The Passing of the Great Race
By Madison Grant
Part II - European Races In History
Chapter
5
THE MEDITERRANEAN RACE
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THE Mediterranean
subspecies, formerly called the Iberian, is a relatively small, light boned,
long skulled race, of brunet color becoming even swarthy in certain portions
of its range. Throughout Neolithic times and possibly still earlier, it seems
to have occupied, just as it does to-day, all the shores of the
Mediterranean, including the coast of Africa from Morocco on the west to
Egypt on the east. The Mediterraneans are the western members of a subspecies
of man which forms a substantial part of the population of Persia,
Afghanistan, Baluchistan, and Hindustan, with perhaps a southward extension
into Ceylon. The Aryanized Afghan and Hindu of northern
India speak languages derived from Old Sanskrit, and are distantly related to
the Mediterranean race. Aside from a common dolichocephaly these peoples are
entirely distinct from the Dravidians of south India whose speech is agglutinative
and who show strong evidence of profound mixture with the ancient negrito
substratum of southern Asia. Everywhere throughout the Asiatic portion
of its range the Mediterranean race overlies an even more ancient negroid
race. These negroids still have representatives among the Pre-Dravidians of
India, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Sakai of the Malay Peninsula, and the
natives of the Andaman Islands. This Mediterranean subspecies at the close
of the Paleolithic spread from the basin of the Inland Sea northward by way
of Spain throughout western Europe, including the British Isles, and, before
the final expansion of the Alpines, was widely distributed up to and touching
the domain of the Nordic dolichocephs. It did not cross the Alps from the
south, but spread around the mountains across the Rhine into western Germany.
In all this vast range from the British
Isles to Hindustan, it is not to be supposed that there is identity of race.
Certain portions, however, of the populations of the countries throughout
this long stretch do show in their physique clear indications of descent from
a Neolithic race of a common original type, which we may call
Proto-Mediterranean. Quite apart from inevitable admixture with
late Nordic and early Paleolithic elements, the little brunet Englishman has
had perhaps ten thousand years of independent evolution during which he has
undergone selection due to the climatic and physical conditions of his
northern habitat. The result is that he has specialized far away
from the Proto-Mediterranean race which contributed this blood originally to
Britain, probably while it was still a part of continental Europe. On the other end of the range of the
Mediterranean species, this race in India has been crossed with Dravidians
and with Pre-Dravidian negroids. The Mediterraneans in India have also had
imposed upon them other ethnic elements which came over through the Afghan
passes from the northwest. The resultant racial mixture in India has had its
own line of specialization. Residence in the fertile but unhealthy river
bottoms, the direct rays of a tropic sun, and competition with the immemorial
autochthones have unsparingly weeded generation after generation, until the
existing Hindu has little in common with the ancestral Proto-Mediterranean. It is to the Mediterranean race in the
British Isles that the English, Scotch, and Americans owe whatever brunet
characters they possess. In central Europe it underlies the Alpine race, and,
in fact, wherever this race is in contact with either the Alpines or the
Nordics, it appears to represent the more ancient stratum of the population. So far as we know, this Mediterranean type
never existed in Scandinavia, and all brunet elements found there are to be
attributed to introductions in historic times. Nor did the Mediterranean race
ever enter or cross the high Alps as did the Nordics, at a much later date,
on their way to the Mediterranean basin from the Baltic coasts. The Mediterranean race with its Asiatic
extensions is bordered everywhere on the north of its enormous range from
Spain to India by round skulls, but there does not seem to be as much
evidence of mixture between these two subspecies of man as there is between
the Alpines and the Nordics. Along its southern boundary the
Mediterranean race is in contact with either the long skull negroes of
Ethiopia, or the ancient negrito population of southern Asia. In Africa this
race has drifted southward over the Sahara and up the Nile valley, and has
modified the blood of the negroes in both the Senegambian and equatorial
regions. 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. Overemphasis of the
importance of the skull shape as a somatological character can easily be
misleading, and other unit characters than skull proportions must also be
carefully considered in all determinations of race. Africa north of the Sahara, from a
zoological point of view, 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 and the ancient Egyptians and their modern descendants,
the fellaheen, are merely clearly marked varieties of this Mediterranean
race. The Egyptians fade off toward the south
into the so-called Hamitic people (to use an obsolete name), and the infusion
of negro blood becomes increasingly great, until we finally reach the pure
negro. On the east in Arabia we find an ancient and highly specialized
subdivision of the Mediterranean race, which has from time out of mind
