Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899

THE PEOPLES OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA – THE GREEK, THE SLAV, AND THE TURK. 6

By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, Ph. D.,ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY; LECTURER IN ANTHROPO-GEOGRAPHY AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

The significant geography of the Balkan Peninsula may best be illustrated by comparing it with the other two south European ones, Italy and Spain. The first point to notice is that it is divided from the mainland by rivers and not by a well-defined mountain chain. Iberia begins definitely at the Pyrenees, and Italy proper is cut off from Europe by the Apennine chain. On the other hand, it is along the line of the Danube and of its western affluent, the Save (see map between pages 614 and 615), that we find the geographical limits of the Balkan Peninsula. This boundary, as will be observed, excludes the kingdom of Roumania, seeming to distinguish it from its trans-Danubian neighbor Bulgaria. This is highly proper, viewed from the standpoint of geography and topography. For Roumania is, for the most part, an extensive and rich alluvial plain; while the Balkan Peninsula, as soon as you leave the Bulgarian lowlands, is characteristically rugged, if not really mountainous.

From Adrianople west to the Adriatic, and from the Balkan Mountains and the Save River south to the plains of Epirus and Thessaly, extends an elevated region upward of two thousand feet above the sea, breaking up irregularly into peaks often rising above five thousand feet. There is no system in these mountains. The land is rudely broken up into a multitude of little "gateless amphitheaters," too isolated for union, yet not inaccessible enough for individuality. As White observes, "If the peninsula, instead of being the highly mountainous and diversified district it is, had been a plateau, a very different distribution of races would have obtained at the present day." Nor can one doubt for a moment that this disordered topography has been an important element in the racial history of the region.

In its other geographical characteristics this peninsula is seemingly more favored than either Spain or Italy. More varied than the former, especially in its union of the two flora of north and south; far richer in contour, in the possession of protected waters and good harbors than Italy; the Balkan Peninsula, nevertheless, has been, humanly speaking, unfortunate from the start. The reason is patent. It lies in its central or rather intermediate location. It is betwixt and between; neither one thing nor the other. Surely a part of Europe, its rivers all run to the east and south. "By physical relief it turns its back on Europe," continually inviting settlement from the direction of Asia. It is no anomaly that Asiatic religions, Asiatic institutions, and Asiatic races should have possessed and held it; nor that Europe, Christianity, and the Aryan-speaking races should have resisted this invasion of territory which they regarded in a sense as their own. In this pull and haul between the social forces of the two continents we finally discover the dominant influence, perhaps, which throughout history has condemned this region to political disorder and ethnic heterogeneity.

As little racial as of topographical system can we discover in this Balkan Peninsula. Only in one respect may we venture upon a little generalization. This is suggested by the preliminary bird's-eye view which we must take as to the languages spoken in the peninsula. This was a favorite theme with the late historian Freeman. It is developed in detail in his luminous writings upon the Eastern question. The Slavs have in this part of Europe played a rôle somewhat analogous to, although less successful than, that of the Teutons in the west. They have pressed in upon the territory of the classic civilizations of Greece and Rome, ingrafting a new and physically vigorous population upon the old and partially enervated one. From some center of dispersion up north toward Russia, Slavic-speaking peoples have expanded until they have rendered all eastern Europe Slavic from the Arctic Ocean to the Adriatic and Ægean Seas. Only at one place is the continuity of Slavdom broken; but this interruption is sufficient to set off the Slavs into two distinct groups at the present day. The northern one, of which we have already treated,7 consists of the Russians, Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks. The southern group, now before us, comprises the main body of the Balkan peoples from the Serbo-Croatians to the Bulgars, as shown upon the accompanying map. Between these two groups of Slavs – and herein is the significant point – is a broad belt of non-Slavic population, composed of the Magyars, linguistically now as always Finns; and the Roumanians, who have become Latin in speech within historic times. This intrusive, non-Slavic belt lies along or near the Danube, that great highway over which eastern peoples have penetrated Europe for centuries. The presence of this water way is distinctly the cause of the linguistic phenomenon. Rome went east; and the Finns, like the Huns, went west along it, with the result as described. Linguistically speaking, therefore, the boundary of the southern Slavs and that of the Balkan Peninsula, beginning, as we have said, at the Danube, are one and the same.

