The passing of the great race; or, The racial basis of European history

The maps shown facing pages 266, 268, 270, and 272 of this book attempt in broad and somewhat hypothetical lines to represent by means of color diagrams the original distribution and the subsequent expansion and migration of the three main European races, the Mediterranean, the Alpine and the Nordic, as outlined in this book.

The Maximum Expansion of the Alpines with Bronze Culture, 3000–1800 B. C.

The first map (Pl. I) shows the distribution of these races at the close of the Neolithic, as well as their later expansion. It also indicates the sites of earlier cultures. The distribution of megaliths in Asia Minor on the north coast of Africa and up the Atlantic seaboard through Spain, France and Britain to Scandinavia is set forth. These great stone monuments were seemingly the work of the Mediterranean race using, however, a culture of bronze acquired from the Alpines. The map also shows the sites throughout Russia of the kurgans, or ancient artificial mounds, distribution of which seems to correspond closely with the original habitat of the Nordics.

In southwestern France there is indicated the area where the Cro-Magnon race persisted longest and where traces of it are still to be found. The site is shown of the type station of the latest phase of the Paleolithic known as the Mas d’Azil—a great cavern in the eastern Pyrenees from which that period took its name of Azilian.

At the entrance of the Baltic Sea is also shown the type station of the Maglemose culture which flourished at the close of the Paleolithic and was probably the work of early Nordics.

In the centre of the district occupied by the Alpines is located Robenhausen, the most characteristic of the Neolithic lake dwelling stations and also the Terramara stations in which a culture transitional between the Neolithic and the bronze existed. In the Tyrol the site is indicated of the village of Hallstatt, which gave its name to the first iron culture.

The site of La Tène at the north end of Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland is also shown. From this village the La Tène Iron Age takes its name.

The difficulty of depicting the shifting of races during twelve centuries is not easily overcome, but the map attempts to show that at the close of the Neolithic all the coast lands of the Mediterranean and of the Atlantic seaboard up to Germany and including the British Isles were populated by the Mediterranean race, in addition, of course, to remnants of earlier Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, who probably, at that date, still formed an appreciable portion of the population.

The yellow arrows indicate the route of the migrations of Mediterranean man, who appears to have entered Europe from the east along the African littoral. But the main invasions passed up through Spain and Gaul into the British Isles, where from that time to this they have formed the substratum of the population. In the central portion of their range these Mediterraneans were swamped by the Alpines, as shown by the spreading green, while in northern Gaul and Britain the Mediterraneans were submerged afterward by Nordics, as appears on the later maps.

The arrows and routes of migration shown on the yellow area of this map indicate changes which occurred during the Neolithic and perhaps earlier, but the pink and red arrows in the northern and southeastern portions represent migrations which were in full swing and in fact were steadily increasing during the entire period involved. The next map shows these Nordics bursting out of their original homeland in every direction and in their turn conquering Europe.

Between these two races, the Mediterranean and the Nordic, there entered a great intrusion of Alpines, flowing from the highlands of western Asia through Asia Minor and up the valley of the Danube throughout central Europe and thence expanding in every direction. Forerunners of these same Alpines were found in western Europe as far back as the closing Azilian phase of the Paleolithic, where they are known as the Furfooz-Grenelle race and are thus contemporary in western Europe with the earliest Mediterraneans.

During all the Neolithic the Alpines occupied the mountainous core of Europe, but their great and final expansion occurred at the close of the Neolithic and the beginning of the Bronze Period, when a new and extensive Alpine invasion from the region of the Armenian highlands brought in the Bronze culture. This last migration apparently followed the routes of the earlier invasions and, in the extreme southwest, it even reached Spain in small numbers, where its remnants can still be found in the Cantabrian Alps. The Alpines occupied all Savoy and central France, where from that day to this they constitute the bulk of the peasant population. They reached Brittany and to-day that peninsula is their westernmost outpost. They crossed over in small numbers to Britain and some even reached Ireland. In England they were the men of the Round Barrows, but nearly all trace of this invasion has vanished from the living population.

The Alpines also reached Holland, Denmark and southwestern Norway and traces of their colonization in these countries are still found.

The author has attempted to indicate the lines of this Alpine expansion by means of the solid green spreading over central Europe and Asia Minor, with outlying dots showing the outer limits of the invasion. Black arrows proceeding from the east denote its main lines and routes. 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.

The Nordics apparently originated in southern Russia, but long before the Bronze Period they had spread northward across the Baltic into Scandinavia, where they specialized into the race now known as the Scandinavian or Teutonic. On the map the continental Nordics are indicated by pink and the Nordics of Scandinavia are shown in red. At the very end of the period covered by this map, these Scandinavian Nordics were beginning to return to the continent. The routes of these migrations and their extent are indicated by red arrows and circles respectively.

