Popular Science Monthly/Volume 51/July 1897/The Racial Geography of Europe: France - The Teuton and the Celt VI
APPLETONS’
POPULAR SCIENCE
MONTHLY.
JULY, 1897.
| THE RACIAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. |
A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY.
(Lowell Institute Lectures 1896.)
By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. D.,
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
VI.—FRANCE—THE TEUTON AND THE CELT.
SEVERAL reasons combine to make France the most interesting country of Europe from the anthropological point of view. More is known of it in detail than of any other part of the continent save Italy. Its surface presents the greatest diversity of climate, soil, and fertility. Its population, consequently, is exposed to the most varied influences of environment. It alone among the other countries of central Europe is neither cis- nor trans-alpine. It is open to invasion from all sides alike. Lying on the extreme west coast of Europe, it is a place of last resort for all the westward-driven peoples of the Old World. All these causes combine to render its population the most heterogeneous to be found on the continent. It comprises all three of the great ethnic types described in our last paper, while most countries are content with two. Nay more, it still includes a goodly living representation of a prehistoric race which has disappeared almost everywhere else in Europe.[1] Thirty years ago lay observers began to note differences in central France between the people of the mountains and of the plains. As early as 1868 Durand de Gros noted that in Aveyron, one of the southern departments lying along the border of a mountainous area, the populations of the region thereabout were strongly differentiated. On the calcareous plains the people were taller, of light complexion, with blue or blue-grayish eyes and having fine teeth. In the upland areas, of a granitic formation, the people were stunted, dark in complexion, with very poor teeth. These groups used distinct dialects. The peasants differed in temperament. One was as lively as the other was morose. One was progressive, the other was backward in culture, suspicious of innovations. This same observer noted that the cattle of the two regions were unlike. On the infertile soils they were smaller and leaner, differing in bodily proportions as well. He naturally, therefore, offered the same explanation for the differences of both men and cattle—namely, that they were due to the influences of environment. He asserted that the geology of the districts had affected the quality of the food and its quantity at the same time, thereby affecting both animal and human life. When this theory was advanced, even the fact that such differences existed was scouted as impossible, to say nothing of the explanation of them. As late as 1889 I found a German geologist, in ignorance of the modern advance of anthropology, strongly impressed by these same contrasts of population, and likewise ascribing them to the direct influence of environment as did the earlier discoverer. These differences, then, surely exist even to the unpracticed eye. We must account for them; but we do it in another way. The various types of population are an outcome of their physical environment. This has, however, worked not directly but in a roundabout way. It has set in motion a species of social or racial selection, now operative over most of Europe. This process it is our province to describe in this paper.
Before we proceed to study the French people, we must cast an eye over the geographical features of the country. These are depicted in the accompanying map, in which the deeper tints show the location of the regions of elevation above the sea level. At the same time the cross-hatched lines mark the areas within which the physical environment is unpropitious, at least as far as agriculture—the mainstay of economic life until recent times—is concerned.
A glance is sufficient to convince us that France is not everywhere a garden. Two north and south axes of fertility divide it into three or four areas of isolation. These differ in degree in a way which illustrates the action of social forces with great clearness. Within these two axes of fertility lie two thirds of all the cities of France with a population of fifty thousand or over. The major one extends from Flanders at the north to Bordeaux in the southwest. Shaped like an hourglass, it is broadened about Paris and in Aquitaine, being pinched at the waist between Auvergne and Brittany. The seventy-five miles of open country which lie between Paris and Orleans have rightly been termed by Kohl "the Mesopotamia of France." This district is not only surpassingly fertile; it is the strategic center of the country as well. At this point the elbow of the Loire comes nearest to the Seine
in all its course. An invader possessed of this vantage ground would have nearly all of France that was worth having at his feet. If the Huns under Attila, coming from the east in 451, had captured Orleans as Clovis did with his Frankish host at a later time, the whole southwest of France would have been laid open to them. The Saracens, approaching from the opposite direction along this axis, had they been victorious at Tours, could in the same way have swarmed over all the north and the east, and the upper Rhone Valley would have been within reach. The Normans in their turn, coming from the north-west, must needs take Orleans before they could enter the heart of the country. Finally, it was for the same reason that the English fought for the same city in 1429, and the Germans took it twice, in 1815 and again in 1870. This district, then, between Paris and Orleans, is the key to the geographical situation, because it lies at the middle point of this backbone of fertility from north to south.