We may best begin our ethnic description by the apportionment of the entire Balkan Peninsula into three linguistic divisions, viz., the Greeks, the Slavs, and the Tatar-Turks. Of these the second is numerically the most important, comprising the Serbo-Croatians, the Albanians, and, in a measure, the Bulgarians. Their distribution is manifested upon our map, to which we have already directed attention. These Slavic-speaking peoples form not far from half the entire population. Next in order come the Greeks, who constitute probably about a third of the total. As our map shows, this Greek contingent is closely confined to the seacoast, with the exception of Thessaly, which, as an old Hellenic territory, we are not surprised to find Greek in speech to-day. The Slavs, contrasted with the Greeks, are primarily an inland population; the only place in all Europe, in fact, where they touch the sea is along the Adriatic coast. Even here the proportion of Greek intermixture is more considerable than our map would seem to imply. The interest of this fact is intensified because of the well-deserved reputation as admirable sailors which the modern Dalmatians possess. They are the only natural navigators of all the vast Slavic world. Everywhere else these peoples are noted rather for their aptitude for agriculture and allied pursuits. There is still another important point to be noted concerning the Greeks. They form not only the fringe of coast population in Asiatic as well as in European Turkey; they, with the Jews, monopolize the towns, devoting themselves to commerce as well as navigation. Jews and Greeks are the natural traders of the Orient. Thus is the linguistic segregation between Greek and Slav perpetuated, if not intensified, by seemingly natural aptitudes.

Perhaps the most surprising feature of our map of Turkey is the relative insignificance of the third element, the Turks. There were ten years ago, according to Couvreur, not above seven hundred and fifty thousand of them in all European Turkey. Bradaska estimated that they were outnumbered by the Slavs seven to one. Our map shows that they form the dominant element in the population only in eastern Bulgaria, where they indeed constitute a solid and coherent body. Everywhere else they are disseminated as a small minority among the Greeks or Slavs. Even about Constantinople itself the Greeks far outnumber them. In this connection we must bear in mind that we are now judging of these peoples in no sense by their physical characteristics, but merely by the speech upon their lips. Nowhere else in Europe, as we shall soon see, is this criterion so fallacious as in the Balkan states. Religion enters also as a confusing element. Sax's original map, from which ours is derived, distinguishes these religious affiliations as well as language. He was indeed the first to employ this additional test. The maze of tangled languages and religions upon his map proved too complicated for our imitative abilities. We were obliged to limit our cartography to languages alone. The reader who would gain a true conception of the ethnic heterogeneity of Turkey should consult his original map.

The word Turk was for several centuries taken in a religious sense as synonymous with Mohammedan,8 as in the Collect for Good Friday in its reference to "Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics." Thus in Bosnia, where in the fifteenth century many Slavs were converted to Mohammedanism, their descendants are still known as Turks, especially where they use the Turkish speech in their religion. Obviously in this case no Turkish blood need flow in their veins. It is the religion of Islam, acting in this way, which has served to keep the Turks as distinct from the Slavs and Greeks as they are to-day. Freeman has drawn an instructive comparison in this connection between the fate of the Bulgars, who, as we shall see, are merely Slavonized Finns, and the Turks, who have steadily resisted all attempts at assimilation. The first came, he says, as "mere heathen savages (who) could be Christianized, Europeanized, assimilated," because no antipathy save that of race and speech had to be overcome. The Turks, in contradistinction, came "burdened with the half-truth of Islam, with the half-civilization of the East." By the aid of these, especially the former, the Turk has been enabled to maintain an independent existence as "an unnatural excrescence" on this corner of Europe.

Even using this word as in a measure synonymous with religious affiliations, the Turks form but a small and decreasing minority in the Balkan Peninsula. Couvreur affirms that not over one third of the population profess the religion of Islam, all the remainder being Greek Catholics. This being so, the query at once suggests itself as to the reason for the continued political domination of this Turkish minority, Asiatic alike in race, in speech, and in religion. The answer is certain. It depends upon that subtle principle, the balance of power in Europe. Is it not clear that to allow the Turk to go under, as numerically he ought to do, would mean to add strength to the great Slavic majority, affiliated as it is with Russia both by speech and religion? This, with the consent of the Anglo-Saxon and other Teutonic rivals of the Slav, could never be allowed. Thus does it come about that the poor Greek is ground between the upper Turkish and the nether Slavic millstone. "Unnatural disunion is the fate of the whole land, and the cuckoo-cry about the independence and integrity of the Ottoman Empire means, among the other evil things that it means, the continuance of this disunion." Let us turn from this distressing political spectacle to observe what light, if any, anthropology may shed upon the problem.

