of short Jews in the latter, 

 as due to intermixture with the native races. 



While the effects of environment are to be considered while 

 speaking of stature, this is a negligible quantity in the case of 

 the headform. Extensive craniological research has conclu- 

 sively shown that the shape of the head depends only on race 

 and heredity. Neither climate, nor social, nor economic condi- 

 tions appear to have any influence on the cranial type. Wher- 

 ever heterogeneity of the cephalic index has been found in a 

 group of people, it was mostly found that racial intermixture 

 was the cause. As was shown in chapter IV the type of head 

 of the Eastern European Jews is mesocephalic, about the same 

 as that of the races and peoples of the countries in which they 

 live. Wherever the head of the indigenous population is 



