(Chapter XII, section 12) The Living Slavs (c) Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes If the Treaty of Versailles was bitter to the Magyars, it was more than bountiful to the southern Slavs, the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, whom the Magyars cut off, centuries ago, from their northern linguistic kinsmen. The present kingdom of Yugoslavia includes almost the totality of the three Slavic peoples mentioned, but also hundreds of thousands of Magyars, Bulgarians, and Albanians, to mention merely the more numerous of the subject minorities. Geographically, Yugoslavia is for the most part mountainous; culturally, it covers the entire range front the sophisticated civilization of central Europe to the Early Iron Age survival of the Balkan highlands. Among the Yugoslavs, religion as well as language forms a source of division; the Croats and Slovenes are Catholics, the Serbs are mostly Greek Orthodox. Under the term Serb are included, however, such diverse peoples as the Serbs Proper, the Montenegrins, the Bosnians, the Herzegovinians, and the Dalmatians. The Bosnians and Herzegovinians include large minorities of Moslems and Catholics, and the latter are particularly numerous in Dalmatia. Aside from the Serbs Proper, only the Montenegrins, whose religion served for centuries as a symbol of resistance to the Turks, are almost to a man Greek Orthodox. Neither language nor religion, however, nor general type of civilization, has much bearing on the, problem of race in Yugoslavia, since within this kingdom lies the concentration point of the entire Dinaric racial zone, which has its western terminus in Austria, Switzerland, northern Italy, and southern Germany, and its eastern in Albania. This Dinaric zone closely follows the mountain chain which borders the Adriatic, and is centered in Montenegro. It is the primary function of this section, and of that on Albania which follows, to dissect this Dinaric nucleus and to elucidate the Dinaric problem. We shall consider in turn the following segments of the southern Slavic nation: Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Dalmatians, and Montenegrins. The Slovenes,118 who are the westernmost of the southern Slavs, are linguistically closest to the Croats, whom they border on the south and east. They arrived in their present territory in the seventh century A.D., and absorbed the remnants of the Keltic and Illyrian peoples who had persisted in one form or other through the invasions and turmoils of the preceding centuries. Their chief area is the former Austrian province of Carniola, where they form 94 per cent of the population; beyond its borders they extend into Styria and Carinthia, and in the south they occupy part of the peninsula of Istria. In stature, head form, and pigmentation, they cannot be distinguished from the Austrians upon whose territory they touch; their mean height being 168 cm., their cephalic index 83.4, and almost half having medium brown to blond hair, while light and light-mixed eyes total nearly 70 per cent. The length and breadth dimensions of the head, however, fall at the small end of the Alpine and Dinaric ranges, with means of 183 mm. and 154 mm.; furthermore, their facial dimensions are rather small, with a total face height no greater than 120 mm., and a bizygomatic diameter of 140 mm. A nasal index of 68 is accompanied by a 25 per cent incidence of concave nasal profiles. The metrical characters detailed above indicate that while the stature and head form of the general Dinaric area are approximated by these Slavs, the Neo-Danubian type which has reëmerged so completely in northern and eastern Slavic territory is also to be reckoned with here. The Slovenes provide a partial breach in the Dinaric racial continuity, comparable to that provided by the Germanic element in Austria. This continuity is, however, partially restored by the Croatians,119 who, with a mean stature of 170 cm., and a mean cephalic index of 85, are intermediate in many respects between the Slovenes and the Serbs. The pigmentation of the Croatians is equivalent to that of the Slovenes; their faces are longer and wider, however, their noses longer, and nasal concavity is reduced to 15 per cent of the whole. The Serbs, who live for the most part to the north and east of the main Dinaric Alpine chain, and immediately east of the Bosnians and Montenegrins, founded a kingdom, alter their invasion from the north in the seventh century, in the country drained by the headwaters of the Lim and White Drin rivers, in what is now the Ipek region of eastern Montenegro, and the Mitrovitza country.120 The previous occupants were Romanized, Latin-speaking descendants of Illyrians and