Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LVVarious
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, August 1899: Volume LV
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
History, then, as I read it, has nothing to say against the purity of
descent of contemporary Jews from those of the Bible. What has
anthropology, as interpreted by Professor Ripley, to produce against
this negative evidence of history? Mainly, it would appear, the fact
that Jews of the present day are predominantly brachycephalic. Of the
fact there can be little doubt. The list given by Professor Ripley in
the Popular Science Monthly (vol. liv, page 340), of over twenty-five
hundred heads, would be sufficient to establish this. But the very
uniformity of the index is almost sufficient by itself to refute the
deduction Professor Ripley draws from it. If there had been any
general amount of admixture, that would have tended rather to produce
variety than uniformity. Surely Professor Ripley does not contend that
the Jewish young men and maidens, who, on his theory, so freely
welcomed outsiders into the family circle, have never fallen in love
with long-headed persons of the opposite sex. His argument requires
that the original Jews of the Diaspora were long-headed, and that they
have uniformly intermarried with the broad-headed varieties of the
genus _homo_. Now, he adduces no evidence whatever that Jews
originally were dolichocephalic, and even if he succeeded in proving
this he would have the further difficulty of finding a European race
with skulls so broad as to raise the average index of the race
considerably over 80. If we assume that the original index of the
Jewish skull was 75, Professor Ripley would have to find some race
with an average index of nearly 90 before the mixture would raise the
contemporary Jewish skull to its present broad-headedness. Dr. Ammon
has shown[13] that there are only two small regions in Europe where
such abnormally broad skulls exist, neither of them centers of Jewish
population.
[Footnote 13: Die Natürliche Auslese beim Menschen, Jena, 1883.]
But Dr. Ammon has shown more. By comparison with the skulls found in
the long barrows in Germany, he shows that the index of German skulls
has risen from 77 to no less than 83 during the last thousand years or
so; and he further shows, by reasoning similar to that which I have
just given, that this rise in index can not be due to any admixture of
race. Now, to what is this rise in head index due? Dr. Ammon, who is a
professed disciple of Weismann, does not go into the question of
causation, but the simplest and most obvious explanation is that
cranial capacity has followed brain development, and that, roughly
speaking, brachycephalism implies intellectual development. A few
instances may be given, confirming this impression of the superior
intellectual capacity of the broad-headed. Prof. Karl Pearson, in his
Chances of Death (vol. i, page 205), has given the following sexual
ratios of the superiority of English, German, and French men over the
opposite sex:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account