RACES OF MANKIND.
Differences of Race, 56—Stature and Proportions, 56—Skull,
60—Features, 62—Colour, 66—Hair, 71—Constitution,
73—Temperature, 74—Types of Races, 75—Permanence, 80—Mixture,
80—Variation, 84—Races of Mankind classified, 87.
In the first chapter something has been already said as to the striking
distinctions between the various races of man, seen in looking closely
at the African negro, the Coolie of India, and the Chinese. Even among
Europeans, the broad contrast between the fair Dane and the dark Genoese
is recognised by all. Some further comparison has now to be made of
the special differences between race and race, though the reader must
understand that, without proper anatomical examination, such comparison
can only be slight and imperfect. Anthropology finds race-differences
most clearly in stature and proportions of limbs, conformation of the
skull and the brain within, characters of features, skin, eyes, and hair,
peculiarities of constitution, and mental and moral temperament.
In comparing races as to their stature, we concern ourselves not with
the tallest or shortest men of each tribe, but with the ordinary or
average-sized men who may be taken as fair representatives of their whole
tribe. The difference of general stature is well shown where a tall
and a short people come together in one district. Thus in Australia the
average English colonist of 5 ft. 8 in. looks clear over the heads of the
5 ft. 4 in. Chinese labourers. Still more in Sweden does the Swede of 5
ft. 7 in. tower over the stunted Lapps, whose average measure is not much
over 5 ft. Among the tallest of mankind are the Patagonians, who seemed
a race of giants to the Europeans who first watched them striding along
their cliffs draped in their skin cloaks; it was even declared that the
heads of Magalhaens’ men hardly reached the waist of the first Patagonian
they met. Modern travellers find, on measuring them, that they really
often reach 6 ft. 4 in., their mean height being about 5 ft. 11 in.—three
or four inches taller than average Englishmen. The shortest of mankind
are the Bushmen and related tribes in South Africa, with an average
height not far exceeding 4 ft. 6 in. A fair contrast between the tallest
and shortest races of mankind may be seen in Fig. 8, where a Patagonian
is drawn side by side with a Bushman, whose head only reaches to his
breast. Thus the tallest race of man is less than one-fourth higher
than the shortest, a fact which seems surprising to those not used to
measurements. Struck by the effect of such difference of stature one is
apt to form an exaggerated notion of its amount, which is really small
compared with the disproportion in size between various breeds of other
species of animals, as the toy pug and the mastiff, or the Shetland pony
and the dray-horse. In general, the stature of the women of any race
may be taken as about one-sixteenth less than that of the men. Thus in
England a man of 5 ft. 8 in. and a woman of 5 ft. 4 in. look an ordinary
well-matched couple.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.—Patagonian and Bushman.]
Not only the stature, but the proportions of the body differ in men of
various races. Care must be taken not to confuse real race-differences
with the alterations made by the individual’s early training or habit of
life, such as the bow-legs of grooms, and the still more crooked legs of
the Indians of British Columbia, who get them misshaped by continually
sitting cramped up in their canoes. A man’s measure round the chest
depends a good deal on his way of life, as do also the lengths of arm
and leg, which are not even the same in soldiers and sailors. But there
are certain distinctions which are inherited, and mark different races.
Thus there are long-limbed and short-limbed tribes of mankind. The
African negro is remarkable for length of arm and leg, the Aymara Indian
of Peru for shortness. Supposing an ordinary Englishman to be altered
to the build of a negro, he would want 2 in. more in the arm and 1 in.
more in the leg, while to bring him to the proportions of an Aymara
his arm would have to be shortened ½ in. and his leg 1 in. from their
present lengths. An instructive way of noticing these differences is
to look back to the skeletons of apes and man (Fig. 5). In an upright
position and reaching down with the middle finger, the gibbon can touch
its foot, the orang its ankle, the chimpanzee its knee, while man only
reaches partly down his thigh. Here, however, there seems to be a real
distinction among the races of man. Negro soldiers standing at drill
bring the middle finger-tip an inch or two nearer the knee than white
men can do, and some have been even known to touch the knee-pan. Such
differences, however, are less remarkable than the general correspondence
in bodily proportions of a model of strength and beauty, to whatever race
he may belong. Even good judges have been led to forget the niceties of
race-type and to treat the form of the athlete as everywhere one and the
same. Thus Benjamin West, the American painter, when he came to Rome and
saw the Belvedere Apollo, exclaimed, “It is a young Mohawk warrior!”
Much the same has been said of the proportions of Zulu athletes. Yet if
fairly-chosen photographs of Kafirs be compared with a classic model such
as the Apollo, it will be noticed that the trunk of the African has a
somewhat wall-sided straightness, wanting in the inward slope which gives
fineness to the waist, and in the expansion below which gives breadth
across the hips, these being two of the most noticeable points in the
classic model which our painters recognise as an ideal of manly beauty.
By this kind of comparison much may be done in distinguishing standard
types of races. Yet, while acknowledging the reality of such varieties in
the build of men of different race, we have again to remark how slight
they are compared with the variation in the limbs of different breeds of
lower animals.
In comparing races, one of the first questions that occurs is whether
people who differ so much intellectually as savage tribes and civilized
nations, show any corresponding difference in their brain. There is, in
fact, a considerable difference. The most usual way of ascertaining the
quantity of brain is to measure the capacity of the brain-case by filling
skulls with shot or seed. Professor Flower gives as a mean estimate
of the contents of skulls in cubic inches, Australian, seventy-nine;
African, eighty-five; European, ninety-one. Eminent anatomists also
think that the brain of the European is somewhat more complex in its
convolutions than the brain of a Negro or Hottentot. Thus, though these
observations are far from perfect, they show a connexion between a
more full and intricate system of brain-cells and fibres, and a higher
intellectual power, in the races which have risen in the scale of
civilization.