Thracians, and of colonists from other parts of the Roman Empire planted there by the emperors. During the twelfth century the Serbs expanded southward onto the plain of Kossovo, whence they made further conquests. Old Serbia, which arose as an important kingdom during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, had as its centers Skoplje and Prizren, which, for the last five centuries, have been mostly inhabited by Turks and Albanians. The Serbs expanded, during the period of their efflorescence, into Albania, Macedonia, and Thessaly; the arrival of the Ottoman Turks, however, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, terminated this period of expansion, and many of the Serbs fled northward, while others became Turkicized and Albanized. The Albanians, many of whom were converted to Islam, worked with the Turks rather than against them, and after the flight of the Serbs from the plain of Kossovo, this region was soon colonized by Albanians, many of whom still remain there. The once important Serbian influence in Albania has left few vestiges, other than Slavic place names, and the presence of a few islands of Moslem Serb speakers in the mountains, as in the Gora district of Luma. In studying the racial history of the Balkans, it must be borne in mind that here more than elsewhere in Europe, linguistic and ethnic boundaries are constantly changing; there have been many wholesale emigrations and immigrations; whole countrysides have changed not only masters, but also peasantry, in mass evictions and mass colonizations. The Balkan peoples change their languages and ethnic identities with difficulty and only after bitter oppression; it is easier to transplant than to alter them; once converted, however, they become as ardent partisans of the new allegiance as of the old. The Serbs have been subjected to these disturbances as much as have the others. Their position as the dominant people of Yugoslavia has only been won through centuries of retrenchment and struggle; their present effort to Slavicize by force the minorities within their boundaries is a commonplace of Balkan history. The modern Serbs, like the rest of the Yugoslavs, fall more into the Dinaric racial classification than any other.121 Not as tall as the inhabitants of the mountain chain itself, they attain a national stature mean of about 168 cm., which varies somewhat regionally, reaching the figure of 170 cm. and over as one approaches Bosnia and Montenegro. The bodily build of the Serbs, as with most other southern Slavic peoples, is neither thick-set nor lean as a rule, but of moderate European proportions. A relative sitting height mean of 52.8 and a relative span of 102, emphasize the relative length of leg and shortness of arm. These are the proportions that one finds in southern Germany, rather than in northern Slavic countries. The Serbs, for their stature, have, even more than the Slovenes, relatively small heads. The mean length is only 182 mm., the breadth 184.5 mm., while the auricular height mean is only 123 mm. These are smalla than the heads of most Alpines, and of most western Dinaric groups. The cephalic index mean of 85 is of fully Dinaric elevation. The faces are also small, but longer than those of Slovenes and Croats, with a mean menton-nasion height of 122 mm. The bizygomatic breadth is likewise restrictat the mean of 140 mm. or less is no greater than among Nordics and Neo-Danubians. The noses are moderately leptorrhine (N. I. = 63), and small. (53 mm. X 33 mm.). The nasal profiles are usually straight, with a 25 per cent convex minority, and about 12 per cent of concave. The nasal root is almost always high, and the tip is inclined horizontally in most cases, but downward more frequently than upward. The Serbs are darker in pigmentation than either the Slovenes or the Croatians; 45 per cent of eyes are pure brown (Martin #2-4), as against 20 per cent which are pure or nearly pure light. Over 55 per cent have black or dark brown hair, while light browns and blonds come to less than 10 per cent. The beards are, of course, often lighter than the head hair. The skin is brunet-white or light-brown in at least a third of the total. It is unlikely that the prevalence of brunet pigmentation among the Serbs came from a Slavic source, and as we shall presently see, the high incidence of dark eyes can hardly be called Dinaric. By elimination we must suppose that the Serbs, in their sojourn in northern Macedonia. accumulated a strong brunet tendency. Bosnia consists of the six provinces, Bihac, Banjaluka, Tuzla, Travnik, Sarajevo, and Mostar, which lie between western Croatia, Dalmatia, Montenegro, and the Slavonian plain. The southernmost province, Mostar, includes, the