A STUDY IN ORIGINS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2572, 1 July 1903, Page 75

A STUDY IN ORIGINS.

THE MEDITERRANEAN RACE: A STUDY OF THE ORIGIN OF EUROPEAN PEOPLES.

By Professor G. Sergi.

With 93 Illustrations. (The Contemporary Science Series.) London : Walter Scott. 6s net. (Reviewed by Dinornts.)

Of radicals in politics we seldom hear nowadays ; and of radicals in science we seldom Bear at all, perhaps because true scientific procedure always is radical in its methods. Reduced to its lowest terms, science is the observation of phenomena and the colligation of the results of observation into groups. Expressed in higher terms, science is knowledge in perspective. It is knowledge viewed down the vista of time : not an aggregation of facts presented simultaneously to the intellect, but a sequence of facts successively ascertained and placed in proper relation with all that was previously known. " Tiie student of science sets out upon his quest with the intention, not of knowing only, bufc of understanding what he knows." The more gatherer of facts is but a common journeyman in the workshop of science. Freedom to dare, and ability to do, the ncessary work of generalisation, are essential qualities in the genuine scientist.

It follows, therefore, that creed, shibboKth, or aught else of conservative formulary or -catchword should have neither place nor standing in the scientific province. That there is a constant tendency towards the growth of a spurious orthodox}' in science lam not concerned to deny. We may consider that to be one of those "streams of tendency," having their source in the weaker side of our common human nature, and apt to be let run on unheeded from their very insignificance. If I do not enforce my opinion by quoting illustrative instances, it is partly from lack of space, and partly from fear of hurting the feelings of oversensitive readers.

With regard to the present volume, however, there can be no question of the face that it is the work of a downright scientific radical, and, it must be admitted, something of an extremist as well. Professor Sergi's freedom from the thraldom of preconception is obvious and marked, and under his keen scrutiny established notions, some of them well supported ones, seem to wither away and vanish like morning mists. His book embodies a solid and strongly characteristic attempt to unravel the tangled skein of Kiiropean race-<>rigins. He believes, and supports his belief with conspicuous ability, that the European peoples comprise two out of three segments of what he has named the ''Euraifrican specie?." In his view, the varieties of this "species," while widely diverging in .colour of skin, hair, and eyes, have pkulls which never deviate to any great extent from a form belonging to the group or species, and peculiar to it. The original home of his "species"' he finds in that part of Africa bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and the inland parts adjacent to them. In protohistoric and prehistoric times the European shores of -the Mediterranean were peopled by colonies from the opposite coasts ; these, in course of time, spreading over the greater part of central, south, western, and northern Europe. He finds distinct evidences of the presence, in -times immensely remote, of the "Eurafrican species" in all lands from Norway to Northern Africa, and fiom South Russia to the Canary Islands. Basing his theory upon rigid considerations of cranial and skeletal characters, he holds that the same race is there still, and having, '.n historic times, peopled the greater part of America, South Africa, and Australasia, that it practically possesses the New World as $ell as the old. That is to say. the two different groups, or varieties, which colonised the land-s along the European shores of the Mediterranean, have been, intermittently, colonibing the reat of the desirable parts of the world ever since.

All the widely varying divisions of the Eurafrican species, according to Professor Sergi, fall into tfiree "races." The African, with red, brown, and black pigmentation, which has never left the original habitat; the Mediterranean, of brunet complexion, inhabiting the great basin including part of Northern Africa, formerly occupying Asia Minor, the three great peninsulas of Europe, the Mediterranean islands, and the Canaries, as well as a portion of western, central, and eastern Europe, now difficult to determine; finally, a Noidic race, of blond skin and hair, blue or grey eyes, most numerously represented in Scandinavia, North Germany, and England. He claims for this Eurafrican species t'ftat it "has absolute uniformity of cephalic and facial forms throughout its geographical distribution, which is very wide, and beneath whatever colour of skin and hair." Thus, he says, ''the Mediterranean stock is a race or variety of the Eurafrican species, and differs from the two other vaiieties chiefly in colour. . . . It is not confined to the limits of the Mediterranean, for to-day populations with the identical characters of the stock may be found elsewhere in Europe, as in Great Britain. The varied movements of peoples have caused mingling of the two varieties, Mediterranean and Nordic, the brown and the white, and their descendants show correspondingly mixed coloiation of the eyes, hair, and skin."

