THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF INDO-EUROPEAN CULTURE, on page 127, says "...the
Corded Ware culture is still commonly seen as ancestral to those IE
peoples whose immediate origins are south across northern, central and
parts of eastern Europe, i.e., the Celts, Germans, Balts and Slavs."
In PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF EUROPEAN POPULATIONS, edited by Schwidetzky
et al., there is a chapter called "The Genesis and Evolution of the
Neolithic Population of the Eastern Baltic Lands" by R. Denisova. On
pages 275-6 we read
"At the turn of the second century B.C., new tribes penetrated into
the eastern Baltic lands. These tribes are known in archaeological
literature as the tribes of Cord-pottery Ware and Battle-axe culture.
An idea of their anthropological type is given by a small craniological
series from Estonia (Fürst 1914; Aul 1933; Mark 1956a). This type is
very massive and markedly dolichocranial, due to great longitudinal and
medium transverse diameters, with very high basion-bregma and a
moderately broad, long face profiled in the horizontal direction."
"In archaeological literature, the tribes of the Battle-axe culture
in the eastern Baltic lands are identified with the first ancient Balts
in this territory."
Page 277:
"All these considerations point to the probability of a genetic
kinship between tribes of the Battle-axe culture of the eastern Baltic
lands and the markedly dolichocranial early Neolithic population of this
area. This kinship, however, is not to be regarded as direct
continuity. Judging from materials of the Mesolithic age, the area of
distribution of the markedly dolichocranial anthropological type was
initially north-central Europe and the neighboring territories of
eastern Europe. It is precisely from this area that the
hyperdolichocranial Europoid population moved to the eastern Baltic
lands where traces of its habitation can already be observed in the
Mesolithic age. It seems that in the periods that followed there were
repeated migrations of hyperdolichocranial tribes from north-central
Europe to the eastern Baltic lands. This is shown by craniological
material of the early (Zveinieki site) and late Neolithic periods (the
tribes of the Battle-axe culture)."
Now let us examine Harvard Professor Carleton Coon's THE RACES OF
EUROPE.
On page 85 he describes the Corded type.
"Corded: Tall stature, mean 167-174 cm.; build linear but muscular,
perhaps heavier than the Megalithic; extremely long-headed, 194 mm.mean.
Vault of great height, means over 140 mm. exceeding breadth; browridges
and muscular markings medium to strong; face very long, and of slight to
moderate breadth; mandible deep and chin marked, but narrow through
gonial angles. Nose leptorrhine, often prominent. This type, in
western and northern Europe, approaches in some respects the Upper
Paleolithic type with which it mixed."
In Plate 27 he shows "A Nordic Dane of Jutish parentage who also
shows Corded predominance. His face is of extreme length, a trait
common among ancient Corded crania."
On page 107:
"THE CORDED OR BATTLE-AXE PEOPLE....The limits of the country
overrun by the Corded people are the Vosges on the west, the Urals on
the east, the Baltic on the north, and the Dinaric Alps on the south."
"The most typical aggregation of Corded skulls comes from Silesia
and Bohemia, whence a series of twenty-nine males may be assembled.
These belong to a very definite, very distinct physical type. The
length of the vault is great, well over 190 mm. in most instances; its
breadth is slight, yielding a low mean cranial index of 71; and the
height is great, considerably exceeding the breadth."
What was the physical type of the Goths?
On page 206 we read "A series of Goths from the Chersonese north of the
Black Sea, dated between 100 B.C. and 100 A.D., includes three male and
eight female skeletons. All of these are long headed, and they belong
to a large, powerful Nordic type which reflects their Swedish origin,
for they are no different from the Swedish Iron Age crania which we have
already studied."
"A later group of Gepidae dated from the fifth or sixth centuries
in Hungary shows the persistence of this same type; despite historical
blending with the Huns....One is forced to the conclusion from this
series, as from that of the Goths in the Chersonese, that the East
Germanic peoples who took part in these wanderings preserve their
original racial characteristics so long as they retained their poitical
and linguistic identity.
"The same conclusion results when one examines the Visigothic
skulls from northern Spain which date from the sixth century A.D. Here
a series combined from several cemeteries shows us exactly the same
Nordic type, with tall stature and a high-vaulted skull, a long face,
and a broad jaw..."
Page 207: "The type represented by these three groups and by the
Visigoths seems to be a variant of the Nordic type to which the early
Indo-European speakers belonged."
Page 215: "The summary of our information concerning the racial origins
and dispersion of the early Germanic peoples may be stated briefly and
simply. At the beginning of the local Iron Age, a new people, bearing a
Hallstatt type of culture, entered northwestern Germany and Scandinavia.
These invaders were of the usual central European Nordic type associated
in earlier centuries with the Illyrians. Through mixture with the local
blend of Megalithic, Corded, and Borreby elements, these newcomers gave
rise to a special sub-type of Nordic which was characterized by a larger
vault and face, a heavier body build, and a skull form on the borderline
between dolicho- and mesocephaly.
"The Germanic tribes that wandered Europe during the period of
migrations belonged essentially to this type."
Page 202:
"The home of the Germans before their expansion was only in a
restricted sense the modern Germany. The tribes of which this people
was composed occupied Denmark, southern and central Sweden, Norway, and
the northern coastal strip of Germany, from the mouth of the Elbe to the
Baltic shore. The islands of the Baltic near Sweden, namely Gotland and
Bornholm were densely populated.
"One must not suppose that these early Germans were the unaltered
descendants of their Bronze Age predecessors, for there is strong
archaeological evidence that new people entered Scandinavia at the
beginning of the retarded Iron Age of this region....The Norse pantheon,
with its family of gods and its Valhalla, is closely related to the
systems of Greece and Rome, of India, and of the other Indo-European
divisions."
http://www.delphi.com/physanthro
http://www.delphi.com/indoeuropean
http://www.delphi.com/prehistory
http://www.delphi.com/biohistory
http://www.delphi.com/nordichistory1
http://www.delphi.com/truthseekers8