and fretted behind the barrier thus imposed. Tacitus and several other
classic authors speak of the remarkable uniformity in their appearance;
how they were all tall and handsome, with fierce blue eyes and yellow
hair. Humboldt remarks the tendency we all have to see only the
single type in a strange foreign people, and to shut our eyes to the
differences among them. Thus some of us think sheep all alike, but the
shepherd knows better; and many think all Chinamen are alike, whereas
they differ, in reality, quite as much as we do, or rather more. But
with respect to the ancient Germans, there certainly was among them one
very prevalent form of head, and even the varieties of feature which
occur among the Marcomans--for example, on Marcus Aurelius’ column--all
seem to oscillate round one central type.

The ‘Graverow’ Type

“This is the Graverow type of Ecker, the Hohberg type of His and
Rutimeyer, the Swiss anatomists. In it the head is long, narrow (say
from 70 to 76 in. breadth-index), as high or higher than it is broad,
with the upper part of the occiput very prominent, the forehead rather
high than broad, often dome-shaped, often receding, with prominent
brows, the nose long, narrow, and prominent, the cheek-bones narrow and
not prominent, the chin well marked, the mouth apt to be prominent in
women. In Germany persons with these characters have almost always light
eyes and hair.... This Graverow type is almost exclusively what is
found in the burying-places of the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries,
whether of the Alemanni, the Bavarians, the Franks, the Saxons, or the
Burgundians. Schetelig dug out a graveyard in Southern Spain which is
attributed to the Visigoths. Still the same harmonious elliptic form,
the same indices, breadth 73, height 74.”