territory known as Herzegovina, which lies nearest to Montenegro. The Bosnians serve racially as an approach to the nucleus of Dinaric giantism in Montenegro.122 Tuzla, in the northeast, has a mean stature of 171 cm.; Bihac and Banjaluca, in the northwest, of 172 cm.; in Travnik and parts of Mostar it rises to 173 cm., in Sarajevo to 174 cm., and in Herzegovina to 175-176 cm., approaching the Montenegrin level. The mean cephalic index of the Bosnians is over 85; this varies by religions, with the Catholics the most brachycephalic (86), and the Moslems the least (84). The Catholics are likewise the tallest and the lightest skinned; being the oldest population in the region in point of conversion, and the least affected by outside influences, the Catholic element preserves both a pre-Slavic123 and a pre-Turkish racial configuration more completely than do the partisans of Orthodoxy or Islam. In hair and eye color the Bosnians are intermediate between Croatians and Serbs; they are darkest in the northeast, and fairest in the regions nearest Montenegro. Since they form but an extension of the Montenegrin nucleus, it will suffice here to point out their near identity with the inhabitants of that former kingdom, and to leave a detailed description for the latter. On the steep and narrow coast of the Dinaric Alps, the zone of Dinaric racial concentration tapers off abruptly. The mean stature of the coastal people, from Istria along the Croatian shore and through the length of Dalmatia almost to the border of Albania, rises regularly from about 166 cm. to 171 cm., as one proceeds southeastward.124 Although the head form, with a mean cephalic index of 83-84, remains brachycephalic, the extreme short-headedness of the mountain interior is not present. The pigmentation changes gradually but extensively from a prevailingly blond condition in Istria to a prevalence of dark-mixed and dark eyes, and of black or dark brown hair, in southeastern Dalmatia. One may attribute the lesser Dinaricism of the Dalmatians to Italian or to Vlach blood, or to both,125 but this cannot be the only explanation. Dalmatia is the home, in solution, of a strong Atlanto-Mediterranean strain comparable to that found in northern Italy, which must go back in both places to a considerable antiquity. The Montenegrins, who are the tallest people in Europe, live on a barren limestone mountain upland, where they, for centuries, succeeded in maintainingnheir Christianity and their freedom while surrounded by the Turks. They, like the northern Albanians, preserve their old exogamous clan organization, and their clan loyalties and feuds. They are linguistically Serbs, but there can be no question that they are to a large extent Slavicized Albanians; the cultural continuity between the two peoples is striking, the only real differences being those of language and religion. Although the Montenegrins are divided geographically into several sections, the racial differences between these are not great, and for the present purpose the Montenegrins will be dealt with as a whole. Where there are regional differences, the Old Montenegrins, who show the most extreme development in typically Montenegrin characters, will be referred to.126 The mean stature of adult male Montenegrins reaches the figure of 177 cm., and in some districts it rises to 178 cm. The mean weight of a large series whose average age is 40 years is 160 lbs.; hence they are probably the heaviest as well as the tallest people in Europe, being even heavier than the Irish. Although their legs are very long, their trunks are correspondingly high, and a mean relative sitting height of 52 is at least 4 points higher than that for the long-legged Tuareg, who are the only white people of pure Mediterranean origin to approach them in stature. The Montenegrins' mean shoulder breath is 39 cm., and their chests are correspondingly large. The relative span of 101 is extremely low, indicat-ing that their arms are short in proportion to either leg or trunk length. The hands and feet are, as is to be expected, usually of great size. These huge mountaineers are not as a rule slender, leptosome people; they are often thick-set, and are large all over. As is to be expected among men of their stature and bulk, the Montenegrins have large heads, but these are not quite as large as those of the somewhat shorter Irish, Icelanders, or Fehmarners. The mean head length is 188 mm., the breadth 160 mm., the auricular height about 128 mm. The cephalic index mean is 85, about the same as for Croatians, Bosnians, and Serbs. The head length, however, is at least 7 mm. greater than that for these other Yugoslavs, excepting the Bosnians, who fill an