(Chapter XI, section 1) THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD: Introduction

In the first two chapters of our survey of the living white peoples we have covered the whole northern third of the European continent, and have discussed at some length the physical characteristics of the present representatives of the Nordic race, and of the East Baltic and Neo-Danubjan racial types, as exemplified by the Finno-Ugrian peoples and by the speakers of the Baltic branch of Indo-European. We have, furthermore studied the survival and reëmergence in northwestern Europe of unreduced, unmodified Upper Palaeolithic types, as exemplified especially by the Irish, and other British, and by the Scandinavians and East Baltic peoples. We have also discussed the incipiently mongoloid Lapps, and the mongoloid intrusions on European soil along its northern borders.

The next strip to follow, in a geographical sense, would be the whole highland belt of central Europe stretching over to the Balkans, to Asia Minor, and across to the Caucasus and Turkestan. This second zone, however, is one of immense racial complexity. In it various branches of the greater Mediterranean family, of Neolithic date and later, have been modified by combining in various proportions with each other and with the autochthonous Alpine race. The key to the complexity of this zone lies in the genetic action of this last entity, which is apparently a reduced, somewhat foetalized, or more highly evolved branch of the old Palaeolithic stock than those which we have been studying in the north. Since, however, it is the action of this element upon the Mediterranean family which is important here, it will be easier to study this zone after having surveyed the population of a third belt, that occupied by the purest living representatives of the Mediterranean race.

This third racial zone stretches from Spain across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco, and thence along the southern Mediterranean shores into Arabia, East Africa, Mesopotamia, and the Persian highlands; and across Afghanistan into India. This zone is one of comparative racial simplicity. In it the brunet Mediterranean race lives today in its various regional forms without, in most cases, the complication of the Palaeolithic survivals and reëmergences which have so confused the racial picture on the ground of Europe itself. Only in the mountains of Morocco and Algeria, and in the Canary Islands, is such a survival of any importance. The Careful study of living populations of the Mediterranean race in its early homelands will do much to simplify the task which lies ahead.