To sum up, this map shows the expansion from central Asia of the round skull Alpines across central Europe, submerging, in the south and west, the little, dark, long skulled Mediterraneans of Neolithic culture, while at the same time they pressed heavily upon the Nordics in the north and introduced Bronze culture among them.

This development of the Alpines at the expense of the Mediterraneans had a permanent influence in western Europe, but in the north their impress was of a more temporary character. It is probable that in the first instance they were able to conquer the Nordics by reason of the superiority of bronze weapons to stone hatchets. But no sooner had they imparted the knowledge of the manufacture and use of metal weapons and tools to the Nordics than the latter turned on their conquerors and completely mastered them, as appears on the next map.

The Expansion of the Pre-Teutonic Nordics, 1800–100 B. C.

The second map (Pl. II) of the series shows the shattering and submergence of the green Alpine area by the pink Nordic area. It will be noted that in Italy, Spain, France and Britain the solid green and the green dots have steadily declined and in central Europe the green has been torn apart and riddled in every direction by pink arrows and pink dots, leaving solid green only in mountainous and infertile districts. This submergence of the Alpines by the Nordics was so complete that their very existence was forgotten until in our own day it was discovered that the central core of Europe was inhabited by a short, stocky, round skulled race originally from Asia. To-day these Alpines are gradually recovering their influence in the world by sheer weight of numbers. On this map the green Alpine area is shown to be everywhere shrinking except in the countries around the Carpathians and the Dnieper River, where the Sarmatians and Wends are located. It was in this district that the Slavic-speaking Alpines were developing. Simultaneously with this expansion toward the west, south and east of the continental Nordics, the Scandinavian or Teutonic tribes appear on the scene in increasing numbers, as shown by the red area and red arrows, pressing upon and forcing ahead of them their kinsmen on the mainland.

The pink arrows in Spain show the invasion of Celtic-speaking Nordics, closely related to the Nordic Gauls who a little earlier had conquered France. This same wave of Nordic invasion crossed the Channel and appears in the pink dots of Britain and Ireland, where the intruders are known as Goidels. These early Nordics were followed some centuries later by another wave of kindred peoples who were known as Brythons or Cymry in Britain and as Belgæ on the continent. These Cymric Belgæ or Brythons probably represented the mixed descendants of the earliest Teutons who crossed from Scandinavia and had adopted and modified the Celtic languages spoken by the continental Nordics. These Cymric-speaking Nordics drove before them the earlier Gauls in France and the Goidels in Britain, but their impulse westward was very likely caused by the oncoming rush of pure Teutons from Scandinavia and the Baltic coasts.

In Italy the pink arrows entering from the west show the route of the invading Gauls, who occupied the country north of the Apennines and made it Cisalpine Gaul, while the arrows entering Italy from the northeast show the earlier invasions of the Nordic Umbrians and Oscans, who introduced Aryan speech into Italy. Farther east in Greece and the Balkans, the pink arrows show the routes of invasion of the Achæans and the kindred Phrygians of Homer as well as the later Dorians and Cimmerians. In the region of the Caucasus, the routes of the invading Persians are shown and, north of the Caspian Sea, the line of migration of the Sacæ from the grasslands of southern Russia toward the east. In the inset map in the upper right corner is shown the expansion of these Nordics into Asia, where the Sacæ and closely related Massagetæ occupied what is now Turkestan and from this centre swarmed over the mountains of Afghanistan into India and introduced Aryan speech among the swarming millions of that peninsula.

In the northern part of the main map the expansion of the Teutonic Nordics is shown, with the Goths in the east and Saxons in the west of the red area, but the salient feature is the expansion of the pink at the expense of the green and the ominous growth of the red area centring around Scandinavia in the north.

The Expansion of the Teutonic Nordics and Slavic Alpines, 100 B. C. to 1100 A. D.

This map (Pl. III) shows the yellow area greatly diminished in central and northern Europe, while it retains its supremacy in Spain and Italy as well as on the north coast of Africa. In the latter areas the green dots have nearly vanished and have been replaced by pink and red dots. In central Europe the green area is still more broken up and reduced to a minimum. In the Balkans and eastern Europe, however, two large centres of green, north and south of the Danube respectively, represent the expanding power of the Slavic-speaking Alpines. The pink area of the continental Nordics is everywhere fading and is on the point of vanishing as a distinctive type and of merging in the red. The expansion of the Teutonic Nordics from Scandinavia and from the north of Germany is now at its maximum and they are everywhere pressing through the Empire of Rome and laying the foundations of the modern nations of Europe. The Vandals have migrated from the coasts of the Baltic to what is now Hungary, then westward into France and finally, after occupying for a while southern Spain, under pressure of the kindred Visigoths to northern Africa, where they established a kingdom which is the sole example we have of a Teutonic state on that continent. The Visigoths and Suevi laid the foundations of Spain and Portugal, while the Franks, Burgundians and Normans transformed Gaul into France.

