Nordics, Mediterraneans, and Human Achievement

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 7, 25 February 1925, Page 57

Nordics, Mediterraneans, and Human Achievement

(By James J. Walsh, M.D., Ph.D., Sc. D., in America.)

For many people in recent years the division of Europeans into three great races —Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean —has introduced an element of scientific theory somewhat difficult to grasp. Here in America, as Hilaire Belloc has suggested so strikingly in an article in the April number of the Atlantic Monthly, men are prone to take scientific theories quite seriously. The caveman myth, in so far as he was supposed to be just a little bit higher than the beasts though he proved to have been an artist, is a typical instance. “Natural selection,” the “survival of the fittest,” the great “Nordic race” are other striking examples amongst many. Superficially educated people who have no background of philsosphic thought are prone to accept such scientific formulas as truths long before they are definitely proved and sometimes just about the time that they are being disproved, and then, go on to apply them to many phases of practical life and to legislation and even to religion. For this reason a discussion of the three great races of Europe would seem timely. The Nordic Race. The Nordics or northern Europeans whose centre of population is the Scandinavian countries are tall blonde human beings, blue eyed, long headed, a sea-loving people. The Alpines, so named because their centre of population is the Alps, are of medium stature, have round heads, dark eyes, and brown or slightly reddish hair. The Mediterranean peoples dwell along the shores of that sea, are long headed like the Nordics, but of much smaller size on the average, have dark eyes and are deeply pigmented in the skin and hair, evidently influenced by the climate in which they have lived so long. It has been said that if you draw a line along the Rhine in Europe the people who dwell near it will be found to be about evenly divided between blondes and . brunettes. Every five degrees south of that line there is a greater percentage of brunettes, every five degrees north of it a definite percentage more of blondes, until at Hammerfest, the most northerly and well inhabited city in Europe, there are well above ninety per cent, of blondes while in the lower part of Italy and in Sicily there are more than ninety per cent, of brunettes, while on the other side of the Mediterranean in Africa you have the extreme brunettes. There are exceptions in these regions, some of them rather striking. There has been a mixture of peoples and some “inwandering” on the part of progressive individuals and families, but in general the distinctions indicated hold rather well. « The Nordics are the Northmen, who under the name of the Danes in England and Ireland, and somewhat later the Normans in northern France and Sicily, as well as in Russia, proved such disturbing factors' for the culture that had developed in the early medieval times. They were warriors in quest of adventure, ever ready to fight, making incursions on peaceful territory, often settling and settling up their rule over the conquered people. After contact with the culture of the conquered nations they often

adopted some of the cultured developments, and, as patrons, encouraged the building of monuments that would create traditions in support of their rulership. This is the only sense in which the term Norman architecture for the Gothic of the north of France has a meaning that is at all historical. It was created by the native population though 'with the encouragement of their rulers, so many of whom belonged to the northern invaders who had come in and foisted themselves on the country. There is very little evidence for any original work in connection with art or esthetics and very few contributions to literature that can be tracked to pure Norman stock. The Alpine race, so called, representing the peoples of eastern France and of Switzerland, of most of Holland, practically all of southern Germany and the Flemish part at least of Belgium, as well as a good part of central Europe, were the thrifty tillers of the soil satisfied with a life of good hard work that gave them a reasonable competency. They were a solid, patient, persistent people over whose territories the men from the north and from the south fought their battles dragging the country people into the conflict. The Mediterraneans. The Mediterranean race is the one that is of supreme interest to human history. It embraces the Greeks in the older time, the southern Italians inhabiting three-fourths of the Peninsula and including such outposts of the southerners as Bologna, Florence, Siena, and Venice. Sicily and Sardinia where Greek culture maintained itself for so long, southern France with so many Greek elements, and most of Spain and Portugal are also included among the territories of the Mediterranean race, though the Portugese have by admixture of racial elements from Africa become more of a mixed race than any of the others. The Mediterraneans do not end with the pillars of Hercules and the great middle sea. Lothrop Stoddard, the son of Stoddard the lecturer, who has been recently writing on the subject in the Saturday 'Evening Post, as well as Madison Grant, insists that the people of the southwestern part of England as well as of Wales, and the bulk of the population of Ireland except at the extreme north, and the inhabitants of the western part of Scotland, all belong to the Mediterranean race. To most people whose notions of race relationships have been derived from older viewpoints this may seem a very heterogenous collection of people without close relationship. There have been, however, some suggestions of affinities between these peoples, that were discussed long ago. Anyone who will turn to Canon Taylor’s erudite volume on Words and Places (Everyman’s Library) will find that their place-names had brought some of these scattered people together in a very interesting way. The learned Canon of York pointed out that the syllable gal which occurs in many regional names probably signifies that there was something in common among all these people. Celt is, of course, he says, only the Greek form of

Gael or Gallus. G and w are often inter-: changeable. The French call the Prince of Wales, Ic prince de Gallcs. Cornwall in England used to be Cornwales. Calais used to be written either Galeys or Waleys - indifferently. Caledonia may well have been Caledonia. Gaul, Galway, Donnegal, Gal-. loway and Ar gyle are all strongly Gaelic districts. Goello is one of the most Celtic portions of Brittany. The inhabitants of Gallicia (Spain) and Portugal possess more Celtic blood than those who inhabit any other portion of the peninsula. There was a tribe of these Gauls or Gaels, which in the third century before Christ, pillaged Rome and Delphi and finally crossing into Asia settled there and gave a name to that district ,of Galatia whose inhabitatnts, even in the time of St. Paul, retained so many characteristic features of their Celtic origin. All this is condensed from Taylor. It was these Mediterranean people widely scattered who accomplished great artistic and literary achievements. The Greeks Following the Cretans, a. Mediterranean people who had been inspired by the old Egyptians, another Mediterranean people, gave the greatest of all developments to culture. Rome captured Greece but captive Greece took its captor captive and Greek culture spread in the Italian peninsula. When the Roman Empire fell before northern races another branch of these Mediterraneans in the distant west saved civilisation and for four centuries Ireland was the schoolmaster of Europe. In recent years it has been the custom to deny this, but as pointed out in Studies (Dublin) Laistner in the Bulletin of the. John Bylands ’ Library (August, 1923) rehabilitates the evidence for the old opinion and vindicates the traditional teaching of the wonderful influence exercised by the Irish in many parts of the Continent. They were undoubtedly the students and teachers of Greek for some four centuries after the fall of Rome. Spain, another branch of the Mediterraneans, supplied the Spanish Caesars who nearly saved Rome from decay and provided all the great writers of the silver age of Latin literature. When the reawakening came at the beginning of the second millennium of Christian times Languedoc and Provence were the great centres of literacy and artistic efforts and from them the Troubadours and Dante received their inspiration. Later Spain’s golden age at the end of the Renaissance gave Europe supremely great literature and some of its greatest painters in Velasquez, Murillo, Ribera, and El Greco whose pictures now command so much attention. bile we hear so much of the great Nordic race then let us not forget that the world’s debt to civilisation is due mainly to the Mediterranean peoples. The Nordics have been conquerors but not intellectual geniuses. They may have contributed something in the political sphere but Europe has been such a mess in that regard all down the centuries that little definite can be said to have been accomplished. We in this country need above all the Mediterranean elements in our population. It is not the force of their struggle for existence but the Intellectual and artistic quality of a people that makes them worthy of consideration.