crossed the Red Sea and infused its blood into the negroes of east Africa. To-day the Mediterranean race forms in
Europe a substantial part of the population of the British Isles, the great
bulk of the population of the Iberian Peninsula, nearly one-third of the
population of France, Liguria, Italy south of the Apennines, and all the
Mediterranean coasts and islands, in some of which, like Sardinia, it exists
in great purity. It forms the substratum of the population of Greece and of
the eastern coasts of the Balkan Peninsula. Everywhere in the interior,
except in eastern Bulgaria and Rumania, it has been replaced by the South
Slavs and by the Albanians, the latter a mixture of the ancient Illyrians and
the Slavs. In the British Isles the Mediterranean race
represents the Pre-Nordic population and exists in considerable numbers in
Wales and in certain portions of England, notably in the Fen districts to the
north of London. In Scotland it is nearly obliterated, leaving behind only
its brunetness as an indication of its former prevalence, though it is now
often associated there with tall stature. This is the race that gave the world the
great civilizations of Egypt, of Crete, of Phoenicia including Carthage, of
Etruria and of Mycensean Greece. It gave us, when mixed and invigorated with
Nordic elements, the most splendid of all civilizations, that of ancient
Hellas, and the most enduring of political organizations, the Roman State. 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, loyalty, and
truth, point clearly to a Nordic rather than to a Mediterranean origin. The struggles in early Rome between Latin
and Etruscan, and the endless quarrels between patrician and plebeian, arose
from the existence in Rome, side by side, of two distinct and clashing races,
probably Nordic and Mediterranean respectively. The northern qualities of
Rome are in sharp contrast to the Levantine traits of
the classic Greeks, whose volatile and analytical spirit, lack of cohesion,
political incapacity, and ready resort to treason, all point clearly to
southern and eastern affinities. While very ancient, present for probably
ten thousand years in western and southern Europe, and even longer on the
south shore of the Mediterranean, nevertheless this race cannot be called
purely European. The route of its migration along the north coast of Africa,
and up the west coast of Europe, can be traced everywhere by its beautifully
polished stone weapons and tools. The Megalithic monuments also are found in
association with this race, and mark its line of advance in western Europe,
although they extend beyond the range of the Mediterraneans into the domain
of the Scandinavian Nordics. These huge stone structures were chiefly
sepulchral memorials and appear to have been based on an imitation of the
Egyptian funeral monuments. They date back to the first knowledge of the
manufacture and use of bronze tools by the Mediterranean race, and they occur
in great numbers, vast size, and considerable variety along the north coast
of Africa and up the Atlantic seaboard through Spain, Brittany, and England
to Scandinavia. It is admitted that the various groups of
the Mediterranean race did not speak, in the first in stance, any form of
Aryan tongue. These Aryan languages we know were introduced into the
Mediterranean world from the north. We have in the Basque tongue to-day a
survival of one of the Pre-Aryan languages, which were spoken by the
Mediterranean population of the Iberian Peninsula before the arrival of the
Aryan-speaking Gauls of Nordic race. The language of these invaders was Celtic,
and replaced over most of the country the ancient speech of the natives, only
in turn to be superseded, along with the Phcenician spoken in some of the
southern coast towns, by the Latin of the conquering Roman, and Latin, mixed
with some small elements of Gothic construction and Arabic vocabulary forms
the basis of modern Portuguese, Castilian, and Catalan. The native Mediterranean race of the
Iberian Peninsula quickly absorbed the blood of these conquering Gauls, just
as it later diluted beyond recognition the vigorous physical characters of
the Teutonic Vandals, Suevi, and Visigoths. A certain amount of Nordic blood
still persists to-day in northwestern Spain, especially in Galicia and along
the Pyrenees, as well as generally among the upper classes. The Romans left
no evidence of their domination except in their language and religion; while
the earlier Phoenicians on the coasts, and the later swarms of Moors and
Arabs all over the peninsula, but chiefly in the south, were closely related
by race to the native Iberians. That portion of the Mediterranean race
which inhabits southern France oocupies the territory of ancient Languedoc
and Provence, and it was these Proven~cals who developed and preserved during
the Middle Ages the romantic civilization of the Albigensians, a survival of
classic culture, which was drowned in blood by a crusade from the north in
the thirteenth century. In North Italy only the coast of Liguria is
occupied by the Mediterranean race. In the valley of the Po the
Mediterraneans were the predominant race during the early Neolithic, but with
the introduction of bronze the Alpines appear, and round skulls to this day
prevail north of the Apennines. About 11OO B.C. the Nordic Umbrians and
Oscans swept over the Alps from the northeast, conquered northern Italy and
introduced their Aryan speech, which gradually spread southward. The Umbrian
state was afterward overwhelmed by the Etruscans, who were of Mediterranean
race, and who, by 800 B.C. had extended their empire northward to the Alps.
