Before considering the living populations of Europe we must give consideration to the extinct peoples that preceded them.

The science of anthropology is very recent—in its present form less than fifty years old—but it has already revolutionized our knowledge of the past and extended prehistory so that it is now measured not by thousands but by tens of thousands of years.

The history of man prior to the period of metals has been divided into ten or more subdivisions, many of them longer than the time covered by written records. Man has struggled up through the ages, to revert again and again into savagery and barbarism but apparently retaining each time something gained by the travail of his ancestors.

So long as there is in the world a freely breeding stock or race that has in it an inherent capacity for development and growth, mankind will continue to ascend until, possibly through the selection and regulation of breeding as intelligently applied as in the case of domestic animals, it will control its own destiny and attain moral heights as yet unimagined.

The impulse upward, however, is supplied by a very small number of nations and by a very small proportion of the population in such nations. The section of any community that produces leaders or genius of any sort is only a minute percentage. To utilize and adapt to human needs the forces and the raw materials of nature, to invent new processes, to establish new principles, and to elucidate and unravel the laws that control the universe call for genius. To imitate or to adopt what others have invented is not genius but mimicry.

This something which we call “genius” is not a matter of family, but of stock or strain, and is inherited in precisely the same manner as are the purely physical characters. It may be latent through several generations of obscurity and then flare up when the opportunity comes. Of this we have many examples in America. This is what education or opportunity does for a community; it permits in these rare cases fair play for development, but it is race, always race, that produces genius. An individual of inferior type or race may profit greatly by good environment. On the other hand, a member of a superior race in bad surroundings may, and very often does, sink to an extremely low level. While emphasizing the importance of race, it must not be forgotten that environment, while it does not alter the potential capacity of the stock, can perform miracles in the development of the individual.

This genius producing type is slow breeding and there is real danger of its loss to mankind. Some idea of the value of these small strains can be gained from the recent statistics which demonstrate that Massachusetts produces more than fifty times as much genius per hundred thousand whites as does Georgia, Alabama or Mississippi, although apparently the race, religion and environment, other than climatic conditions, are much the same, except for the numbing presence in the South of a large stationary Negro population.

The more thorough the study of European prehistory becomes, the more we realize how many advances of culture have been made and then lost. Our parents were accustomed to regard the overthrow of ancient civilization in the Dark Ages as the greatest catastrophe of mankind, but we now know that the classic period of Greece was preceded by similar dark ages caused by the Dorian invasions, that had overthrown the Homeric-Mycenæan culture, which in its turn had flourished after the destruction of its parent, the brilliant Minoan culture of Crete. Still earlier, some twelve thousand years ago, the Azilian Period of poverty and retrogression succeeded the wonderful achievements of the hunter-artists of the Upper Paleolithic.

The progress of civilization becomes evident only when immense periods are studied and compared, but the lesson is always the same, namely, that race is everything. Without race there can be nothing except the slave wearing his master’s clothes, stealing his master’s proud name, adopting his master’s tongue and living in the crumbling ruins of his master’s palace. Everywhere on the sites of ancient civilizations the Turk, the Kurd and the Bedouin camp; and Americans may well pause and consider the fate of this country which they, and they alone, founded and nourished with their blood. The immigrant ditch diggers and the railroad navvies were to our fathers what their slaves were to the Romans and the same transfer of political power from master to servant is taking place to-day.

Man’s place of origin was undoubtedly Asia. Europe is only a peninsula of the Eurasiatic continent and although the extent of its land area during the Pleistocene was much greater than at present, it is certain from the distribution of the various species of man, that the main races evolved in Asia, probably north of the great Himalayan range long before the centre of that continent was reduced to a series of deserts by progressive desiccation.

The evidence based on man’s relatively large bulk, on the lack of the development of his fore limbs and particularly on his highly specialized foot structure all indicate that he has not been arboreal for a vast period of time, probably not since the end of the Miocene. The change of habitat from the trees to the ground may have been caused by a profound modification of climate, from moist to dry or from warm to cold, which in turn may have affected the food supply and compelled a more carnivorous diet.

Evidence of the location of the early evolution of man in Asia and in the geologically recent submerged area toward the southeast is afforded by the fossil deposits in the Siwalik hills of northern India; where the remains of primates have been found which were either ancestral or closely related to the four genera of living anthropoids and where we may confidently look for remains of the earliest human forms; and by the discovery in Java, which in Pliocene times was connected with the mainland over what is now the South China Sea, of the earliest known form of erect primate, the Pithecanthropus. This ape-like man is practically the “missing link,” being intermediate between man and the anthropoids and is generally believed to have been contemporary with the Günz glaciation of some 500,000 years ago, the first of the four great glacial advances in Europe.

