By – Albert Hitoaliaj. Translation Petrit Latifi

Abstract

This article analyzes historical narratives surrounding the German anthropologist Rudolf Virchow and his reported assessments of Albanian cranial morphology, as documented in European and Anglo-American journalism and intellectual discourse from the late nineteenth century. By examining publications in The Times, Le Matin, and later interpretations by Albanian and foreign authors, the study situates Virchow’s views within the scientific paradigms of nineteenth-century physical anthropology. It also explores how these claims were mobilized politically during key moments such as the Congress of Berlin and debates over Albanian territorial integrity. Rather than validating racial hierarchies, the article critically examines how scientific language, authority, and selective interpretation were employed to construct narratives of antiquity, identity, and legitimacy in Southeastern Europe.

“We are saving for last the opinion of a great scholar and anthropologist, Professor Virchow. Blowitz, a correspondent for the “Times”, reminds us of his meeting with the doctor” – writes Mit’hat Frashëri in his book.

The fragment that Mit’hat Frashëri brings in this book is a part taken from the article “Virchow chez lui (La danse des crânes- Les peuples des Balkans – La perle de la collection Vivent les Albanais!- Le savant et l’homme politique)”, an article which was published on the front page of issue 6442 of the newspaper “Le Matin”, Paris on October 15, 1901.

The results of the scientist Rudolf Virchow, the creator of the science of chronology, one of the most prominent scientists of the 1800s, the famous German politician and anthropologist, on the Albanian race.

Many may have had the opportunity to read Mit’hat Frashëri’s book, “Albanians” (Zenit Editions 2005) which is translated from the original written in French “Les albanais dans leur pays et â l’etranger”. Among the many quotes from authors – making comments and descriptions – that Mit’hat Frashëri brings to give a description of the nature and character of the Albanian nation, towards the end, he preserves as something special a quote that he emphasizes.

This quote that he makes resembles those ribbons that are placed on the heads of little girls, after they have been dressed elegantly.

Since he has spoken about the features, manners, customs, culture, ability, life and spirit of a nation that has produced history and that has left its traces on the latter for many centuries, he perhaps thinks that in order to give a final answer about the character of the Albanian, science can help us just as well – and perhaps more than history.

“We are saving for last the opinion of a great scholar and anthropologist, Professor Virchow. Blowitz, a correspondent for the “Times”, reminds us of his meeting with the doctor” – writes Mit’hat Frashëri in his book.

The fragment that Mit’hat Frashëri brings in this book is a part taken from the article “Virchow chez lui (La danse des crânes- Les peuples des Balkans – La perle de la collection Vivent les Albanais!- Le savant et l’homme politique)”, an article which was published on the front page of issue 6442 of the newspaper “Le Matin”, Paris on October 15, 1901.

In the article in “Le Matin”, this part of the article that talks about the features of the skulls of Albanians bears the subtitle “La race supérieure” (superior race). Blowitz’s original article was published in the “Times” newspaper in 1878, many years before the reprint of this article in “Le Matin” in 1901. Below we will present as a complete article, precisely its earliest edition.

Why did “Le Matin” reprint, even on the front page, this article which – based on scientific research – speaks of the superiority and greatness of the Albanian race, compared to others? The name of Rudolf Virchow, the person who makes this assessment, is the right answer.

If someone else had said such a conclusion, it would be unlikely that it would be taken as a basis, but Virchow’s name is of such magnitude that it is difficult to believe that such a scientist had “misled” when he looked at the Albanians with amazement, as the most perfect race.

In 1915, after the unfair division of Albanian lands, Albania was again threatened by a new division. It was the year of the secret Treaty of London, which granted Italy Vlora and its district and allowed it a kind of protectorate over Central Albania, while the Greeks took Southern Albania and the Serbs and Montenegrins took Northern Albania.

In this year, Faik bey Konica, the well-known Albanian intellectual, raised his voice about the injustices being committed against Albanians. At that time he was in Lausanne, Switzerland. On November 12, 1915, by sending an open letter to Mr. Hans Delbruck, a close advisor to the government, professor of modern history at the University of Berlin, he unmasked the wrong German policies.

The letter written and published in French – “Germany and Albania” (L’Allemagne et L’Albanie) – has been published these years by the researcher Jup Kastrati in his study “On the Literary Creativity of Faik Konica”, as part of the work “Studies on Prohibited Authors”, published by the Center for Albanological Studies.

