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One knows that the blonds came by sea and by land, but always from the north. It is also in agreement with the colour-maps constructed from statistics of the hair and eye colours of over ten million school children in Germany,

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Distribution of the Colour of the Eyes in France; from Topinard. The

eighty-eight Departments (Alsace-Lorraine added and counted as one) are divided into four equal groups.

Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland. The fairest children occur in the north, and, speaking in general terms, they darken as one proceeds south and west; thus the darkest children are to be found on the confines of Italy and France. There are, however, several dark" islands" in Central Ger

many, especially in Bohemia, and numerous light" islands " in the extreme south of this large area.

The maximum of frequency of the darks is seen along the Mediterranean coast, in Corsica, along the Pyrenees, and

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Distribution of the Colour of the Hair in France; from Topinard. The eighty-eight Departments are divided into four equal groups.

also in Auvergne. This conforms perfectly to what is known of the primitive location of a dark population in the basin and islands of the Mediterranean before the Aryan invasion. From other sources we know that there was a mixed dark population in France before the fair barbarians

came from the north-east to overlord the earlier inhabitants of France; but colour maps alone do not serve to distinguish between these earlier peoples. A further analysis will be made when dealing with head-form.

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Resultant of the Two Preceding Maps; from Topinard.

The map of combined hair and eye colours marks the descent of the fair invaders down the valley of the Rhone, in the direction of Upper Italy. Other irregularities of distribution and the various" islands," such as the departments of Vendée (75) and Charente-Inférieure (36) in the west, Tarn (54) and Tarn et Garonne (59) in the south, and

Jura (8) and Drôme (22) in the east, can be explained by local historical events. Topinard asks whether the fair "island" of Charente-Inférieure is due to the English, to the Protestants around La Rochelle (the majority of whom should be fair), or to the immigration of the Alans? The Alans, or Alani, were Scythian people, with red hair and grey eyes, who joined themselves with the Vandals. They occupied the middle course of the Loire in 451 A.D.' Collignon, however, does not find Charente-Inférieure particularly fair, and he cannot satisfy himself that any trace exists of the Alans, about whom we know really very little.

Topinard fully recognises that the departments are purely administrative divisions which have no ethnological significance, but it is very convenient to take the departments as statistical units, as they are of a sufficient size to give the broad features of the distribution of hair and eye colouration. The significance of the distribution has, of course, no relation whatever to the departments themselves. Here also, as in Britain, a more detailed survey in selected districts will give most interesting and suggestive results, the interpretation of which can best be worked out by a careful study of the local history, both prehistoric and documental. For France such detailed anthropological investigations have been carried out by Dr. R. Collignon in a very thorough and suggestive manner. His methods are so valuable that a chapter will be devoted to an abstract of his studies in the Dordogne district.

G. de Mortillet, Formation de la Nation Française, 1897, p. 122.

CHAPTER III

VALUE OF HEAD-FORM IN ANTHROPOLOGY

O much attention has been paid by anthropologists to the

that the greater part of the literature of physical anthropology is taken up with minutely descriptive and statistical accounts of the contours and measurements of skulls.

It is obvious enough why the skull has been so minutely studied. Although most parts of the human skeleton) exhibit distinctive traits by which they can be readily distinguished from the bones of other animals, the more characteristic human tendencies are, however, so to speak, focussed in the skull. For example, the bones of the legs and the pelvis have become modified owing to the assumption of the erect attitude; but the position of the large hole (the foramen magnum) in the base of the skull, through which the spinal cord passes into the brain, and the balancing of the head on the vertebral column, attest to the same fact.

The acquisition of the erect attitude liberated the hand from progression, and this gave it the chance to become the delicate and mobile mechanism that we now possess, and which is especially marked in the case of musicians, artists, and skilled workmen. The "handiness" of the hand relieved the jaws from much of the work that they were wont to do, and as a consequence the human jaw has a marked tendency to be reduced in size.

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