C.Stevens - Craniology and Turkic History

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(1) THE FINNO-UGRIANS

In the preceding chapter it has been shown that the Indo-European languages were probably formed somewhere on the plain of southern Russia or western Turkestan, by a blending of languages spoken by peoples in a Neolithic or early Copper Age stage of culture. One of the two lin guistic elements in this blend has been positively identified with Finno-Ugrian, which at the same time forms one of the two lateral divisions of the Ural Altaic stock, the fundamental unity of which is under question. 1

The blending of Finno-Ugrian with the B element which produced Indo-European languages took place at some time no earlier than the last few centuries of the fourth millennium B.C., well after the acquisition of agriculture and animal husbandry by western Asiatic peoples, and be fore the adoption of a complete Bronze Age technology by the inhabitants of the plains north of the Caucasus and the Iranian plateau. The Finnish speakers, who contributed so largely to Indo-European speech at that time, must have been residents of the plains at the time of their meeting with the bringers of Caucasic speech with which their own language was united. At the same time, they must inevitably have contributed to the formation of the racial blend with which the resulting Indo-European languages were early identified.

The historic Finno-Ugrians, of whom frequent mention has been made in the past, with little elucidation, include in the first branch all of the Finnishspeaking tribes of central and northern Russia, the Esthonians, and the Baltic Finns, as well as the Lapps, who speak an archaic Finnish dialect; in the second, the ancestors of the Magyars, the Bolgars, and the Siberian Ostiaks and Voguls. 2 At the time of their first historical mention, in the classical period, they seem to have been united in central and north ern Russia. The Finns were centered about the middle course of the Volga,

1 Professor G. J. Ramstedt of Helsingfors University, an eminent student of Altaic languages, has come to the conclusion that the Uralic and Altaic groups of languages are not, as was previously thought, demonstrably related, but form two entirely separate linguistic stocks. He is supported in this view by Professor Szinnyei of Budapest. Private Communication.

2 See Chapter IX, section 8, for a detailed listing of the living and extinct peoples known to have spoken Finno-Ugrian languages.

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224 THE RACES OF EUROPE

and west to the country occupied by the Baits and the Slavs; the Ugri be tween the Volga and the Urals. In the sense that they occupied one unified territory from which they later spread, they emulated the behavior of their Indo-Europeanspeaking neighbors. Movement to the south was in hibited, in historic times, by the presence of the Scythians and Sarmatians; before the rise of these horsenomads, however, they must at some time have been in contact with Caucasics-peaking peoples, who may have in cluded the mysterious preScyths, the Cimmerians, the remnants of whose speech have been likened to modern Cherkess. 3

A Finnish expansion took place in historic time, and during the Chris tian era. It consisted of the following movements: the migration of the ancestors of the Baltic Finns to the northwest, largely as a result of Slavic and LettoLithuanian pressure this took place at the same time as the Slavic penetration of Russia; the movement of the Bolgars to Bulgaria, during the seventh century, and of the Magyars to Hungary, under Turk ish leadership, during the ninth; the migration of the Ostiaks and Voguls across the Urals to the Obi drainage, during the thirteenth.

Before the time of known Finnish expansion, the Scythian barrier in hibited the use of agriculture as a primary means of subsistence among the Finnish tribes located to the north of the nomads. Many of the Finns, in fact, lived principally by hunting and fishing along the forested streams which formed the headwaters of the Volga, Don, and Dniester. But it is unlikely that the Finns in preScythian times had been ignorant of agri culture; those who lived in arable country farmed at least by the time of Herodotus.

The evidence for the racial composition of the early Finns is scanty, but incapable of misinterpretation. One small series of ten skulls dating from about the sixth century B.C., contemporaneous with the Early Scythian period, has been identified with the ancestors of the Volga Finns at the time of their unity. 4 (See Appendix I, col. 49.) These come from the cemeteries of Polianki and Maklacheievka, from the former Viatka govern ment in Permian Finn country just south of the present Komi or Zyryenian Republic. The graves belonged to the socalled Anan'ino cultural horizon. This Anan'ino culture 5 was formed from a combination of influences from Siberia, the Caucasus, Scythia, and Scandinavia. It did not end suddenly, but passed by a gradual process of evolution into the civilization of the historic Volga Finns. Therefore, we may consider these skulls, few as they are, to represent the ancestors of the Finns before the beginning of their historic expansion.

* Baschmakoff, A., ZFRK, vol. 4, 1936, pp. 194199. *Debetz, G., ESA, vol. 6, 1931, pp. 9699. &Tallgren, A. M., Real, vol. 1, pp. 164165.

THE IRON AGE 225

This small group of seven male and three female crania is not com pletely homogeneous, but it is nearly so. All of the skulls are European in racial type. The faces are a little broader than in most Mediterranean groups, but not to an exceptional degree. The noses, with the exception of one extremely leptorrhine male, are mesorrhine or chamaerrhine; but so are those of many early Danubians. The cranial form is mesocephalic or dolichocephalic, with one male reaching the figure of 83; the vault is moderately high; the forehead usually straight, the browridges moderate.