The reason we mentioned this letter of Konica is that, among others, he refers to Virchow, to show the German professor, Hans Delbruck, the characteristics of the Albanian nation. Here is what Faik bey Konica wrote, among other things:

“…I can inform you of the existence of a Bulgarian-Greek treaty for the division of Albania, a treaty suggested, approved, sealed and guaranteed by Germany. For this reason, I take the liberty of asking you, at the request of my compatriots, a question: “How will you manage to reconcile your declaration with the brutal plan of the division of Albania?”

Here is a country, here is a people that falls into the category of “small nationalities” and that would deserve, in a special way , your kindness and appreciation. Has not your Mommsen said that the Albanian nation is the oldest in the Balkans?

Has not your Virchow often called it “the truly superior nation” of Eastern Europe? Have not your scholars at all times repeated that it is distinguished from its neighbors by language and spirit?”

Before we read about the meeting of Blowitz, the Times journalist, with Professor Virchow, let us briefly look at something about the life of the German scientist. This helps us to understand more clearly his conclusions about the Albanians and the importance of his work.

Who is Rudolf Virchow?

Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow (1821-1902) was a German physician, anthropologist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist, and politician, known for his contributions to public health. He is referred to as the “father of modern pathology” and is considered one of the founders of social medicine.

He came from a farming family of German and Polish descent. Virchow studied medicine and chemistry in Berlin at the Prussian Military Academy. When he graduated in 1843, he went to serve as an assistant to the renowned anatomist, Robert Froriep.

One of his greatest contributions to German medical education was to encourage the use of the microscope by students, urging his students to ‘microscopically thought’.

Virchow is credited with many important discoveries. Virchow’s most widely known scientific contribution is his theory of the cell, which built on the work of Theodor Schwann. He is credited with being the first to recognize leukemia cells. Virchow published his study of cells in 1858 in Omnis cellula e cellula (“every cell originates from another existing cell like it”), based on the invention of François-Vincent Raspail.

This was a rejection of the concept of spontaneous generation, which advocated the idea that organisms could arise from non-living matter, initially opposed by Francesco Redi and finally rejected by Virchow, to state that the only source for a living cell was another living cell.

Another important (major) discovery by Virchow, is one he made at about the same time as Charles Emile Troisier, regarding an enlarged supra-calvicular node and lung cancer.

This is known as Virchow’s node. Virchow is also well known for his elucidation of the mechanism of pulmonary thromboembolism. In addition, Virchow founded the medical fields of cellular pathology and comparative pathology.

In 1869 he founded the Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory (Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte), which was very influential in coordinating and intensifying German archaeological research.

In 1885 he conducted a study of craniometry (the measurement and study of skull bones), which yielded striking results that contradicted contemporary racist scientific theories of the “Aryan race”, prompting Virchow to denounce “Nordic mysticism” at the 1885 Anthropological Congress in Karlsruhe.

In 1861, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1892 he was awarded the Copley Medal.

Among his most famous students was the anthropologist Franz Boas, who has been called the “father of American anthropology” and the “father of modern anthropology”. Virchow was a tireless researcher and left behind a large number of written works.

He also developed a standard method of autopsy procedure, which bears his name and is still one of the two main techniques used today. But more than an experimental physician, Virchow was also a passionate advocate for social and political reform. He is widely considered a pioneer of social medicine and anthropology. Virchow strongly opposed Darwinism in a lecture in which he emphasized the lack of fossil evidence for a common ancestor of apes and humans.

Virchow is also credited with founding social medicine, focusing on the fact that disease is often not simply biological, but a social consequence.

As a co-founder and member of the liberal party (Deutschen Fortschrittspartei) he was a major political antagonist of Bismarck. It is said that Bismarck challenged Rudolf Virchow to a duel and Virchow, given the choice of weapon, because he was the challenged party, chose two sausages, one of which was cholera-ridden. Bismarck is said to have withdrawn from the duel.

One area in which he collaborated with Bismarck was the Kulturkampf, the anti-clerical campaign against the Catholic Church, claiming that the anti-clerical laws bore “the character of a great war in the interests of humanity”. Virchow was a respected figure in Masonic circles and there are sources that claim that he may have been a Freemason. He died of heart failure and is buried in Matthews St. Cemetery, Schöneberg, Berlin. Society for Physicians The Anthropology Society gives an annual prize in the name of Virchow (Rudolf Award Virchow).

