The Anthropological Systematics of Europe By Bertil Lundman

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Apart from the above rather artistic quartering of Europe, a synthetic anthropological map of the continent appears mostly like a landscape of sand dunes. The maxima of the different types have natural centers in the different regions of Europe. However, they show mostly flowing transitions into one another. The maxima are quite stable. But, for the most part, rather slow shifts of these maxima in the course of time can be recognized. For they are neither as firm as a granite mountain, nor as changeable as a stormy sea.

Consequently, we find in many regions of Europe a population concentrated around one predominant anthropological type. We can well designate this type as a race, so long as we do not set greater standards of homogeneity than the zoologists do for their races. We should not conceive the races too narrowly, as if in each case all men in their nuclear regions would be of almost the completely same hereditary-type.

The names of these races are now generally well known. To break with this terminology would be a rejection of the biological rules of nomenclature. The foundation of all classifications of the peoples of Europe is and remains that of the (Russian-born) French zoologist and anthropologist Joseph Deniker. Deniker, who died in 1918, worked out his classificatory system for the races of Europe in the 1890's. However, he intentionally did not consider the Finnish and Turkish peoples of our continent. Deniker based his system upon the total anthropological material known at that time. Naturally that material still showed many deficits.

Other investigators have later altered, extended, or added to this classificatory system-with more or less fortunate hand. My conception, however, has been strongly influenced by the so-called newer biosystematic school of Bernard Rensch, Ernst Mayr and Julian Huxley. Furthermore, I am inclined to give much greater consideration to the height-length index of the skull and to the distribution of the blood group alleles in my anthropological systematic studies than occurred in the case of earlier investigators.

As a modern biologist I am less inclined than Deniker to award the status of race to a scattered distribution, without historical and geographical grounds. I prefer to think rather of parallel evolution in regions situated far from one another. Hence, in this case one should speak of two distinct races even if they are morphologically very similar. There are also often found on closer consideration some pervading differences between two such races which previously were not observed.

To be sure, these differences are apparently insignificant, but obviously important from the standpoint of anthropological systematics Here also, one can often make use of differences in cranial height and sometimes of the blood group allelic relations. Consequently, some of the races described by Deniker, which are to be distributed in regions situated far from one another, can be divided into two separate races:
a western with low cranial height and an eastern with higher values. This is particularly true of the Mediterranean and Alpine races. By this means the map of the races of Europe assumes a much more natural appearance (See Map 17). However, I have not had to strike out any of Deniker's primary European races and only one of his subraces. This is the Vistula race, which is completely unclear to all anthropologists following Deniker. The Litorid race of Deniker is still only a rather late hybrid-race. The specific contributions of the author concern almost only a few insignificant remnant races. These are primarily among the Finnic tribes which Deniker did not take into consideration in his anthropological systematics.