Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899Various
History
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899: Volume LIV, No. 5, March 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
The modern Greeks are a very mixed people. There can be no doubt of
this fact from a review of their history. In despite of this, they
still remain distinctly true to their original Mediterranean ancestry.
This has been most convincingly proved in respect of their head
form.[16] The cephalic index of modern living Greeks ranges with great
constancy about 81. This, it should be observed, betokens an
appreciably broader head than in the case of the ancient Hellenes.
Stephanos, who has measured several hundred recruits, finds
dolichocephaly to be most prevalent in Thessaly and Attica; while
broad-headedness, so characteristic, as we shall see, of the Albanians
and other Slavs, is more accentuated toward the north, especially in
Epirus. About Corinth also, where Albanian intermixture is common, the
cephalic index rises above 83. The Peloponnesus has probably best
preserved its early dolichocephaly, as we should expect. In Thessaly
alone are the modern Greeks as purely Mediterranean as in classic
times. There can be no doubt that in Asia Minor at least, the word
Greek is devoid of any racial significance. It merely denotes a man
who speaks Greek, or else one who is a Greek Catholic, converted from
Mohammedanism. Greek, like Turk, has become entirely a matter of
language and religion, as these people have intermingled. Thus in the
southwest of Asia Minor, where Semitic influences have been strong,
von Luschan[17] makes the pregnant observation that the Greeks, in the
main, look like Jews and speak Turkish. Here, then, is proof positive
that no Greeks of pure Mediterranean descent remain to represent the
primitive Hellenic type in that region. But it is equally certain that
in the main body of the Greeks at home in Greece, the original racial
traits are still in the ascendant. The smoothly oval and long faces in
our two Greek portraits are surely of Mediterranean type. To this, the
ideal form, the purest elements in the nation still tend to revert.
[Illustration: GREEKS.
ROUMANIANS. County Hunyad, Hungary.
BULGARIANS. County Temes, Hungary.
BALKAN STATES.]
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