Albanians, superior race

That Professor Virchow was one of the most prominent names of scientists of the time is easily noticed. This idea is further reinforced by Blowitz in his article. It seems that this famous name had caused Blowitz’s article to be published, at the same time as the Times, even in the most distant corner of the world, in New Zealand (“Dr. Virchow on skulls”, New Zealand Tablet, Volume VI, Issue 290, 22 November 1878, page 17). It is the same article that was reprinted in 1901 in “Le Matin”. Below is the full article. Here is how Blowitz describes the meeting at Professor Virchow’s house:

“I eagerly accepted Dr. Liebreich’s offer to introduce me to Dr. Virchow. We waited a few minutes in one of the laboratories. In the first room we passed through was a collection of human bones, arranged symmetrically as if they were oases. An assistant was busy calculating the dimensions of a skull placed precisely in a glass holder.

The second room was like a miniature of the Valley of Jehoshaphat (translator’s note, A.H.: Jehoshaphat was the fourth king of the Kingdom of Judah, while the Valley of Jehoshaphat is the place where: according to Joel 3:02, the God of Israel will gather all the nations to judgment) at the moment of the first sounding of the trumpet of resurrection.

There were skeletons standing upright, bent, sitting, stooping, like people caught in a maze among their sleep as they stretched themselves out before they were fully awake. Bones of every kind covered the tables, shelves, and chairs, and to find chairs to sit on one had to clear them of the human remains that weighed them down.

Countless skulls crowned this fascinating collection, shining white among the shapeless pieces scattered on the furniture and on the floor. Contemplating this spectacle and remembering the eloquent and sharp speeches of Dr. Virchow, I expected to see a gigantic silhouette, strangely dressed, with sparkling eyes and a luminous face, personifying the double power of the man who penetrates the secrets of death and boasts in defending the existence of life, freedom. The door opened, and I saw none of this.

The man who came towards me was dressed like an antiquarian busy organizing his collections; his head was somewhat shriveled and a beard; short, graying hair and beard; a sun-tanned forehead – instead of being wrinkled – protruding forward and slightly compressed at the sides; visible veins in the cheekbones; small, sun-tanned eyes, a fixed mouth, a sharp and indefatigable nose; hands, tanned by the sun, agile and thin, showing determination, energy and dexterity. However, the originality of the situation quickly became apparent.

The conversation immediately turned to the Congress (translator’s note, A.H: Congress of Berlin, 1878) that was then taking place. We discussed the rivalry of small nations trying to gain supremacy in European Turkey (translator’s note, A.H: we are talking about the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans).

In his office or rather in his museum in 1878, during that the great Congress was being held in Berlin, the day after the Russo-Turkish war, (note, A.H: the following part is what Mit’hat Frashëri also quotes in his book “Albanians”, Zenit Editions 2005, pages 66-67) when they were talking about the different races of the Balkans, the learned doctor suddenly stood up: “Look! – he said.

Here is the truly superior race of these countries. Look at these!” He placed three skulls in front of us with an equal conformation. “One of your colleagues sent me the first one, then I handed over the other two. They are the skulls of Albanians killed by the Turks. Look at them carefully! Aren’t they beautiful?! Aren’t they magnificent?!

When I received this first one, I thought it was an exception. But they are all like this one here! Here is the superior race, even much higher than all the others!” And Dr. Wirchov, with enthusiastic tenderness and a loving look, caressed the incomplete skull that he held on his knees.

Then, raising and lowering it carefully, he began to define in a rapid speech and with images the different populations of European Turkey and, in support of each opinion he expressed, he asked for one, two, three skulls: Montenegrin, Bosnian, Dalmatian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Turkish and Hungarian.

Little by little he had added evidence in support of these opinions and finally, in the center of this complete circle and formed by skulls of different sizes, more or less cut by edged weapons and by fire, he completed his demonstration.

Although the Congress judged him outside the cranological (cranial) point of view, he always returned to his Albanian skulls and when he spoke, he sat down to touch them with his fingers, while he considered the others unworthy; and I must I add that Count Andras (translator’s note, A.H.: President Hungarian physician and foreign minister of Hungary, 1871–79) would not boast if he knew the series determined by Dr. Virchow for the Hungarians. “Times”

This evidence brought by this article would be even more complete if we had the opportunity to read the complete studies of Professor Virchow on the Albanian race. These studies are still waiting for the day to be revealed and published in the Albanian language.