From the relative isolation of the Greeks at the extreme southern point of the peninsula and especially in the Peloponnesus, it would seem that they might be relatively free from those ethnic disturbances which have worked such havoc elsewhere in the Orient. Nevertheless, Grecian history recounts a continuous succession of inroads from the landward north, as well as from the sea. It would transcend the limits of our study to attempt any detailed analysis of the early ethnology of the country.9 Examination of the relationship of the Pelasgi to their contemporaries we leave to the philologists. Positively no anthropological data on the matter exist. We are sufficiently grateful for the hundred or more well-authenticated ancient Greek crania of any sort which remain to us. It is useless to attempt any inquiry as to their more definite ethnic origin within the tribal divisions of the country.10 The testimony of these ancient Greek crania is perfectly harmonious. All authorities agree that the ancient Hellenes were decidedly long-headed, betraying in this respect their affinity to the Mediterranean race, which we have already traced throughout southern Europe and Africa.11 Whether from Attica; from Schliemann's successive cities excavated upon the site of Troy; or from the coast of Asia Minor; at all times from 400 B. C. to the third century of our era; it would seem proved that the Greeks were of this dolichocephalic type. Stephanos gives the average cranial index of them all as about 75.7, betokening a people like the present Calabrians in head form; and, for that matter, about as long-headed as the Anglo-Saxons in England and America. More than this concerning the physical traits of these ancient Greeks we can not establish with any certainty. No perfect skeletons from which we can ascertain their statures remain to us. Nor can we be more positive as to their brunetness. Their admiration for blondness in heroes and deities is well known. As Dr. Beddoe ('93) says, almost all of Homer's favorites were blond or chestnut-haired, as well as large and tall. Lapouge12 seems inclined to regard this as proof that the Greeks themselves were of this type, a deduction which appears to us in no wise well founded.13 As we shall see, every characteristic in their modern descendants and every analogy with the neighboring populations leads us to the conclusion that the classical Hellenes were distinctly of the Mediterranean racial types, little different from the Phœnicians, the Romans, or the Iberians.

Since the Christian era, as we have said, a successive downpour of foreigners from the north into Greece has ensued.14 In the sixth century came the Avars and the Slavs, bringing death and disaster. A more potent and lasting influence upon the country was probably produced by the slower and more peaceful infiltration of the Slavs into Thessaly and Epirus from the end of the seventh century onward. A result of this is that Slavic place names to-day occur all over the Peloponnesus in the open country where settlements could readily be made. The most important immigration of all is probably that of the Albanians, who, from the thirteenth century until the advent of the Turks, incessantly penetrated the land. As a result the Albanian language is spoken to-day over a considerable part of the Peloponnesus, especially in its northeastern corner, where it attaches to the mainland. Only one little district has preserved, it may be added, anything like the original classical Greek speech. The Tzakons, in a little isolated and very rugged district on the eastern coast, include a number of classical idioms in their language. Everywhere else, either in the names of rivers, mountains, and towns, or in borrowed words, evidence of the powerful influence of the Slavic infiltration occurs. This has induced Fallmerayer, Philippson, and others to assert that the Slavs have in fact submerged the original Greeks entirely.15 Explicit rebuttal of this is offered by Hopf, Hertzberg, and Tozer, who admit the Slavic element, but still declare the Greeks to be Greek. This is a matter concerning which neither philologist nor geographer has a right to speak; the anthropological testimony is the only competent one. To this we turn.

