The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

THE WANDERINGS OF THE WIROS i55
a condition which has actually occurred. That such a pure and homogeneous type
would evolve if a community were isolated from all others for a sufficient length of time
is probable, but we have no clear evidence that such a state of isolation has been
preserved for a sufficient period in any part of Europe, or for that matter in the world.
The Andamanese have for long kept themselves in fairly complete isolation in a small
group of islands, yet their type seems to show evidence of admixture. The same is
more true of the Australian aborigines, although the island continent has almost
succeeded in keeping out other placental animals. It is true that as we go back into the
past, especially into early neolithic times, the skuUs in any given region appear more
homogeneous than is the case at later periods. After the forests had appeared in
Magdalenian times, and until the metal trade arose, communities seem to have been more
isolated than either before or after. This was, apparently, the race-making period
postulated by McDougall. But the communities who settled at that time in these
regions of isolation were to some extent of mixed ancestry, and their isolation was not
of sufficient length to insure absolute homogeneity, though we find a closer
approximation to it then than has occurred since.
We have seen at the close of Chapter II. that what we have been accustomed
to consider the Mediterranean race is in reaUty a mixture of several late palaeolithic
t3^es, all somewhat resembling one another in their most conspicuous features, and
the same seems to have been true of the Nordic Wiros, during their race-making period
on the Russian steppe. Unfortunately we have no very long series of skuUs to study,
and in the case of some we are uncertain whether they belong to this or to a slightly later
date. But Sergi has described a series of ninety-one,^ which will give us some idea of their
range of variation. Thirty-six of these skulls have indices var5dng from seventy-three
to seventy-six, thirty-one more between seventy-one and seventy-eight, while the
remaining twenty-four range outside these from sixty-five to eighty-one. Many of
these skulls are very high, and so conform to the type of Briinn-Brux-Combe Capelle,
and this has led Fleure to suspect that this late palseoUthic type, the essentially intrusive
element into the west of Solutrean times, is present in considerable numbers among
these steppe-folk,* According to Sergi fifty-one out of the ninety-one show this feature
5 Sergi (1908) 309-16). ^ Fleure (1922) 12, 13.