The form of the skull itself, so important in its relation to the brain
within and the expressive features without, has been to the anatomist
one of the best means of distinguishing races. It is often possible to
tell by inspection of a skull what race it belongs to. The narrow cranium
of the negro (Fig. 9 _a_) would not be mistaken for the broad cranium of
the Samoyed (Fig. 9 _c_.) On taking down from a museum shelf a certain
narrow, wall-sided, roof-topped, forward-jawed skull with unusually
strong brow-ridges (Fig. 10 _d_), there is no difficulty in recognising it
as Australian. In comparing skulls, some of the most easily noticeable
distinctions are the following.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.—Top view of skulls. _a_, Negro, index 70,
dolichokephalic; _b_, European, index 80, mesokephalic; _c_, Samoyed,
index 85, brachykephalic.]
When looked at from the vertical or top view, the proportion of breadth
to length is seen as in Fig. 9. Taking the diameter from back to front as
100, the cross diameter gives the so-called index of breadth, which is
here about 70 in the Negro (_a_), 80 in the European (_b_), and 85 in the
Samoyed (_c_). Such skulls are classed respectively as _dolichokephalic_,
or “long-headed;” _mesokephalic_, or “middle-headed;” and
_brachykephalic_, or “short-headed.” A model skull of a flexible material
like gutta-percha, if of the middle shape, like that of an ordinary
Englishman, might, by pressure at the sides, be made long like a negro’s,
or by pressure at back and front be brought to the broad Tatar form. In
the above figure it may be noticed that while some skulls, as _b_, have a
somewhat elliptical form, others, as _a_, are ovoid, having the longest
cross diameter considerably behind the centre. Also in some classes of
skulls, as in _a_, the zygomatic arches connecting the skull and face are
fully seen; while in others, as _b_ and _c_, the bulging of the skull
almost hides them. In the front and back view of skulls, the proportion
of width to height is taken in much the same way as the index of breadth
just described. Next, Fig. 10, which represents in profile the skulls of
an Australian (_d_), a negro (_e_), and an Englishman (_f_), shows the
strong difference in the facial angle between the two lower races and our
own. The Australian and African are _prognathous_, or “forward-jawed,”
while the European is _orthognathous_, or “upright-jawed.” At the same
time the Australian and African have more retreating foreheads than the
European, to the disadvantage of the frontal lobes of their brain as
compared with ours. Thus the upper and lower parts of the profile combine
to give the faces of these less-civilized peoples a somewhat ape-like
slope, as distinguished from the more nearly upright European face.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.—Side view of skulls. _d_, Australian,
prognathous; _e_, African, prognathous; _f_, European, orthognathous.]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.—_a_, Swaheli; _b_, Persian.]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.—Female portraits. _a_, Negro (W. Africa); _b_,
Barolong (S. Africa); _c_, Hottentot; _d_, Gilyak (N. Asia); _e_,
Japanese; _f_, Colorado Indian (N. America); _g_, English.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.—African negro.]
Not to go into nicer distinctions of cranial measurement, let us now
glance at the evident points of the living face. To some extent feature
directly follows the shape of the skull beneath. Thus the contrast
just mentioned, between the forward-sloping negro skull and its more
upright form in the white race, is as plainly seen in the portraits of a
Swaheli negro and a Persian, given in Fig. 11. On looking at the female
portraits in Fig. 12, the Barolong girl (South Africa) may be selected as
an example of the effect of narrowness of skull (_b_), in contrast with
the broader Tatar, and North American faces (_d_, _f_). She also shows
the convex African forehead, while they, as well as the Hottentot (_c_),
show the effect of high cheek-bones. The Tatar and Japanese faces (_d_,
_e_) show the skew-eyelids of the Mongolian race. Much of the character
of the human face depends on the shape of the softer parts—nose, lips,
cheeks, chin, &c., which are often excellent marks to distinguish race.
Contrasts in the form of nose may even exceed that here shown between
the aquiline of the Persian and the snub of the Negro in Figs. 11 and
13. European travellers in Tartary in the middle ages described its
flat-nosed inhabitants as having no noses at all, but breathing through
holes in their faces. By pushing the tips of our own noses upward, we
can in some degree imitate the manner in which various other races,
notably the negro, show the opening of the nostrils in full face. Our
thin, close-fitting lips, differ in the extreme from those of the negro,
well seen in the portrait (Fig. 13) of Jacob Wainwright, Livingstone’s
faithful boy. We cannot imitate the negro lip by mere pouting, but must
push the edges up and down with the fingers to show more of the inner
lip. The expression of the human face, on which intelligence and feeling
write themselves in visible characters, requires an artist’s training to
understand and describe. The mere contour of the features, as taken by
photography in an unchanging attitude, has delicate characters which we
appreciate by long experience in studying faces, but which elude exact
description or measurement. With the purpose of calling attention to
some well-marked peculiarities of the human face in different races, a
small group of female faces (Fig. 12) is here given, all young, and such
as would be considered among their own people as at least moderately
handsome. Setting aside hair and complexion, there is still enough
difference in the actual outline of the features to distinguish the
Negro, Kafir, Hottentot, Tatar, Japanese, and North American faces from
the English face below.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.—Section of negro skin, much magnified (after
Kölliker). _a_, dermis, or true skin; _b_, _c_, rete mucosum; _d_,
epidermis, or scarf-skin.]
