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(Chapter XII, section 9)
(Part 2) Before turning to the Great Russian population, we may consider the Slavic-speaking mountaineers of the Carpathians whose territory extends from Galicia to Rumania. These people, whether they live in Poland, Czechoslovakia, or the Bukovina section of Rumania, are known as Ruthenians, and speak dialects of Ukrainian. In southern Galicia they are known as Gorals, or ''Mountaineers"; in the southeastern corner of Poland as Huzuls. These people are the descendants of Slavic pioneers who moved into the mountains from the plains to the north and northeast, as early as the eighth century; through isolation and the retention of a relatively primitive way of living they have developed a distinctive culture. Many of them are shepherds, others small farmers.99 In the western part of their territory, the mountain people do not differ greatly in most metrical characters from Galicians; they have a mean stature of 164-165 cm., and cephalic indices of 83-84; they are, however, leptoprosopic with a mean facial index of 90, and face heights of 126 and 127 mm. They are also considerably darker than their equally brachycephalic northern neighbors, with brown or dark brown hair, and eyes which are predominantly mixed, often dark-mixed, in iris pattern. Fully 40 per cent or more seem to have dark eyes, and pure light eyes are exceptional. The skin is definitely brunet-white in over half these people. The Huzuls differ from the others in the possession of tall stature (170 cm.) and a higher cephalic index (85). They are also noted for their long-limbed, spare bodily build, and the gaunt, high-nosed Dinaric quality of their facial features. The Ruthenians as a whole belong to the Alpine-Dinaric racial group, with the Dinaric factor predominant among the Huzuls; the Slavicization of these mountaineers was more a linguistic than a racial phenomenon. On the other hand, the mutual influences between the early Dinaric inhabitants of the Carpathians and the Slavs have tended in the opposite direction; the strong Dinaric element in the lowland Ukrainian population may be due to a northward infiltration from the mountains. The Great Russians, the most numerous of the Slavic ethnic groups, are also the easternmost Slays, and the most recent to spread into their present homes. It was they who pushed northward up the streams of central and eastern Russia, thrusting aside and absorbing the Finnish tribes, until they reached the White Sea; it was they who, with the Ukrainians, served as a bulwark against the invasions of Mongols and Tatars, and who later pushed eastward over Mongol and Tatar territory into Asia. The history of central Asia has been a curious one in the relationship of white and mongoloid peoples; the Turkestans, once wholly white, became partially Mongolized by Turkish and Mongol advances from the days of the Huns through to Kublai Khan. Southern Siberia, however, once sparsely inhabited by mongoloids, received the eastward thrust, first of the Ugrian Ostiaks and Voguls, then of the Great Russians of the sixteenth century, who pushed steadily onward along arable land until they reached the Pacific. Thus in central Asia the current has flowed westward in the southern level, and eastward in the northern. Farther north still, the westward advance of the Samoyeds has added another contrary stream. Whereas the primary racial influence which acted upon the White Russians was derived from the Balts, and upon the Ukrainians from the Iranians, those which have affected the Great Russians the most have been Finnic in the north, and Iranian in the south. One must not suppose, however, that the northern Great Russians are nothing but Slavicized Volga Finns; there is considerable evidence to indicate that the Slavic colonists advanced in great numbers and reproduced with immoderate fecundity; the Great Russians have been as capable of rapid genetic expansion as of absorption. Their deviation from an ancestral Slavic type is due as much to selection within their own ranks as to the accretion of Finns. The mean stature of the Great Russians today is about 166 cm.,100 approximately the same as that of Poles, White Russians, and some Ukrainians. It varies regionally from 169 cm. in the Kuban and Don Cossack country, to about 165 cm. in the Finnish territory between the Volga and the Urals.101 That selective forces are strongly at play in the determination of the stature level is evidenced by the fact that the Russians who have emigrated to Siberia have attained the mean of 168 cm., while those measured at Ellis Island on their way into America as immigrants reached 170 cm.102 Between the twelfth century and 1880 or thereabouts, the stature of the Great Russians, as exemplified by the inhabitants of the Moscow government, had not perceptibly changed, remaining at the level of 165.5 cm.103 The same cannot, however, be said for the cranial index. A mean of 73.5 typified crania from eleventh and twelfth century Slavic kurgans; Kremlin skulls from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had reached 79.6; from then on there has been a steady rise to a mean of 81 for the recent cranial material. This