There is nothing new about these crania, and nothing specifically Mongoloid. They closely resemble another small series of eight male skulls from the cemetery of Polom in the same district as the Anan'ino cemeteries 6 (see Appendix I, col. 50), dating from the ninth century A.D., and known to have been those of Finns of the Permian subfamily. In view of the small numbers, no difference can be found which would be statistically valid. A third group from the Lower Volga, representing the Mordvins of the fourteenth century, is similar to the Anan'ino and Per mian crania, except that it is extremely long headed, with low indices, centered about the range from 71 to 73.

When we make a metrical comparison between the first two groups of Finnish skulls and all European series previously studied, we find that they fit into the ranks of Iron Age Indo-European speakers without difficulty. On the whole, they resemble most nearly the largersized members of the intermediate group; they also resemble the Scythian crania to a consider able extent, and even more the Minussinsk skulls. They are slightly smaller than the Germanic type, but equal to it in vault height and face breadth. In nose form and cranial height, they resemble the Neolithic Danubians.

News of the racial position of these early Finnish skulls will come as a surprise to scholars who see in the Finns a group of Mongoloid immigrants from Asia. But that they were essentially if not wholly European is, de spite the paucity of Debetz's material, incontestable. Nor can one derive these Finns from forestdwellers of Mesolithic tradition, except perhaps as a minor influence. Furthermore, in the early Anan'ino series, recognizable Corded peculiarities are to be found in but one male skull out of seven. The Finno-Ugrians, therefore, may be tentatively considered to have been, in the period before they expanded into their historic seats, Europeans of mixed origin, basically Danubian in type, with some brachycephalic ele ment and an extremely longheaded variation as well; the latter is already familiar to us in the form of the Corded type; the former is not clearly definable, but is European. Its only discernible difference from the others in the same series is in a greater breadth of the skull. This broadheaded element is completely lacking in the late lower Volga group, of which we have only the cranial indices.

8 Debetz, loc. cit.

226 THE RAGES OF EUROPE

Debetz's discovery that the Finno-Ugrian speakers were originally purely European in race, and furthermore, not local Palaeolithic or Mesolithic survivors, is in perfect accord with the present state of linguistic knowledge, which makes their form of speech one of two equally weighted elements in the basic Indo-European. They not only were, but on logical grounds must have been, in the larger sense, Mediterraneans.

On equally logical grounds, this discovery does not invalidate the hypothesis that the descendants of Mesolithic hunters and fishers persisted until modern times in the forests of the far north, nor that some such survivors may not have been absorbed by those tribes of Finns which migrated even beyond the Permian country to the chilly drainage of the Arctic Ocean. This theory is very hard to test, however, for if we review the early racial history of the northern forest belt, ⁷ we find very little skeletal data with which to work. What material there is comes almost entirely from Latvia, Estonia, and the Ladoga Lake country, all north and west of the historic Finnic center. It includes skulls of Corded type, both with and without mixture, and a number of ill-defined crania which do not fit into the usual European picture. Many of these latter are brachycephalic, some are perhaps, but not certainly, incipiently or partially Mongoloid.

Unfortunately, the manner in which these skulls have been published does not permit a lucid review of their racial position. Similar ones appeared sporadically in Late Neolithic and Bronze Age series in Poland and on the plains of southern Russia, apparently as intrusions from the north, but not in sufficient numbers to alter the prevailing character of the population south of the forest from which they, as the osseous headpieces of stray woodsmen, had wandered.

Until almost three centuries after the birth of Christ, therefore, Europe, except possibly along the very Arctic rim, had not witnessed the invasion of any Mongoloid people. Western Asia, from the Bosporus to the Indus, and the plains immediately east of the Caspian as well, were equally ignorant of them. But with the arrival of the Huns this gap was sn filled. .

(2) THE TURKS AND MONGOLS

In order to discuss the movements of Asiatic peoples into Europe from the first inroad of the Huns to the conquests of the Osmanli Turks in the sixteenth century, it will be necessary to review briefly the events in cen tral and eastern Asia which preceded and precipitated these incursions.

7 See pages 125-126.

THE IRON AGE 227

From the time that the Irano-Aryan ancestors had arrived in Russian Turkestan in anticipation of their descent into the hills of northwestern India, much of this grassy plain had been the home of those Iranians who remained behind while their kinsmen climbed the mountains which would take them into India and the Irano-Afghan plateau. These Iranians apparently developed, or borrowed, a high degree of adaptation to their steppe environment, and especially through the perfection of pastoral nomadism with the horse as chief instrument of mobility. They expanded through the passes to the eastward, which took them to Kashgaria, and there came in contact with the Chinese Empire. On the other side, they expanded westward into Europe, where we have already studied them in the form of Scythians and Sarmatians.

To the northwest of the vast Iranian domain, in Mongolia, a number of semi-agricultural, semi-pastoral tribes, possessing the sheep, probably also cattle, and perhaps wagons, but apparently not the horse, came in early times to the attention of the Chinese historians. By 800 B.C. we hear of a people called the Hiung-Nu, who gradually grew in importance until they came to dominate all of Mongolia. ⁸ At a fairly late date, set by McGovern between 541 and 300 B.C., the Hiung-Nu presumably obtained horses, and learned to ride them. They seem to have acquired these animals from the Iranians or from Turkish speaking peoples, along with the whole complex of horse nomadism. Chinese accounts of the Hiung-Nu later than the third century B.C. refer to them as typical plainsmen, strikingly similar in many cultural respects to the Scythians.