British MP, Cowen: Albanians are the oldest nation of the East

Meanwhile, Virchow was so convinced about the scientific answers about the Albanian race, that he addressed the Berlin Congress to preserve this rare race. They did not listen to him. Of course, Albania was torn apart, as if it were worse. Science before politics (interests, bargains) is almost always devalued.

The justice of the Great Powers was also of equal value. It would be of great interest to the Albanian public to know the statement made by Virchow regarding the Albanian race and the efforts he made to evaluate us, by the Berlin Congress, as a race with special features. But the learned professor was not the only one who saw the Albanians as a very ancient race.

Below, we bring a fragment in which the British discuss precisely this thing, the Albanians. The passage is taken from “From the debates in the House of Commons of Great Britain on September 4, 1880”, reflected in the publication on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of National Independence, “Albanian Renaissance” (Prepared by: Kristo Frashëri, State Publishing Company “Naim Frashëri”, Tirana 1962):

“Joseph Cowen: I believe that the purpose of the warships that will gather at Ragusa is to strike fear into the Turks. What if the Turks are not struck by fear? What will be done then? Will the naval power of England, of free and constitutional England, be used to burn or destroy the huts of the Albanian hunters, fishermen or shepherds of Ulcinj? Will the power of Britain be used for this vile purpose?

For whose benefit will this injustice be done? For the benefit of the Montenegrins.

The Montenegrins are surrounded by another people, who are as brave as they are, and whose history is lost in the mists of time. The Albanians are the oldest nation of the East. They were there before the ancient Greeks. The Albanians have their own legends, language and special characteristics.

They have some qualities that are quite different from those of the Montenegrins, but they are as brave as they are and their love of freedom has never been and cannot be doubted. The plan of the great powers is to take a piece of Albania and give it to Montenegro, without asking the Albanians and without getting their permission.

A deputy: The Albanians are not a nation.

Joseph Cowen: They are not a nation, says his Lordship. Prince Bismarck also said that in Berlin. Prince Bismarck said that he had not heard of an Albanian nation. But Prince Bismarck had not even heard of the nationality of Holland or Denmark. Another prince, as powerful as Prince Bismarck is today, claimed in the Congress of Vienna that no Italian nation knew. In the mind of that diplomat, Italy was nothing more than a “geographical expression”.

And yet today we all know that Italy is a great and united nation. What was proven in a little over fifty years for the people of one side of the Adriatic, can be proven in a different way for the other side in as long a time. In my mind it would be as great an injustice to put the Albanians under the yoke of the Montenegrins as it would be to put the Montenegrins under the yoke of the Albanians…”

How Virchow secured the first Albanian skull – an Albanian tribal chief

In his book Mit’hat Frashëri, he does not give further details about Virchow’s work or how he secured the Albanian skulls. In the “Times” article, also reprinted in “Le Matin”, Virchow tells Blowitz: “One of your colleagues sent me the first one, then I got my hands on the other two. They are the skulls of Albanians killed by the Turks. Look at them carefully! Aren’t they beautiful?! Aren’t they magnificent?!

When I got this first one, I thought it was an exception. But they are all like this one here! Here is a superior race, much higher than all the others!”. After a research on Virchow’s work, what comes as something new and previously unsaid is the testimony of the journalist who provided Virchow with the first Albanian skull. Who was Blowitz’s colleague?

And how did Virchow get his hands on the other two skulls? Blowitz’s colleague was an American correspondent covering news from the Balkans. “Le Matin” reprinted the article in 1901. That same year, the two-volume memoirs of the American journalist, William James Stillman, (“The Autobiography of a Journalist”; William James Stillman 1828-1901; Vol. 2; Boston Houghton, Mifflin and Co. ; Cambridge Mass. Riverside Press, 1901) were published. Stillman sheds light on how Virchow secured the Albanian skulls. He brought him the first one. Stillman is the person who surprised the professor (according to what (Blowitz tells Virchow) with the skull he sent him.

It was a time when the northern regions were being taken from the Albanians to be given to Montenegro. Stillman was a correspondent for the Balkans and followed the developments that were taking place (his positions – perhaps due to lack of information – are often pro-Montenegrin, but this is not the subject of the article).