The second axis, lying along the river Rhone, is of somewhat less importance as a center of population because of its extreme narrowness. Yet it is a highway of migration between the north and the south of Europe, skirting the Alps; and it is easily accessible to the people of the Seine basin by the low plateau of Langres near the city of Dijon. This renders it the main artery of communication from Paris to the Mediterranean. Down its course Teutonic blood has flowed. The culture of the south has spread into northern Europe in the contrary direction. Such is the normal exchange between the two climates in human history, the world over. The great fertility of the Rhone axis, moreover, is in strong contrast to the character of the country upon either side. Judged by its population, it merits the important position we have here assigned to it.
These two axes of fertility divide France, as we have said, into three areas which exhibit the phenomena of social isolation in different degrees. East of the Rhone lies Savoy, exceedingly mountainous, with a rigorous Alpine climate, and of a geological formation yielding with difficulty to cultivation. This region combines two safeguards against ethnic invasion. In the first place, it is not economically attractive; for the colonist is unmoved by those charms which appeal to the tourist to-day. We reiterate, the movement of peoples is dependent upon the immediate prosperity of the country for them. It matters not whether the invading hosts be colonists, coming for permanent settlement, or barbarians in search of booty; the result is the same in either case. Savoy, therefore, has seldom attracted the foreigner. It could not offer him a livelihood if he came. In the second place, whenever threatened with invasion, the defense of the country was easy. Permanent conquest is impossible in so mountainous a district. Combining both of these safeguards in an extreme degree. Savoy, therefore, offers some of the most remarkable examples of social individuality in all France.
The second area of isolation lies between our two north and south axes of fertility—that is to say, between the Rhone on the east and the Garonne on the southwest. It centers in the ancient province of Auvergne, known geographically as the Massif Centrale. This comprises only a little less than two thirds of France south of Dijon. In reality it is an outpost of the Alps cut off from Savoy by the narrow strip of the Rhone Valley. Much of it is a plateau elevated above two thousand feet, rising into mountains which touch three thousand feet in altitude. Its climate is unpropitious; its soil is sterile; impossible for the vine, and in general even for wheat. Rye or barley alone can be here successfully raised. At the present time this region is almost entirely given over to grazing. It has vast possibilities for the extractive arts; but those meant nothing until the present century. For all these reasons Auvergne presents a second degree
of isolation. It lacks all economic attractiveness; but it is not rugged enough in general to be inaccessible or completely defensible as is Savoy.
Brittany, or Armorica, the third area of isolation, is perhaps somewhat less unattractive economically than Auvergne. It is certainly less rugged. Extending in as far as the cities of Anglers and Alençon, it is saved from the extreme infertility of its primitive rock formation by the moisture of its climate. Neither volcanic, as are many parts of Auvergne, nor elevated—seldom rising above fourteen hundred feet—it corresponds to our own as well. A cross in the core of Auvergne in each case; the Rhine shown in the northeast; the location of Paris, Lyons, Belfort, etc., will enable the reader to keep them all in line at once.
Earlier in our work we have seen that the several physical traits which betoken race vary considerably in their power of resistance to environmental influences. This resistant power is greatest in the-head form; less so in the pigmentation and stature. As we are now studying races, let us turn to our most competent witness first. It will be remembered, from a preceding pa per, that we measure the proportions of New England.
|
|
|
| Teutonic Type. Blond. Index, 77. |
Alpine Type. Hautes Alpes. Neutral. Index, 96. |
Mediterranean Type. Brunette. Index, 76. |
For the farmer, it is more suited to the cultivation of religious propensities than to products of a more material kind. It is the least capable of defense of the three areas of isolation; but it redeems its reputation by its peninsular position. It is off the main line. It is its remoteness from the pathways of invasion by land which has been its ethnic salvation.
In order to show the effect which this varied environment, above described, has exerted upon the racial character of the French people, we have arranged a series of three parallel maps in the following pages, showing the exact distribution of the main physical traits. For purposes of comparison certain cities are located upon them all alike, including even the map of physical geography the head by expressing the breadth in percentage of the length from front to back.[2] This is known as the cephalic index. We have also seen that a high index—that is, a broad head—is the most permanent characteristic of the so-called Alpine race of central Europe. This type is bounded on the north by the long-headed and blond Teutons, on the south by a similarly long-headed Mediterranean stock, which is, however, markedly brunette. It is with these three racial types that we have mainly to do in this paper. Passing over all technicalities, our map of cephalic index shows the location of the Alpine racial type by its darker tints; while, in proportion as the shades become lighter, the prevalency of long and narrow heads increases.