In the sixth century B.C. new swarms of Nordics, coming this time from Gaul
and speaking Celtic dialects, seized the valley of the Po, and in 390 B.C.
these Gauls, reinforced from the north and under the leadership of Brennus,
stormed Rome and completely destroyed the Etruscan power. From that time
onward the valley of the Po became known as Cisalpine Gaul. Mixed with Nordic
elements, chiefly Gothic and Lombard, this population persists to this day,
and is the backbone of modern Italy. A similar movement of these same Gauls or
Galatians, as the Greek world called them, starting from northern Italy,
occurred a century later when these Nordics suddenly appeared before Delphi
in Greece in 279 B.C., and then swept over into Asia Minor and founded the
state called Galatia, which endured until Christian times. South Italy, until its conquest by Rome,
was Magna Graecia, and the population to-day retains many Pelasgian Greek
elements. It is among these Hellenic remnants that artists search for the
handsomest types of the Mediterranean race. In Sicily also the race is purely
Mediterranean in spite of the admixture of types coming from the neighboring
coasts of Tunis. These intrusive elements, however, were all of kindred race.
Traces of Alpine elements in these regions and on the adjoining African coast
are very scarce, and are to be referred to the great and final wave of round
skull invasion which introduced bronze into Europe. In Greece the Mediterranean Pelasgians, who
spoke a non-Aryan tongue, were swamped by the Nordic Achaeans, who entered
from the northeast according to tradition prior to 1250 B.C., probably
between 1400 and 1300 B.C. There were also probably still earlier waves of
these same Nordic invaders as far back as 1700 B.C., which was a period of migration
throughout the ancient world. These Achaeans were armed with iron weapons of
the Hallstatt culture, with which they conquered the bronze using natives.
The two races, as yet unmixed, stand out in clear contrast in the Homeric
account of the siege of Troy, which is generally assigned to the date of 1194
to 1184 B.C. The same invasion that brought the Achaeans
into Greece brought a related Nordic people to the coast of Asia Minor, known
as Phrygians. Of this race were the Trojan leaders. Both the Trojans and the Greeks were
commanded by huge blond princes, the heroes of Homer, while the bulk of the
armies on both sides was composed of little brunet Pelasgians, imperfectly
armed and remorselessly butchered by the leaders on either side. The only common
soldiers mentioned by Homer as of the same race as the heroes, were the
Myrmidons of Achilles. About the time that the Acheeans and the
Pelasgians began to amalgamate, new hordes of Nordic barbarians, collectively
called Hellenes, entered from the northern mountains and destroyed this old
Homeric-Mycenaean civilization. This Dorian invasion took place a little
before 1100 B.C. and brought in the three main Nordic strains of Greece, the
Dorian, the Aeolian and the Ionian groups, which remain more or less distinct
and separate throughout Greek history. It is more than probable that this
invasion or swarming of Nordics into Greece was part of the same general
racial upheaval that brought the Umbrians and Oscans into Italy. Long years of intense and bitter conflict
follow between the old population and the newcomers, and when the turmoil of
this revolution settled down, classic Greece appears. What was left of the
Achceans retired to the northern Peloponnesus, and the survivors of the early
Pelasgian population remained in Messenia serving as helots their Spartan
masters. The Greek colonies in Asia Minor were founded by refugees fleeing
from these Dorian invaders. The Pelasgian strain seems to have
persisted best in Attica and the Ionian states. The Dorian Spartans appear to
have retained more of the character of the northern barbarians than the
Ionian Greeks, but the splendid civilization of Hellas was due to a fusion of
the two elements, the Achaean and Hellene of Nordic, and the Pelasgian of
Mediterranean race. The contrast between Dorian Sparta and
Ionian Athens, between the military efficiency, thorough organization, and
sacrifice of the citizen for the welfare of the state, which constituted the
basis of the Lacedaemonian power, and the Attic brilliancy, instability, and
extreme development of individualism, is strikingly like the contrast between
Prussia with its Spartan-like culture and France with its Athenian
versatility. To this mixture of the two races in classic
Greece the Mediterranean Pelasgians contributed their Mycenaean culture and
