The Neolithic manner of living differs radically from that of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic man, since it involves the production of food by agriculture and animal husbandry. The plants and animals themselves are not of European origin, but are native for the most part to western Asia. Neolithic civilization had probably begun in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and possibly the Indus Valley by 5000 B.C. The people who discovered or invented this control over nature probably belonged to the purely sapiens branch of the white race in the larger sense, including group of related dolicho- or mesocephalic types which did not form part of the more specialized European and North African Upper Palaeolithic group, although they were closely related to such generalized forms as Galley Hill and Combe Capelle.

Members of this larger racial group invaded Europe from several quarters, starting in the latter part of the fourth millennium B.C. Their principal avenues of approach were from North Africa through Spain, from the Mediterranean to western Europe by sea, across the South Russian plains, and up the Danube Valley. The Danubian migration may have been fed by streams from north of the Black Sea, from Anatolia by way of the Bosporus, from southern Anatolia and points farther south and east by way of Greece, or by some combination of these three. The exact source or sources of the Danubian migration remain to be determined. Another avenue was to Greece and Italy from the east by sea.

The invaders may be divided into a number of sub-types. First, there is a basic cleavage into a short-statured, sexually undifferentiated, relatively small-headed and frequently mesocephalic variety which fits most closely the specifications of the Mediterranean race in the more commonly used sense of that term. There were three groups of Neolithic culture bearers who belonged principally if not entirely to this type: the Danubians; the farmers and swineherds who moved westward along the fertile coastal regions of North Africa, and over into Spain and thence northward to France and Switzerland; and the sea-borne settlers of Italy, and probably also of Greece. The Danubians are distinguished by a particularly high cranial vault and high nasal index; the western branch by a lower vault and narrower nose. To the latter class belonged also the ancient Egyptians.

The other half of the Neolithic Mediterranean race is noted for tall stature and a more extremely dolichocephalic skull form. This variety was found in East Africa; it was also common in early Mesopotamia and Iran, while the Egyptians belonged more nearly to the smaller Mediterranean variety. This tall, longer-headed half of the race is longer faced, narrower nosed, and less delicate in bony structure than the other. It also seems to fall closer to such possible prototypes as Galley Hill and Combe Capelle from the Palaeolithic.

This tall branch is again sub-divided. One sub-branch, with moderate vault and face heights, travelled, in all likelihood, by sea from the eastern Mediterranean to Gibraltar, around Spain, and up to western France, Britain, and Scandinavia. In the last two countries, and especially in the British Isles, it contributed an important element to the population. It is not easy to find the prototype of this Megalithic group; some of the Mesopotamians seem to have been very close to it metrically, and some East Africans as well; we shall later find evidence of it on the shores of the Black Sea. For the moment we can only postulate that it came from some as yet unidentified part of southwestern Asia, southeastern Europe, or northeastern Africa.

The other sub-branch, characterized by an extremely high cranial vault and a very long face and nose, moved westward from the plains of southern Russia and Poland into central and western Europe. The members of this group, who were culturally associated with Corded pottery, performed a different part in Neolithic history from that of the Danubians. They were not peasants, but traders and presumably warriors. Their final destinations were southern and central Germany, especially Saxony and Thuringia, and southern Scandinavia. From a late center in the Rhinelands, they were destined to play an important part in subsequent metal age prehistory.

The Neolithic population of Europe did not wholly consist of these various invaders just described, although they perhaps made up the more numerous element in the whole. In the western and northern fringes, away from the gates of entry, earlier peoples of Mesolithic and even Palaeolithic tradition remained. In Spain, Portugal, and Italy small Mediterranean types of pre-Neolithic or Early Neolithic dating may well have blended with the invaders in large numbers, but since the two elements would have been much the same it is impossible to determine the proportions of each.

In France, Switzerland, and Belgium a major survival of Mesolithic cultural factors into the Neolithic is accompanied by a large brachycephalic increment, which is indubitably related to, and in some degree ancestral to, the modern Alpine race. Farther north, from Belgium to Sweden and particularly in the Danish archipelago, one finds, under similar circumstances of cultural survival, a numerous brachycephalic element, called the Borreby type, which is somewhat different from the ancestral Alpine form farther south. The northern brachycephals were larger headed and definitely higher vaulted and wider faced; with taller stature, heavier limb bones, and in many cases heavy browridges, wide jaws, and low orbits. The shape of the skull is sometimes angular, while that of the Alpines is perhaps more often globular, although this difference does not apply to all individuals and should not be over-stressed.

Both the Alpine and the Borreby types bear strong resemblances to the few known brachycephalic examples of Upper Palaeolithic crania. The Borreby type in particular resembles those from Afalou bou Rummel in Algeria. Both also resemble the Mesolithic skulls from Ofnet in Bavaria. There can be little doubt that brachycephalic man in western Europe was not a Neolithic importation but a Mesolithic survival. It is possible that these two types evolved from Palaeolithic man by some process which involved the disappearance or absorption of the normal, long-headed and numerically more important element. It is also possible that they came into Europe during the Mesolithic from some source or sources unknown. The Mesolithic is still so much of a blank in the racial sense that almost any movement might have taken place without detection.

Northern Britain, parts of Ireland, Norway, and the north of Sweden formed an area of isolation during the entire Neolithic, into which the ideas and products of civilization gradually and only partially seeped. We do not know, from contemporary evidence, that Palaeolithic man of the type already indicated in the same regions during the Mesolithic, survived in these spots through the Neolithic, but later evidence will make that assumption reasonable.

The forests of northern Europe east of Scandinavia were inhabited by a hunting and fishing people who formed part of a general circumpolar cultural group which probably extended with little technical change across Siberia to the Pacific, and may have influenced North America. In the European and western Siberian segment of this belt, eminent authority opines on cultural grounds that the Neolithic inhabitants were the direct ancestors of an element in the modern Finno-Ugrians physically, although not necessarily linguistically. The skeletal remains from this region, while few, yet reveal the presence of at least three separate types; a presumably Corded variety of Mediterranean; a Palaeolithic-looking mesocephal with low orbits and a wide face, which does simulate an element common among the modern Finns; and an incipiently or partially mongoloid brachycephal, with high orbits, a long face, and a prominent nose, resembling certain modern central Asiatic Turks.

The racial history of Europe in the Neolithic, therefore, is a problem in the balance between new racial streams of relatively uniform type which poured in from the south and east, and older, residual elements which survived or suffered amalgamation in the west and north. It again reveals the marginal character of Europe in the racial as well as cultural sense and shows the necessity of a greater knowledge of race in Asia and in Africa if we are to understand our own origins.