The modern Greeks are a very mixed people. There can be no doubt of this fact from a review of their history. In despite of this, they still remain distinctly true to their original Mediterranean ancestry. This has been most convincingly proved in respect of their head form.16 The cephalic index of modern living Greeks ranges with great constancy about 81. This, it should be observed, betokens an appreciably broader head than in the case of the ancient Hellenes. Stephanos, who has measured several hundred recruits, finds dolichocephaly to be most prevalent in Thessaly and Attica; while broad-headedness, so characteristic, as we shall see, of the Albanians and other Slavs, is more accentuated toward the north, especially in Epirus. About Corinth also, where Albanian intermixture is common, the cephalic index rises above 83. The Peloponnesus has probably best preserved its early dolichocephaly, as we should expect. In Thessaly alone are the modern Greeks as purely Mediterranean as in classic times. There can be no doubt that in Asia Minor at least, the word Greek is devoid of any racial significance. It merely denotes a man who speaks Greek, or else one who is a Greek Catholic, converted from Mohammedanism. Greek, like Turk, has become entirely a matter of language and religion, as these people have intermingled. Thus in the southwest of Asia Minor, where Semitic influences have been strong, von Luschan17 makes the pregnant observation that the Greeks, in the main, look like Jews and speak Turkish. Here, then, is proof positive that no Greeks of pure Mediterranean descent remain to represent the primitive Hellenic type in that region. But it is equally certain that in the main body of the Greeks at home in Greece, the original racial traits are still in the ascendant. The smoothly oval and long faces in our two Greek portraits are surely of Mediterranean type. To this, the ideal form, the purest elements in the nation still tend to revert.

Whatever may be thought of the ancients, the modern Greeks are strongly brunet in all respects. Ornstein ('79) found less than ten per cent of light hair, although blue and gray eyes were characteristic of rather more than a quarter of his seventeen hundred and sixty-seven recruits. This accords with expectation, for among the Albanians, next neighbors and most intrusive aliens in Greece, light eyes are quite common. Weisbach's ('82) data confirm this, ninety-six per cent of his Greeks being pure brunets.18 In stature these people are intermediate between the Turks and the Albanians and Dalmatians, which latter are among the tallest of Europeans. In facial features Nicolucci's early opinion seems to be confirmed, that the Greek face is distinctively orthognathous – that is to say, with a vertical profile, the lower parts of the face being neither projecting nor prominent. The face is generally of a smooth oval, rather narrow and high, especially as compared with the round-faced Slavs. The nose is thin and high, perhaps more often finely chiseled and straight in profile. The facial features seem to be well demonstrated in the classic statuary, although it is curious, as Stephanos observes, that these ideal heads are distinctly brachycephalic. Either the ancient sculptors knew little of anthropology, or else we have again a confirmation of our assertion that, however conscious of their peculiar facial traits a people may be, the head form is a characteristic whose significance is rarely recognized.

Linguistically the pure Slavs in the Balkan states comprise only the Serbo-Croatians and the Albanians (see map), dividing between them the ancient territory of Illyria. This western half of the peninsula, rugged and remote, has been relatively little exposed to the direct ravages of either Finnic or Turkish invaders. Especially is this true of Albania. Nearly all authorities since Hahn are agreed in identifying these latter people – who call themselves Skipetars, by the way – as the modern representatives of the ancient Illyrians. They are said to have been Slavonized by the Serbo-Croatians, who have been generally regarded as descendants of the settlers brought by the Emperor Heraclius from beyond the Save. This he is said to have done in order to repopulate the lands devastated by the Avars and other Slavs who, Procopius informs us, first appeared in this region in the sixth century of our era. The settlers imported by Heraclius came, we are told, from two distant places: Old Servia, or Sorabia, placed by Freeman in modern Saxony; and Chrobatia, which, he says, lies in southwestern Poland. According to this view, the Serbo-Croatians are an offshoot from the northern Slavs, being divided from them to-day by the intrusive Hungarians, while the Albanians alone are truly indigenous to the country.

The recent political fate of these Illyrian peoples has been quite various, the Albanians alone preserving their independence continually under the merely nominal rule of the Turks. Religion, also, has affected these Slavs in various ways. Servia owes much of its present peace and prosperity to the practical elimination of the Moslems. Bosnia is still largely Mohammedan, with about a third of its people, according to White ('86), still professing that religion. The significance of this is increased, since it was mainly the upper classes in Bosnia, according to Freeman, who embraced the religion of Islam in order to preserve their power and estates. The conversion was not national, as in the case of the Albanians. Thus social and religious segregation work in harmony to produce discord. With multitudes of Jews monopolizing the commerce of the country and the people thus divided socially as well as in religion, the political unrest in Bosnia certainly seems to require the strong arm of Austrian suzerainty to preserve order.