One or two species of anthropoid apes have been discovered in the Miocene of Europe which may possibly have been remotely related to the ancestors of man but when the archæological exploration of Asia shall be as complete and intensive as that of Europe it is probable that more forms of fossil anthropoids and new species of man will be found there.

Man existed in Europe during the second and third interglacial periods, if not earlier. We have his artifacts in the form of eoliths, at least as early as the second interglacial stage, the Mindel-Riss, of some 300,000 years ago. A single jaw found near Heidelberg is referred to this period and is the earliest skeletal evidence of man in Europe. From certain remarkable characters in this jaw, it has been assigned to a new species, Homo heidelbergensis.

Then follows a long period showing only scanty industrial relics and no known skeletal remains. Man was slowly and painfully struggling up from a culture phase where chance flints served his temporary purpose. This period, known as the Eolithic, was succeeded by a stage of human development where slight chipping and retouching of flints for his increasing needs led, after vast intervals of time, to the deliberate manufacture of tools. This Eolithic Period is necessarily extremely hazy and uncertain. Whether or not certain chipped or broken flints, called eoliths or dawn stones, were actually human artifacts or were the products of natural forces is, however, immaterial for man must have passed through such an eolithic stage.

The further back we go toward the commencement of this Eolithic culture, the more unrecognizable the flints necessarily become until they finally cannot be distinguished from natural stone fragments. At the beginning, the earliest man merely picked up a convenient stone, used it once and flung it away, precisely as an anthropoid ape would act to-day if he wanted to break the shell of a tortoise or crack an ostrich egg.

Man must have experienced the following phases of development in the transition from the prehuman to the human stage: first, the utilization of chance stones and sticks; second, the casual adaptation of flints by a minimum amount of chipping; third, the deliberate manufacture of the simplest implements from flint nodules; and fourth, the invention of new forms of weapons and tools in ever increasing variety.

Of the last two stages we have an extensive and clear record. Of the second stage we have in the eoliths intermediate forms ranging from flints that are evidently results of natural causes to flints that are clearly artifacts. The first and earliest stage, of course, could leave behind it no definite record and must in the present state of our knowledge rest on hypothesis.

With the deliberate manufacture of implements from flint nodules, we enter the beginning of Paleolithic time and from here on our way is relatively clear. The successive stages of the Paleolithic were of great length but are each characterized by some improvement in the manufacture of tools. During long ages man was merely a tool making and tool using animal and, after all is said, that is about as good a definition as we can find to-day for the primate we call human.

The Paleolithic Period or Old Stone Age lasted from the somewhat indefinite termination of the Eolithic, some 150,000 years ago, to the Neolithic or New Stone Age, which began about 7000 B. C.

The Paleolithic falls naturally into three great subdivisions. The Lower Paleolithic includes the whole of the last interglacial stage with the subdivisions of the Pre-Chellean, Chellean and Acheulean; the Middle Paleolithic covers the whole of the last glaciation and is co-extensive with the Mousterian Period and the dominance of the Neanderthal species of man.^[1] The Upper Paleolithic embraces all the postglacial stages down to the Neolithic and includes the subdivisions of the Aurignacian, Solutrean, Magdalenian and Azilian. During the entire Upper Paleolithic, except the short closing phase, the Cro-Magnon race flourished.

It is not until after the third severe period of great cold, known as the Riss glaciation, nor until we enter, some 150,000 years ago, the third and last interglacial stage of temperate climate, known as the Riss-Würm, that we find a definite and ascending series of culture. The Pre-Chellean, Chellean and Acheulean divisions of the Lower Paleolithic occupied the whole of this warm or rather temperate interglacial phase, which lasted nearly 100,000 years.

A shattered skull, a jaw and some teeth have been discovered recently in Sussex, England. These remains were attributed to the same individual, who was named the Piltdown Man. Owing to the extraordinary thickness of the skull and the simian character of the jaw, a new genus, Eoanthropus, the “dawn man,” was created and assigned to Pre-Chellean times. Some of the tentative restorations of the fragmentary bones make this skull altogether too modern and too capacious for a Pre-Chellean or even a Chellean.

Further study and comparison with the jaws of other primates also indicate that the jaw belonged to a chimpanzee so that the genus Eoanthropus must now be abandoned and the Piltdown Man must be included in the genus Homo as at present constituted.