The significance of these differences in head form to the eye is manifested by the three portraits at hand. The northern long-headed blond type, with its oval face and narrow chin, is not unlike the Mediterranean one in respect of its cranial conformation. This particular Teutonic type is slightly misleading, from the mode of dressing the hair, which tends to exaggerate the width at the forehead. The Alpine populations of central France are exemplified by rather an extreme type in our portrait, in which the head is almost globular, while the face is correspondingly round. Such extremes are rare. They indicate the tendency, however, with great distinctness. The contrast between the middle type and either extreme is well marked. Even with differences but half as great as those between our portrait types, it is no wonder that Durand and other early observers should have insisted that they were real and not the product of imagination. They may have erred in their explanations, although not in their facts.
Recalling the physical geography of the country, as we have described it, the most patent feature of our map of cephalic index is a continuous belt of long-headedness, which extends from Flanders to Bordeaux on the southwest. It covers what we have termed the main axis of fertility of France. A second strip of long-headed population fringes the fertile Mediterranean coast, with a tendency to spread up the Rhone Valley. In fact, these two areas of long-headed populations show a disposition to unite south of Lyons in a narrow light strip. This divides the dark-colored areas of Alpine people into two wings. One of these centers in the Alpine highlands, running up to the north; the other, in Auvergne, extends away toward the Spanish frontier. At the present time let us note that this intrusive strip of long heads cutting the Alpine belt in two follows the exact course of the canal which has long united the head waters of the Loire with the Rhone. It is an old channel of communication between Marseilles and Orleans. Foreigners, immigrating along this highway, are the cause of the phenomenon beyond question.
The long-headed populations therefore seem to follow the open country and the river valleys. The Alpine broad-headed type, on the other hand, is always and everywhere aggregated in the areas of isolation. Its relative purity, moreover, varies in proportion to the degree of such isolation enjoyed or suffered. In Savoy and Auvergne it is quite unmixed; in Brittany only a few vestiges of it remain. And yet these few remnants are strictly confined within the inhospitable granitic areas, so that the boundaries of the two correspond very closely. The spoken Celtic tongue has also lingered here in Brittany for peculiar reasons, which we shall soon discuss. The main one is the isolation of the district, which has sheltered the Alpine race in the same way. For it is now beyond question that the Breton, the Auvergnat, and the Savoyard are all descendants of the same stock. In nearly every case the Alpine race is found distributed, as Dr. Collignon says, "by a mechanism, so to speak, necessary, and which by the fatal law of the orographic condition of the soil ought to be as it is." In the unattractive or inaccessible areas the broad-headedness centers almost exclusively; in the open, fertile plains the cephalic index falls as regularly as the elevation. So closely is this law followed that Dr. Collignon affirrms of the central plateau that wherever one meets an important river easily ascended, the cephalic index becomes lower and brachycephaly diminishes.
The two-hundred-metre line of elevation above the sea seems most nearly to correspond to the division line between types. This contour on our geographical map is the boundary between the white and first shaded areas. Compare this map with that of the cephalic index, following round the edge of the Paris basin, and note the similarity in this respect. There is but one break in the correspondence along the eastern side. This exception it is which really proves the law. It is so typical that it will repay us to stop a moment and examine. We have to do, just south of Paris, with that long tongue of dark tint, that is of relative broad-headedness, which reaches away over toward Brittany. It nearly cuts the main axis of Teutonic racial traits (light tinted) in two. This is the department of Loiret, whose capital is Orleans. It is divided from its Alpine base of supplies by the long-headed department of Yonne on the east. This latter district lies on the direct route over to Dijon and the Rhone Valley. Teutonic peoples have here penetrated toward the southeast, following the path of least resistance as always. Why, you will ask, is the Loiret about Orleans so much less Teutonic in type? The answer would appear were the country mapped in detail. The great forest of Orleans, a bit still being left at Fontainebleau, used to cover this little upland between the Seine and the Loire, east of Orleans. It was even until recently so thinly settled that it was known as the Gatinais, or wilderness. Its insular position is for this reason not at all strange. The Teutons have simply passed it by on either side. Those who did not go up the Seine and Yonne followed the course of the Loire. Here, then, is a parting of the ways down either side of Auvergne.