Whatever the theory of the historians as to origins may be, to the anthropologist the modern Illyrians – Serbo-Croatians and Albanians alike – are physically a unit. Two characteristics render this ethnic group distinctive: first, that it comprises some of the tallest men in the world, comparing favorably with the Scotch in this respect; and, secondly, that the Illyrians tend to be among the broadest-headed people known. In general, it would appear that the people, of Herzegovina and northern Albania possess these traits to the most notable degree, while both in the direction of the Save and Danube and of the plains of Thessaly and Epirus they have been attenuated by intermixture. Presumably also toward the east among the Bulgarians in Macedonia and Thrace these characteristics diminish in intensity. Thus, for example, while the Herzegovinians, measured by Weisbach, yielded an average stature of five feet nine inches, the Bosnians were appreciably shorter; and the Dalmatians and Albanians were even more so. Nevertheless, as compared with the Greeks, Bulgars, Turks, or Roumanians, even the shortest of these Slavs stood high. From this specific center outward, especially around the head of the Adriatic Sea, over into Venetia, spreads the influence of this giantism. It confirms, as we have said, the classical theory of an Illyrian cross among the Venetians, extending well up into the Tyrol.

As for the second trait, the exaggerated broad-headedness, it too, like the tallness of stature, seems to center about Herzegovina and Montenegro. Thus at Scutari, in the corner of Albania near this last-named country, Zampa19 found a cranial index of 89; in Herzegovina the index upon the living head ranges above 87. It would be difficult to exceed this brachycephaly anywhere in the world. The square foreheads and broad faces of the people correspond in every way to the shape of the heads. Its significance appears immediately on comparison with the long oval faces of the Greeks.

One more trait of the Balkan Slavs remains for us to note. The people are mainly pure brunets, as we might expect, but they seem to be less dark than either the Greeks or the Turks. Especially among the Albanians are light traits by no means infrequent. In this respect the contrast with the Greeks is apparent, as well as with the Dalmatians along the coast and the Italians in the same latitude across the Adriatic. Weisbach found nearly ten per cent of blond and red hair among his Bosnian soldiers, while about one third of the eyes were either gray or blue. The Herzegovinians are even lighter than the Bosnians, almost as much so as the Albanians. From consideration of these facts it would appear as if the harsh climate of these upland districts had been indeed influential in setting off the inland peoples from the Italian-speaking Dalmatians along the coast. For among the latter brunetness certainly increases from north to south, conformably to the general rule for the rest of Europe. In the interior, blondness apparently moves in the contrary direction, culminating in the mountain fastnesses of northern Albania and the vicinity. On the whole, we find also in this trait of brunetness competent evidence to connect these Illyrians with the great body of the Alpine race farther to the west. We have another illustration of its determined predilection for a mountainous habitat, in which it stoutly resists all immigrant tendencies toward variation from its primitive type.

The Osmanli Turks, who politically dominate the Balkan Peninsula, notwithstanding their numerical insignificance, are mainly distinctive among their neighbors by reason of their speech and religion. Turkish is the westernmost representative of a great group of languages, best known, perhaps, as the Ural-Altaic family.20 This comprises all those of northern Asia even to the Pacific Ocean, together with that of the Finns in Russian Europe. Its members are by no means unified physically. All varieties of type are included within its boundaries, from the tall and blond one which we may call Finnic, prevalent about the Baltic; to the squat and swarthy Kalmucks and Kirghez, to whom we have in a physical sense applied the term Mongols. The Turkish branch of this great family of languages is to-day represented in eastern Europe by two peoples, whom we may roughly distinguish as Turks and Tatars.21 The term Tatar, it should be observed, is entirely of European invention, like the similar word Hungarian. The only name recognized by the Osmanli themselves is that of Turk. This, by the way, seems quite aptly to be derived from a native root meaning "brigand," according to Chantre. They apply the word Tatar solely to the north Asiatic barbarians. By general usage this latter term, Tatar, has to-day become more specifically applied by ethnologists to the scattered peoples of Asiatic descent and Turkish speech who are mainly to be found in Russia and Asia Minor.