change in head form parallels but does not equal that which has already been observed among Slavs in Bohemia. The brachycephalizing agent was not, however, the same; in Moscow it entered only in the fifteenth century, when fully brachycephalic crania appeared among examples of the older type; the former were much lower and broader faced, and broader nosed. This heterogeneity gradually decreased with the increase of the mean cranial index. There can be no question that the brachycephalizing agent was in its general character not Alpine, in the western European sense, but a separately evolved and incipiently or partially mongoloid Upper Palaeolithic derivative, whether transmitted through a Finnish or a Tatar medium, or both. The modern Great Russians vary in head form from a mean cephalic index of 78 to 79 in parts of the old Scythian country of South-central Russia to 83 and 84 farther north and east. The mesocephalic and low brachycephalic index levels represent the usual Danubian reëmergence with the absorption of the old forest types; in the west from an entirely Slavic and in the east from a partially Finnish source. Head dimensions among these Great Russians are medium to small, and comparable to those found among the Volhynians, White Russians, and Finns. The faces of these people are likewise similar to those of the other Slavs mentioned; although they often appear to be wide, the male bizygomatic means rarely exceed 140 mm. The nasal indices usually approach or attain mesorrhiny.104 There is a great variability in nasal profile, with at least 25 per cent of concavity in most of the country. In pigmentation the Great Russians, like all Slavs previously studied, are predominantly light-mixed, with a tendency to brown and ash-blond hair, and light-mixed eyes. The lightest pigmentation is found in the western part of the Great Russian territory, and blondism decreases gradually to the south and east. The peasants who have migrated to Siberia, however, have taken with them a greater blondism than is typical of most of Russia; over 70 per cent of hair colors lighter than dark brown, and under 30 per cent of brown eyes, characterize the subjects measured in various Siberian districts.105 The Great Russians of a special area lying partly in the Tambov, Penza, and Saratov Governments, who form a mesocephalic nucleus in the country half way between Moscow and the mouth of the Volga, have been subjected to a detailed study,106 which shows them to be essentially Nordic. A mean stature of 169 cm., a cephalic index just under 79, and a head length of 192 mm., indicate an initial resemblance to Nordics or brunet Mediterraneans. The auricular height mean of about 130 mm. is greater than that of Scandinavian Nordics, however, as are the bizygomatic of 140 mm. and the bigonial of 109 mm., while the minimum frontal of 105 mm. is more nearly Nordic than the other lateral dimensions. The face height, 125 mm., yields a facial index on the borderline of mesoprosopy and leptoprosopy; the nasal index, about 65, is derived from a mean nose length of 55 mm. and a breadth of nearly 36 mm. Half of these Great Russians have wavy hair, the other half straight; the head hair is dark brown (Fischer #4-5) in 30 per cent of the series studied, and almost never black; it is medium brown (Fischer #6-10) in about 50 per cent, and light brown in most of the rest. Rufosity is rare, but at the same time most of the blondism falls on the golden side. About 8 per cent have brown eyes, nearly 30 per cent light, and the rest mixed. Thus these tall, mesocephalic Great Russians are brown to dark brown-haired, and essentially mixed to light eyed. Their facial features conform in most cases to a Nordic standard; the nasal profile is straight or wavy in over 65 per cent of the group, convex in 25 per cent, and concave in the 10 per cent that is left. Individually as well as collectively, most of these men look Nordic in either a complete or a partial sense; others, in the minority, with concave, up-tilted noses and wide faces, approximate the forest type of incipiently mongoloid trend. The facial dimensions, with their accent on the heaviness of the mandible, diverge from a western European Nordic standard, but conform to that of the eastern Nordic type found skeletally among Scythians and in the Minussinsk kurgans; they also conform to a brunet Mediterranean type which we shall see in other regions bordering the Black Sea. The high vault, and the prevalence of brown hair in combination with light eyes, suggests a major survival of the Corded element so lacking elsewhere in most of eastern Europe; since the Slavs elsewhere have to a large extent lost this element, it seems likely that the people in question are the descendants of earlier Iranian inhabitants as much as of Slavic immigrants. North of the grasslands, in the old forested country, the Great Russians resume their expected racial character, and their resemblance to White Russians, western Ukrainians, and Poles. The difference between eastern Great Russians, living in Finnic territory, and the indigenous Finns, may be seen by a comparison between Cheremisses and Mordvins, on the one hand, and their Russian neighbors.107 The Russians