Into Italy for a thousand years floods of Nordic Teutons crossed the Alps and settled along the Po Valley. While many tribes participated in these invasions, the most important migration was that of the Lombards, who, coming from the basin of the Baltic by way of the Danubian plains, occupied the Po Valley in force and scattered a Teutonic nobility throughout the peninsula. The Lombard and kindred strains in the north give to that portion of the peninsula its present predominance over the provinces south of the Apennines.

The conquest of the British Isles by the Teutonic and Scandinavian Nordics was far more complete than was their conquest of Spain, Italy or even northern France. When these Teutons arrived upon the scene, the ancient, dark Neolithics had very largely absorbed the early Nordic invaders, Goidels and Cymry alike. Floods of Saxons, of Angles and later of Danes, crossed the Channel and the North Sea and displaced the old population in Scotland and the eastern half of England, while Norse Vikings following in their wake occupied nearly all of the outlying islands and much of the coast. Both these later invasions, Danish and Norse, passed around the greater island and inundated Ireland, so that the big, blond or red-haired Irishman of to-day is to a large extent a Dane in a state of culture analogous to that of Scotland before the Reformation.

This map shows that the vitality of Scandinavia was far from exhausted after sending for upward of two thousand years tribe after tribe across to the continent and that it was now producing an extraordinarily vigorous type, the Vikings in the west and the equally warlike and energetic Varangians in the east, who migrated back to the motherland of the Nordics and laid the foundations of modern Russia.

While all these splendid conquests were in full swing a little known group of tribes was growing and spreading in eastern and southern Germany and in Austria-Hungary and occupying the lands left vacant by the Teutonic nations, which had invaded the Roman Empire. From this centre in the neighborhood of the Carpathians and in Galicia eastward to the head of the Dnieper River, the Wends and Sarmatians expanded in all directions. They were the ancestors of those Alpines who are to-day Slavic-speaking. From this obscure beginning came the bulk of the Russians and the South Slavs. The expansion of the Slavs is one of the most significant features of the Dark Ages and the author has attempted to indicate the centre of expansion of these tribes by green dots and green arrows, radiating in all directions from the solid green area in Europe. To sum up this map, the yellow area has steadily declined everywhere, while in western Europe the green area is now limited to the infertile and backward mountain regions. In eastern Europe, however, this same green Alpine area is showing a marvellous capacity for recovery, as will appear from the map of the races of to-day.

The red area is widely spread and occupies the river valleys and the fertile lands and represents everywhere the ruling, military aristocracy more or less thinly scattered over a conquered peasantry of Mediterranean and Alpine blood. One phenomenon of dire import is shown on the map, where, coming from the districts north and east of the Caspian Sea, certain black arrows are seen shooting westward into Europe, reaching in one extreme instance as far as Châlons in France, where Attila nearly succeeded in destroying what remained of western civilization. These arrows mark respectively Huns, Cumans, Avars, Magyars, Bulgars and other Asiatic hordes, probably for the most part of Mongoloid origin and coming originally from central Asia far beyond the range of Aryan speech. These hordes of Mongoloids destroyed the budding culture of Russia, while at a later date kindred tribes under the name of Turks or Tatars flooded the Balkans and the valley of the Danube but these later invasions entered Europe from Asia Minor.

The preparation of the last map (Pl. IV), showing the present distribution of European races, was in some respects a more intricate task than that of the earlier maps. The main difficulty is that, as a result of successive migrations and expansions, the different races of Europe are now often represented by distinct classes. Numerically one type may be in a majority, as are the Rumanians in eastern Hungary, where they constitute nearly two-thirds of the population. At the same time this majority is of no intellectual or social importance, since all the professional and military classes in Transylvania are either Magyar or Saxon. Under the existing scheme of showing majorities by color these ruling minorities do not appear at all. In this last map the yellow is beginning to expand, especially in the British Isles. The green also is recovering somewhat in central and western Europe, but in the Balkans, eastern Germany, Austria and above all in Poland and Russia, it has largely replaced the former Nordic color. The pink, i. e., the continental Nordics as a distinct type, has entirely vanished and has been everywhere replaced by the Teutonic red. This does not mean that there are no existing remnants of the continental Nordics, but it does mean that these remnants cannot now be distinguished from the all-pervading and masterful type of the Teutonic Nordics.

In general, this last map, as compared with the earlier ones, although showing a steady shrinkage of the Nordic area, brings out clearly the manner in which it centres around the basins of the Baltic and the North Sea, radiating thence in every direction and in decreasing numbers. The menace of the continued expansion of the green area westward and northward into the red area of the Nordics is undoubtedly one of the causes of the present world war. This expansion began as far back as the fall of Rome, but only in our day and generation has this backward race even claimed a parity of strength and culture with the Master Race.