The six centuries, more or less, from 400 B.C. to 200 A.D., formed the period of greatness of the Hiung-Nu in Mongolia, during which they con stantly harried China, and took possession of Chinese Turkestan. Despite their conquest, however, Iranian languages, and the mysterious Tok harian B, persisted in the towns until 800 A.D. or later. At length the Chinese took measures to rid themselves of this nuisance, and succeeded in defeating the Hiung-Nu so completely that they abandoned their territory and disappeared to the westward.

The last mention of the Hiung-Nu in Chinese sources is about 170 A.D. and, exactly two hundred years later, the Huns appeared on the banks of the Don in Russia. McGovern has presented a convincing argument to prove that the two were the same people; that their passage across Asia took them across a space sterile of historians, between the spheres of Chinese and of Byzantine chroniclers. Only one glow of light appears in this interim; in 290 A.D. Tigranes the Great of Armenia hired some such people as mercenaries.

8 McGovern, W. M., Early Empires of Central Asia. I am indebted to Dr. McGovern for permission to make use of his book before publication.

228 THE RAGES OF EUROPE

The history of the Huns in Europe does not require elaborate treatment. Having defeated the Ostrogoths and sent them and their kinsmen scurry ing westward, the Huns moved to the present Hungary, which they made their headquarters. From here they sent expeditions to Rome, to Ger many, and to France, where Attila was defeated in the battle of the Cata lonian fields in 451 A.D. After his death two years later, the Huns retired to eastern Europe, and many of them united with their relatives the Bol gars, who had settled between the Ugrian and Finnic tribes of the middle Volga and Kama rivers, where, under Bolgar leadership, a great state arose, which flowered between the eighth and fourteenth centuries.

In the meantime, the Huns in central Asia raided Mesopotamia, Per sia, Afghanistan, and India; presumably the Turkish penetration of cen tral Siberia dates likewise from the period between 200 and 400 A.D. This span of two centuries marks the beginning of the great expansion of Turkishspeaking peoples, for the Huns, and their allies and relatives, must have spoken various forms of speech related to Turkish, many of which are now extinct.

When we view the Hunnish inroad into Europe in the light of the total context of Old World history, it ceases to be a strange inruption of hideous and invincible barbarians darting out of nowhere, as it at first appeared to the Byzantines and Romans. The Huns were a people who had been exposed to a high civilization, that of China; they were cultured if illiter ate, and in every sense the match of the frightened adversaries whom they met in Europe. When we examine the details of these invasions, we see that it was not one simple inroad, but a series of them in which a perplexing confusion of names is involved. Chief of the newcomers, after the Huns, were the Avars, who arrived in the sixth century. The Huns considered these their kinsmen and equals, and later amalgamated with them after the Avars had, in the eighth century, been defeated by Char lemagne and had retreated, some to Hungary and others to the Don country.

From the fall of the Huns until the rise of the Mongols some thousand years later, the history of central Asia is simply a repetition of the same theme; some obscure subtribe would become important, win leadership over the others, and head new invasions of increasing complexity. The history of southern Russia became extremely complicated, for the steppes of the Don country served as a terminal point for all but the most serious of these movements.

After the Avars came the Turks, called TiiKue, hereditary ironwork ers, who had been an old clan of the Hiung-Nu. They defeated the Avars in 546 A.D., and settled about the Caspian Sea; from here they conducted their raids and expanded, and gave their name to the whole linguistic substock of Altaic which all of them, Huns included, seem to have spoken. It is probable that their speech superseded many older allied forms.

THE IRON AGE 229

In the guise of Petchenegs and Kumans, in the tenth and eleventh centuries new waves of Turks moved across the southern Russian steppes as far as the Danube. As Seljuks, the Turks took charge of Asia Minor and fought the Crusaders; as Osmanlis, they conquered the Seljuks, withstd the Mongol advance, captured Constantinople, and swarmed over the Balkans and up to Vienna. But meanwhile, in the thirteenth century, other Turks under Mongol leaders, now for the first time called Tatars, had covered southeastern Europe ahead of the Osmanlis; and, in the four teenth, hordes of true Mongols had followed, leaving permanent settle ments in the Caucasus, the Kalmuck Steppe, and the Crimea.

In the fifteen hundreds, the tide commenced to turn in eastern Europe; the Muscovites grew powerful, and the Asiatic invaders began to draw eastward as the steppes were peopled with Slavs. Under the rule of the Turks and Mongols, the older population had not entirely disappeared; colonies of Alans persisted until the thirteenth century, and Russian col onies lived under the protection of the Turkish Khazars. In the same fashion, the Turks and Mongols did not disappear with the Slavic advance, and their colonies in the midst of Slavic territory are still numerous.

There is an abundance of documents dealing with the invasion of Europe by the Huns and by their relatives the Avars. These inroads took place shortly after the expansion of the Germanic peoples to the east, and formed a primary reason for the failure of the Goths and Vandals to found a permanent home in the former Scythian country. They took place, also, before the major expansion of the Slavs, who moved eastward in the in terim between the invasion of central Europe by the Huns and the whole sale westward migration of the Magyar ancestors under Arp&d.

