Mediterranean race

“ What is true where the hemispheres come together is true also where continents converge. The core of the Old World is found in the Mediterranean basin where Europe, Asia and Africa form a close circle of lands and where they are inhabited by the one white Mediterranean race. Contrast their racial unity about this common center with the extremes of ethnic divergence in their remote peripheries, where Teutons, Mongols, Malays and Negroes differ widely from the Mediterranean stock and from each other. ”

“ To summarize, it appears that a study of the Mediterranean race shows that so far from being purely European, it is equally African and Asiatic and that in the narrow coastal fringe of southern Persia, in India and even farther east the last strains of this race gradually fade into the Negroids through prolonged cross breeding. ”

“ This leaves us, therefore, with two rivals for supremacy—viz., the broad-headed Alpine type of central Europe and the true Mediterranean race in the south.
A second reason, no less potent than the first, for the simplicity of the ethnic problems presented in Italy is, of course, its peninsulated structure. All the outlying parts of Europe enjoy a similar isolation. The population of Spain is even more unified than the Italian. The former is probably the most homogeneous in Europe, being almost entirely recruited from the Mediterranean long-headed stock. ”

“ The Mediterranean race is everywhere marked by a relatively short stature, sometimes greatly depressed, as in south Italy and in Sardinia, and also by a comparatively light bony framework and feeble muscular development.
The Alpine race is taller than the Mediterranean, although shorter than the Nordic, and is characterized by a stocky and sturdy build. The Alpines rarely, if ever, show the long necks and graceful figures so often found in the other two races. ”

“ To what extent the Mediterranean race entered into the blood and civilization of Rome, it is now difficult to say, but the traditions of the Eternal City, its love of organization, of law and military efficiency, as well as the Roman ideals of family life, of loyalty and truth, point clearly to a northern 154rather than to a Mediterranean origin, although there must have been some Alpine strains mixed in with the Nordic element. ”

“ From a zoological point of view Africa north of the Sahara is now and has been since early Tertiary times a part of Europe. This is true both of animals and of the races of man. The Berbers of north Africa to-day are racially identical with the Spaniards and south Italians while the ancient Egyptians and their modern descendants, the fellaheen, are merely well-marked varieties of this Mediterranean race. ”

“ In pigmentation and stature the same thing is true. Little by little as we go south the Alpine blonde is eliminated until we reach the Mediterranean race in all its purity.
The southern part of the Italian Peninsula is to-day the seat of a Mediterranean population of remarkably pure ethnic descent. The peasants are very long-headed, strongly brunette, and almost diminutive in stature. Especially is this true in the mountains of Calabria, where geographical isolation is at an extreme. Along the coasts we find little points of contact with invaders by sea. ”

“ Contrariwise, on the southern side of the Mediterranean, where there was open, if largely desert, country, there would be room under primitive conditions for a homogeneous race to multiply. It is in North Africa that we must probably place the original hotbed of that Mediterranean race, slight and dark with oval heads and faces, who during the neolithic period colonized the opposite side of the Mediterranean, and threw out a wing along the warm Atlantic coast as far north as Scotland, as well as eastwards to the Upper Danube ”

“ To this mixture of races in classic Greece the Mediterranean Pelasgians contributed their Mycenæan culture and the Nordic Achæans and Hellenes contributed their Aryan language, fighting efficiency and the European aspect of Greek life.
The first result of a crossing of two such contrasted subspecies as the Nordic and Mediterranean races has repeatedly been a new outburst of civilization. This occurs as soon as the older race has imparted to the conquerors its culture and before the victors have allowed their blood to be attenuated by mixture. ”

“ Sergi is of the opinion, though he does not press it, that the Mediterranean race originated in Africa, perhaps in the region of the great lakes, and that its most primitive representatives of to-day are the Hamitic peoples along the southern shore of the Mediterranean.142 His definition of the race is based less upon mere breadth and length of skull than upon contours and form and development of regions. ”

“ Certainly there must have been Grimaldi people, and perhaps even Azilian and Neolithic people going about in the valleys and forests of these regions that are now submerged. The Neolithic Dark Whites, the people of the Mediterranean race, may have gone far towards the beginnings of settlement and civilization in that great lost Mediterranean Valley. ”

“ In France it is well known that members of the Mediterranean race are better adapted for colonization in Algeria than are French Alpines or Nordics. This subspecies of man is notoriously 45intolerant of extreme cold, owing to its susceptibility to diseases of the lungs and it shrinks from the blasts of the northern winter in which the Nordics revel.
The brunet Mediterranean element in the native American seems to be increasing at the expense of the blond Nordic element generally throughout the Southern States and probably also in the large cities. ”

“ Proximity to Africa has closely allied Spain to the southern continent in flora, fauna, and ethnic stock. The long-headed, brunette Mediterranean race occupies the Iberian Peninsula and the Berber territory of northwest Africa.241 This community of race is also reflected in the political union of the two districts for long periods, first under the Carthaginians, then the Romans, who secured Hispania by a victory on African soil, and finally by the Saracens. ”

“ Beyond these mixtures of blood, there is absolutely no relationship between the Mediterranean race and the Negroes. The fact that the Mediterranean race is long skulled as well as the Negro does not indicate relationship as has been suggested. An overemphasis of the importance of the skull shape as a somatological character can easily mislead and characters other than skull proportions 152must be carefully considered in determining race. ”

