Aleš Hrdlička

“ We may now return to the skull of our chimpanzee. In considering the nature of the divisions in the parietal bones of this skull, we can at once and absolutely discard the idea of the divisions being due to fractures, or being boundaries of Wormian or fontanel bones, and thus really extra-parietal in their nature. There is nothing about the sutures, or the divided pieces, or the neighboring bones, that would even suggest such an explanation; and in our records on Wormian and fontanel bones we find no analogies either in man, or apes, or lower animals, to the conditions here observed. ”

“ The Slavs as a whole show the highest fertility among the more important European peoples. This will be well seen in the tables that follow. The birthrate among the Russians and southern Slavs is relatively enormous; and although the deathrate in these groups is also large, nevertheless the yearly excess of population remains superior to that of all other groups. During the last two decades some diminution in the birthrate has been observed in Bohemia, as everywhere in western Europe, but as yet this is almost restricted to the cities and has affected but very little the rural population. ”

“ Eklutna—Fairbanks.—Since reaching Seward the almost incessant drizzles have ceased and the weather has been fine and pleasantly warm. Everything is green, grass is luxuriant, and there are many flowers.
The railroad journey is a regular scenic tour, with its crowning point a glorious view of Mount McKinley. The trains run only in the daytime. For the night a stop is made at a railroad hotel, in a quiet, picturesque location, at the edge of a good-sized river. They have foxes in cages here and a tame reindeer. There are no natives in this vicinity. ”

“ The manly independence and the solicitude for individual political rights always exhibited by the Bohemian people have rendered them the teachers of nations; and their principles and parliamentary constitution have gradually penetrated into every country under heaven.
"They protected and preserved the rights of men during long ages when those rights were elsewhere unknown or trampled down. Bohemia has been the birthplace and the shelter of the modern politics of freedom."
But Bohemia has also been for centuries the culture center of central Europe. ”

“ If our views concerning the origin of the Indian and his comparatively late coming into America be correct, then it seems there ought to exist to this day, in some parts of eastern Asia, archeological remains, and possibly even survivals, of the physical stock from which our aborigines resulted. For it could have been no small people that sent us in the course of several thousand years the various more pronounced sub-types of the American Indian, which according to all indications have developed outside of America. ”

“ The sky is now clear and there is not much wind, but the swell is and keeps on such that, notwithstanding the repeated calls of our siren, the Eskimo whom we see above the beach near their boats, do not dare to launch these and come, nor does the captain care to risk one of our own launches, though we need fresh reindeer meat and all would like once more to meet the nice lot of natives of this village. After a prolonged wait and as conditions show no improvement, nothing remains but to leave the island. ”

“ Among the men there may also be noted occasional tendency to a prominence of the angles of the lower jaw. The skin is as in other central Europeans, never swarthy except in those with Mediterranean or other darker admixture. The hair and beard in their general characteristics are also as in other Europeans, though the growth of hair as well as that of beard seems to be especially favored by nature among the Russians. The prevalent hair color in the north is grizzly to brown, but as one proceeds westward and southwest darker shades increase in frequency. ”

“ Religious persecution and then general oppression of Bohemia follow. The freely chosen king becomes tyrant and before long the greatest enemy of Bohemia. Backed by the rest of his dominion, by Rome and Spain, he tramples over the privileges of Bohemia; depletes its man-power as well as treasury; by subterfuge or treachery occupies Prague and other cities, and follows with bloody reprisals and confiscations, which lead to an era of ruthlessness and suffering such as the country has not experienced in its history. ”

“ Barring the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands in the south and the Chukchee territory in the west, the Bering Sea is wholly the sea of the Eskimo, the Indians occupying the inland but reaching nowhere to the coast. There is doubtless much of significance in this remarkable distribution. It is now quite certain that the Eskimo has not been pressed out by the Indian; there are as a rule no traces of him farther inland than where he has been within historic times. On the other hand no Indian remnants or remains are known from any part of the coasts or islands within the Eskimo region ”

“ The causes of these intensely interesting demographic conditions among the Slavs are not easy to determine. Some of the factors favoring the high birthrate are doubtless the good physical status of the people, and the simple and often hard rural life of the vast majority. Except in Bohemia, parts of Moravia and Poland, and a few spots of Russia, industrialism is but little developed. And among the rural population there is, notwithstanding the prevalent notions about the Russian moujik of the casual observer, relatively little real alcoholism. ”

“ Inclined at times to melancholy, brooding, pessimism, he is yet deep at heart for ever buoyant, optimistic, hopeful—hopeful not of possessions or power, but of human happiness, and of the freedom and future golden age of not merely his own, but all people. ”