Another one of the best local examples illustrating this law that the Alpine stock is segregated in areas of isolation and of economic 
Types in the Morvan. disfavor is offered by the Morvan. This "mauvais pays" is a peninsula of the Auvergne plateau, a little southwest of the city of Dijon. It is shown on our geographical map. It is a little bit of wild and rugged country, about forty miles long and half as wide, which rises abruptly out of the fertile plains of Burgundy. Its mountains, which rise three thousand feet, are heavily forested. The soil is sterile and largely volcanic in character; even the common grains are cultivated with difficulty. The limit of cultivation, even for potatoes or rye, is reached by tilling the soil one year in seven. This little region contains at the present time a population of about thirty-five thousand—less to-day than fifty years ago. Until the middle of the century there was not even a passable road through it. It affords, therefore, an exceedingly good illustration of the result of geographical isolation in minute detail. Its population is as strongly contrasted with that of the plains round about as is its topography. The people, untouched by foreign influence to a considerable extent, have intermarried, so that the blood has been kept quite pure. The region is socially interesting as one of the few places in all France where the birth rate long resisted the depressing influences of civilization. For years it has been converted into a veritable foundling asylum for the city of Paris. Its mothers have cared for innumerable waifs besides their own offspring. This isolated people is strongly Alpine, as our portraits show, the boy on the right being a peculiarly good type; the other one has a strain of Teutonic narrow-headedness from all appearances. Beyond a doubt here is another little spot in which the Alpine race has been able to persist by reason of isolation alone.[3]
The law which holds true for most of France, then, is that the Alpine stock is confined to the areas of isolation and economic unattractiveness. A patent exception to this appears in Burgundy—the fertile plains of the Saone, lying south of Dijon. A strongly marked area of broad-headedness cuts straight across the Saone Valley at this point. A most desirable country is strongly held by a broad-headed stock, although it is very close to the Teutonic immigration route up along the Rhine. Here we have a striking example of the reversion of a people to its early type after a complete military conquest. It serves as an apt illustration of the impotency of a conquering tribe to exterminate the original population. The Burgundians, as we know, belonged to a blond and tall race of Teutonic lineage, who came to the country from the north in considerable numbers in the fifth century. The Romans welcomed them in Gaul, forcing the people to grant them one half of their houses, two thirds of their cultivated land, and a third of their slaves. For about a thousand years this district of Burgundy took its rule more or less from the Teutonic invaders: and yet to-day it has completely reverted to its primitive type of population. It is even more French than the Auvergnats themselves. The common people have virtually exterminated every trace of their conquerors. Even their great height (shown on our stature map), for which the Burgundians have long been celebrated, is probably more to be ascribed to the material prosperity of the district than to a Teutonic strain. One factor contributing to the result we observe is that the fertile country of the Saone Valley is open to constant immigration from Switzerland and the surrounding mountains. The Rhine has drawn off the Teutons in another direction, and political hatreds have discouraged immigration from the north-east. The result has been that the Alpine type has been strongly re-enforced from nearly every side, while Teutonic elements have been gradually eliminated.
Another and perhaps even more potent explanation for this localization of the Alpine type in Burgundy also lies at hand. This fertile plain is the last rallying point of a people repressed both from the north and the south. The general rule, as Canon Taylor puts it, is that the "hills contain the ethnological sweepings of the plains." This holds good only until such time as the hills themselves become saturated with population, if I may mix figures of speech. Applying this principle to the present case, it appears as if the original Alpine stock in Burgundy had been encroached upon from two sides. The Teutons have overflowed from the north; the Mediterranean stock has pressed up the Rhone Valley. Before these two the broad-headed Alpine type has, as usual, yielded step by step, until at last it has become resistant, not by reason of any geographical isolation or advantage, but merely because of its density and mass. It has been squeezed into a compact body of broad-headedness, and has persisted in that form to the present time. It has rested here, because no further refuge existed. It is dammed up in just the same way that the restless American borderers have at last settled in force in Kansas. Being in the main discouraged from further westward movement, they have at last taken root. In this way a primitive population may conceivably preserve its ethnic purity, entirely apart from geographical areas of isolation as such.