In any event the Piltdown Man is highly aberrant and, so far as our present knowledge goes, does not appear to be related to any other species of man found during the Lower Paleolithic. Future discoveries of the Piltdown type and for that matter of Heidelberg Man may, however, raise either or both of them to generic rank.

In later Acheulean times a new human species, very likely descended from the early Heidelberg Man of Eolithic times, appears on the scene and is known as the Neanderthal race. Many fossil remains of this type have been found.

The Neanderthaloids occupied the European stage exclusively, with the possible exception of the Piltdown Man, from the first appearance of man in Europe to the end of the Middle Paleolithic. The Neanderthals flourished throughout the entire duration of the last glacial advance known as the Würm glaciation. This period, known as the Mousterian, began about 50,000 years ago and lasted some 25,000 years.

The Neanderthal species disappears suddenly and completely with the advent of postglacial times, when, about 25,000 years ago, it was apparently supplanted or exterminated by a new and far higher race, the famous Cro-Magnons.

There may well have been during Mousterian times races of man in Europe other than the Neanderthaloids, but of them we have no record. Among the numerous remains of Neanderthals, however, we do find traces of distinct types showing that this race in Europe was undergoing evolution and was developing marked variations in characters.

Neanderthal Man was an almost purely meat eating hunter, living in caves or rather in their entrances. He was dolichocephalic and not unlike existing Australoids, although not necessarily of black skin and was, of course, in no sense a Negro.

The skull was characterized by heavy superorbital ridges, a low and receding forehead, protruding and chinless under jaw and the posture was imperfectly erect. This race was widely spread and rather numerous. Some of its blood may have trickled down to the present time and occasionally one sees a skull apparently of the Neanderthal type. The best skull of this type ever seen by the writer belonged to a very intellectual professor in London, who was quite unconscious of his value as a museum specimen. In the old black breed of Scotland the overhanging brows and deep-set eyes are suggestive of this race.

Along with other ancient and primitive racial remnants, ferocious gorilla-like living specimens of Paleolithic man are found not infrequently on the west coast of Ireland and are easily recognized by the great upper lip, bridgeless nose, beetling brow with low growing hair and wild and savage aspect. The proportions of the skull which give rise to this large upper lip, the low forehead and the superorbital ridges are certainly Neanderthal characters. The other traits of this Irish type are common to many primitive races. This is the Irishman of caricature and the type was very frequent in America when the first Irish immigrants came in 1846 and the following years. It seems, however, to have almost disappeared in this country. If, as it is claimed, the Neanderthals have left no trace of their blood in living populations, these Firbolgs are derived from some very ancient and primitive race as yet undescribed.

In the Upper Paleolithic, which began after the close of the fourth and last glaciation, about 25,000 years ago, the Neanderthal race was succeeded by men of very modern aspect, known as Cro-Magnons. The date of the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic is the first we can fix with accuracy and its correctness can be relied on within narrow limits. The Cro-Magnon race first appears in the Aurignacian subdivision of the Upper Paleolithic. Like the Neanderthals, they were dolichocephalic but with a cranial capacity superior to the average in existing European populations and a stature of very remarkable size.

It is quite astonishing to find that the predominant race in Europe 25,000 years ago, or more, was not only much taller, but had an absolute cranial capacity in excess of the average of the present population. The low cranial average of existing populations in Europe can be best explained by the presence of large numbers of individuals of inferior mentality. These defectives have been carefully preserved by modern charity, whereas in the savage state of society the backward members were allowed to perish and the race was carried on by the vigorous and not by the weaklings.

The high brain capacity of the Cro-Magnons is paralleled by that of the ancient Greeks, who in a single century gave to the world out of their small population much more genius than all the other races of mankind have since succeeded in producing in a similar length of time. Attica between 530 and 430 B. C. had an average population of about 90,000 freemen, and yet from this number were born no less than fourteen geniuses of the very highest rank. This would indicate a general intellectual status as much above that of the Anglo-Saxons as the latter are above the Negroes. The existence at these early dates of a very high cranial capacity and its later decline shows that there is no upward tendency inherent in mankind of sufficient strength to overcome obstacles placed in its way by stupid social customs.

All historians are familiar with the phenomenon of a rise and decline in civilization such as has occurred time and again in the history of the world but we have here in the disappearance of the Cro-Magnon race the earliest example of the replacement of a very superior race by an inferior one. There is great danger of a similar replacement of a higher by a lower type here in America unless the native American uses his superior intelligence to protect himself and his children from competition with intrusive peoples drained from the lowest races of eastern Europe and western Asia.