The colour of the skin, that important mark of race, may be best
understood by looking at the darkest variety. The dark hue of the
negro does not lie so deep as the innermost or true skin, which is
substantially alike among all races of mankind. The seat of the colouring
is well shown in Fig. 14, a highly magnified section of the skin of a
negro. Here _a_ shows the surface of the true skin with its papillæ; this
is covered by the mucous layer, the innermost cells of which (_b_) are
deeply coloured by small grains of black or brown pigment, the colour
shading down to brownish or yellowish toward the outer surface of this
mucous layer (_c_), while even the outside scarf-skin (_d_) is slightly
tinged. The negro, in spite of his name, is not black, but deep brown,
and even this darkest hue does not appear at the beginning of life, for
the new-born negro child is reddish brown, soon becoming slaty grey, and
then darkening. Nor does the darkest tint ever extend over the negro’s
whole body, but his soles and palms are brown. When Blumenbach, the
anthropologist, saw Kemble play Othello (made up in the usual way, with
blackened face and black gloves, to represent a negro) he complained
that the whole illusion was spoilt for him when the actor opened his
hands. The brown races, such as the native Americans, have the colouring
of the skin in a less degree than the Africans, and with them also it
is not till some time after birth that the full depth of complexion is
reached. The colouring of the dark races appears to be similar in nature
to the temporary freckling and sun-burning of the fair white race. Also,
Europeans have permanent dark colouring in some portions of the skin,
though not exposed to the sun; the areola of the breast, for instance;
while in certain affections, known by the medical name of melanism,
patches closely resembling negro skin appear on the body. On the whole it
seems that the distinction of colour, from the fairest Englishman to the
darkest African, has no hard and fast lines, but varies gradually from
one tint to another. It is instructive to notice that there occur in the
various races certain individuals in whom the colouring matter of the
skin is wanting, the so-called albinos. The contrast between their morbid
whiteness and any ordinary fairness of complexion is most remarkable in
the negro albinos (to call them by this self-contradictory term), who
have the well-known African features, but in dead white, as it were a
cast of a negro in plaster.
The natural hue of skin farthest from that of the negro is the complexion
of the fair race of Northern Europe, of which perfect types are to be
met with in Scandinavia, North Germany, and England. In such fair or
blonde people the almost transparent skin has its pink tinge by showing
the small blood-vessels through it. In the nations of Southern Europe,
such as Italians and Spaniards, the browner complexion to some extent
hides this red, which among darker peoples in other quarters of the
world ceases to be discernible. Thus the difference between light and
dark races is well observed in their blushing, which is caused by the
rush of hot red blood into the vessels near the surface of the body.
Albinos shows this with the utmost intenseness, not only a general glow
appearing, but the patches of colour being clearly marked out. The blush,
vivid through the blonde skin of the Dane, is more obscurely seen in the
Spanish brunette; but in the dark-brown Peruvian, or the yet blacker
African, though a hand or a thermometer put to the cheek will detect
the blush by its heat, the somewhat increased depth of colour is hardly
perceptible to the eye. The contrary effect, paleness, caused by retreat
of blood from the surface, is in like manner masked by dark tints of skin.
As a character of race, the colour of the skin has from ancient times
been reckoned the most distinctive of all. The Egyptian painters, three
or four thousand years ago used regular tints for this purpose, as
may be seen in paintings at the British Museum. These colours do not
pretend to be exact, as is seen by the native Egyptian gentlemen being
painted dark brick-red, but the ladies pale yellow, so as to signify in
an exaggerated way their lighter complexion. It was in this conventional
manner that they coloured the four principal races of mankind known
to them, the Egyptians themselves red-brown, the nations of Palestine
yellow-brown, the Libyans yellow-white, and the Æthiopians coal-black
(see page 4). In the history of the world, colour has often been the sign
by which nations accounting themselves the nobler have marked off their
inferiors. The Sanskrit word for caste is _varna_, that is, “colour;” and
this shows how their distinction of high and low caste arose. India was
inhabited by dark indigenous peoples before the fairer Aryan race invaded
the land, and the descendants of conquerors and conquered are still in
some measure to be traced among the light-complexioned high-caste, and
the dark-complexioned low-caste families. Nor has the distinction of
colour ceased in the midst of modern civilization. The Englishman’s white
skin is to him, as of old, a caste-mark of separation from the yellow,
brown, or black “natives,” as he contemptuously calls them, in other
quarters of the globe.
The range of complexion among mankind, beginning with the tint of the
fair-whites of Northern Europe and the dark-whites of Southern Europe,
passes to the brownish-yellow of the Malays, and the full-brown of
American tribes, the deep-brown of Australians, and the black-brown
of Negros. Until modern times these race-tints have generally been
described with too little care, and named as conventionally as the
Egyptians painted them. Now, however, the traveller by using Broca’s set
of pattern colours, records the colour of any tribe he is observing,
with the accuracy of a mercer matching a piece of silk. The evaporation
from the human skin is accompanied by a smell which differs in different
races. The peculiar rancid scent by which the African negro may be
detected even at a distance is the most marked of these. The odour of the
brown American tribes is again different, while they have been known,
to express dislike at the white man’s smell. This peculiarity, which
not only indicates difference in the secretions of the skin, but seems
connected with liability to certain fevers, &c., is a race-character of
some importance.
