This is indeed true. Apparent exceptions prove the rule; for where, in the heart of the Basque territory, the broad heads seem to penetrate to the Spanish frontier, there is the ancient pass of Roncesvaux, celebrated in history and literature. The broadheaded type would naturally have invaded here if at all. Everywhere else the long-headed type seems to prevail, not only on the Spanish slopes, but clear over to the foothills of the Pyrenees on the other side in France.[1]
If these facts be all true, what has become of our Basque physical type? Where are our philological theories of purity of racial representation? If the Basques are indeed an unmixed race, there must be one of these two types which is false. At first the anthropologists sought thus to reject one or the other, French or Spanish, for this reason. Then they laid aside their differences; they abandoned entirely the old theory of purity of descent. The Basque became for them the final complex product of a long series of ethnic crosses. Each of the conflicting characteristics was traced to some people, wherever found it mattered not. The type was compounded by a formula, as a druggist puts up a prescription. Bladé wrote in the light of such views. Canon Taylor,
Spanish Basques. Tolosa, Guipuzeoa.
in his Origin of the Aryans, holds that the broad-headed French Basque is only a variation of the Alpine type which we have seen prevails in all the southwest of France, with a dash of Lapp blood. For him the Spanish Basque was, on the other hand, a subtype of the long-faced Iberian or Spanish narrow head. The
- ↑ The general limits of the mountainous country are shown by the five-hundred-meter contour line on our subsequent map on page 625.