That the Huns came in great numbers cannot be questioned, and that they introduced a completely alien racial type onto European soil is vividly attested by the accounts of numerous contemporary historians, among whom may be mentioned Jordanes, Sidonus, Appolinaris, and Priscus. These authors unanimously describe the Huns as being short, broad shouldered, thickset, swarthy, flatnosed, sliteyed, nearly beardless, and bandylegged. The Avars are described by some authors as being identical with the Huns, but by others as being less horrible of aspect. According to that Byzantine wit, Jordanes, the Avars defeated the Iranianspeaking Alans, who were the descendants of the Sarmatians, by frightening them with their faces and not by valor.

230 THE RACES OF EUROPE

The careful studies of Bartucz, on whose work this following part is almost entirely based, has disclosed, in unquestioned manner, the exact racial composition of these invaders. 9 (See Appendix I, col. 51.) Many of the Hunnish and Avar cemeteries are very extensive, containing, in all, thousands of skulls. In many of these cemeteries, particularly in that of Mosonszentjanos, purely Mongoloid skeletons have been found, unaccompanied by European followers or European mixture. *

Bartucz finds two clearly differentiated Mongoloid types in these cem eteries. The first, which he designates as type A, is dolicho to mesocephalic with a mean index of 75.5 for the males and 77.0 for the females. These skulls are of great length and considerable size. The forehead is very narrow, the temples sharply curved, and the zygomatic arches laterally bowed. The occiput is narrow and conical at the end. From the side pro file, the forehead appears exceptionally low and slanting. The vertex falls well back of bregma, and the profile is curved through the extent of its length. In the occipital region the line of neck muscle attachment forms a powerful torus.

The vault of this type is lower than that found in any European group. It is, in fact, near the low point for mankind, with a range in height from 120 to 130 mm. The browridges, accentuated by the extreme slope of the forehead, are heavy, but the glabella region is flat, the orbits are rounded, and with the lower border often projecting farther forward than the upper. The nasal bones are long, narrow, and flat; so that the nasal skeleton some times fails to project in front of the malars. The lower borders of the nasal opening are smoothly rounded. The malars are extremely large and prominent, the canine fossa completely lacking, and the maxillary sinus, which overlies it, is so blown out that the surface of the bone is at this point often raised. The dental arch of the palate is Ushaped. The man dible is heavy, but the chin, however, but slightly developed. The whole subnasal portion of the face is enormous. The stature of this type, calcu lated from the long bones, is 164.4 cm. for the males, 153.1 cm. for the females.

Type B is also purely Mongoloid, but it is brachycephalic, with a mean index of 83 for both sexes. The forehead is also low, but much broader and more sharply curved, the occiput is rounded and broad, and the skull as a whole is globular, although the vault is still low. The face is broad and low, the orbits are lower, the nose less leptorrhine, the malars and zygomata less pronouncedly Mongoloid, than in the case of type A. The nasal bones are shorter, the palate broader and rounder, the chin more prominent. This type is characterized by shorter stature; 160.9 cm. for the males, and 152.8 cm. for the females.

9 Bartucz, L., ZFRK, vol. 1, 1935, pp. 225240; Skythika, vol. 2, 1929, pp. 8396; vol. 4, 1931, pp. 7590; ESA, vol. 5, 1930, pp. 6673. Krecsmarik, E., Dolgozatok, vol. 3, 1927, pp. 160166. Lcbzeltcr, V., MAGW, vol. 65, 1935, pp. 4446.

THE IRON AGE 231

Thanks to the industrious researches of the modern Russian schl of physical anthropology, it is not difficult to discover the Asiatic relationships of these two types. Type A is found today among the living Tungus, 10 and it has likewise a long history in Siberia, for it is found among many Siberian peoples, including Palaeasiatics, and it is characteristic of many of the Neolithic skulls excavated in the neighborhd of Lake Baikal. 11 Type B belongs to the Mongolspeaking peoples, and is found in especial purity among the Buryats, who represent, culturally and probably racially, the Mongols before the time of their expansion. Modern Buryat skulls are among the largest in capacity known.

In most Hunnish and Avar cemeteries, type B is more in evidence than type A. Type A, however, predominates in the cemeteries which are known to have been used by the Huns, type B in those which belong to Avars. The Avar cemeteries contain also, in many cases, intermediate types which show that these people had begun to mix with members of the white stock, either in central Asia, in Europe, or both, and other cemeteries in which the white element is in the majority. The leading classes of the Huns and Avars, however, appear to have kept themselves apart, and to have preserved their Mongoloid racial types pure throughout the centuries of their political domination. In the graves which are most richly fur nished, and which show that the occupants were men of power and conse quence, the Mongoloid types are unaltered. The two graves of known Avar heroes contain skeletons belonging purely to type B.