After one of the many Albanian-Montenegrin battles, he hears the story of the murder of an Albanian and here begins the story we were looking for. The skull of that Albanian is the first skull in Virchow’s collection. The following passage is taken from the above-mentioned book (pages 611-613) of the memoirs of journalist William J. Stillman:

“The captain told me of a brave Albanian, who had fallen wounded from his horse and taken refuge in a cleft in the rocks, who had killed two Montenegrins and wounded a third before he appeared defenseless against one of them, who had come up behind him and shot him from a cleft in the rocks that sheltered him. The manner of his death, and that of his assailants, illustrate the Montenegrin ways of war so fully that I was interested in this more than in the heroic details of the fighting.

The Montenegrin has a thing for attacking his enemy face to face and preferably with cold steel. Enemies who fall in general combat from rifle fire, he never considers as his “heads”; “he only declares those he killed in hand-to-hand combat”. This Albanian was the chieftain of his tribe, the hereditary chief, and to kill him in hand-to-hand combat was the ambition of all three of those who attacked him in succession; the assassination in the back was only a matter of necessity.

I remembered at that moment a correspondence I had had years before with Virchow, concerning the Pelasgians; and thinking of his collection of skulls, I asked the captain if he knew the place where the Albanian had fallen and whether the bones were still there, and when he assured me that they were where he had fallen, I offered him two florins to bring me the skull, which he did. It was the skull of a young man, with the sutures of the skull bones almost closed, with only two teeth missing and none of them diseased, and I sent it to the great craniologist, who replied to me with warm thanks.

Kafka, he said, was the most excellent of his collection in terms of mental development, and he read a paper on it before the German Imperial Academy. He was so impressed by the characteristics of that skull that he was inclined to consider it an extraordinary skull, and wrote to one of the Austrian officers in Montenegro to ask if he could send him some more, and these, although not like that of the chief of the tribe, of a tribe undoubtedly pure Albanian, – because the aristocracy never married with blood other than that of the same race and social class – possessed all the same characteristics of intellect, confirming his placing of the Albanians at the head of the races of Europe, for mental capacity.”

In this way we have shed light on part of the path taken by Professor Virchow in relation to the studies of the Albanian race. But there is something else that attracts attention in the above part of Stillman’s memoirs. He mentions a conversation he had with Professor Virchow about the Pelasgians and based on this he sends him the skulls of Albanians.

It does not take much insight to understand that the Pelasgian race that Stillman had once talked about with the professor were precisely the Albanians. Otherwise, why would he mention this when he intended to get his hands on the skull of an Albanian? On the other hand, Professor Virchow, as we mentioned above, founded the Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory (Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte) in 1869. This Society had a great influence on the coordination and intensification of German archaeological research. A very well-known name in German archaeology is also Henry Schliemann.

The latter has made some of the greatest discoveries in the field of archaeology. He is known as the discoverer of Troy and Priam’s treasure. He made important excavations and discoveries in Thyros and discovered the treasures of the ancient Mycenaean civilization, etc. Schliemann was a friend of Professor Virchow, who accompanied him on many of his excavations, from Ilios (Troy) to Greece.

Virchow was an undisputed authority in the field of anthropology of the time and in this way he studied the skeletons found during the excavations, enriching archaeology with scientific results. Following a request from Schliemann – which was felt to be an homage to the book – Virchow wrote the introduction to Schliemann’s book “Mycenae”. These few details serve to give the idea that Virchow was a person who had sufficient archaeological knowledge to reach conclusions about of the Albanian Pelasgian race.

Albanians, so little known to Europeans

Virchow’s conclusions about the Albanians were no longer something said in a low voice, but were results with which the scientific environment was familiar. His paper before the German Imperial Academy regarding the Albanian race is quoted below by Stillman, Blowitz’s colleague, whom Professor Virchow also mentions in the “Times” article.

This paper has not yet been published in Albanian. However, the case of the Albanians had already become a unit of comparison in scientific seminars. A fragment where Albanians are taken as an example by Virchow, during the proceedings of an important anthropological conference, is also included in this material:

“At the last Anthropological Congress in Vienna, some sensations were caused by the speech of the great Berlin biologist, Professor Virchow. About a year ago Virchow, on a similar occasion, made a severe attack on Darwinian positions, and this year he spoke in the same way as openly. The following part is taken from his long speech at the Congress:

Twenty years ago, when we met in Innsbruck, it was precisely the moment when the Darwinian theory had left its first victorious mark throughout the world. My friend, Vogt, immediately rushed into the ranks of the champions of this doctrine. Since then, we have searched in vain for the intermediate stages which were supposed to connect man with the apes; the proto-man, the pro-anthropos, has not yet been discovered. For anthropological science, the pro-anthropos it is not even a subject of discussion. The anthropologist may, perhaps, see it in a dream, but on waking he cannot say that he has made any approach to it.