While the skull of the Cro-Magnon was long, the cheek bones were very broad and this combination of broad face with long skull constitutes a peculiar disharmonic type which occurs to-day only among the very highly specialized Esquimaux and one or two other unimportant groups.

Skulls of this particular type, however, are found in small numbers among existing populations in central France, precisely in the district where the fossil remains of this race were first discovered. These isolated Frenchmen probably represent the last lingering remnant of this splendid race of hunting savages.

The Cro-Magnon culture is found around the basin of the Mediterranean, and this fact, together with the conspicuous absence in eastern Europe of its earliest phases, the lower Aurignacian, indicates that it entered Europe by way of north Africa, as its successors, the Mediterranean race, probably did in Neolithic times. There is little doubt that the Cro-Magnons originally developed in Asia and were in their highest stage of physical development at the time of their first appearance in Europe. Whatever change took place in their stature during their residence there seems to have been in the nature of a decline rather than of a further development.

There is nothing whatever of the Negroid in the Cro-Magnons and they are not in any way related to the Neanderthals, who represent a distinct and, save for the suggestions made above, an extinct species of man.

The Cro-Magnon race persisted through the entire Upper Paleolithic, during the periods known as the Aurignacian, Solutrean and Magdalenian, from 25,000 to 10,000 B. C. While it is possible that the blood of this race enters somewhat into the composition of the peoples of western Europe, its influence cannot be great and the Cro-Magnons—the Nordics of their day—disappear from view with the advent of the warmer climate of recent times.

It has been suggested that, following the fading ice edge north and eastward through Asia into North America, they became the ancestors of the Esquimaux but certain anatomical objections are fatal to this interesting theory. No one, however, who is familiar with the culture of the Esquimaux and especially with their wonderful skill in bone and ivory carving, can fail to be struck with the similarity of their technique to that of the Cro-Magnons.

To the Cro-Magnon race the world owes the birth of art. Caverns and shelters are constantly unearthed in France and Spain, where the walls and ceilings are covered with polychrome paintings or with incised bas-reliefs of animals of the chase. A few clay models, sometimes of the human form, are also found, together with abundant remains of their chipped but unpolished stone weapons and tools. Certain facts stand out clearly, namely, that they were purely hunters and clothed themselves in furs and skins. They knew nothing of agriculture or of domestic animals, even the dog being probably as yet untamed and the horse regarded merely as an object of chase.

The question of their knowledge of the principle of the bow and arrow during the Aurignacian and Solutrean is an open one but there are definite indications of the use of the arrow, or at least the barbed dart, in early Magdalenian times and this weapon was well known in the succeeding Azilian Period.

The presence toward the end of this last period of quantities of very small flints called microliths has given rise to much controversy. It is possible that some of these microliths represent the tips of small poisoned arrows such as are now in very general use among primitive hunting tribes the world over. Certain grooves in some of the flint weapons of the Upper Paleolithic may also have been used for the reception of poison. It is highly probable that the immediate predecessors of the Azilians, the Cro-Magnons, perhaps the greatest hunters that ever lived, not only used poisoned darts but were adepts in trapping game by means of pitfalls and snares, precisely as do some of the hunting tribes of Africa to-day. Barbed arrowheads of flint or bone, such as were commonly used by the North American Indians, have not been found in Paleolithic deposits.

In the Solutrean Period the Cro-Magnons shared Europe with a new race known as the Brünn-Předmost, found in central Europe. This race is characterized by a long face as well as a long skull, and was, therefore, harmonic. This Brünn-Předmost race appears to have been well settled in the Danubian and Hungarian plains and this location indicates an eastern rather than a southern origin.

Good anatomists have seen in this race the last lingering traces of the Neanderthaloids but it is more probable that we have here the first advance wave of the primitive forerunners of one of the modern European dolichocephalic races.

This new race was not artistic, but had great skill in fashioning weapons and possibly is associated with the peculiarities of Solutrean culture and the decline of art which characterizes that period. The artistic impulse of the Cro-Magnons which flourished so vigorously during the Aurignacian seems to be quite suspended during this Solutrean Period, but reappears in the succeeding Magdalenian times. This Magdalenian art is clearly the direct descendant of Aurignacian models and in this closing age of the Cro-Magnons all forms of Paleolithic art, carving, engraving, painting and the manufacture of weapons, reach their highest and final culmination.