Bartucz's identification of type A predominantly with the Huns, and B with the Avars, seems valid. That the two intermarried freely is shown by the fact that in single graves containing a man and wife, the two are often of opposite types. In such cases of differential mating, there is no linkage between sex and type, indicating that A and B were socially equal. It is very likely that the initial amalgamation of these two types took place in Mongolia, and not in Europe. Also, the presence of numerous interme diate forms attests this freedom of intercourse. Individual Hunriish skulls found as far afield as Lower Austria and France may be easily identified with the crania from Hungary, and belong in known cases to type B. 12

A further light upon the physical characteristics of the Huns is shown by a study of Hunnish head hair, from graves of this period. A sample of it is very fine, straight, and jet black. 13 In color and in form, this hair was classically Mongoloid, but this fineness casts some doubt upon the gen eralization that all Mongoloid hair must be coarse, especially since it has

10 Roguinski, A., RAJ, vol. 23, 1934, pp. 105126. 11 Debetz, G., RAJ, vol. 19, 1930, pp. 750. 12 Lebzelter, V., MAGW, vol. 65, 1935, pp. 4446. Zaborowski, S., RA, vol. 24, 1914, pp. 318320. "Greguss, P., Dolgozatok, vol. 7, 1927, p. 232.

232 THE RACES OF EUROPE

been shown that American Indian hair is very variable in this respect.

The incontrovertible evidence of the Hungarian graves completely dis pels the theory that the Huns may have been largely European in racial type. If the Hiung-Nu were ancestors of the Huns, then the early inhabi tants of Mongolia were definitely Mongoloid, and belonged to the two important racial elements present there today, the Tungus and the Mongol proper. This throws the prehistory of central Asia into a clear and logical light. It is exactly what one would expect.

But it is necessary to discover what was the nature of the European racial element amalgamated by the Avars. This may be accomplished by studying some of the least Mongoloid cemeteries. In that of Jutas 14 (see Appendix I, col. 52), only five out of twentyfour skulls show any trace of recognizable Mongoloid features. The Jutas sample, then, may be used for testing. Fourteen male skulls are all below 78 in cranial index, and are very similar to one of the Minussinsk regional subseries; less pronounced relationships are present between it and Scythian and Armenian Iron Age skulls. The resemblance to Slavic and Germanic skulls, which are larger, is less pronounced. It is therefore certain that these non-Mongoloid Avars belonged to the general Mediterranean racial family, and that some, at least, were members of the Nordic Iron Age group; it is more than likely that they were for the most part incorporated into the Avar ranks in central Asia before corning to Europe. The study of the crania from another cemetery, that of Tiszadersz 15 (see Appendix I, col. 53), makes this virtually certain.

McGovern has discovered a number of Chinese references to the Hiung-Nu and other Turkish speaking "barbarians" which describe them as hairy, bignosed, and partially blond. In later times, Genghis Khan was supposed to be redhaired and greeneyed. It is therefore likely that some of the Asiatic Nordic element found in the Jutas and Tiszadersz cemeteries was incorporated by the Avars before they left Mongolia, but, on the basis of the evidence from purely Mongoloid cemeteries Hke Mosonszentjanos, it is unlikely that this influence could have penetrated the entire Hunnish and Avar nations.

At any rate, it is evident from the size and number of the Avar ceme teries that, as Bartucz says, 16 these invaders played an important r61e in the peopling not only of Hungary but also of adjacent countries of central Europe, for the people whom the Avars brought into the Danube basin did not depart with the cessation of Avar rule.

At the same time the Avars did not uprt the former population, which

14 Bartucz, L., Skythika, vol. 4, 1931, pp. 7591.
15 Lebzelter, V., MAGW, vol. 65, 1935, pp. 4446. Bartucz, L., ZFRK, 1935.
16 Bartucz, L., ZFRK, vol. 1, 1935, pp. 225240.

THE IRON AGE 233

included Slavs and Germans, among older elements, but made them tax paying vassals. Furthermore, in the days of Attila, the richness of the Huns had attracted many craftsmen and adventurers to the royal court, among whom were many Italians. Priscus's account makes it very evident 17 that Attila's capital contained a very heterogeneous population.

The great migration to Hungary, that which brought the ancestors of the presentday Magyars, took place at the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth century, when the Hungarian national hero Arpad led the Magyars into Hungary, where many Slavs had settled in the interim after the collapse of Hunnish power. We have already seen (p. 220) that these Slavs had partially taken over Hunnish physical traits. By 906 A.D., the Magyars were at home in Hungary; in the two centuries which followed, they adopted Christianity, and invited settlers of many nationalities, including Moslems and Jews, to help them occupy the land. These newcomers, along with the preMagyar Slavs, formed a taxpaying peas antry.

The Magyars were Ugrians from the region between the Volga and the Urals, who had been partially Turkicized by the Petchenegs and others, but had retained their Finno-Ugrian language, albeit strongly shot with Turkish. In this respect, they resembled the ancestral Bulgarians, semi Turkicized Finns, who had, a few decades earlier, crossed the lower Danube and settled Bulgaria, implanting themselves on a population of Slavs who had themselves been but a short while in occupancy. In Bulgaria, the Slavic language seeped through and replaced the Finnish; in Hungary, the Ugrian became dominant and the Slavic speech to a large extent disappeared. Nevertheless, Slavic culture blended with the Ugrian and Turkish, to produce modern Hungarian forms.