are taller than Cheremisses but shorter than Mordvins; hence no distinction may be made on the basis of stature. The relative sitting height is the same, as are the head length, head breadth, head height, and the total face height. The bizygomatic of the Russians, however, is 138 mm., as compared to 140 mm. for Cheremisses and 141 mm. for Mordvins; the nasal index of the Russians is 64, that of the Mordvins 65, of the Cheremisses 71. Thus the only differences that can be seen anthropometrically are those which concern the breadths of the face and nose, and these only to a slight degree. There is a real difference, however, which appears in observational characters; only 34 per cent of Russians have weak beard growth, as compared to 64 per cent of Mordvins and 77 per cent of Cheremisses; 22 per cent of Russians have a median eyefold, which is found among 34 per cent of Mordvins, and 46 per cent of Cheremisses; only 12 per cent of the Russians have concave nasal profiles, as compared to 18 per cent of Mordvins, and 39 per cent of Cheremisses. Furthermore, only 36 per cent of Russians are brunet in total complexion type, while 50 per cent of Mordvins, and 69 per cent of Cheremisses, are so identified. The conclusion to this is that the Great Russians living in Finnish territory in eastern Russia, although they have absorbed much Finnish blood, have not wholly lost their Slavic character, and have acquired fewer mongoloid or incipiently mongoloid soft part features than have the Finns. The traveller in Moscow, or in any other important Russian city, is struck by the diversity of racial types met not only on the Street but also in any other place or circumstance. The broad-faced, snub-nosed Russian peasant, with his shoulder-length head hair and beard, has, since the revolution, lost much of his hirsute adornment; deprived of these distinctive properties, he ceases to look as strange or as distinctive as before. His hairiness, famous in caricature, is for the most part due to custom rather than to pilosity, since beard growth among Great Russians is no more abundant than among most other Europeans. Beside the snub-nosed peasant type, one sees on the streets of Moscow Nordics who would be at home in Sweden or in England; Dinarics, Norics, and every variety of near and distant mongoloid. There are also occasionally tall, large-headed, and large-faced men who are East Baltic in our present sense, and some rare Mediterraneans other than Jews. Although many of these individuals of varied type come from far corners of the Russian Empire, there is a considerable mobility, and a juxtaposition of varied types in the same place. Russia is a new country from the standpoint of migrations and settlement, when compared to the rest of Europe: she resembles in her population phenomena rather the United States or Canada. There are still many unabsorbed or only partially absorbed peoples within her European, not to mention her Asiatic, borders.
85 It should be stated at the start that Czekanowski's ß [SNPA comment: the Greek sign beta] or pre-Slavic type is to be identified with our Neo-Danubian. Czekanowski correctly considers this to be the basic racial element in Poland, and to have entered the eastern European plains in Neolithic times. Czekanowski, J., Polish Encyclopedia, vol. 2, pp. 42-59, Geneva, 1921. 86 Mydlarski, J., Kosmos, vol. 50, #2-3, 1925. 87 Baranowska-Malewska, Z., MAAE, vol. 14, 1914, PP. 86-109. 88 Mydlarski, Kosmos, 1925. 89 Davenport, C., and Love, A, Army Anthropometry. 90 Frankowska, M. z R., Czaszki z Lwowskiej Katedry Lacinskiej z XVII I XVIII w.;
Kosmos, vol. 50, 1925, pp. 649-736. 91 Rutkowski, L., MAAE, 1904, 1914. Olechnowicz, MAAE, 1895. 92 See Map 8, Chapter VIII, pp. 270-271. Sources are those already listed and:
Bochenek, A., MAAE, vol. 7, 1904, pp. (101)-(113); vol. 8,1906, pp. (69)-(76). 93 Bryk, J., Kosmos, vol. 55, 1930, Zesz. I-IL. 94 See Chapter IX, section 12, p. 292. 95 Modrezewski, L. T., PAn, vol. 8, 1934, pp. 25-28. 96 Hesch, M., Letten, Litauer, Weissrussen. Other sources are:
Eichholz, E. R., Doctor's dissertation in publications of the Voenno-meditsinskaja akademija, St. Petersburg, 1895-96. Résumé in AFA, vol. 26, 1899, pp. 166-170. 97 Poch, H., MAGW, vol. 55, 1925, pp. 289-333; vol. 56, 1926, pp. 10-52. Other sources on Ukrainians include:
Beloded, F. S., AFA, vol. 34, 1907, pp. 221-223. 98 The vault height is estimated from Nosov's data. 99 Sources on the Carpathian mountaineers include
Demianowski, A., ANAW, vol. 1, 1922, #8. 100 Anuchin, D. N., ZIGO, vol. 7, vyp. 1, 1889. 101 Bunak, V., ZfMuA, vol. 30, 1932, pp. 441-503. To readers unacquainted with Russian, Bunak's work is perhaps the most useful single source on the physicial anthropology of modern Russia. 102 Baxter, J. H., Statistics, Medical and Anthropological, U. S. Army. 103 Derviz, D. V., RAJ, vol. 12, 1923, pp. 24-38, French résumé, p. 100. 104 Ivanovsky, A. L., AFA, vol. 48, 1925, pp. 1-12. 105 Zeland, N. L., RALJ, vol. 3, 1900, pp. 75-82; Anth, vol. 13, 1902, pp. 222-232. 106 Debetz, G., AZM, 1933, pp. 34-57. 107 Bunak, V., RAJ, vol. 13, 1924, pp. 178-207; also résumé in AAnz, vol. 2, 1925, pp. 109-110.
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