What is the meaning of this remarkable differentiation of population? Why should the Alpine racial type be so hard favored in respect of its habitat? Is it because prosperity tends to make the head narrow; or, in other words, because the physical environment exerts a direct influence upon the shape of the cranium? Were the people of France once completely homogeneous until differentiated by outward circumstances? There is absolutely no proof of it. Nevertheless, the coincidence remains to be explained. It holds good in every part of Europe that we have examined—in Switzerland, the Tyrol, the Black Forest—and now here in great detail for all France. Two theories offer a possible and competent explanation for it all. One is geographical, the other social.
The first theory accounting for the sharp differences of population between the favorable and unpropitious sections of Europe is that the population in the uplands, in the nooks and corners, represents an older race, which has been eroded by the modern immigration of a new people. In other words, the Alpine Celts once occupied the land much more exclusively; they were the primitive possessors of the soil. From the north have come the Teutonic tribes, from the south the Mediterranean peoples; in France, just as in the Tyrol, as we have pointed out in a preceding paper. The phenomenon, according to this theory, is merely one of ethnic stratification.
A second explanation, much more far reaching in its prognosis, is, as we have said, sociological. The phenomenon is the outcome of a process of social selection, which rests upon racial or physical differences of temperament. This theory is advanced by Ammon of Baden, and his disciple Lapouge in France, in two very remarkable recent books.[4] Briefly stated, it is this: In some undefined way the long-headed type of head form is generally associatad with an energetic, adventurous temperament, which impels the individual to migrate in search of greater economic opportunities. The men thus physically endowed are more apt to go forth to the great cities, to the places where advancement in the scale of living is possible. The result is a constant social selection, which draws this type upward and onward, the broad-headed one being left in greater purity thereby in the isolated regions. Those who advocate this view do not make it necessarily a matter of racial selection alone. It is more fundamental. It concerns all races and all types within races. This is too comprehensive a topic to be discussed in this place; we shall hope to deal with it later. Personally, I think that it may be, and indeed is, due to a great process of racial rather than purely social selection. I do not think it yet proved to be other than this. The Alpine stock is more primitive, deeper seated in the land; the Teutonic race has come in afterward, overflowing toward the south, where life offers greater attractions for invasion. In so doing it has repelled or exterminated the Alpine type, either by forcible conquest or by intermixture, which racially leads to the same goal.[5]
Before we proceed further let us examine the other physical traits a moment. The map of the distribution of brunetteness shows these several Alpine areas of isolation far less distinctly than the map of the cephalic index. It points to the disturbing influence of climate or of other environment. If the law conducing to blondness in mountainous areas of infertility were to hold true here as it appears to do elsewhere, this factor alone would obscure relations. Many of the populations of the Alpine areas should, on racial grounds, be darker than the Teutonic ones; yet, being economically disfavored, on the other hand, they tend toward blondness. The two influences of race and environment are here in opposition to the manifest blurring of all sharp racial lines and divisions. Despite this disturbing influence, the Auvergnat area appears as a great wedge of pigmentation penetrating the center of France on the south. This is somewhat broken up on the northern edge, because of the recent immigration of a considerable mining population into this district which has come
from other parts of the country. The Rhone Valley appears as a route of migration of blondness toward the south. Little more than these general features can be gathered from the map of color, except that the progressive brunetteness as we advance toward the south is everywhere in evidence. Were we to examine the several parts of France in detail we should find competent explanations for many features which appear as anomalous—as, for example, the extreme blondness upon the southwest coast of Brittany.
The map of stature still preserves evidence of the threefold division of the short Alpine people into Savoyards, Auvergnats, and Bretons. It demonstrates in great clearness the influence of the Rhone Valley in the production of tall stature. In this case the process is cumulative, for the fertile valley productive of increased bodily height is at the same time a highroad of immigration for the Teutonic race, which always carries a tall stature wherever it goes. The main axis of fertility from Paris to Bordeaux
does not appear, for two reasons. The area about Limoges and Perigueux (see map of cephalic index on page 293), with the shortest population of all, is the seat of a prehistoric people which we shall describe in our next paper; and north of it toward Orleans local causes with which we have not time to deal here have been operative.