We have no physical remains of the early Finnic invaders of Bulgaria, but those of the Ugri of the landtaking period, as the Hungarians call it, are adequate. As is to be expected, these ancestral Magyars, led into Hungary by Arpad, were only Mongoloid to a minor degree. 18 Some of the crania which are found in wealthy graves do show definite Mongoloid characteristics, but the others for the most part lack them. The majority of the Magyars were of the same Finnish types expected from our previous study of Finns in Russia, while smaller minorities included Binaries or Armenoids. 19

At any rate, it was a very mixed population that lived in Hungary dur ing the early Magyar period. On the whole, throwing all elements to gether, the stature was short and the mean head form rnesocephalic.

17 Brion, M., Attila, the Scourge of God.
"Bartucz, L., ZFRK, 1935.
Ibid.
Gsp4r, J., MAGW, vol. 58, 1928, pp. 129140.

234 THE RACES OF EUROPE

Since then, the Hungarians have grown rounder headed, as have Rus sians and southern Germans.

During all the turmoil of the Magyar and Bolgar migrations, the Ugrians who remained in eastern Russia passed relatively unnoticed, but in the thirteenth century or thereabouts they, for some reason, probably new Turkish .pressure, crossed the Urals en masse, and established themselves in the western drainage of the Obi. Here they were divided into two tribes, the Voguls, on the immediate slopes of the Urals, and the Ostiaks, in the lower courses of the tributaries and along the Obi itself. In their new home their culture was modified to stiit a more rigorous environment, and only those in the southern Obi drainage, at the time of the Russian conquest, still practiced agriculture.

An adequate series of skulls from the time between this eastward migra tion and the arrival of the Russians about three centuries later shows a mixture between the original Finnish type, with which we have already acquainted ourselves, and Siberian and central Asiatic Mongoloids, of the two types already found in the early Hunnish and Avar cemeteries. 20 How much of the Mongoloid blood was acquired in Europe, and how much later in Siberia, cannot be determined.

In the Hungarian period of settlement we already become aware of the presence of a new physical type associated with the Turks, who formed a minority in the ranks of the Magyars. When we examine the crania of the Petchenegs and Kumans, in both Hungary and Russia 21 we see that this new type has become the dominant one among these later Turks to arrive in eastern Europe. In it Mongoloid features are sometimes present, but in abeyance. The skulls are very large, of moderate height, extremely brachy cephalic, and planoccipital. The foreheads are sloping, browridges some times heavy, the faces are very broad, and also very long. The orbits are of moderate height. The noses are narrow, and although often low at the root, frequently project at the bridge, giving indication of a convex profile in the living.

These Kuman skulls, as best represented by Debetz's series which in cludes fourteen adult males, are much longer and broader than historic Armenian skulls, 22 and both longer and broader faced. In height, nose and orbit dimensions, and the tendency to occipital flattening, these two groups are the same. They are also larger than Alpine skulls from central Europe, and far greater in facial dimensions; larger too, than the type B Mongoloid crania as represented by a large series of central Asiatic Telengets; much higher vaulted and broader of forehead than the latter, and even a little larger faced.

20 Zaborowski, M., BSAP, ser. 4, vol. 9, 1898, pp. 73111. Ssilinitsch, J. P., AFA, vol. 34, 1903, p. 233, etc. 21 Bartucz, L., AF vol. 1, 1923, pp. 9799. Debetz, G., AntrM, vol. 3, 1929, pp, 8995. 22 Bunak, V. V., Crania Armenica*

THE IRON AGE 235

Thus, the type under consideration, which has become in many regions the characteristic Turkish form, is one which cannot be disposed of by the simple expedient of placing it in an Armenoid or Dinaric category. In size and proportions of the vault, the closest parallel to these skulls is with the British Bronze Age crania; but the resemblance here is far from an identify, for the British faces, although equally broad, are much shorter. In the same sense, the Turkish skulls are reminiscent of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic brachycephalic types from Europe and North Africa.

Since we know almost nothing of the early skeletal history of central Asia, east of Anau and south of the Minussinsk district, it would be worth less to spend too much time at this point speculating on the immediate origin of this type. As with so many other problems, we must defer its seri ous consideration to the section on the living, except to point out that in a small series of ten skulls from eastern Russian Turkestan, dated between 600 and 900 A.D., similar but somewhat smaller vault forms are in evi dence. 23 At the same time, a few isolated Turkish skulls, from central Siberia, attributed to from the seventh or eighth centuries A.D., 24 are not unlike the Kuman crania.

After the Huns and Turks came the Mongols, who had been later to adopt the horse culture of the Asiatic plains. Their homeland was around the southern end of Lake Baikal, and they were hunters and fishermen before they became plainsmen. The earliest mention of them in Chinese history occurs in the seventh century A.D., at which time they camped in the country from Urga northward to the forest edge. They are supposed to have sprung from a blue wolf, and from this animal to Genghis Khan was a span of but eight generations.

Their conquest of most of the known world began in the first half of the thirteenth century, and ended two generations later with the death of Genghis Khan's grandson, Kublai Khan. The Mongols were not numer ous enough to do all of their conquering alone, and incorporated most of the central Asiatic Turks into their armies. Hence there arose a perplexing welter of Mongolized Turks and Turkicized Mongols, and no doubt of Mongolized as well as Turkicized Iranians. We have no skeletal material adequate to untangle this snarl, but must rely on Mongol and Buryat crania from Mongolia itself to determine their racial type. This was simply the type B of the Huns, in a relatively pure form, as found today particularly among Buryats. Hence the settlement of the Mongols on the Kalmuck steppe brought the pure, brachycephalic Mongol type to the country around the northern shore of the Black Sea, and into the lower Volga plains, where whole encampments of normal Mongols may still be seen today.

