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.