“ Those inhabiting the vicinity of Norton and Kotzebue Sounds are by far the finest and tallest, while those living between Cape Lisburne and Point Barrow are, like the tribes of the eastern portions of America, much shorter in stature, and bespeak the inferiority of the districts in which they live.
Both sexes are well proportioned, stout, muscular, and active. The hands and feet are small and beautifully formed, which is ascribed by some writers to their sedentary habits, but this cannot be the case, as probably no people take more exercise or are more constantly employed. ”

“ One such nation is surely, it seems, that of the Czechs or Bohemians. A 1,500-year-long life-and-death struggle with the race who surround it from the north, west, and south, with a near-burial within the Austrian Empire for the last three centuries, have failed to destroy the little nation or break its spirit.
As President Wilson has said: "At least two among these many races [of Austria] , moreover, are strenuously, restlessly, persistently devoted to independence. No lapse of time, no defeat of hopes, seems sufficient to reconcile the Czechs of Bohemia to incorporation with Austria. ”

“ The stream may one moment be like a great, liquid, softly flowing mirror, to be in a few minutes churned into an ugly and dangerous roughness from which every smaller boat must seek shelter. Its shores are inhospitable, except for the native fisherman and hunter, and torment man with swarms of gnats and mosquitoes. ”

“ A connected series of facts and arguments which seem to indicate that the Eskimo are an exceedingly ancient people, whose dawn was probably ushered in by a temperate climate, but whose dissolution now approaches, amidst eternal ice and snow; that the early migrations of these people have been from the north southwards, from the islands of the Polar Sea to the continent and not from the mainland to the islands; and that the present geographical area of the Eskimo may be regarded as a primary center of human distribution for the entire polar zone. ”

“ The first recorded war with the Germans dates from 630, when the Frank Dagobert endeavors by force of arms to impose vassalage on the Czechs, but suffers defeat; and from this time on the Bohemian history is replete with records of fighting with the Germans. How the nation escaped annihilation must remain a marvel of history. It is sometimes reduced to almost a German vassal; yet it is never entirely overcome, and rises again and again to assert its individuality and independence. ”

“ They are grown-up children, much more tractable than the Indians. But otherwise they show so much in common with the Indian that the more one sees of them the more he grows drawn to the belief of the original (and that not so far distant) identity of their parentage. It seems the Eskimo and the Indian are after all no more than two diverging fingers of one and the same hand; or they were so a bit farther back. Mental differences there are, yet these are no more than may be found in different tribes of the Indians or different groups of other races. ”

“ Notwithstanding the most bitter struggle for every right of their own, the Czechs have extended a helpful hand to all other branches of the Slavs, in whose intellectual advance and solidarity they see the best guarantee of a peaceful future. They have extended their great organization Sokol, which stands for national discipline, with physical and mental soundness, among all the Slavic nations, and they are sending freely their teachers over the Slav world, and this while still under the Habsburgs. ”

“ The nose.—The nose of the western Eskimo promises to be of much importance in the study of Eskimo origins in general. Nowhere in this region is it like the nose of the northern or northeastern groups. It is decidedly broader. Its breadth is intermediary between that of the Alaska and other Indians and that of the northern and northeastern Eskimo, connecting with both, and these characteristics are so generalized throughout western Alaska and the Bering Sea islands that they can not possibly be attributed to Indian or other admixture. ”

“ A military genius arises in Jan Zizka, and after him another in Prokop Holy; a new system of warfare is developed, including the use of some frightful weapons and of movable fortifications formed of armored cars; and for fifteen years wave after wave of armies and crusaders from all Europe, operating under the direction of Rome, Germany, Austria, and Hungary, are broken and destroyed, until religious and national freedom seem more secure. ”

“ No trace or indication of anything older than the double-grooved ax culture has thus far been seen anywhere in the valley; and large stretches of present banks are quite barren.
As we approach Nulato the horizon before us becomes hilly and mountainous. The sun is now fully out and its warmth is very pleasant. Pass an Indian woman paddling a canoe; later an Indian family going upstream in a motor boat. Most of these Indians possess a motor boat of some sort, and know how to run it, though it is not in their nature to be overcareful. ”

“ Under the leadership of fanatics, every house, every nook, is searched for books and writings, and these are burned in the public squares "to eradicate the devil" of reformation. Rapine reigns, until there is nothing more to burn, nothing to take, and until three-quarters of the population have gone or perished—a dreary monument to the Habsburg dynasty, to the status of mankind in the 17th century. ”