At that time in Innsbruck the prospect was, apparently, that the line of descent from ape to man would be reconstructed all at once, but now we cannot prove even the descent of separate races from one another. At the present time, we are able to say that among the peoples of antiquity not a single one was closer to the apes than we are. At the present time I can affirm that there is no race on earth absolutely unknown to man.

The least known of all races are the inhabitants of the central mountainous regions of the Malay Peninsula, but on the other hand we know the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego as well as the Eskimos, the Bashkirs, the Polynesians, and the Lapps. No! we know more about these race than we know of certain European tribes. I need only mention the Albanians…” (Oriental Religions and Christianity; Frank F. Ellinwood, New York, 1891)

Mihai Eminescu: The Pure Albanian Race, the First of the Ancient Eastern Empire

Virchow’s assertions had become so well-known at the time that there were cases when they were taken as comparative indicators of superiority. The purposes for which these comparisons were made are no more important than the fact that they referred to anthropological science as an indisputable element.

Not even the greatest Romanian national poet, Mihai Eminescu, avoided these comparisons. He called on science to help him (the following example is cited simply to show the echo of Virchow’s research, and has nothing to do with anti-Semitism) to save his homeland, which he considered endangered by the Jews:

“Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), the venerable national poet of Romania, the modernizer of Romania, and the rhapsodist of the infant state, believed that his country was caught between socialism and liberalism and should avoid the dangers of both in favor of feudalism, “…the system of greater freedom, of decentralization, of social autonomy, of class independence.

People were not equal and therefore they were free”. Feudal Romania was a country of healthy purity, needless to say – without Jews. “The Jew deserves no rights anywhere in Europe, because he does not work”. Jews in Romania were “foreigners in its body,” a “race whose immediate aim was to take over Romanian real estate and whose long-term aim was to seize its own country”.

“Whatever anyone may say”, wrote Eminescu, “between us and the Jews there is a racial difference which does not allow us to have any feeling towards them – in circumstances where honour is at stake – but contempt and nothing but contempt”. The poet, like many Romantic Europeans of his time, did not hesitate to appeal to science: “The ethnographer Hoffmann defended the idea that the development of the skull of the Romanian race was admirable, that those types of skulls deserved to be were at the forefront of civilization.

Virchow, a famous naturalist, gives the Albanian skull the first place among all the skulls of pure races from the ancient empire of the East, and the Albanian skull is identical with that of the Romanian race, with that of our people today.” (Scott L. Malcolmson; “Empire’s edge: travels in South-Eastern Europe, Turkey and Central Asia”; p. 17; Verso, 1995)

Such examples compare s are not rare. Robert Matteson Johnston (1867-1920) was one of the many authors who referred to Professor Virchow’s conclusions regarding the more developed cranial capacity of the Albanians. Johnston, an American historian and important scholar of military history, was born in Paris and educated at Eton College and Pembroke College, Cambridge.

Johnston also taught at Harvard and Mount Holyoke College during his career. In his book “The Napoleonic Empire in Southern Italy and the Rise of the Secret Societies” (READ BOOKS reprint; 2010; pages 3,4), in an excerpt he refers to Virchow’s research while describing the capabilities of the Albanian race. Here is how he expresses it:

“ …‘The lively Campanian, the thrifty Abruzzi, the brutal Apulian, the arrogant Calabrian easily arouse discussion and show the heterogeneity of the race,’ wrote Cantù. They differ not only in their temperaments, but also in their dialects, to the point of mutual incomprehensibility. Of the various elements of the population, none shows more characteristic features than the Albanians, a race that displays, according to Virchow, the greatest cranial capacity in Europe. Their settlements were the result of the immigration that had taken place from across the Adriatic between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries under the pressure of the Turkish occupation.”

Professor Virchow’s studies and conclusions have been taken into consideration by many other serious researchers, which shows the importance of these scientific conclusions. Virchow’s complete works and research on Albanians, if published in Albanian, would be an important scientific element that would serve to strengthen the conclusions on the antiquity of Albanians, an enigmatic race that comes from the most lost depths of time as an unbroken ethnocultural line.