The part of the human body which shows the greatest variety of colour
in different individuals, is the iris of the eye. This is the more
noticeable because the adjacent parts vary particularly little among
mankind. The sclerotic coat, which in a healthy European is almost what
it is called, the “white” of the eye, only takes a slightly yellow tinge
among the darkest races, as the African negro. Again, in ordinary eyes
of all races, the pupil in the centre of the iris appears absolutely
black, being in fact transparent, and showing through to the black
pigment lining the choroid coat at the back of the eye. But the iris
itself, if examined in a number of types of men, has most various
colour. In understanding the coloration of the eye, as of the skin, the
peculiarities of albinos are instructive. The pink of their eyes (as of
white rabbits) is caused by absence of the black pigment above-mentioned,
so that light passing out through the iris and pupil is tinged red from
the blood-vessels at the back; thus their eyes may be seen to blush
with the rest of the face. This want of the protecting black pigment
also accounts for the sensitiveness to light which makes albinos avoid
a glare; it was for this reason that the Dutch gave them the name of
_kakkerlaken_, or “cockroaches,” these creatures also shunning the
light. Prof. Broca, in his scale of colours of eyes, arranges shades of
orange, green, blue, and violet-grey. But one has only to look closely
into any eye to see the impossibility of recording its complex pattern
of colours; indeed what is done is to observe it from a distance so that
its tints blend into one uniform hue. It need hardly be said that what
are popularly called black eyes are far from having the iris really black
like the pupil; eyes described as black are commonly of the deepest
shades of brown or violet. These so-called black eyes are by far the
most numerous in the world, belonging not only to brown-black, brown,
and yellow races, but even prevailing among the darker varieties of the
white race, such as Greeks and Spaniards. Aristotle remarks that the
colour of the eyes follows that of the skin. Indeed it is plain that
there is a connection of the colours of the skin, eyes, and hair among
mankind. In races with the darker skin and black hair, the darkest eyes
generally prevail, while a fair complexion is usually accompanied by the
lighter tints of iris, especially blue. A fair Saxon with black eyes, or
a full-grown negro with pale blue eyes, would be looked at with surprise.
Yet we know by our own country-people how difficult it is to lay down
exact rules as to matching colours in complexion. Thus the combination of
black hair with dark blue or grey eyes is frequent in some districts of
Great Britain. Dr. Barnard Davis and Dr. Beddoe think it indicates Keltic
blood.
From ancient times, the colour and form of the hair have been noticed as
distinctive marks of race. Thus Strabo mentions the Æthiopians as black
men with woolly hair, and Tacitus describes the German warriors of his
day with their fierce blue eyes and tawny hair. As to colour of hair, the
most usual is black, or shades so dark as to be taken for black, which
belongs not only to the dark-skinned Africans and Americans, but to the
yellow Chinese and the dark-whites such as Hindus or Jews. Mr. Sorby
remarks that blackness of hair is due to black pigment being present in
such quantity as to overpower whatever red or yellow pigment the hair
may also contain. In the fair-white peoples of Northern Europe, on the
contrary, flaxen or chestnut hair prevails. Thus we see that there is
a connection between fair hair and fair skin, and dark hair and dark
skin. But it is impossible to lay down a rule for intermediate tints,
for the red-brown or auburn hair common in fair-skinned peoples occurs
among darker races, and dark-brown hair has a still wider range. Our
own extremely mixed nation shows every variety from flaxen and golden
to raven black. As to the form of the hair, its well-known differences
may be seen in the female portraits in Fig. 12, where the Africans on
the left show the woolly or frizzy kind, where the hair naturally curls
into little corkscrew-spirals, while the Asiatic and American heads on
the right have straight hair like a horse’s mane. Between these extreme
kinds are the flowing or wavy hair, and the curly hair which winds in
large spirals; the English hair in the figure is rather of the latter
variety. If cross sections of single hairs are examined under the
microscope, their differences of form are seen as in four of the sections
by Pruner-Bey (Fig. 15). The almost circular Mongolian hair (_a_) hangs
straight; the more curly European hair (_b_) has an oval or elliptical
section; the woolly African hair (_c_) is more flattened; while the
frizzy Papuan hair (_d_) is a yet more extreme example of the flattened
ribbon-like kind. Curly and woolly hair has a lop-sided growth from the
root which gives the twist. Not only the colour and form of the hair,
but its quantity, vary in different races. Thus the heads of the Bushmen
are more scantily furnished with hair than ours, while among the Crow
Indians it was common for the warrior’s coarse black hair to sweep on
the ground behind him. The body-hair also is scanty in some races and
plentiful in others. Thus the Ainos, the indigenes of Yeso, are a shaggy
people, while the Japanese possessors of their island are comparatively
hairless. So strong is the contrast, that the Japanese have invented a
legend that in ancient times the Aino mothers suckled young bears, which
gradually developed into men.
[Illustration: FIG. 15.—Sections of hair, highly magnified (after
Pruner). _a_, Japanese; _b_, German; _c_, African negro; _d_, Papuan.]