Long anterior to the immensely remote epoch, which saw the arrival of the first colonists from Africa, Europe was already peopled by inferior races, traces of which Still are to be found as rarities in various •localities. "It is," Professor Sergi says, "definitely accepted that the Neanderthal skull is the most ancient witness to the appearance in Europe of man Tith well-de-fined o»teological characters." But he maintains that Homo Neanderthalensis was in no sense a precursor of existing European!) According to him, the Neanderthal race, of •which many traces have been found fossil, tras merely an inferior product of evolution

which utterly failed to survive, save as a lingering trace, because of its manifest unfitress. For similar reasons he rejects Pithecanthropus erectus as being a possible human precursor, declaring it to be merely "a higher type of ihe other anthropomorphic species!" "The history of evolution,"' he say's, "shows us species which represent st-ages of progress in form and structure, but not transitory types." The Neanderthal type seems to him to be "a species distinct by itself, the most ancient that we know in quaternary times, and distinguishable in subsequent epochs, having few but sure records of its existence even in the present epoch." He holds it to bs "a European species, originating in Europe, in eaily quaternary, or possibly late tertiary times'' ; but on this latter point he says, we till know nothing definite. It is, he says, desirable to note th : s survival of the Neanderthal man for various reasons It shows the persistence of cranial forms^ through many thousand years, and In spite of mixture'with other species. It also shows that the forms subsequently prevailing are not derived from Homo Neanderthalensis. This fact is claimed as proof of the principle upon which he lays most stres* — viz., the persistence of forms, e^pec ally ciani.il forms, during immense period*, and in presence .of changing enviionmer.t*, intermixture of varieties, etc.

Professor Sergi holds that his Eurafrican species was indiginoua to Africa, that it passed through all stages of pi ogress fiom proto-prffcuolithic savagery to high and powerful civilisation within its home lands. He says : — I hope, to show . . . that there was really a centre of dispers on of the Mediterranean stook, which in far remote times probably Quaternary, anterior to all tradition, occupied the region-! which surround thi.3 great bdtsin, and that tho various peop'cs derived from this stock lave po^e^ed the most ancient native civilisation in the countries, islands, and peninsulas they occupied. I believe, further, that we must not make an absolute separation, such as is commonly made, between the arious regions of this basin; the invaders or lmmijrianls in the Mediterranean spread both to east and we^t, to south and to north, of the- soa; that is to say, they inhabited Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Libya, and the rest of Northern Africa, Greece, Italy, and the Iberian peninsula.

The ba-sin of the Mediterranean is not merely European ; Asia and Africa al«o form part of it, pud it may bo paid that its watciH formed a point of contact for threcquarUrc of the ancient word. In this contact arosgr and developed the civilisation which lias chiefly aifiueuced modern people, and which continues its influence ; the other civilisations perished completely or belonged to a world less in touch with the social life of humanity, though they may have constituted grandiose States like Babylonia and A.«-yna. Of thc^e we possets today the historical record* 1 , which have an aritistic and monumental \alue, but their social orde-r, which is so large a part of a nation's civilisation, has left aio influence- oi> modi in life, while L-atiu cnilisation still lives moro or less tran-fonncd, in modern social life. Hie- people* nearest to Aaia, and which mctt strongly foil Asiatic influence in their development, ha\? sunk like the Asiatic peoples, some ha\ing disappeared even from history ; to-day we havo to dis inter them from among tho remains of then monuments and their indcciplic-rable language. The Mediterranean lias prrsentod the most favouiable conditions for tho development of a civilisation mere cosmopolitan than thc~o born in the valleys of th© great rivers, like the Euphrates the Tigris, the Nile, or the five gruit nver-> of India. The Moditeirane-an, with it* large and email peninsulas, its numerous islands, its waterways to other seas, and to the interior of tho Eurrouudmg land, has furnished points of contact and struggle between many nations, arousing the internal and external activity of each, in the direction meet useful to Its existence and growth. Professor Sergi's views ;ire destructively antagonistic to the "Aryan theory," which ascribes the origin of the European races to ludo-Gennauic sources. Ra.«ed largely on linguistic considerations, this theory has, for long been in a tottering condition, a result due almost entirely to closer study of the intimate anthropological aspects of the subject. The researches of Virchow and others have pretty conclusively demonstrated the Indo-Germanic or Aryan raoe to have only a mythical existence — to be, in short, the "Mrs Hmtis" 1 of archaeology and philology. In its bearings upon research into the evolution and influence of the Semitic peoples also, his position with regard to the Eurafrican s-psck-.s is strikingly in harmony with both ancient and recent history. The Semitic peoples, as viewed in Sergi's perspective, have neither part nor parcel in the structure of the all-progressive Mediterranean race. In the course of its evolution hordes of barbarous Semites harassed it in many directions, and finally overran and destroyed its Asiatic seats of civilisation, but their fanatical ardour excelled only in destructiveness. The Semite still shows as scant inclination to intermingle with the populations amid which he harbouis as ev^r he did. On the other hand, Professor Seigi's theory is largely in harmony with the views of those anthropologists, who, like Keane, hold that the varieties of man were, in times immensely remote, already well and widely dispersed. For a just comprehension of the important theme dealt with in this able book, it is necessary, as Oliver Wendall Holmes said, to polarise our thought — to lay aside all our preconceptions, and approach the subject free from bias and with open minds. Those who can do so will find rich and stimulating food for reflection within tho compass of this remarkable volume.

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