the Nordic Achaeans 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 culture. This occurs as soon as the older race has
imparted to the conquerors its civilization, and before the victors have
allowed their blood to be swamped by mixture. This process seems to have happened
several times in Greece. Later, in 339 B.C., when the original
Nordic blood had been hopelessly diluted by mixture with the ancient
Mediterranean elements, Hellas fell an easy prey to Macedon. The troops of
Philip and Alexander were Nordic and represented the uncultured but unmixed
ancestral type of the Achaeans and Hellenes. Their unimpaired fighting
strength was irresistible as soon as it was organized into the Macedonian
phalanx, whether directed against their degenerate brother Greeks, or against
the Persians, whose original Nordic elements had also by this time
practically disappeared. When in its turn the pure Macedonian blood was
impaired by intermixture with Asiatics, they, too, vanished, and even the
royal Macedonian dynasties in Asia and Egypt soon ceased to be Nordic or
Greek except in language and customs. It is interesting to note that the Greek
states in which the Nordic element was most predominant outlived the other
states. Athens fell before Sparta, and Thebes outlived them both. Macedon in
classic times was considered quite the most barbarous state in Hellas, and
was scarcely recognized as forming part of Greece, but it was through the
military power of its armies and the genius of Alexander that the Levant and
western Asia became Hellenized. Alexander, with his Nordic features, aquiline
nose, gently curling yellow hair, and mixed eyes, the left blue and the right
very black, typifies this Nordic conquest of the Near East. It is not possible to-day to find in purity
the physical traits of the ancient race in the Greek-speaking lands and
islands, and it is chiefly among the pure Nordics of Anglo-Norman type that
there occur those smooth and regular classic features, especially the brow
and nose lines, that were the delight of the sculptors of Hellas. So far as modern Europe is concerned
culture came from the south and not from the east, and to this Mediterranean subspecies is due the
foundation of our civilization. The ancient Mediterranean world was of this
race; the long-sustained civilization of Egypt, which endured during
thousands of years of almost uninterrupted sequence; the brilliant Minoan
Empire of Crete, which flourished between 4000 and 1200 B.C., and was the
ancestor of the Mycensean cultures of Greece, Cyprus, Italy, and Sardinia;
the mysterious empire of Etruria, the predecessor and teacher of Rome; the
Hellenic states and colonies throughout the Mediterranean and Black Seas; the
maritime and mercantile power of Phcenicia and its mighty colony, imperial Carthage;
all were the creation of this race. The sea empire of Crete, when its royal
palace at Cnossos was burned by the 'sea peoples' of the north, passed to
Tyre, Sidon, and Carthage, and from them to the Greeks, so that the early
development of the art of navigation is to be attributed to this race, and
from them the north, centuries later, learned its maritime architecture. Even though the Mediterranean race has no
claim to the invention of the synthetic languages, and though it played a
relatively small part in the development of the civilization of the Middle
Ages or of modern times, nevertheless to it belongs the chief credit of the
classic civilization of Europe, in the sciences, art, poetry, literature, and
philosophy, as well as the major part of the civilization of Greece, and a
very large share in the Empire of Rome. In the Eastern Empire the Mediterraneans
were the predominant factor under the guise of Byzantine Greeks. Owing to the
fact that our histories have been written under the influence of Roman
orthodoxy, and because in the eyes of the Frankish Crusaders the Byzantine
Greeks were heretics, they have been regarded by us as degenerate cowards. But throughout the Middle Ages Byzantium
represented in unbroken sequence the Empire of Rome in the East, and as the
capital of that empire it held Mohammedan Asia in check for nearly a thousand
years. When at last in 1453 the imperial city, deserted by western
Christendom, was stormed by the Ottoman Turks, and Constantine, last of Roman
Emperors, fell sword in hand, there was enacted one of the greatest tragedies
of all time. With the fall of Constantinople the Empire
of Rome passes finally from the scene of history, and the development of
civilization is transferred from Mediterranean lands and Mediterranean race
to the North Sea and the Nordic race. |
Continue on to Part 2, Chapter 6 - THE NORDIC RACE