' 3 Vishncvsky, B. N., KMV, 1921, #12.

24 Gromov, V. I., ESA, vol. 1, 1926, pp, 94*99.

Kazantsev, A. I., RAT, No. l2 4 1934, pp. 129133.

236 THE RACES OF EUROPE

On the whole, the Mongols proper did not influence the racial composi tion of Europe in the sense that the Turks did. Their influence was sporadic in most of the regions which they crossed, and strong only in southeastern Russia, and in the isolated colonies still living in the Caucasus. Elsewhere it merely served to freshen elements already brought by the Huns and Avars.

Lest this survey of Uralic and Altaic-speaking peoples be incomplete, we must mention still another group, the Samoyeds, who live east of the Osti aks in the Obi country, and wander along the Arctic shore of Russia as far as the Kola Peninsula, where they meet the Lapps.

The modern Samoyeds, despite their proximity to the Siberian Ugrians, belong for the most part to the central, brachycephalic, Mongoloid type; Bartucz's B group, the classical Buryat-Mongoloid. 25 Except in modern times, they have had no influence upon the racial composition of northern Europe.

(3) SPEAKERS OF URALIG AND ALTAIC, AND OLD WORLD RACIAL ORIGINS

Before indulging in the speculation which the present study of the Uralic and Altaic-speaking peoples in antiquity inspires, a brief review of our present knowledge will be in order. Uralic is a linguistic stock or substock which includes Finnic and Ugrian, as well as Samoyedic; Altaic in cludes Mongolian, Turkish, Tungusic, and possibly Korean.

The Finns and the Ugrians were a united people, in the geographical sense, until the arrival of the Slavs from the west, and Huns and Avars from the east, forced some of them to migrate, and caused the absorption of others. Judging by a series of small samples taken from the heart of their forest abode, they were members of the general Nordic subgroup, most closely related to the Minussinsk people in Siberia, but showing relation ships likewise with Scythians and peoples of known Indo-European lin guistic affiliation. Thus, since the Finns and Ugrians were not Indo European speakers, there is no reason to suppose that all of the nomads of central Asia who belonged to this same racial type were Iranians. The Samoyeds, distant linguistic relatives of the FinAoUgrians, are not rep resented by early skeletal material, and their racial position in antiquity cannot be established.

Sommier, S., APA, vol. 17, 1887, pp. 71222. Klimek, S., APA, vol. 59, 1929, pp. 1331.

THE IRON AGE 237

Of the known Altaic speakers, three branches, the Tungus, Mongols, and the Koreans, were and still are almost purely Mongoloid. The fourth branch, that of the Turks, is the only one the racial origin of which is in question. Today most of the Turks are racially European, but in the old days the Huns and Avars, who were intimately concerned with the Turkish expansion, were as Mongoloid as the others, with both Tungus and Buryat Mongol elements represented.

We are at this point squarely faced with the problem of the origin of the living Finns and Turks, and with that of the role played by speakers of their linguistic stock or stocks in the formation of European and Asiatic peoples. These problems may not be finally solved with the evidence in our possession. Yet there is enough material, historical, linguistic, and somatological, to make speculation legitimate.

In the foregoing chapter we have seen that the earliest Indo-European languages probably moved westward into central Europe as the speech of the Danubian immigrants as early as 3000 B.C. These Danubian farmers were racially the relatives or descendants of Anatolian and South Russian peoples of a special physical type, a branch of the Mediterranean stock to which we have given the name Danubian. This type was reasonably homogeneous, but the number of skulls upon which its identification is based is slight, and it is possible that a minor increment of longerheaded, narrower-nosed Mediterranean forms accompanied it, since the two variants seem long to have been associated in South Russia.

Now since Indo-European speech was a mixture of B, or Caucasic, with A, or Finno-Ugrian, and since, as we have seen, the earliest known Finno-Ugrians were Nordics with a very strong Danubian tendency, it therefore becomes likely that the Danubian farmers owed their racial type to a mixture of two linguistically different ethnic groups who were physically much the same, and both predominantly Danubian.

If we are correct in identifying the Corded people with the introduction of Altaic speech into Europe, then the further identification of the Corded racial type with (a) the non-Mongoloid modern Turks and (b) the Afghanian racial type of the Irano Afghan plateau, makes it seem possible that there was, in remote food producing times, an ancestral bloc of peoples living on that plateau who spoke languages ancestral to Altaic, and perhaps remotely related to Uralic, Sumerian, or both. Some of the peoples who formed that bloc presumably moved northward onto the central Asiatic grasslands. This change of scene on the part of these early agriculturalists may have had two effects: the introduction of agriculture into the oases of Turkestan and into Mongolia, and the development of pastoral nomadism by some of the immigrants, with the subsequent rise of the horse culture.