That certain races are constitutionally fit and others unfit for
certain climates, is a fact which the English have but too good reason
to know, when on the scorching plains of India they themselves become
languid and sickly, while their children have soon to be removed to
some cooler climate that they may not pine and die. It is well-known
also that races are not affected alike by certain diseases. While in
Equatorial Africa or the West Indies the coast-fever and yellow-fever
are so fatal or injurious to the new-come Europeans, the negros and even
mulattos are almost untouched by this scourge of the white nations. On
the other hand, we English look upon measles as a trifling complaint,
and hear with astonishment of its being carried into Fiji, and there,
aggravated no doubt by improper treatment, sweeping away the natives by
thousands. It is plain that nations moving into a new climate, if they
are to flourish, must become adapted in body to the new state of life;
thus in the rarefied air of the high Andes more respiration is required
than in the plains, and in fact tribes living there have the chest and
lungs developed to extraordinary size. Races, though capable of gradual
acclimatization, must not change too suddenly the climate they are
adapted to. With this adaptation to particular climates the complexion
has much to do, fitting the negro for the tropics and the fair-white for
the temperate zone; though, indeed, colour does not always vary with
climate, as where in America the brown race extends through hot and cold
regions alike. Fitness for a special climate, being matter of life or
death to a race, must be reckoned among the chief of race-characters.
Travellers notice striking distinctions in the temper of races. There
seems no difference of condition between the native Indian and the
African negro in Brazil to make the brown man dull and sullen, while
the black is overflowing with eagerness and gaiety. So, in Europe, the
unlikeness between the melancholy Russian peasant and the vivacious
Italian can hardly depend altogether on climate and food and government.
There seems to be in mankind inbred temperament and inbred capacity of
mind. History points the great lesson that some races have marched on in
civilization while others have stood still or fallen back, and we should
partly look for an explanation of this in differences of intellectual and
moral powers between such tribes as the native Americans and Africans,
and the Old World nations who overmatch and subdue them. In measuring the
minds of the lower races, a good test is how far their children are able
to take a civilized education. The account generally given by European
teachers who have had the children of lower races in their schools is
that, though these often learn as well as the white children up to about
twelve years old, they then fall off, and are left behind by the children
of the ruling race. This fits with what anatomy teaches of the less
development of brain in the Australian and African than in the European.
It agrees also with what the history of civilization teaches, that up
to a certain point savages and barbarians are like what our ancestors
were and our peasants still are, but from this common level the superior
intellect of the progressive races has raised their nations to heights of
culture. The white man, though now dominant over the world, must remember
that intellectual progress has been by no means the monopoly of his race.
At the dawn of history, the leaders of culture were the brown Egyptians,
and the Babylonians, whose Akkadian is not connected with the language of
white nations, while the yellow Chinese, whose Tatar affinity is evident
in their hair and features, have been for four thousand years or more a
civilized and literary nation. The dark-whites, Assyrians, Phœnicians,
Persians, Greeks, Romans, did not start but carried on the forward
movement of culture, while since then the fair-whites, as part of the
population of France, Germany, and England, have taken their share not
meanly though latest in the world’s progress.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.—Race or Population arranged by Stature (Galton’s
method).]
After thus noticing some of the chief points of difference among
races, it will be well to examine more closely what a race is. Single
portraits of men and women can only in a general way represent the
nation they belong to, for no two of its individuals are really alike,
not even brothers. What is looked for in such a race-portrait is the
general character belonging to the whole race. It is an often repeated
observation of travellers that a European landing among some people
unlike his own, such as Chinese or Mexican Indians, at first thinks
them all alike. After days of careful observation he makes out their
individual peculiarities, but at first his attention was occupied with
the broad typical characters of the foreign race. It is just this broad
type that the anthropologist desires to sketch and describe, and he
selects as his examples such portraits of men and women as show it best.
It is even possible to measure the type of a people. To give an idea of
the working of this problem, let us suppose ourselves to be examining
Scotchmen, and the first point to be settled how tall they are. Obviously
there are some few as short as Lapps, and some as tall as Patagonians;
these very short and tall men belong to the race, and yet are not its
ordinary members. If, however, the whole population were measured and
made to stand in order of height, there would be a crowd of men about
five feet eight inches, but much fewer of either five feet four inches or
six feet, and so on till the numbers decreased on either side to one or
two giants, and one or two dwarfs. This is seen in Fig. 16, where each
individual is represented by a dot, and the dots representing men of the
mean or typical stature crowd into a mass. After looking at this, the
reader will more easily understand Quetelet’s diagram, Fig. 17, where
the heights or ordinates of the binomial curve show the numbers of men
of each stature, decreasing both ways from the central five feet eight
inches which is the stature of the mean or typical man. Here, in a total
of near 2,600 men, there are 160 of five feet eight inches, but only
about 150 of five feet seven inches or five feet nine inches, and so on,
till not even ten men are found so short as five feet or so tall as six
feet four inches. As the proverb says, “it takes all sorts to make a
world,” so it thus appears that a race is a body of people comprising a
regular set of variations, which centre round one representative type.
In the same way a race or nation is estimated as to other characters, as
where a mean or typical Englishman may be said to measure 36 inches round
the chest, and weigh about 144 pounds. So it is possible to fix on the
typical shade of complexion in a nation, such as the Zulu black-brown.
The result of these plans is to show that the rough-and-ready method of
the traveller is fairly accurate, when he chooses as his representative
of a race the type of man and woman which he finds to exist more
numerously than any other.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.—Race or Population arranged by Stature
(Quetelet’s method).]
[Illustration: FIG. 18.—Caribs.]
[Illustration: FIG. 19.—(_a_) Head of Rameses II., Ancient Egypt. (_b_)
Sheikh’s son, Modern Egypt. (After Hartmann.)]
The people whom it is easiest to represent by single portraits are
uncivilised tribes, in whose food and way of life there is little to
cause difference between one man and another, and who have lived together
and intermarried for many generations. Thus Fig. 18, taken from a
photograph of a party of Caribs, is remarkable for the close likeness
running through all. In such a nation the race-type is peculiarly easy
to make out. It is by no means always thus easy to represent a whole
population. To see how difficult it may be, one has only to look at an
English crowd, with its endless diversity. But to get a view of the
problem of human varieties, it is best to attend to the simplest cases
first, looking at some uniform and well-marked race, and asking what in
the course of ages may happen to it.