Brittany and Normandy are two of the most interesting regions in Europe to the traveler and the artist. The pleasing landscapes and the quaint customs all serve to awaken interest. To the anthropologist as well the whole district possesses a marked individuality of its own. Within it lie the two racial extremes of the French people—the old and the new—closely in contact with one another. Attention was first attracted to the region because of the persistence of the Celtic spoken language, now vanished everywhere else on the mainland of Europe—quite extinct, save as it clings for dear life to the outskirts of the British Isles. Here again, we find an ethnic struggle in process, which has been going on for centuries, unsuspected by the statesmen who were building a nation upon these shifting sands of race. This struggle depends, as elsewhere in France, upon the topography of the country. The case is so peculiar, however, that it will repay us to consider it a little more in detail.
The anthropological fate of Brittany, this last of our three main areas of isolation, depends largely upon its peninsular form. Its frontage of seacoast and its many harbors have rendered it peculiarly liable to invasion from the sea; while at the same time it has been protected on the east by its remoteness from the economic and political centers and highways of France. This coincidence and not a greater purity of blood has preserved its Celtic speech. Since the foreigners have necessarily touched at separate points along its coast, concerted attack upon the language has been rendered impossible. This fact of invasion from the sea has divided its people not into the men of the mountain distinct from those of the plain—a differentiation of population, by the way, as old as the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes. The contrast has arisen between the seacoast and the interior. The people of the inland villages contain a goodly proportion of the Alpine stock, although, as our maps show, it is more attenuated than in either Savoy or Auvergne. To the eye this Alpine lineage appears in a
roundness of the face, a concave nose in profile, and broad nostrils. Along the coast intermixture has narrowed the heads, lightened the complexion, and, perhaps more than all, increased the stature. For an example of these contrasts our maps will serve as an illustration. We have already made use of one in a preceding paper. It is reproduced for purposes of comparison.
In view of the nature of these physical changes induced by ethnic crossing along the seacoast, we must look to the Teutonic race for the lineage of the invaders. They must, on the whole, have been light and long-headed. History, in this case, comes to our aid. The Saxon pirates skirted the whole coast around to the mouth of the Loire. In fact, they were so much in evidence that part of it was known to the old geographers as the litus Saxonicum. The largest colony which has left permanent traces of its invasion in the character of its present population, although
Cæsar assured us that he exterminated it utterly, is located in Morbihan. This department on the south coast of the peninsula, as our map of coloration of all France shows, is one of the blondest in all France. Its capital, Vannes, derives its name from the Venetes, whose confederation occupied this area. Both Strabo and Diodorus of Sicily asserted that these people belonged to the Belgaæ (Teutonic stock), although modern historians of Gaul seem inclined to deny it. Our anthropological evidence is all upon the side of the ancient geographers.
From a different source, although due indirectly to these same Teutonic barbarians, are derived the physical characteristics of the people in the north of Brittany, near Dinan, in the valley of the Ranee. Its location appears upon both of our maps of Brittany. This little district is very distinct from the surrounding country. The landscape also is peculiar in many respects. The cottages are like the English, with hedgerows between the several plots of ground. All these outward features corroborate the anthropological testimony that this was a main settlement of the people who came over from Cornwall in the fifth century, ousted by the Anglo-Saxons. They, in fact, gave the name Brittany to the whole district. They spoke the Celtic language in all probability, but were absolutely distinct in race. They seem to have been largely Teutonic. The Saxons soon followed up the path they laid open, so that the characteristics of the present population are probably combined of all three elements. At all events, to-day the people are taller, lighter, narrower-nosed, and longer-headed than their neighbors. A similar spot of narrow-headedness appears upon our map at Lannion. The people here are, however, of dark complexion, short in stature, characterized by broad and rather flat noses. Here is probably an example of a still greater persistence in ethnic traits than about Dinan, for the facts indicate that here at Lannion, antedating even the Alpine race, is a bit of the prehistoric population which we promise to identify in the next paper.
