Alpine race
The Alpine race was one of the three sub-races of the Caucasian race. The term is not commonly used today, but was popular in the early 20th century.
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[edit] History
The term "Alpine" (H. Alpinus) has historically been given to denote a physical type within the Caucasian race, first defined by William Z. Ripley (1899), but originally proposed by Vacher de Lapouge. It is equivilant to Joseph Deniker's "Occidental" or "Cevenole" subrace.[1][2] In the early 20th century the Alpine physical type was popularised by numerous anthropologists, such as Thomas Griffith Taylor and Madison Grant, as well as in Soviet era anthropology.[3][4] It however fell out of popularity by the 1950's, but reappeared in the literature of Sonia Mary Cole (1963) and Carleton Coon (1969).[5] In more recent sources, a very small array of anthropologists accustomed with such usage, still use the term.[6]
[edit] Physical Appearance
The Alpine race is mainly distinguished by its cranial measurements, such as high cephalic index. A typical Alpine skull is therefore regarded as brachycephalic ('broad-headed').[7] As well as being broad in the crania, this thickness appears generally elsewhere in the morphology of the Alpine, as Hans Günther describes:
...the Alpine race is thick-set and broad. The average height of the Alpine man is about 1.63 metres. This small height is brought about by the relatively short, squat legs. This broadness and shortness is repeated in all the details: in the broadness of the hand and its short fingers, in the short, broad feet, in the thick, short calves.
Ripley (1899) further notes that the nose of the Alpine is more broad (mesorrhine) while their hair is usually a cheshnut colour. According to Robert Bennett Bean (1932) the skin pigmentation of the Alpine is an 'intermediate white', a colour in-between the lighter skinned Nordic and the darker skinned Mediterranean.[8] Despite the large numbers of alleged Alpines, the characteristics of the Alpines were not as widely discussed as those of the Nordics and Mediterraneans. Typically they were portrayed as "sedentary": solid peasant stock, the reliable backbone of the European population, but not outstanding for qualities of leadership or creativity. Madison Grant, insisted on their "essentially peasant character".[9]
[edit] Geography and Origin
According to Ripley and Coon, the Alpine race is predominant in central/southern/Eastern Europe and parts of Western/Central Asia. Ripley argued that the Alpines had originated in Asia, and had spread westwards along with the emergence and expansion of agriculture, which they established in Europe. By migrating into central Europe, they had separated the northern and southern branches of the earlier European stock, creating the conditions for the separate evolution of Nordics and Mediterraneans. This model was repeated in Madison Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race (1916), in which the Alpines were portrayed as the most populous of European and western Asian races. However in Carleton Coon's rewrite of Ripley's The Races of Europe, he developed a different argument that they reduced the Upper Paleolithic survivors indigenous to Europe, based on prehistoric broad-headed crania unearthed at Grenelle (France) and the findings at Furfooz in the Belgian province of Namur:
...Alpine: A reduced and somewhat foetalized survivor of the Upper Palaeolithic population in Late Pleistocene France, highly brachycephalized; seems to represent in a large measure the bearer of the brachycephalic factor in Crô-Magnon. Close approximations to this type appear also in the Balkans and in the highlands of western and central Asia, suggesting that its ancestral prototype was widespread in Late Pleistocene times. In modern races it sometimes appears in a relatively pure form, sometimes as an element in mixed brachycephalic populations of multiple origin. It may have served in both Pleistocene and modern times as a bearer of the tendency toward brachycephalization into various population.
Coon further argued that they were linked to their unreduced (Brünn, Borreby) counterparts.
A debate concerning the origin of the Alpine race in Europe, involving Arthur Keith, John Myres and Alfred Cort Haddon was published by the Royal Geographical Society in 1906.[10]
[edit] European Racial Types (Ripley)
| Head | Face | Hair | Eyes | Stature | Nose | Synonyms | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine | Round | Broad | Chestnut, dark brown, blonde, red | Hazel, brown or gray | Medium, stocky | Variable; rather broad; heavy | Occidental (Deniker), Homo Alpinus (Lapouge) | |
| Mediterranean | Long | Long | Black | Dark | Medium, slender | Rather broad | ||
| Nordic | Long | Long | Very light | Blue | Tall | Narrow; aquiline | Nordic (Deniker), Homo Europaeus (Lapouge) |
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Les Six Races Composant la Population Actuelle de l'Europe, J. Deniker, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 34, (Jul. - Dec., 1904), pp. 181-206.
- ^ Deniker's Classification of the Races of Europe, William Z. Ripley, The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 28, No. 1/2 (1899), pp. 166-173.
- ^ The Nordic and Alpine Races and Their Kin: A Study of Ethnological Trends, Griffith Taylor, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 37, No. 1 (Jul., 1931), pp. 67-81.
- ^ The Great Soviet Encyclopaedia (Russian)
- ^ The living races of man, Carleton Stevens Coon, Edward E. Hunt, Knopf, 1969, p. 66.
- ^ Anthropological Glossary. Krieger Publishing Co., Roger Pearson, Malabar, Fl. 1985. People and Races, Alice Mossie Brues, 1990.
- ^ The Alpine Races in Europe , John L. Myres, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 28, No. 6 (Dec., 1906), pp. 537-553.
- ^ The Races of Man. Differentiation and Dispersal of Man, p. 32.
- ^ Grant, Madison (1916). "The Passing of the Great Race". p. part 2, ch. 11; part 2, chapter 5.
- ^ The Alpine Races in Europe: Discussion, D. G. Hogarth, Arthur Evans, Dr. Haddon, Dr. Shrubsall, Mr. Hudleston, Mr. Gray, Dr. Wright and Mr. Myres, The Geographical Journal, Vol. 28, No. 6 (Dec., 1906) (pp. 553-560).
- ^ Ripley (1899), The Races of Europe, p. 121; Synonyms column shortened
[edit] Further reading
- Spiro, Jonathan P. (2009). Defending the Master Race: Conservation, Eugenics, and the Legacy of Madison Grant. Univ. of Vermont Press. ISBN 978-1-58465-715-6. Lay summary (29 September 2010).