Nine or ten thousand years may be assigned to the Aurignacian and Solutrean Periods and we may with considerable certainty give the minimum date of 16,000 B. C. as the beginning of Magdalenian time. Its entire duration can be safely set down at 6,000 years, thus bringing the final termination of the Magdalenian to 10,000 B. C. All these dates are extremely conservative and the error, if any, is in assigning too late and not too early a period to the end of Magdalenian times.

At the close of the Magdalenian we enter upon the last period of Paleolithic times, the Azilian, which lasted from about 10,000 to 7,000 B. C., when the Upper Paleolithic, the age of chipped flints, definitely and finally ends in Europe. This period takes its name from the Mas d’Azil, or “House of Refuge,” a huge cavern in the eastern Pyrenees where the local Protestants took shelter during the persecutions. The extensive deposits in this cave are typical of the Azilian epoch and here certain marked pebbles may be the earliest known traces of symbolic writing, but true writing was probably not developed until the late Neolithic.

With the advent of this Azilian Period art entirely disappears and the splendid physical type of the Cro-Magnons is succeeded by what appear to have been degraded savages, who had lost the force and vigor necessary for the strenuous chase of large game and had turned to the easier life of fishermen.

In the Azilian the bow and arrow are in common use in Spain and it is well within the possibilities that the introduction and development of this new weapon from the South may have played its part in the destruction of the Cro-Magnons; otherwise it is hard to account for the disappearance of this race of large stature and great brain power.

The Azilian, also called the Tardenoisian in the north of France, was evidently a period of racial disturbance and at its close the beginnings of the existing races are found.

From the first appearance of man in Europe and for many tens of thousands of years down to some ten or twelve thousand years ago all known human remains are of dolichocephalic type.

In the Azilian Period appears the first round skull race. It comes clearly from the East. Later we shall find that this invasion of the forerunners of the existing Alpine race came from southwestern Asia by way of the Iranian plateau, Asia Minor, the Balkans and the valley of the Danube, and spread over nearly all of Europe. The earlier round skull invasions may as well have been infiltrations as armed conquests since apparently from that day to this the round skulls have occupied the poorer mountain districts and have seldom ventured down to the rich and fertile plains.

This new brachycephalic race is known as the Furfooz or Grenelle race, so called from the localities in Belgium and France where it was first discovered. Members of this round skull race have also been found at Ofnet in Bavaria where they occur in association with a dolichocephalic race, our first historic evidence of the mixture of contrasted races. The descendants of this Furfooz-Grenelle race and of the succeeding waves of invaders of the same brachycephalic type now occupy central Europe as Alpines and form the predominant peasant type in central and eastern Europe.

In this same Azilian Period there appear, coming this time from the South, the first forerunners of the Mediterranean race. The descendants of this earliest wave of Mediterraneans and their later reinforcements occupy all the coast and islands of the Mediterranean and are spread widely over western Europe. They can everywhere be identified by their short stature, slight build, long skull and brunet hair and eyes.

While during this Azilian-Tardenoisian Period these ancestors of two of the existing European races are appearing in central and southern Europe, a new culture phase, also distinctly Pre-Neolithic, was developing along the shores of the Baltic. It is known as Maglemose from its type locality in Denmark. It is believed to be the work of the first wave of the Nordic race which had followed the retreating glaciers northward over the old land connections between Denmark and Sweden to occupy the Scandinavian Peninsula. In the remains of this culture we find definite evidence of the domesticated dog.

With the appearance of the Mediterranean race the Azilian-Tardenoisian draws to its close and with it the entire Paleolithic Period. It is safe to assign for the end of the Paleolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic or Polished Stone Age, the date of 7,000 or 8,000 B. C.

The races of the Paleolithic Period, so far as we can judge from their remains, appear successively on the scene with all their characters fully developed. The evolution of all these subspecies and races took place somewhere in Asia or eastern Europe. None of these races appear to be ancestral one to another, although the scanty remains of the Heidelberg Man would indicate that he may have given rise to the later Neanderthals. Other than this possible affinity, the various races of Paleolithic times are not related one to another.