The first thing to be noticed is its power of lasting. Where a people
lives on in its own district, without too much change in habits, or
mixture with other nations, there seems no reason to expect its type to
alter. The Egyptian monuments show good instances of this permanence. In
Fig. 19, _a_ is drawn from the head of a statue of Rameses, evidently a
careful portrait, and dating from about 3,000 years ago, while _b_ is an
Egyptian of the present day, yet the ancient and modern are curiously
alike. Indeed, the ancient Egyptian race, who built the Pyramids, and
whose life of toil is pictured on the walls of the tombs, are with little
change still represented by the fellahs of the villages, who carry on
the old labour under new tax-gatherers. Thus, too, the Æthiopians on
the early Egyptian bas-reliefs may have their counterparts picked out
still among the White Nile tribes, while we recognise in the figures of
Phœnician or Israelite captives the familiar Jewish profile of our own
day. Thus there is proof that a race may keep its special characters
plainly recognizable for over thirty centuries, or a hundred generations.
And this permanence of type may more or less remain when the race
migrates far from its early home, as when African negroes are carried
into America, or Israelites naturalize themselves from Archangel to
Singapore. Where marked change has taken place in the appearance of a
nation, the cause of this change must be sought in intermarriage with
foreigners, or altered conditions of life, or both.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.—Malay Mother and Half-caste Daughters.]
The result of intermarriage or crossing of races is familiar to all
English people in one of its most conspicuous examples, the cross between
white and negro called mulatto (Spanish _mulato_, from _mula_, a mule).
The mulatto complexion and hair are intermediate between those of
the parents, and new intermediate grades of complexion appear in the
children of white and mulatto, called quadroon or quarter-blood (Spanish
_cuarteron_), and so on; on the other hand, the descendants of negro and
mulatto, called sambo (Spanish _zambo_) return towards the full negro
type. This intermediate character is the general nature of crossed races,
but with more or less tendency to revert to one or other of the parent
types. To illustrate this, Fig. 20 gives the portrait of a Malay mother
and her half-caste daughters, the father being a Spaniard; here, while
all the children show their mixed race, it is sometimes the European
and sometimes the Malay cast of features that prevails. The effect of
mixture is also traceable in the hair, as may often be well noticed in a
mulatto’s crimped, curly locks, between the straighter European and the
woolly African kind. The Cafusos of Brazil, a peculiar cross between the
native tribes of the land and the imported negro slaves, are remarkable
for their hair, which rises in a curly mass, forming a natural periwig
which obliges the wearers to stoop low in passing through their hut
doors. This is seen in the portrait of a Cafusa, Fig. 21, and seems
easily accounted for by the long stiff hair of the native American having
acquired in some degree the negro frizziness. The bodily temperament
of mixed races also partakes of the parent-characters, as is seen in
the mulatto who inherits from his negro ancestry the power of bearing a
tropical climate, as well as freedom from yellow fever.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.—Cafusa Woman.]
Not only does a mixed race arise wherever two races inhabit the same
district, but within the last few centuries it is well known that a large
fraction of the world’s population has actually come into existence by
race-crossing. This is nowhere so evident as on the American continent,
where since the Spanish conquest such districts as Mexico are largely
peopled by the mestizo descendants of Spaniards and native Americans,
while the importation of African slaves in the West Indies has given
rise to a mulatto population. By taking into account such intercrossing
of races, anthropologists have a reason to give for the endless shades
of diversity among mankind, without attempting the hopeless task of
classifying every little uncertain group of men into a special race.
The water-carrier from Cairo, in Fig. 22, may serve as an example of
the difficulty of making a systematic arrangement to set each man down
to his precise race. This man speaks Arabic, and is a Moslem, but he
is not an Arab proper, neither is he an Egyptian of the old kingdom,
but the child of a land where the Nubian, Copt, Syrian, Bedouin, and
many other peoples have mingled for ages, and in fact his ancestry may
come out of three quarters of the globe. Among the natives of India, a
variety of complexion and feature is found which cannot be classified
exactly by race. But it must be remembered that several very distinct
varieties of men have contributed to the population of the country,
namely the dark-brown indigenes or hill-tribes, the yellow Mongolians
who have crossed the frontiers from Tibet, and the fairer ancient Aryans
or Indo-Europeans who poured in from the north-west; not to mention
others, the mixture of these nations going on for ages has of course
produced numberless crosses. So in Europe, taking the fair nations of the
Baltic and the dark nations of the Mediterranean as two distinct races
or varieties, their intercrossing may explain the infinite diversity of
brown hair and intermediate complexion to be met with. If then it may
be considered that man was already divided into a few great main races
in remote antiquity, their intermarriage through ages since will go far
to account for the innumerable slighter varieties which shade into one
another.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.—Cairene.]