Normandy is to-day one of the blondest parts of France. It is distinctly Teutonic in the head form of its people. In fact, the contrast between Normandy and Brittany is one of the sharpest to be found in all France. The map of cephalic index on page 293 shows the regularly increasing long-headedness as we approach the mouth of the Seine. In the Norman departments from thirty to thirty-five per cent of the hair color is dark; in the adjoining department of Cotes-du-Nord, in Brittany, the proportion of dark hair rises from forty to sixty, and in some cases even to seventy-five per cent. In stature the contrast is not quite as sharp, although the people of the seacoast appear to be distinctly taller than those far inland. The ordinary observer will be able to detect differences in the facial features. The Norman nose is high and thin; the nose of the Breton is broader, opening at the nostrils. In many minor details the differences are no less marked.
Normandy, on the whole, is an example of a complete ethnic conquest. At the same time, while a new population has come, the French language has remained unaffected, with the exception of a spot near the city of Bayeux, where the Saxons and Normans together combined to introduce a bit of the Teutonic tongue. This conquest of Normandy has taken place within historic times. It is probably part and parcel of the same movement which Teutonized the British Isles; for it appears that the Normans were the only Teutonic invaders who can historically be traced to this region. Wherever they left the country untouched, the population approaches the Alpine type, being darker, broader-headed, and shorter in stature. This indicates that the tribes, such as the Caletes (the city of Caux), the Lexovii (Lisieux), and the Baiocasses (Bayeux) in Cæsar's time were probably of this latter type; in other words, that the district was Alpine in population until the Normans came with Rollo in the tenth century. The Romans appear to have allowed the Saxons to settle at places along the seacoast, but they had never penetrated deeply into the interior.
The correspondence between the map of Norman place names and that of cephalic index is sufficiently close to attest to the value of each. One of the common features of the Teutonic village names is "ville," from "weiler," meaning an abode, and not from "villa," of Romance origin. This suffix appears, for example,
in Haconville, or in a corrupted form in Hardivilliers. Another common ending of place names is bœuf, as in Marbœuf. Dr. Collignon has traced out a considerable number of such place names of Norman origin, all of which point to the Cotentin—that distinct peninsula which juts out into the English Channel—as a center of Norman dispersion. Certain it is that Cherbourg, at its extremity, shows the Norman element at its maximum purity. Probably this was a favorite base of supplies, protected by its isolation and in close proximity to the island of Jersey, which the Normans also held. The Saxon colony near Caen was a factor also which determined this location. The extension of the Normans to the west seems to have been stopped by the human dike set up by the English and Saxons about Dinan, and by "Norman Switzerland," the hilly region just east of it. Follow the similarity between the boundary of long and narrow beads on our map of cephalic index of Brittany, and the cross-hatched lines and tints on the map of physical geography of France on page 291. Note how it cuts across diagonally from northwest to southeast, parallel to the course of the Seine. Here the economic attraction in favor of the invasion of Brittany ceased, and at the same time the displaced natives found a defensible position. Prevented from extension in this direction, the Normans henceforth turned toward the Seine, where, in fact, their influence is most apparent at the present time. Paris, the Mecca of all invaders, toled them away, and Brittany was saved.
- ↑ It would be ungracious not to acknowledge publicly my indebtedness to two of the foremost authorities upon the population of France—Dr. R. Collignon, of the École Supérieure de Guerre at Paris, and Prof. G. V. de Lapouge, of the University of Rennes in Brittany. Invaluable assistance in the preparation of this and the following paper has been rendered by each. No request, even the most, exacting, has failed of a generous response at their hands. W. Z. R.
- ↑ *It should not fail of notice that these maps are constructed from averages for each department as a unit. These last are merely administrative districts, entirely arbitrary in outline, and entirely in dissonance with the topography of the country. The wonder is that, in view of this, the facts should still shine out so clearly. Thus all the Rhone departments lie half up among the mountains on the east. Their averages are therefore representative neither of the mountains nor the valleys. Between Dijon and Lyons the departments completely span the narrow valley, entirely obliterating its local peculiarities.
- ↑ It should be noted that this relation does not appear upon our map of head form, because this represents merely the averages for whole departments. The Morvan happens to lie just at the meeting point of three of these, so that its influence upon the map is entirely scattered. Most interesting details are given in Mémoires de la Société d'Anthropologie, Series 3, I, 1894, fasc. 2.
- ↑ Natürliche Auslese beim Menschen, Jena, 1893. Les Sélections Sociales, Paris, 1896.
- ↑ For an exceedingly interesting discussion of the action of economic and social forces in France, vide Auvergne, by T. E. Cliffe-Leslie in Fortnightly Review, xvi, p. 736 seq.