Hans Günther - The racial elements of European history - Chapter IVa

Hans Günther - The racial elements of European history

THE RACIAL ELEMENTS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY

Chapter IV Part One

 RACIAL STRAINS FROM OUTSIDE EUROPE

 The Hither Asiatic [ΠΡΟΣΩ ΑΣΙΑΤΙΚΗ] race

IN the second chapter we dealt only with those bodily characteristics which show themselves especially clearly in the outward appearance, that is to say, with some only of the outwardly visible hereditary bodily attributes. Besides other visible characteristics, therefore, hereditary racial characteristics within the body were also left undealt with; these last we are still unable to consider even to-day, for a beginning has hardly yet been made with them. Here, too, we can only just refer to the peculiarities of movement in the various races, and to racial blood analysis.^l

Besides those hereditary elements which can be recognized or at least surmised in the European population as coming from one of the European races, there are also characteristics that are not yet ascribed to any European race or to a racial strain from outside Europe, and are, perhaps, not true racial marks, or are marks which occur in several races: among such may be mentioned the epicanthus and the so-called Mongolian spot.

In the case of the Mongolian fold, where this is found at times in Europeans an Inner Asiatic (Mongolian) strain may be generally suspected; where there is very frizzly hair we may suspect a Negro strain.

In Eastern Europe, as, too, in Hungary and the Balkans, whither tribes of Asiatic origin have ever been penetrating, an Inner Asiatic strain can be seen, growing more and more evident as we go eastwards.

This strain is to be found, too (through Lappish blood), in northern Finland, Sweden, and Norway (cp. Figs. 144 and 145).

A Negro strain is found from olden times all over the Mediterranean area (Negroes in the Roman army, Negro slaves), especially in the shipping towns since the Crusades. Negroes were, and still are, the fashion as servants in the big towns. Marriages with Southern Europeans have brought Negro blood into Central Europe; Italian navvies, particularly, have often shown a more or less evident Negro strain. Into France Negro blood has made its way from the French territories in Africa. Portugal, owing to the former importation of slaves from Africa, shows a particularly well-marked Negro strain.² To-day it is first and foremost French policy that is intensifying the 'Black Peril' for the whole world by giving the Negro, through the granting of full civil rights and officer's rank, an influence whose full results we cannot yet see.³ For Germany the French domination involves the 'Black Shame,' whose results, too, cannot be foreseen -- the attacks by Africans on white women in the occupied territory. Distler in his book, Das deutsche Leid am Rhein. Anklagen gegen die Schandherrschaft des französischen Militarismus (1921), has to say that: 'It is beyond all doubt that the birth-rate of cross-breeds is steadily rising.'

A Malay strain, arising from the mixed unions which have been customary among the Dutch in their colonies since the seventeenth century, is to be seen unmistakably in the towns of Holland.

Fig. 144 - Yakut Woman, Inner Asiatic Race	Fig. 145 - Gilyak from the Chaivinsky Gulf, Inner Asiatic Race
Fig. 146 - Holland, Van Haanen, painter, Nordic with Malay strain	Fig. 147 - Dahomey Negro
Fig. 148 - Russia, Tartar, Inner Asiatic with East Baltic strain	Fig. 149 - Magyar (Szekler) woman, predominantly Inner Asiatic
Figs. 150a, 150b - Transylvania, Inner Asiatic-Dinaric, or Inner Asiatic-Hither Asiatic

   

From the Caucasus and Asia Minor there reaches as far as the Balkans a fairly strong strain of the Hither Asiatic race. This strain is recognizable, too, in Spain and southern Italy. In Spain and southern Italy, particularly in Sicily, there are slight Oriental racial strains. These two races are strongly represented in the mixed blood of the Jews. In the gipsies, too, they are both present.

Fig. 151 - Skull from Asia Minor, Hither Asiatic Race
Fig. 152 - Imeretian from Kutais, Hither Asiatic Race	Fig. 153 - Armenian, Hither Asiatic Race	Fig. 153a - von Heidenstam, Nordic-Hither Asiatic

The Hither Asiatic [ΠΡΟΣΩ ΑΣΙΑΤΙΚΗ] race must be considered as a branch of the Dinaric. Both have so many marks in common that there has been a tendency to look on them as a single human group. The Hither Asiatic race is of middling height, and thick-set; the head is short and rises straight up at the back; the face is narrow, with a very prominent nose, which sinks downward at the cartilage and has a fleshy lower end; the lips are rather full; the hair is brown or black, generally curly, often too, it would seem, frizzly; the eyes are brown; the skin is brownish. Both the body hair and the beard grow very strong. The eyebrows are thick, and often meet above the nose. Compared with the Dinaric race the chin is less prominent, and lies farther back; a line drawn from the upper lip to the chin is characteristic for the profile of the Hither Asiatic race. The line from the ear to the cheek-bones runs somewhat more downwards than in the other races here considered. If the expression of the Dinaric face may be called bold, that of the Hither Asiatic is cunning. In their mental qualities these two races, which have so great a bodily likeness, show a good deal of difference. In the Hither Asiatic man there is a striking gift for trade, more than ordinary powers of reading character and understanding human nature, and a tendency to deliberate cruelty, combined with musical and histrionic ability. 'Not so much an energetic spirit of enterprise as a watchful reserve, not so much a proud self-reliance as a crafty spirit of calculation is what speaks out from their eyes'; this is Stiehl's excellent picture of the Armenian prisoners of war of Hither Asiatic race.⁴ The Caucasus is the area where the Hither Asiatic race is most predominant. The original languages of this race are the Caucasian (Alarodic).