It is not enough to look at a race of men as a mere body of people
happening to have a common type or likeness. For the reason of their
likeness is plain, and indeed our calling them a race means that we
consider them a breed whose common nature is inherited from common
ancestors. Now experience of the animal world shows that a race or
breed, while capable of carrying on its likeness from generation
to generation, is also capable of varying. In fact, the skilful
cattle-breeder, by carefully choosing and pairing individuals which vary
in a particular direction, can within a few years form a special breed
of cattle or sheep. Without such direct interference of man, special
races or breeds of animals form themselves under new conditions of
climate and food, as in the familiar instances of the Shetland ponies,
or the mustangs of the Mexican plains which have bred from the horses
brought over by the Spaniards. It naturally suggests itself that the
races of man may be thus accounted for as breeds, varied from one
original stock. It may be strongly argued in this direction that not
only do the bodily and mental varieties of mankind blend gradually into
one another, but that even the most dissimilar races can intermarry
in all directions, producing mixed or sub-races which, when left to
themselves, continue their own kind. Advocates of the polygenist theory,
that there are several distinct races of man, sprung from independent
origins, have denied that certain races, such as the English and native
Australians, produce fertile half-breeds. But the evidence tends more
and more to establish crossing as possible between all races, which
goes to prove that all the varieties of mankind are zoologically of one
species. While this principle seems to rest on firm ground, it must be
admitted that our knowledge of the manner and causes of race-variation
among mankind is still very imperfect. The great races, black, brown,
yellow, white, had already settled into their well-known characters
before written record began, so that their formation is hidden far back
in the præhistoric period. Nor are alterations of such amount known to
have taken place in any people within the range of history. It has been
plausibly argued that our rude primitive ancestors, being less able than
their posterity to make themselves independent of climate by shelter and
fire and stores of food, were more exposed to alter in body under the
influence of the new climates they migrated into. Even in modern times,
it seems possible to trace something of race-change going on under new
conditions of life. Thus Dr. Beddoe’s measurements prove that in England
the manufacturing town-life has given rise to a population an inch or
two less in stature than their forefathers when they came in from their
country villages. So in the Rocky Mountains there are clans of Snake
Indians whose stunted forms and low features, due to generations of
needy outcast life, mark them off from their better nourished kinsfolk
in the plains. It is asserted that the pure negro in the United States
has undergone a change in a few generations which has left him a shade
lighter in complexion and altered his features, while the pure white in
the same region has become less rosy, with darker and more glossy hair,
more prominent cheek-bones and massive lower jaw. These are perhaps the
best authenticated cases of race-change. There is great difficulty in
watching a race undergoing variation, which is everywhere masked by the
greater changes caused by new nations coming in to mingle and intermarry
with the old. He who should argue from the Greek sculptures that the
national type has changed since the age of Perikles, would be met with
the answer that the remains of the old stock have long been inextricably
blended with others. The points which have now been brought forward will
suffice to show the uncertainty and difficulty of any attempt to trace
exactly the origin and course of the races of man. Yet at the same time
there is a ground-work to go upon in the fact that these races are not
found spread indiscriminately over the earth’s surface, but certain
races plainly belong to certain regions, seeming each to have taken shape
under the influences of climate and soil in its proper district, where
it flourished, and whence it spread far and wide, modifying itself and
mingling with other races as it went. The following brief sketch may
give an idea how the spreading and mixture of the great races may have
taken place. It embodies well-considered views of eminent anatomists,
especially Professors Huxley and Flower. Though such a scheme cannot be
presented as proved and certain, it is desirable to clear and fix our
ideas by understanding that man’s distribution over the earth did not
take place by promiscuous scattering of tribes, but along great lines
of movement whose regularity can be often discerned, where it cannot be
precisely followed out.
[Illustration: FIG. 23.—Andaman Islanders.]
That there is a real connexion between the colour of races and the
climate they belong to, seems most likely from the so-called black
peoples. Ancient writers were satisfied to account for the colour of the
Æthiopians by saying that the sun had burnt them black, and though modern
anthropologists would not settle the question in this off-hand way, yet
the map of the world shows that this darkest race-type is principally
found in a tropical climate. The main line of black races stretches along
the hot and fertile regions of the equator, from Guinea in West Africa
to that great island of the Eastern Archipelago, which has its name of
New Guinea from its negro-like natives. In a former geological period an
equatorial continent (to which Sclater has given the name of Lemuria) may
even have stretched across from Africa to the far East, uniting these now
separate lands. The attention of anthropologists has been particularly
attracted by a line of islands in the Sea of Bengal, the Andamans, which
might have been part of this former continent, and were found inhabited
by a scanty population of rude and childlike savages. These Mincopis
(Fig. 23) are small in stature (the men under five feet), with skin of
blackness, and hair very flat in section and frizzled, which from their
habit of shaving their heads must be imagined by the reader. But while
in these points resembling the African negro, they are unlike him in
having skulls not narrow, but broad and rounded, nor have they lips so
full, a nose so wide, or jaws so projecting as his. It has occurred to
anatomists, and the opinion has been strengthened by Flower’s study of
their skulls, that the Andaman tribes may be a remnant of a very early
human stock, perhaps the best representatives of the primitive negro
type which has since altered in various points in its spread over its
wide district of the world. The African negro race, with its special
marks of narrow skull, projecting jaws, black-brown skin, woolly hair,
flattened nose, full and out-turned lips, has already been here described
(see pages 61 to 67). Its type perhaps shows itself most perfectly in the
nations near the equator, as in Guinea, but it spreads far and wide over
the continent, shading off by crossing with lighter coloured races on
its borders, such as the Berbers in the north, and the Arabs on the east
coast. As the race spreads southward into Congo and the Kafir regions,
there is noticed a less full negro complexion and feature, looking as
though migration from the central region into new climates had somewhat
modified the type. In this respect the small-grown Hottentot-Bushman
tribes of South Africa (see Figs. 8, 12 _c_) are most remarkable, for
while keeping much negro character in the narrow skull, frizzy hair, and
cast of features, their skin is of a lighter tint of brownish-yellow.
