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THE following pages are
devoted to an attempt to elucidate the meaning of history in terms of race;
that is, by the physical and psychical characters of the inhabitants of
Europe instead of by their political grouping, or by their spoken language.
Practically all historians, while using the word race, have relied on
tribal or national names as its sole definition. The ancients, like the
moderns, in determining ethnical origin, did not look beyond a man's name,
language, or country, and the actual information furnished by classic
literature on the subject of physical characters is limited to a few
scattered and often obscure remarks.
Modern anthropology has demonstrated that
racial lines are not only absolutely independent of both national and
linguistic groupings, but that in many cases these racial lines cut through
them at sharp angles and correspond closely with the divisions of social
cleavage. The great lesson of the science of race is the immutability of
somatological or bodily characters, with which is closely associated the
immutability of psychical predispositions and impulses. This continuity of
inheritance has a most important bearing on the theory of democracy and
still more upon that of socialism, and those, engaged in social uplift and
in revolutionary movements are consequently usually very intolerant of the
limitations imposed by heredity.
Democratic theories of government in
their modern form are based on dogmas of equality formulated some hundred
and fifty years ago, and rest upon the assumption that environment and not
heredity is the controlling factor in human development. Philanthropy and
noble purpose dictated the doctrine expressed in the Declaration of
Independence, the document which to-day constitutes the actual basis of
American institutions. The men who wrote the words, "we hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," were
themselves the owners of slaves, and despised Indians as something less
than human. Equality in their minds meant merely that they were just as
good Englishmen as their brothers across the sea. The words "that all
men are created equal" have since been subtly falsified by adding the
word "free," although no such expression is found in the original
document, and the teachings based on these altered words in the American
public schools of to-day would startle and amaze the men who formulated the
Declaration.
The laws of nature operate with the same
relentless and unchanging force in human affairs as in the phenomena of
inanimate nature, and the basis of the government of man is now and always
has been, and always will be, force and not sentiment, a truth demonstrated
anew by the present world conflagration.
It will be necessary for the reader to
strip his mind of all preconceptions as to race, since modern anthropology,
when applied to history, involves an entire change of definition. We must,
first of all, realize that race pure and simple, the physical and psychical
structure of man, is something entirely distinct from either nationality or
language, and that race lies to-day at the base of all the phenomena of
modern society, just as it has done throughout the unrecorded eons of the
past.
The antiquity of existing European
populations, viewed in the light thrown upon their origins by the
discoveries of the last few decades, enables us to carry back history and
prehistory into periods so remote that the classic world is but of
yesterday. The living peoples of Europe consist of layer after layer of
diverse racial elements in varying proportions, and historians and
anthropologists, while studying these populations, have been concerned
chiefly with the recent strata, and have neglected the more ancient and
submerged types.
Aboriginal populations from time
immemorial have been again and again swamped under floods of newcomers and
have disappeared for a time from historic view. In the course of centuries,
however, these primitive elements have slowly reasserted their physical
type and have gradually bred out their conquerors, so that the racial
history of Europe has been in the past, and is to-day a story of the
repression and resurgence of ancient races.
Invasions of new races have ordinarily
arrived in successive waves, the earlier ones being quickly absorbed by the
conquered, while the later arrivals usually maintain longer the purity of
their type. Consequently the more recent elements are found in a less mixed
state than the older, and the more primitive strata of the population
always contain physical traits derived from still more ancient
predecessors.
Man has inhabited Europe in some form or
other for hundreds of thousands of years, and during all this lapse of time
the population has been as dense as the food supply permitted. Tribes in
the hunting stage are necessarily of small size, no matter how abundant the
game, and in the Paleolithic period man probably existed only in specially
favorable localities, and in relatively small communities.
In the Neolithic and Bronze periods
domesticated animals and the knowledge of agriculture, although of primitive
character, afforded an enlarged food supply, and the population in
consequence greatly increased. The lake dwellers of the Neolithic were, for
example, relatively numerous. With the clearing of the forests and the
draining of the swamps during the Middle Ages and, above all, with the
industrial expansion of the last century, the population multiplied with
great rapidity. We can, of course, form little or no estimate of the
numbers of the Paleolithic population of Europe, and not much more of those
of Neolithic times, but even the latter must have been very small in
comparison with the census of to-day.
Some conception of the growth of
population in recent times may be based on the increase in England. It has
been computed that Saxon England at the time of the Conquest contained
about 1,500,000 inhabitants; at the time of Queen Elizabeth the population
was about 4,000,000, while in 1911 the census gave for the same area some
35,000,000.
The immense range of the subject of race
in connection with history from its nebulous dawn, and the limitations of
space, require that generalizations must often be stated without mention of
exceptions. These sweeping statements may even appear to be too bold, but
they rest, to the best of the writer's belief, upon solid foundations of
facts, or else are legitimate conclusions from evidence now in hand. In a
science as recent as modern anthropology, new facts are constantly revealed
and require the modification of existing hypotheses. The more the subject
is studied the more provisional even the best-sustained theory appears, but
modern research opens a vista of vast interest and significance to man, now
that we have discarded the shackles of former false view-points and are
able to discern, even though dimly, the solution of many of the problems of
race. New data will in the future inevitably expand, and perhaps change our
ideas, but such facts as are now in hand, and the conclusions based
thereupon, are provisionally set forth in the following chapters, and
necessarily often in a dogmatic form.
The statements relating to time have
presented the greatest difficulty, as the authorities differ widely, but
the dates have been fixed with extreme conservatism and the writer believes
that whatever changes in them are hereafter required by further
investigation and study, will result in pushing them back and not forward
in prehistory. The dates given in the chapter of "Paleolithic
Man" are frankly taken from the most recent authority on this subject,
"The Men of the Old Stone Age," by Professor Henry Fairfield
Osborn, and the writer desires to take this opportunity to acknowledge his
great indebtedness to this source of information, as well as to Mr. M.
Taylor Pyne and to Mr. Charles Stewart Davison for their assistance and
many helpful suggestions.
The author also wishes to acknowledge a
debt of gratitude to Professor William Z. Ripley's great work on "The
Races of Europe," which contains a vast array of anthropological data,
maps, and type portraits, providing a mine of information upon which the
author has drawn freely, for the present distribution of the three primary
races of Europe.
The American Geographical Society and its
staff, particularly Mr. Leon Dominian, have also been of great assistance
in the preparation of the maps contained herein, and this occasion is taken
by the writer to express his deep appreciation for their assistance.
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