The Conquest of a Continent; or, The Expansion of Races in America. Grant Madison
groups: one, the Western or Centum group, which pushed west and north; the other, the Eastern or Satem group which pushed south and east. The Centum group included the Greek, Latin, Celtic, and Germanic languages. Curiously enough, an outlying member of this group, the Tokarian, was spoken in Turkestan as late as the seventh century A.D. The Satem group, sometimes called Iranian, included the Lithuanian, all the Slavic languages and those of ancient and modern Persia and the various forms of Sanscrit spoken in India and Burma.
Light-skinned invaders from the northwest appear to have entered India in successive waves and to have introduced the Aryan language known as Sanscrit. They were probably the Sacae or Scythians from South Russia. These Nordics in India can properly be called "Aryans." As used otherwise, however, the term Aryan is purely linguistic. Originally all the tribes who spoke the languages of the Centum and Satem groups were members of the Nordic race.
According to recent discoveries in the Valley of the Indus, a very elaborate civilization flourished at least five thousand years ago at Mohenjo-Daro, four hundred miles north of the mouth of the river. This civilization was as elaborate as the corresponding culture of Mesopotamia or of Egypt. The racial characters found in the bodies in the burials indicate that the mass of the population was then, as now, of Mediterranean race, but that the ruling class was long-headed and long-faced, and of a tall stature and sturdy build—a type clearly Nordic. In the earliest graves of Ur, in Mesopotamia, the skulls are very clearly of a race akin to those on the Indus. All this would tend to throw back the date of the invasion of men from the north by another thousand years or more. The same appears to be true of the invasions into Greece of the Achæans and of the Osco-Umbrians into Italy.
The wide distribution of the Satem or Iranian group to the south and west of Asia shows that the Nordics in great numbers conquered the aboriginal inhabitants of these countries and imposed on them the Aryan speech. They invented the caste system to maintain the purity of their blood. In fact, the Hindu word "varna" means both color and caste. In spite of all their efforts, however, the conquering invaders died out almost completely in India and Persia—leaving behind them only their language, and, in some cases, their religion.
With this brief review of the essential difference between race and language or culture, we may return to a consideration of humanity in terms of essentially racial characters.
The world as a whole can be roughly mapped racially according to the most obvious human differentiation—namely, color: white, yellow, red, black, and brown. The white race at the present day dominates Europe, northern Asia in part, Australia, and North America as far south as Mexico, with outposts scattered all over the globe. Eastern Asia is yellow. Southern Asia and northern Africa are brown. Africa south of the Sahara Desert is black, and there is a black tinge across southern Asia, as we shall see. The red men, or Amerinds, with but a small remnant in the United States and Canada, inhabit Latin America, where in some cases their blood is mixed with that of the descendants of Negro slaves, and, of course, to a still larger extent with that of South Europeans.
Color, however, is not the only character upon which a racial map of the world could be based. Perhaps a more satisfactory division could be made according to the cross section of human hair. However, in dealing with the racial groupings of Eurasia, we find different types of humanity arranged in definite zones according to certain outstanding physical characters.
Farthest south on the great land area of Eurasia lies a belt of Negroids, extending from Ethiopia with intervals through Arabia to the South Seas. The principal racial characteristics of these people are very dark or black skin, dark eyes, tightly curled black hair, and long, i.e., dolichocephalic skulls. In southern Persia the population shows a Negro admixture, and a distinctly Negroid type is numerous among the Pre-Dravidians of India. The Hindus themselves are very dark brown with wavy black hair.
A few decades ago there was much talk of the English officer and the Hindu in the ranks being of the same Aryan blood, because they both spoke widely diverse forms of the great group of Aryan languages. This, of course, did not imply the slightest trace of blood relationship—the Aryan speech of the Hindu had been imposed upon him by his conquerors from the north. Such fallacies were common a generation ago.
To the eastward we find remnants of Negro types in the Malay Peninsula and in the large islands to the east as far as the Philippines. This Negroid type extends also eastward through Melanesia. From this discontinuous distribution it would appear that the Negroes and Negritos were the original population of southern Eurasia. It is probable that from this region the true Negroes migrated westward into Ethiopia.
At a date far earlier than this hypothetical migration westward, an earlier type of Negroid pushed southeast to Tasmania, which was thereafter cut off from the land mass of Australia. In Australia itself these Tasmanians were absorbed or exterminated by the later coming Australoids from whom they differed materially.
The racial tangle in Australia, Papua, and the islands of Melanesia presents great difficulties in classification, but the basic element appears to be Negro with a large admixture of later Mongoloids coming from Asia.
The next zone of human population, superimposed in many cases upon the Negroids, but south of the great central mountain ranges of Eurasia, is constituted by the Mediterranean race. This race is characterized by black, wavy hair, very dark eyes, oval face with fairly regular features, dark olive skin, relatively short stature, and a somewhat slight skeletal and muscular structure. This last character is in sharp contrast with the powerful and sturdy build of the next two races to be considered, the Alpine and the Nordic. The principal character of the Mediterranean race, however, is its long (dolichocephalic) skull. The Negroes, as we have said, have long skulls, but of quite a different type.
The range of the Mediterraneans extends from the western part of the British Isles, through Spain and along both coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, down the east coast of Africa to Somaliland. In Asia it embraces the Arabs, South Persians, most of the Hindus, with an eastward extension. In Northeast Africa and India it is strongly mixed with Negro.
Spreading everywhere throughout Europe north of the territory dominated by the Mediterranean race, and often mixed with it, we find the Alpines. This race is characterized by a somewhat short, stocky build much sturdier than the Mediterranean, abundant dark, but not straight, head and body hair, dark eyes and round (brachycephalic) skull.
The center of origin of the Alpines was somewhere in Central Asia west of the true Mongols, north of the Mediterraneans, and east of the Nordics—possibly in Turkestan. The Alpines and Mongols are both characterized by a round skull but, as in the case of the long-skulled Mediterraneans and the long-skulled Negroes, the type of skull differs appreciably.
The Mongols and Alpines have been in close contact for ages. The Mongols have issued again and again from East and Central Asia and submerged the Alpines, driving them westward into Central Europe. There has been a great deal of intermixture and the Slavic Alpine population of eastern Europe frequently shows distinctive Mongol traits. However, the two races, while perhaps remotely connected, differ widely. The Alpines, like the Australoids and to a less extent like the Nordics, have abundant body hair and copious beard, while the Mongols (like their derivatives, the American Indians) are beardless and without body hair. Alpine hair is wavy, that of the Mongols and Mongoloids straight. Alpine features are rather coarse, often with a large prominent nose, while true Mongols have an exceedingly flat face, depressed nose, and a broad space between the eyes. This depressed nose, in adult Mongols, is the retention of an infantile character, as babies of all races are born with bridgeless noses. As to stature, most Alpines are of moderate height, although those from the Tyrol to Albania, the so-called Dinaric race, are decidedly tall.
It was a branch of tall Mongols, with a slight admixture of Alpines, that crossed into America from Asia and became the ancestors of the American Indians, who are of substantial height, often with prominent, almost hawklike noses and high cheek bones.
We might mention here the Malays, who are essentially Mongols and who pushed down into Indo-China and throughout the Malay Peninsula. There are many traces of their blood in Polynesia. This expansion was relatively recent and in those localities there are everywhere indications of earlier races, especially of the very ancient