“ We have seen at the close of Chapter II. that what we have been accustomed to consider the Mediterranean race is in reality a mixture of several late palæolithic types, all somewhat resembling one another in their most conspicuous features, and the same seems to have been true of the Nordic Wiros, during their race-making period on the Russian steppe. Unfortunately we have no very long series of skulls to study, and in the case of some we are uncertain whether they belong to this or to a slightly later date. ”

“ In the beautiful and luxuriant gardens, especially in Italy, on the French Riviera, and in Algeria, the flora of almost every quarter of the globe is represented.
No less varied and interesting are the Inhabitants of the Mediterranean lands, who belong to three distinct continents, and who differ widely in race and language, in religion and culture. In remote mountain-regions there still exist peoples, like the Basques and the Albanians, who belong to the oldest races in Europe. ”

“ The Mediterranean race, spreading up the shores of the Atlantic, enters largely into the composition of the people of the south-west. The northern element, immigrant from the shores of the Baltic and North Sea, is strongest in the east and north. ”

“ Those Alpines who crossed the Caucasus passed through southern Russia and a side wave of the same migration passed down the Syrian coast to Egypt and along the north coast of Africa, entering Italy by way of Sicily. The last African invasion left behind it the Giza round skulls of Egypt. This final Alpine expansion taught the other races of Europe, both Mediterranean and Nordic, the art of metallurgy. ”

“ Now the Egyptians and other peoples of North Africa are considered by all anthropologists as typical members of the Mediterranean race, though the inhabitants of the western part seem, as we have seen, to have incorporated no small amount of Grimaldi blood ”

“ Concerning modern Europe north of the Alps, culture came from the south and not from the east and to the Mediterranean subspecies is due the foundation of our civilization. The ancient Mediterranean world was for the most part of this race; the long-sustained civilization of Egypt, which endured for thousands of years in almost uninterrupted sequence; the brilliant Minoan Empire of Crete, which flourished between 3000 and 1200 B. C. and was the ancestor of the Mycenæan cultures of Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Sardinia ”

“ The integrating force of such a basin will often overcome the disintegrating force of race antagonisms. The Roman Empire in the Mediterranean was able to evolve an effective centralized government and to spread one culture over the neighboring shores, despite great variety of nationality and language and every degree of cultural development. A certain similarity of natural conditions, climatic and otherwise, from the Iberian Peninsula to the borders of the Syrian desert, also aided in the process of amalgamation. ”

“ The Mediterranean, in other words, must be conceived not as a great barring sea, but as a land-locked lake or pair of lakes, so that Europe and Africa were joined geographically as well as racially and culturally.
As to the Cro-Magnon race, its association with the Aurignacian-Magdalenian culture of mid-European type is clear enough, but its origin remains problematical. One naturally looks eastward: to the north lay ice, to the west the Atlantic, to the south a different even though related culture. ”

“ The only race showing any Negroid characters is that of Grimaldi, apparently accompanying the Cro-Magnons, few in number and having little or no influence on the population of Europe. Evidently the Mediterranean region was far more precocious than northern Europe, and the genuine Mediterranean [Pg 182] race may have arrived here bringing the Neolithic culture almost or quite as early as the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic Epoch in France. ”

“ Yet the weakness of correlation of race faculty and civilization, except in the most general way, can be driven home to North Europeans and North Americans as soon as the relative parts played in culture history by the several Caucasian divisions are examined. On the ground of long continued lead in productivity, of having reared the largest portion of the structure of existing civilization, the Mediterranean branch of the Caucasian race would have to be awarded the palm over all others. ”

“ Hailing from an entirely different region of Europe, they differ completely in their racial characteristics from the earlier immigration. Considering only the head form, some of these people would show no marked difference from the Anglo-Saxon or Teuton. The Sicilians, the Neapolitans, the Greeks, are more or less dolichocephalic. But some anthropologists lay entirely too much stress on the headform. It is evident that purity of race is of far greater importance than the shape of the head. But these Mediterranean countries have probably the most mixed population of any region on the globe. ”

“ We have these races forming by their own inherent genius a social environment far beyond anything the world had ever witnessed, but when this was at its maximum it had not power to counteract the weakening influence of race admixture and exhaustion of the stock. The physical environment also remained the same, and those who would account for Greek and Roman culture by the favorable position of the two Mediterranean peninsulas—their climate, soil, coast line
The Curves Show the Distribution of Eminent Men in the Greco-Roman Period. ”

“ With a large train of followers she left her country, and after wandering some time, landed on the coast of the Mediterranean, in Africa, and located her settlement at the bottom of the gulf, on a peninsula, near the spot where Tunis now stands. Many of the neighboring people, allured by the prospect of gain, repaired thither to sell to those foreigners the necessities of life, and soon became incorporated with them. The people thus gathered from different places soon grew very numerous. ”

“ I shall begin my survey of the race and its distribution with the South Mediterranean branch, as that 115 which has been the more important of the two in history, controlling by far the greater territory, and developing the earlier and more potent civilizations. It has ever been, and still is, the leader in intellectual acumen, and the monuments of its achievements, both in the realms of thought and action, remain unrivalled in the world. ”

“ He also sought with considerable success to show that northwest Africa was the primitive home of the Aryo-Semitic race, to whom, and not to any Mongolian or Negro peoples, are really due all the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean. ”

“ It is not difficult to believe that communities of the Phœnician or Ethiopian race were established all around the Mediterranean, and even beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, in ages quite as old as Egypt or Chaldea, and that they had communication with America before Tyre or Sidon was built. ”

“ The most highly blended race outside of India occupied what is now the Mediterranean basin. Here blue men from the north and Saharans from the south met and mingled with Nodites and Adamites from the east. ”