SLAVS. A branch of the Aryan or Indo Germanic family, which constitutes the great hulk of the population of Europe east of the me ridian of 15° E. as well at of Siberia. They are broad-headed, below• the average Aryan in height, with the color of skin pale white, swarthy, or light brown, and eye,* brown, hazel, gray, and black.
The Slays comprise the following groups and nationalities: Eastern Group—Great Russians, Little Russians or Mato-Russians (including the Ruthenians), White Russians. Western Group— Poles, Wends, Czechs (Bohemians and Moravi ans), Slovaks. Southern Group—Slovenians, Serbo-Croats, Croats, Serbs, Morlaks, Uskoks, Herzegovinians, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Slavic inhabitants of Macedonia, Bulgarians.
It has long been recognized that in this vast complex resulting from racial mixtures there can be found no 'Slav type.' Investigations among the Slav peoples show an interblending of 'races' ex clusive of the Finno-Tatar admixture. The most persistent physical character among the Slays is the head form, which is brachycepha1ivs so that this uniformity, conflicting materially with diverse statures in the various groups, has led most anthropologists to class them with the Alpine race, i.e., sho•t-headed people like the Celts.
The country occupied by the Slays before the time of the great migration of nations appears to have been a region extending several hundred miles on either side of the Dnieper. reach
ing northward as far as the Valdai Hills and westward into the basin of the Upper Vistula. From this seat in the period from the third or fourth century to the seventh century they spread in all directions, toward the Baltic, beyond the Elbe, into the basin of the Danube, and beyond into the Balkan Peninsula. In the tenth cen tury they occupied the basin of the Lower Dnieper. From the tenth century on the Germans pressed hack the Slays, and in the course of several cen turies region after region that had been occupied by Slavic tribes again became German. The Bul garian invaders of the Balkan Peninsula were a Finnic people, who appear to have been akin to the Huns. After their settlement in Bulgaria they became Slavicized. The Polabians, a Slavic people, who dwelt about the Lower Elbe and the southwestern corner of the Baltic Sea, have be come extinct. The total number of Slays is not far from 125,000,000.
Consult Zogra f, Les peoples de la Russia (Moscow, 1895). See Colored Plate of WI; ITE RACES OF EUROPE, under EUROPE. PEOPLES Or.