intermediate position; the head breadth is about 6 mm. greater. The faces are correspondingly large; the minimum frontal mean is 112 mm., the bizygomatic 147 mm., and the bigonial 112 mm. The toal face height, 127 mm. in Old Montenegro, rises to a mean of over 130 mm. in Bida and the northern border tribes; the nose height reaches the remarkable elevation of 61 mm., while the breadth is 36 mm. The facial index, in view of the great size of both component diameters, lies at 89 in Old Montenegro, on the border between mesoprosopy and leptoprosopy; it rises to 91 in Brda and the northern border tribes. The upper facial index, 53 in Old Montenegro, has a mean of 55 in the north. The nasal index is hyperleptorrhine, with tribal means ranging between 58 and 60. The widest faces, the shortest faces, and the lowest upper facial indices, as well as the widest foreheads and jaws, are concentrated in the southwest, Old Montenegro. These excesses are not typically Dinaric; they suggest only one possible relationship, and that is with the unreduced Upper Palaeolithic races. The Montenegrins are prevailingly dark brown in head hair color; in Old Montenegro some 45 per cent of adult males belong to this class, while 20 per cent are medium brown, and 26 per cent auburn, or brown with a perceptible reddish tinge. The tribesmen of Brda and the northern border are somewhat darker, and show less rufosity. The beards are much lighter than the head hair; among Old Montenegrins 43 per cent are reddish brown, and 8 per cent contain a pure red element; only 17 per cent are dark brown. In Brda golden-brown beards are extremely common, as frequent as 39 per cent; in the northern border tribes, 24 per cent. The rufosity of the Montenegrins, and their tendency to golden blondism, is not only extreme, but is particularly unusual for this part of Europe. It will be recalled that the Serbians, traditionally close relatives of the Montenegrins, are much darker haired, and that the Slavs in general, when blond, favor the ash-blond side of the scale, being almost entirely deficient in rufosity. Twenty-five per cent of Old Montenegrins have pure dark eyes, and 10 per cent pure light ones. The pure darks are almost all mixtures between dark brown and light brown shades, while the pure lights are grayish blue. The mixed class, by far the largest, consists of 37 per cent green-brown, 20 per cent blue-brown, and 6 per cent gray-brown. The northern border tribes and BMa are lighter eyed than Old Montenegro, with only 20 per cent of pure darks. On the whole the Montenegrins have lighter eyes than the Serbs, and fully as light as the Slovenes and Croatians. Over 80 per cent have pinkish white unexposed skin color, ranging from von Luschan #3 to 7, 8, and 9; a small minority have skins which are as dark as light brown. About 25 per cent show some freckling, as is to be expected in association with rufosity. The head hair is straight or nearly straight among half the Old Montenegrins, wavy among the rest; in the other tribes the ratio of straight runs higher. The beard and body hair are, as a rule, moderate to abundant; the glabrosity of the eastern Slavs rarely appears here. Baldness, either partial or involving the whole crown of the head, is quite common. The eyebrows are as a rule thick, and concurrent in 80 per cent of the group. Exceptionally heavy browridges, rare among other Slavs, are found in about 20 per cent. The eyes are frequently deep set, with a narrow opening between the lids; three men cut of four have external eyefolds. A low orbit, a quite un-Dinaric character, seems frequent. The nose again in many cases diverges from a Dinaric standard; deep nasion depressions are common, and the nasal root is often of only moderate height and moderate breadth. The bridge is frequently but by no means always high, and of medium breadth. Among the Old Montenegrins, non-Dinaric nasal characters are commoner than among the other tribal groups. Fifty-two per cent of convex nasal profiles, however, retain the Old Montenegrins as a whole in the Dinaric class; the ratio is higher elsewhere. Fifteen per cent are concave, and 4 per cent definitely snubbed. The tip is of medium thickness in most cases, and inclined downward more frequently than upward. It must be remembered that in this case we are dealing with a series of men whose mean age is 40 years, and that among Dinaric peoples the depression of the nasal tip is a phenomenon of advancing age. On the whole the Montenegrins show a variety of nasal forms: the large hawk-beak for which they are famous is the most common, but alongside it is a large-tipped, low-bridged form which is less frequent but even more characteristic. The lips are usually of