Fig. 154 - Arab from South Algeria (sharply bent nose), according to Weninger C, 76.64, F, 98.52	Fig. 155 - Assyrian, the nose is bent in the last third, characteristic shape of the lips
Fig. 156 - Mummy portrait from Egypt, Second Century AD, characteristic shape of the lips	Fig. 157 - Georgian, Hither Asiatic strain
Fig. 158 - Arab Sheikh from Palmyra	Fig. 159 - Arab from the Algerian Sahara

The Oriental race, which is found as a slight strain in Southern Europe, is short to middling height, slender, long-headed, and narrow-faced. The nose is narrow, or curved in the lower third (Fig. 155), less often sharply curved in the upper third (Fig. 154), and not very prominent, being sometimes rather flat; now and again it has a somewhat deep-lying, though narrow, root (Fig. 158). The lips are slightly swollen, often, as it were, arched and pointed in a smile. The deep groove (sulcus mentalabialis) between the under lip and the chin often lies higher than in other races (Fig. 156); this gives a characteristic look to the face of the Oriental race. The under lip as a result sometimes leaves the impression of being slightly protruded, as it probably often is. The skin is rather fair; it often looks fairer than that of the Mediterranean race, but with a fairness which is pale, not rosy. The hair is dark brown or black, and usually curly. The eyes are very dark. They are often almond-shaped, that is to say, the inner corners are rounded, while the outer corners come more to a point, the opening between the lids rising slightly in the outward direction. The eyes often have a sunken look.

The Oriental race is probably akin to the Mediterranean. Its original home seems to have been Arabia in the Diluvial Age, when this was still a fertile area. The Arabian Bedouin still show the strongest Oriental strain. The Semitic tongues belonged originally to the Oriental race. Owing to tribes of Oriental race having spread these tongues far and wide, they are spoken to-day by many whose blood belongs to other races.

Fig. 160 - Russia, Lermontov, Poet, 1814-41, Oriental-Dinaric	Fig. 161 - Rumania, Oriental
Fig. 162 - Turk from Smyrna, Oriental with Hither Asiatic strain	Fig. 163 - Netherlands, Van Dyck, Painter (self-portrait), Nordic with Oriental strain

Oriental and Hither Asiatic blood has been spread from the East over the whole of South-eastern Europe, above all in the lands around the Black Sea and in the Balkans, and also wherever Islam has been carried, especially, therefore, in Spain. Through unions with Southern Europeans the blood of the Oriental and of the Hither Asiatic race has sometimes made its way, too, to Central and Northern Europe. The fact of there being a strain of these races in a Central or Northern European does not, then, always point to a Jewish connexion (cp. Fig. 163).

Over and above strains of blood from outside Europe, such as the foregoing, it may well be that occasionally characteristics of prehistoric European races will be traceable, when investigations are once begun in this direction. Possibly, for example, among criminals there is a somewhat greater frequency of characteristics of the Neanderthal race; so that, for example, a low retreating forehead, or underhung jaws, and a small brain-chamber in the skull would not always have to be interpreted as signs of degeneration only, but in many cases as characters inherited from this prehistoric race and sprinkled throughout the population; which characters might easily show themselves on the mental side in criminal tendencies.

In Scotland a strain of the palaeolithic Crô-magnon race has been suspected, as also in Norway in the Drontheim district,⁵ in Sweden in the Dalarna province, in Germany in Westphalia.⁶ I am inclined to believe in the probability of a strain of this race (with fair hair and skin, and light eyes?) for Westphalia, and an area from Westphalia to West Thuringia. The race we are speaking of is very tall -- tall and broad, not tall and slender; broad-faced and long-headed; by some it is held to be dark-haired and dark-eyed, others hold that it is fair. In Norway, and thence derivatively in Iceland⁷ -- as also it would seem in Scotland -- we have to do with a strain from a dark-haired, dark-eyed race; in Dalarna perhaps only with the results of a Nordic-East Baltic cross.

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Footnotes for Chapter IV Part One

 

¹ On these points cp. Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes. On blood analysis and other departments of research in racial physiology, cp. Basler, Rassen- und Gesellschaftsphysiologie, 1925.

² In America it is believed that any admixture of Negro blood can be recognized by the colouring of the white of the nails. This crescent-shaped mark at the bottom of the nail which in the European races is white, is said to show a bluish tinge for many generations after a mingling of Negro blood.

³ On the dangers, equally great for the European and the American peoples, of the French policy towards the natives of Africa, cp. the following articles: 'Die schwarze Weltgefahr,' by Widenbauer; and 'Wesen und Zweck der französischen Koloniepolitik,' by v. Oefele (both in Deutschlands Erneuerung, 1923, Heft 12). Cp. also the book of Larsen (a Dane), Der flug des Adlers über den Rhein und den Äquator, 1925, which deserves to be circulated especially in Germany. On the Black Peril in general, see Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Colour against White World-Supremacy, 1920. That in France, too, there are glimpses of the danger can be seen by what Le Temps wrote on 26th April 1923: 'In the Roman Empire towards its end the legions were replaced by barbarian hordes. We know what that cost.'

⁴ Stiehl, Unsere Feinde, Characterköpfe aus deutschen Kriegsgefargenenlagern, 1916.

⁵ Bryn, 'En Nordisk Crô-magnontype,' Ymer, 1921.

⁶ Hauschild, 'Zur Anthropologie der Crô-magnonrasse.' Zeitschr. für Ethnol., Heft I-4. 1923.

⁷ Hanneson, Körpermasse und Körperproportionen der Isländer, Reykjavik, 1925. 

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