About 7,000 B.C. we enter an entirely new period in the history of man, the Neolithic or New Stone Age, when the flint implements were polished and not merely chipped. Early as is this date in European culture, we are not far from the beginnings of an elaborate civilization in parts of Asia and Egypt. The earliest organized governments, so far as our present knowledge goes, were Egypt and Sumer. Chinese civilization at the other end of Asia is later, but mystery still shrouds its origin and its connection, if any, with the Mesopotamian city-states. The solution probably lies in the central region of the Syr Darya and future excavations in those regions may uncover very early cultures. Balkh, the ancient Bactra, the mother of cities, is located where the trade routes between China, India and Mesopotamia converged and it is in this neighborhood that careful and thorough excavations will probably find their greatest reward.

However, we are not dealing with Asia but with Europe only and our knowledge is confined to the fact that the various cultural advances at the end of the Paleolithic and the beginning of the Neolithic correspond with the arrival of new races.

The transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic was formerly considered as revolutionary, an abrupt change of both race and culture, but a period more or less transitory, known as the Campignian, now appears to bridge over this gap. This is only what should be expected, since in human archæology as in geology the more detailed our knowledge becomes the more gradually we find one period or horizon merges into its successor.

For a long time after the opening of the Neolithic the old-fashioned chipped weapons and implements remain the predominant type and the polished flints so characteristic of the Neolithic appear at first only sporadically, then increase in number until finally they entirely replace the rougher designs of the preceding Old Stone Age.

So in their turn these Neolithic polished stone implements, which ultimately became both varied and effective as weapons and tools, continued in use long after metallurgy developed. In the Bronze Period metal armor and weapons were for ages of the greatest value. So they were necessarily in the possession of the military and ruling classes only, while the unfortunate serf or common soldier who followed his master to war did the best he could with leather shield and stone weapons. In the ring that clustered around Harold for the last stand on Senlac Hill many of the English thanes died with their Saxon king, armed solely with the stone battle-axes of their ancestors.

In Italy also there was a long period known to the Italian archæologists as the Eneolithic Period when good flint tools existed side by side with very poor copper and bronze implements; so that, while the Neolithic lasted in western Europe four or five thousand years, it is, at its commencement, without clear definition from the preceding Paleolithic and at its end it merges gradually into the succeeding ages of metals.

After the opening Campignian phase there followed a long period typical of the Neolithic, known as the Robenhausian or Age of the Swiss Lake Dwellers, which reached its height after 5000 B. C. The lake dwellings seem to have been the work chiefly of the round skull Alpine races and are found in numbers throughout the region of the Alps and their foothills and along the valley of the Danube.

These Robenhausian pile built villages were the earliest known form of fixed habitation in Europe and the culture found in association with them was a great advance over that of the preceding Paleolithic. This type of permanent habitation flourished through the entire Upper Neolithic and the succeeding Bronze Age. Pile villages end in Switzerland with the first appearance of iron but elsewhere, as on the upper Danube, they still existed in the days of Herodotus.

Pottery is found together with domesticated animals and agriculture, which appear during the Robenhausian for the first time. The chase, supplemented by trapping and fishing, was still common but it probably was more for clothing than for food. A permanent site is not alone the basis of an agricultural community, but it also involves at least a partial abandonment of the chase, because only nomads can follow the game in its seasonal migrations and hunted animals soon leave the neighborhood of settlements.

The Terramara Period of northern Italy was a later phase of culture contemporaneous with the Upper Robenhausian and was typical of the Bronze Age. During the Terramara Period fortified and moated stations in swamps or close to the banks of rivers became the favorite resorts instead of pile villages built in lakes. The first traces of copper are found during this period. The earliest human remains in the Terramara deposits are long skulled, but round skulls soon appear in association with bronze implements. This indicates an original population of Mediterranean affinities overwhelmed later by Alpines.

Neolithic culture also flourished in the north of Europe and particularly in Scandinavia now free from ice. The coasts of the Baltic were apparently occupied for the first time at the very beginning of this period, as no trace of Paleolithic industry has been found there, other than the Maglemose, which represents only the very latest phase of the Old Stone Age. The kitchen middens, or refuse heaps, of Sweden and more particularly of Denmark date from the early Neolithic and thus are somewhat earlier than the lake dwellers. Rough pottery occurs in them for the first time, but no traces of agriculture have been found and, as said, the dog seems to have been the only domesticated animal.

From these two centres, the Alps and the North, an elaborate and variegated Neolithic culture spread through western Europe and an autochthonous development took place, comparatively little influenced by trade intercourse with Asia after the first immigrations of the new races.

We may assume that the distribution of races in Europe during the Neolithic was roughly as follows.