moderate integumental and slight membranous thickness; eversion is usually slight, and this last feature may be associated with a 25 per cent incidence of the primitive edge-to-edge manner of dental occlusion. Although the malars are rarely prominent in the forward plane, the zygomatic arches frequently jut widely to the side; the gonial angles are of exaggerated prominence in nearly half the group. In the back of the head, occipital protrusion is usually slight to absent; occipital flattening is present in 43 per cent of the Old Montenegrins, and even commoner in some of the other groups. Lambdoidal flattening is even more frequent; few heads show no flattening in either the lanibdoid region or below it. The Montenegrins, after a detailed examination, are seen to be far from typical Dinarics in many features; they are too large-bodied, too large-headed, and too broad-faced; their noses are too frequently broad and thick-tipped. They are also far too rufous for the ordinary Dinaric type. Taking the Montenegrins individually, one finds many who do conform to standard Dinaric specifications, but are all taller than most Dinarics elsewhere; there are also some short, thick-set Alpines, and a minority of tall, brunet dolichocephals or near dolichocephals whom we shall also find farther south in Albania. But the Montenegrin of distinctive type, concentrated in Old Montenegro, is a very tall, large-bodied man, with a large, full-vaulted head abbreviated at the rear; his face is very broad, his jaw heavy, his brows overhanging, and his nose large and thick-tipped. It is this type which bears the rufosity in hair color, the freckling, and a tendency to light-mixed eye color. Most of the Montenegrins are intermediate between this type and a more conventional Dinaric. The Old Montenegrin type, concentrated in the southwestern mountain fringe of Montenegro, just north of the Lake of Scutari, in the most conservative part of the kingdom culturally, and the ethnic center of the Montenegrin nation, is nothing more nor less than a local unreduced brachycephalized Upper Palaeolithic survival or reemergence, comparable to those found in northern Europe and northern Africa. Its growth to an extreme size is a local specialization, in which selection may have played a part, as well possibly as nutritive factors associated with life on a limestone mountain. Mixture with this Borreby-like type, and a response to the same selective and environmental influences, have elevated the stature of the accompanying Dinaric factor as well. Montenegro is not, therefore, simply a Dinaric nucleus; it is a Borreby-like or Afalou-like outcropping within a Dinaric nucleus. We know little or nothing of the prehistoric archaeology of Montenegro. So far there is no evidence to prove or disprove the presence of an Upper Palaeolithic European racial strain in this region. How this strain got to Montenegro, far from its other centers of survival, is a problem which cannot be solved without further facts. Notes: 118 Biasutti, R., APA, vol. 51, 1921, pp. 154-184. Cwirko-Godyki, M., RDAP, vol. 41, 1931, pp. 105-120. Skerlj, B., ZFMA, vol. 28, 1930, pp. 213-237; AAnz, vol. 8, 1932, pp. 126-143; AnthPr, vols. 1-2, 1927, pp. 55-91. Weisbach, A., MAGW, vol. 33, 1903, pp. 234-251. 119 Biasutti, R., APA, vol. 51, 1921, pp. 154-184. Hrdlicka, A., The Old Americans. Weisbach, A., MAGW, vol. 35, 1905, pp. 99-117. 120 Anonymous, MAGW, vol. 18, 1888, pp. 182-190. Cvijic, J., GR, vol. 5,1918, pp. 345-361. 121 Lebzelter, V., MAGW, vol. 59, 1929, pp. 61-126; vol. 63, 1933, pp. 233-251. Males, B., Antropoloska Ispitivanja. Males, B., and Konstantinovic, B., RDAR, vol. 28, 1928-29, pp. 401-416. Pittard, E., REAP, vol. 20, 1910, pp. 307-311. Wiazemsky, Prince, Anth, vol. 20, 1909, pp. 353-372. Wrzosek, A., WAnt, vol. 1, Z.1, 1922. 122 Capus, G., BSAP, ser. 4, vol. 6, 1895, pp. 99-103. Krauss, F. S., MAGW, vol. 15, 1885, pp. 84-87. Weisbach, A., MAGW, vol. 25, 1895, pp. 206-239; MAGW, supplement 2, 1889. 123 Pre-Slavic in the chronological sense, not in the sense used by Polish anthropologists. 124 Weisbach, A., ZFE, supplement to vol. 16, 1884, pp. 1-77. Zampa, R., RDAP, ser. 3, vol. 1, 1886, pp. 625-648. 125 See Chapter XII, section 16, p. 614. 126 The data upon which the following anthropometric summary is largely based consists of an unpublished series of over 800 Montenegrins measured by Mr. Robert W. Ehrich, and used here with his permission. Other sources consulted are: Haberlandt, A., and Lebzelter, V., AFA, vol. 45, 1919, pp. 123-154. Males, B., AnthPr, vol. 9, 1931, pp. 125-145. Pittard, E., RDAP, vol. 26, 1916, pp. 199-201. Valsik, J., PAn, vol. 8,1934, pp. 53-55. Vram, U., ASRA, vol. 11, 1905, pp. 183-193.