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| The Iberian Peninsula | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| [What follows are transcriptions from "The races of Europe", the great work written in 1939 by the renowned anthropologist Carleton Coon] | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Iberian Peninsula - Spain | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Mediterranean world, which we have studied in Asia and Africa, possesses little undisputed territory on European soil. Aside from the western islands, including the Balearics, Corsica and Sardinia, the only truly Mediterranean country in Europe is that of the Iberian Peninsula. The main events in Iberian racial history, as far as we know them, may be summarised as follows. In Upper Palaeolithic times Spain and Portugal were backward regions, peripheral to both France and North Africa. Influences from the north came in the earliest Aurignacian times, and again during the maximum cold of the last glaciation, when reindeer migrated southward over the Pyrenees. The extent to which influences came from across the Gibraltar before the Mesolithic invasions is not known, but such influences cannot have been extensive. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| (...) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| During the third millennium B.C., food-producing peoples entered Spain from North Africa with swine, sheep and goats, and with barley, emmer and other plants. The physical type of these invaders is well known to us, not only through skeletal remains, but also by means of our study of the living peoples of North Africa. Some of these invaders remained in Spain and Portugal, where they became the basic population of these countries, others passed northward over the Pyrenees into eastern France and Switzerland, while still others passed northward as far as Germany, and into the British Isles. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Toward the beginning of the second millennium B.C., if not earlier, these agricultural colonists were reinforced by a people of much higher culture, the megalith-building tall Mediterraneans, who came by sea, and many of whom went on from Spain as far as the British Isles and Scandinavia. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| (...) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| They were followed by other peoples of a general Mediterranean type, but coming from Asia Minor, as their exaggerated nasal form indicates. These new invaders brought the knowledge of metal with them from the east, and were the first of the prospectors to visit this metal-rich peninsula. They in turn were followed by round-headed compatriots with the same nasal peculiarities, who introduced the Dinaric racial type to western Europe. These Dinaric brachycephals, who settled in the same regions as their maritime predecessors, probably left Spain in large numbers after a brief sojourn, in favour of countries farther north. From Bronze-Age time until the Roman conquest, there were only two known movements which may have affected Spain racially. One was that of the Phoenicians, a continuation of the pre-historic invasions from the eastern Mediterranean; the other was that of the Celts into the north, to form the mixed nation of the Celtiberians known to the Romans. Many of the Celts, however, also used Spain merely as a stopping place on their wanderings. In post-Roman times, Germanic invaders, the Goths and the Vandals, brought a second Nordic infusion to the peninsula, but the Vandals soon moved on to Algeria, thence to Carthage, and finally to Byzantium. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| The invasions of the Goths and vandals were shortly followed by a movement in the opposite direction, that of the Moors from across the Straits of Gibraltar. These Moors, who came in considerable numbers, were of two ethnic origins, Arab and Berber, and the later group was without doubt the more numerous. During the eight centuries of Moorish rule in Spain, many people other than Arabs and Berbers came to live in the Iberian Peninsula; thousands of Sephardic Jews, some Slavs, a few Huns, and peoples of most of the nationalities which were in contact with the Moslem world. Persians were brought from iran to make Shiraz wine, which is our present sherry; during the height of the Omeyyad caliphate in Spain, Andalusia became a centre of world civilisation and like all such centres, drew to it many people from many quarters. The expulsion of the Moors and of the Jews in 1492 robbed Spain of the forces which had brought it civilisation, but gave the Spaniards the impetus to conquer the New World. The shifting of population from the wholly Christian north to the former Moorish territory, combined with the drainage of men into the New World, must have caused some changes in the racial distribution of the peninsula, especially in combination with the departure of thousands of Moslems and of Jews. Many of these, however, preferred baptism to expulsion, and the contribution of North Africans and of Asiatics to the Iberian racial body, in historic and pre-historic times, must have been considerable. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Despite the complex political history of Spain, the living population is basically and almost wholly Mediterranean. As we have seen in Chapter VIII, the regional stature means vary from 161cm to 168cm; more than one Mediterranean strain is obviously involved. The head from is almost everywhere mesocephalic; not even in Andalusia does a Moorish or Arab degree of dolichocephaly prevail. Provincial index means as high as 80 occur in the coastal regions of the northwest, in Lugo and Oviedo; Galicia and the Asturias, mining country, are still inhabited by people some of whom preserve the head form of the prospectors of the Bronze Age. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| The cephalic index rises in Spain as stature increases, which would indicate that the Dinaric element is to a certain extent concerned with the coastal tallness, as is the early Atlanto-Mediterranean. In northern Spain, in the provinces which the Moors never occupied, blondism is commoner than in the south, where much of the population is as dark in skin and eye colour as most non-Ruffian Berbers. Rufosity is rare in Spain, except in the Asturias and Galicia. During the Ruffian war it was a common saying among the Ruffian soldiers, "The ordinary Spaniards are as nothing, but watch out for the small red-headed men, the Gallegos. They are shaitans, and do not know fear." | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Two widely observed racial characters serve to differentiate the Spaniards from most of the living inhabitants of Arabia and North Africa: hair colour and nasal profile. In Spain, as a whole, some 29 per cent of the male population has black hair, some 68 per cent dark-brown, while traces of blondism are visible in 17 per cent. In most of North Africa and Arabia, the black hair is commoner than the dark brown. The nasal profiles of some 120.000 Spaniards are convex in 15 per cent of cases, straight in 72 per cent, and concave in 13 per cent. In Arabia and North Africa east of Morocco, the commonest profile form is usually convex, and concaves are very rare. The prevalence of these two features, dark brown hair and a straight nasal profile, indicates that the bulk of the Spanish population is derived from the earlier Mediterranean invasions of Mesolithic and Neolithic date. The Spaniards are more like the most marginal and fully sedentary of the brunet Berber groups in North Africa than like the more recently settled transhumant ones or the Arabs. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| The eye colour in the total Spanish group is listed as: blue, 18 per cent; brown, 68 per cent; black, 14 per cent. Dark-mixed eyes must undoubtedly fall, in many cases, into the brown class; still, it is doubtful that in most parts of southern Spain, Catalonia, and Portugal much more than 23 per cent of incipient blondism is to be found. In Spain as a whole, 46 per cent of definitely dark skin, in the very brunet-white and light brown category, again marks the population of this peninsula off from most of Europe. The regional variation in this is great; the darkest skins are in the south, in the country of Moorish occupation. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| (...) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| The skin colour of the Andalusians is light brown, corresponding to #15 to #18 on the von Luschan chart, in 80 per cent of cases, while only one man in six has a pinkish-white skin of the type so frequent among Ruffians. 60 per cent have dark brown hair, 30 per cent black hair. The remaining 10 per cent show some evidence of blondism or of rufosity. Only one man out of 420 was truly blond. The hair is straight in half the series, wavy in a third, and curly in a sixth. Six men in the entire group have Negroid, frizzy hair, a minor absorption of Negro blood dating from Moorish times, is evident. As a whole, however, Andalusians are free from Negroid traits. As among most Mediterraneans, beard and body hair are not abundant. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| 60 per cent of Andalusians have pure brown eyes, of which the majority are dark brown, although light brown and mixed-brown irises occur. Mixed-light eyes comprise 30 per cent of the series, with a prevalence of greenish-brown shades, while 10 per cent of the whole sample possesses bluish-grey eyes, on the grey rather than blue side.A ratio of 40 per cent of light or incipient light eyes is higher than one expects to find among racially pure Mediterraneans, and indicates the infusion of Nordic blood, from both North Europeans and Berber sources. Probably if the rest of Spain were studied for eye colour in the same way, higher ratios of eye blondism would appear elsewhere, since most of the green-brown eyes in this sample are predominantly dark. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Eyefolds among Andalusians are practically lacking. The opening of the eye lids is usually of moderate height, and of horizontal direction. A very small minority shows slanting eyes reminiscent of the Egyptian ideal of beauty. The eyebrows are moderately thick, and eyebrow concurrency appears in 70 per cent of the series; since concurrent eyebrows are rare among present-day North African Mediterraneans, this suggests early influences from the eastern Mediterranean, as well, perhaps, as later ones from Arabia. Browridges are characteristically small to medium; foreheads are of only moderate height and breadth, and the forehead slope is, as a rule, slight; it is lacking or vertical in roughly 14 per cent of the total group. On the whole, the forehead form of these Andalusians is typically Mediterranean, and often infantile. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| The nasion depression is small to medium; the nasal root is usually quite high and of moderate breadth; the nasal bridge is of moderate height and breadth, and the nasal profile is usually straight. As in the total Spanish series, 18 per cent show convex profiles, while concavity is limited to 15 per cent. The nasal tip is absolutely small to medium, and usually horizontal or slightly depressed. Nasal wings are usually compressed or medium. From these data we derive a picture of a high-rooted nose with a moderate bridge height and a straight profile, a thin tip and compressed wings. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Lips are of medium integumental and membranous thickness; really thick lips are rare, and the lip seam is usually difficult to observe. Alveolar prognathism is almost always absent. The chin is of slight to medium prominence. The malars are of moderate forward promincence, and are usually compressed laterally (...), the temporal region is frequently flattish (...). The occipital protrusion is usually moderate, while 2 per cent are found with no protrusion, indicating an occiput of Armenoid Dinaric shape. Lambdoid flattening occurs in 12 per cent of the series; this low incidence suggests that little if any of the Afalou element from north Africa is present in Andalusia. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| The racial character of the richer, city-dwelling Moors of Andalusia, before the time of their expulsion, may be suggested by a study of the almost wholly unmixed descendants of these �migr�s in Morocco. In the city of Sheshawen the old, aristocratic families are descended from the former aristocrats of Granada, and have lived endogamously since 1492. A little Ruffian blood has crept in, but aside from that the Sheshawen families remain an island of Andalusian Moors in Moroccan soil. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| A small, homogeneous sample of these people shows a much closer relationship with Spain than with Morocco. They are a little longer-headed (194.5 mm), a little more dolichocephalic (C.I. = 76.5) and a little longer-faced (123 mm) than the Christian Andalusians; the bigonial diameter of 103 mm, although wide for Spain as a whole, is of Andalusian size. The Sheshawen Moors have predominantly dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, with brunet-white skin colour. In facial morphology, they are fully Andalusian. The implication is that the Moors in Spain took more from the population of the peninsula, in a racial sense, than what they gave. Our earlier conclusion that the Andalusians are Mediterraneans of largely Neolithic derivation is supported by this unexpected evidence. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Refuting Kemp | ||||||||||||||||||||||