The Mediterranean basin and western Europe, including Spain, Italy, Gaul, Britain and parts of western Germany, were populated by Mediterranean long heads. In Britain the Paleolithic population must have been very small and the Neolithic Mediterraneans were the first effectively to open up the country. Even they kept to the open moorlands and avoided the heavily wooded and swampy valleys which to-day are the main centres of population. Before metal and especially iron tools were in use forests were an almost complete barrier to the expansion of an agricultural population.

The Alps and the territories immediately adjacent, with Central Gaul and much of the Balkans, were inhabited by Alpine types. These Alpines extended northward until they came in touch in eastern Germany and Poland with the southernmost Nordics, but as the Carpathians at a much later date, namely, from the fourth to the eighth century A. D., were the centre of radiation of the Alpine Slavs, it is very possible that during the Neolithic the early Nordics lay farther north and east.

North of the Alpines and occupying the shores of the Baltic and Scandinavia, together with eastern Germany, Poland and Russia, were located the Nordics. At the very base of the Neolithic and perhaps still earlier, this race occupied Scandinavia, and Sweden became the nursery of what has been generally called the Teutonic subdivision of the Nordic race. It was in that country that the peculiar characters of stature and blondness became most accentuated and it is there that we find them to-day in their greatest purity.

During the Neolithic the remnants of early Paleolithic man must have been numerous, but later they were either exterminated or absorbed by the existing European races.

During all this Neolithic Period Mesopotamia and Egypt were thousands of years in advance of Europe, but only a small amount of culture from these sources seems to have trickled westward up the valley of the Danube, then and long afterward the main route of intercourse between western Asia and the heart of Europe. Some trade also passed from the Black Sea up the Russian rivers to the Baltic coasts. Along these latter routes there came from the north to the Mediterranean world the amber of the Baltic, a fossil resin greatly prized by early man for its magic electrical qualities.

Gold was probably the first metal to attract the attention of primitive man, but could only be used for purposes of ornamentation. Copper, which is often found in a pure state, was also one of the earliest metals known and probably came first either from the mines of Cyprus or of the Sinai Peninsula. These latter mines are known to have been worked before 3400 B. C. by systematic mining operations and much earlier “the metal must have been obtained by primitive methods from surface ore.” It is, therefore, probable that copper was known and used, at first for ornament and later for implements, in Egypt before 4000 B. C. and possibly even earlier in the Mesopotamian regions.

We now reach the confines of recorded history and the first absolutely fixed date, 4241 B. C., is established for lower Egypt by the oldest known calendar. The earliest date as yet for Mesopotamia is somewhat later, but these two countries supply the basis of the chronology of the ancient world until a few centuries before Christ.

With the use of copper the Neolithic fades to its end and the Bronze Age commences soon thereafter. This next step in advance was made apparently before 3000 B. C. when some unknown genius discovered that an amalgam of nine parts of copper to one part of tin would produce the metal we now call bronze, which has a texture and hardness suitable for weapons and tools. The discovery revolutionized the world. The new knowledge was a long time spreading and weapons of this material were of fabulous value, especially in countries where there were no native mines and where spears and swords could only be obtained through trade or conquest. The esteem in which these bronze weapons, and still more the later weapons of iron, were held, is indicated by the innumerable legends and myths concerning magic swords and armor, the possession of which made the owner well-nigh invulnerable and invincible.

The necessity of obtaining tin for this amalgam led to the early voyages of the Phœnicians, who from the cities of Tyre and Sidon and their daughter Carthage traversed the entire length of the Mediterranean, founded colonies in Spain to work the Spanish tin mines, passed the Pillars of Hercules and finally voyaged through the stormy Atlantic to the Cassiterides, the Tin Isles of Ultima Thule. There, on the coasts of Cornwall, they traded with the native British of kindred Mediterranean race for the precious tin. These dangerous and costly voyages become explicable only if the value of this metal for the composition of bronze be taken into consideration.

After these bronze weapons were elaborated in Egypt the knowledge of their manufacture and use was extended through conquest into Palestine, and northward into Asia Minor.

The effect of the possession of these new weapons on the Alpine populations of western Asia was magical and resulted in an intensive and final expansion of round skulls into Europe. This invasion came through Asia Minor, the Balkans and the valley of the Danube, poured into Italy from the north, introduced bronze among the earlier Alpine lake dwellers of Switzerland and among the Mediterraneans of the Terramara stations of the valley of the Po and at a later date reached as far west as Britain and as far north as Holland and Norway, where its traces are still to be found among the living population.