238 THE RACES OF EUROPE

This step in our speculative structure leads logically to the question of the origin of the Turks. Having placed Ural-Altaic-speaking white men, of a special Mediterranean type still found in Iran and Afghanistan, in Turkestan and Mongolia, 26 it is not difficult to suppose that Mongoloid peoples, originally hunters, were attracted to the plains from their forests and rivers by the advantages of the new economy, and that they assimilated, in adopting it, those of the white immigrants with whom they were in immediate contact.

In the meanwhile, some of the Altaic-speaking plainsmen, related to the ancestors of the Corded people, may have mixed with smaller Mediter raneans such as were found at Anau, to produce Nordics of the type found in the Minussinsk kurgans, although it is possible that these Nordics do not antedate the arrival of the Iranians. An inruption of relatively unmixed Corded invaders from their eastern center, about 2200 B.C., brought the Altaic linguistic element noted by Nehring in Indo-European speech into central Europe, and produced, by a blending of these Corded invaders with European Danubian racial elements, the European Nordics, who, during the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age, spread Indo-European speech over a wide area.

In the middle of the second millennium B.C., during the full Bronze Age, one branch of these Indo-European speakers, the Iranians, spread east ward from their home in southern Russia across the country north of the Black Sea into Turkestan, and thence some of them went southward into Afghanistan and India, bearing with them their original cattle and farming culture which they had brought from their earlier home, with a minimum of horse culture elements.

Other Iranians remained on the plains, and took over the horse nomadism which the Altaic speakers had already developed. That they mixed with Altaic speakers, as the legend of the Scythian youths and Amazon maidens would suggest, is probable, owing to their acquisition of a low cranial vault and a wide face, eastern Nordic traits which at this time were foreign to western Europe. The importance of Altaic god names in what is known of the Scythian language would support this contention. These Iranians spread the horse culture westward to the Danube and eastward to China, and pushed those of their Altaic-speaking predecessors whom they had failed to absorb northward and eastward into Siberia and Mongolia.

26 This is substantiated by the fact that some of the Neolithic skulls from Lake Baikal studied by Debetz are of Mediterranean type, while others resemble those of modern Tungus.

Debetz, G., RAJ, vol. 19, 1930, pp. 750; AZM, vol. 2, 1932, pp. 2648.

THE IRON AGE 239

In Mongolia, about 400 B.C., the horse culture was taken over completely by the fully Mongoloid Hiung-Nu, as indicated by Chinese historical documents. The royal and noble families of the Huns and Avars remained purely Mongoloid, but their followers in their march to Europe consisted in large measure of these Altaic-speaking white men who accompanied them. The historic Turks are descended in large measure from these Altaic-speaking whites. Some, such as the Kirgiz and the Tatars whose ancestors invaded eastern Russia in historic times, are half Mongoloid; others, including the Turkomans, the Azerbaijani Turks, and the truly Turkish element among the Seljuks and Osmanlis, are fully white, since their ancestors had never been subjected to this mixture. A third group, represented today by the Uzbegs and Sarts of Russian Turkestan, and by the pseudo-Armenoid crania found in late Turkish graves in Europe, were a mixture of the old longheaded white strain with central Asiatic Alpines, such as the Tajiks, and to a lesser extent with Mongoloids.

Mongols, Turks, and Tungus, living today in the forested northern part of Asia, that is in Siberia, are historically recent intruders who, in response to their new environment, have partially taken over the culture of Palaoasiatic aborigines. Their dispersions may be traced from the Altai Mountains and Mongolia as a center. Their linguistic relationship with each other may be due to varying degrees of acquisition of the speech of the nomadic white peoples who brought the horse culture to Mongolia, or to an earlier diffusion from whites, bringing agriculture to Mongolia, from the same source, or to both. The reindeer milking complex of the Tungus and Samoyeds, and the reindeer riding of the former, are borrowings from the central Asiatic horse culture.

The two most important steps in the foregoing reconstruction are:

(1) the tentative identification of the Corded people with Altaic speech; and

(2) the identification of the Corded skeletal type with

(a) an element in the Nordic racial complex of Europe,

(b) the living as well as ancient inhabitants of Iran and Afghanistan, and

(c) the modern Turkomans, Azerbaijani Turks, and the true Turkish strain among living Osmanlis. The induction of the Sumerians into this argument is helpful if true, but not necessary. Some of the Corded cultural paraphernalia had a Sumerian appearance, but this may have been caused by diffusion alone rather than by common ethnic ancestry.

The foregoing hypothesis, in reference to the origin of the Corded people, of the Turks, of the modern Altaic-speaking Mongoloids, and of the Sumerians, is pure hypothesis and should not be quoted without the inclusion of a statement that it is offered as speculation only. It is not intended to form a part of the serious contribution of the present study to white racial history. It is included, however, because in the light of existing evidence it seems more likely than any other hypothesis known to the author which is of equal scope and which purports to explain the same phenomena.

240 THE RACES OF EUROPE

In any case, the question of Uralic and Altaic origins is a part of the white racial problem, and it is intimately connected with the history of Indo-European languages and of the Nordic race. Of two elements in this reconstruction we are reasonably sure; that the ancestors of some of the living Turks, including the Turkomans, Azerbaijanis, and Osmanlis, were always white men, and that the Corded people were racially related to the inhabitants of the Iranian plateau in antiquity.