The simultaneous appearance of bronze about 3000 or 2800 B. C. in the south as well as in the north of Italy may possibly be attributed to a lateral wave of this same invasion which, passing through Egypt, where it left behind the so-called Gizeh round skulls, reached Tunis and Sicily. In southern Italy bronze may have been introduced from Crete. With the first knowledge of metals begins the Eneolithic Period of the Italians.

The close resemblance in design and technique among the implements of the Bronze Age in widely separated localities is so great that we can infer a relatively simultaneous introduction.

With the introduction of bronze the custom of incineration of the dead also appears and replaces the typical Neolithic custom of inhumation.

The introduction of bronze into England and into Scandinavia may be safely dated about one thousand years later, after 1800 B. C. The fact that the Alpines only barely reached Ireland indicates that at this time that island was severed from England and that the land connection between England and France had been broken. The computation of the foregoing dates, of course, is somewhat hypothetical, but the fixed fact remains that this last expansion of the Alpines brought the knowledge of bronze to western and northern Europe and to the Mediterranean and Nordic peoples living there.

The effect of the introduction of bronze in the areas occupied chiefly by the Mediterranean race along the Atlantic coast and in Britain, as well as in north Africa from Tunis to Morocco, is seen in the construction and in the wide distribution of the megalithic funeral monuments, which appear to have been erected, not by Alpines but by the dolichocephs. The occurrence of bronze tools and weapons in the interments shows clearly that the megaliths of the south of France date from the beginning of the Bronze Age. The absence of bronze from the dolmens of Brittany may indicate an earlier age. It is, however, more likely that the opening Bronze Age in the South was contemporary with the late Neolithic in the North. The construction and use of these monuments continued at least until the very earliest trace of iron appears and in fact mound burials among the Vikings were common until the introduction of Christianity.

Although there is evidence of very early use of iron in Egypt the knowledge of this metal as well as of bronze in Europe centres around the area occupied by the Alpines in the eastern Alps and its earliest phase is known as the Hallstatt culture, from a little town in the Tyrol where it was first discovered. This Hallstatt iron culture appeared about 1500 B. C. The Alpine Hittites in northeast Asia Minor were probably the first to mine and smelt iron and they introduced it to the Alpines of eastern Europe, but it was the Nordics who benefited by its use. Bronze weapons and the later iron ones proved in the hands of these Northern barbarians to be of terrible effectiveness. With these metal swords in their grasp, the Nordics conquered the Alpines of central Europe and then suddenly entered the ancient world as raiders and destroyers of cities. The classic civilizations of the northern coasts of the Mediterranean Sea fell, one after another, before the “Furor Normanorum,” just as two thousand years later the provinces of Rome were devastated by the last great flood of the Nordics from beyond the Alps.

The first Nordics to appear in European history are tribes speaking Aryan tongues in the form of the various Celtic and related dialects in the West, of Umbrian in Italy and of Thracian in the Balkans. These barbarians, pouring down from the North, swept with them large numbers of Alpines whom they had already thoroughly Nordicized. The process of conquering and assimilating the Alpines must have gone on for long centuries before our first historic records and the work was so thoroughly done that the very existence of this Alpine race as a separate subspecies of man was actually forgotten for many centuries by themselves and by the world at large until it was revealed in our own day by the science of skull measurements.

The Hallstatt iron culture did not extend into western Europe and the smelting and extensive use of this metal in southern Britain and northwestern Europe are of much later date and occur in what is called the La Tène Period, usually assigned to the fifth and fourth century B. C.

Iron weapons were, however, known sporadically in England much earlier, perhaps as far back as 800 B. C., but were very rare and were probably importations from the Continent.

“Hallstatt relics have only been found in the northeast or centre of France and it appears that the Bronze Age continued in the remainder of that country until about 700 B. C.”

The spread of this La Tène culture is associated with the Nordic Cymry, who constituted the last wave of Celtic-speaking invaders into western Europe, while the earlier Nordic Gauls and Goidels had arrived in Gaul and Britain equipped with bronze only.

In Roman times, following the La Tène Period, the main races of Europe occupied the relative positions which they had held during the whole Neolithic Period and which they hold to-day, with the exception that the Nordic subspecies was less extensively represented in western Europe than when, a few hundred years later, the so-called Teutonic tribes overran these countries; but on the other hand, the Nordics occupied large areas in eastern Germany, Hungary, Poland and Russia now mainly occupied by the Slavs of Alpine race.

Many countries in central Europe were in Roman times inhabited by fair-haired, blue eyed barbarians, where now the population is preponderantly brunet and becoming yearly more so.