There is nothing to suggest that this came by crossing the negro type
with a fairer race, indeed there is no evidence of such a race to cross
with. If the Bushman is a special modification of the Negro, then this is
an excellent case of the transformation of races when placed under new
conditions. To return now to Southern Asia, there are found in the Malay
Peninsula and the Philippines scanty forest-tribes apparently allied
to the Andamaners and classed under the general term Negritos (_i.e._
“little blacks”), seeming to belong to a race once widely spread over
this part of the world, whose remnants have been driven by stronger new
come races to find refuge in the mountains. Fig. 24, represents one of
them, an Aheta from the island of Luzon. Lastly come the wide-spread
and complicated varieties of the eastern negro race in the region known
as Melanesia, the “black islands,” extending from New Guinea to Fiji.
The group of various islanders (Fig. 25) belonging to Bishop Patteson’s
mission, shows plainly the resemblance to the African negro, though with
some marked points of difference, as in the brows being more strongly
ridged, and the nose being more prominent, even aquiline—a striking
contrast to the African. The Melanesians about New Guinea are called
Papuas from their woolly hair (Malay _papuwah_ = frizzed), which is often
grown into enormous mops. The great variety of colour in Melanesia, from
the full brown-black down to chocolate or nut-brown, shows that there
has been much crossing with lighter populations. Such mixture is evident
in the coast-people of Fiji, where the dark Melanesian race is indeed
predominant, but crossed with the lighter Polynesian race to which much
of the language and civilization of the islands belongs. Lastly, the
Tasmanians were a distant outlying population belonging to the eastern
blacks.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.—Aheta (Negrito), Philippine Islands.]
[Illustration: FIG. 25.—Melanesians.]
[Illustration: FIG. 26.—South Australian (man).]
[Illustration: FIG. 27.—South Australian (woman).]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.—Australian (Queensland) women.]
[Illustration: FIG. 29.—Dravidian hill-man (after Fryer).]
In Australia, that vast island-continent, whose plants and animals are
not those of Asia, but seem as it were survivors from a long-past period
of the earth’s history, there appears a thin population of roaming
savages, strongly distinct from the blacker races of New Guinea at the
north, and Tasmania at the south. The Australians, with skin of dark
chocolate-colour, may be taken as a special type of the brown races of
man. While their skull is narrow and prognathous like the negro’s, it
differs from it in special points which have been already mentioned
(page 60), and has, indeed, peculiarities which distinguish it very
certainly from that of other races. In the portraits of Australians,
Figs. 26, 27, 28, there may be noticed the heavy brows and projecting
jaws, the wide but not flat nose, the full lips, and the curly but not
woolly black hair. Looking at the map of the world to see where brown
races next appear, good authorities define one on the continent of
India. There the hill-tribes present the type of the old dwellers in
south and central India before the conquest by the Aryan Hindus, and
its purest form appears in tribes hardly tilling the soil, but living a
wild life in the jungle, while the great mass, more mixed in race with
the Hindus, under whose influence they have been for ages, now form the
great Dravidian nations of the south, such as the Tamil and Telugu. Fig.
29 represents one of the ruder Dravidians, from the Travancore forests.
Farther west, it has been thought that a brown race may be distinguished
in Africa, taking in Nubian tribes and less distinctly traceable in the
Berbers of Algiers and Tunis. If so, to this race the ancient Egyptians
would seem mainly to belong, though mixed with Asiatics, who from
remote antiquity came in over the Syrian border. The Egyptian drawings
of themselves (as in Chaps. IX. to XI.) require the eyes to be put in
profile and the body coloured reddish-brown to represent the race to us.
None felt more strongly than the Egyptian of ancient Thebes, that among
the chief distinctions between the races of mankind were the complexion
and feature which separated him from the Æthiopian on the one hand, and
the Assyrian or Israelite on the other.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.—Kalmuk (after Goldsmid).]
[Illustration: FIG. 31.—Goldi (Amur).]
[Illustration: FIG. 32.—Siamese actresses.]
Turning to another district of the world, the Mongoloid type of man has
its best marked representatives on the vast steppes of northern Asia.
Their skin is brownish-yellow, their hair of the head black, coarse, and
long, but face-hair scanty. Their skull is characterized by breadth,
projection of cheek-bones, and forward position of the outer edge of the
orbits, which, as well as the slightness of brow-ridges, the slanting
aperture of the eyes, and the snub-nose, are observable in Figs. 30 and
31, and in Fig. 12 _d_. The Mongoloid race is immense in range and
numbers. The great nations of south-east Asia show their connexion with
it in the familiar complexion and features of the Chinese and Japanese.
Figs. 32, 33, 34 are portraits from Siam, Cochin-China, and Corea. In his
wide migrations over the world, the Mongoloid, through change of climate
and life, and still farther by intermarriage with other races, loses
more and more of his special points. It is so in the South-east, where
in China and Japan the characteristic breadth of skull is lessened. In
Europe, where from remotest antiquity hordes of Tatar race have poured
in, their descendants have often preserved in their languages, such as
Hungarian and Finnish, clearer traces of their Asiatic home than can be
made out in their present types of complexion and feature. Yet the Finns,
Figs. 35 and 36, have not lost the race-differences which mark them off
from the Swedes among whom they dwell, and the stunted Lapps show some
points of likeness to their Siberian kinsfolk, who wander like them with
their reindeer on the limits of the Arctic regions.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.—Cochin-Chinese.]
[Illustration: FIG. 34.—Coreans.]
[Illustration: FIG. 35.—Finn (man).]
[Illustration: FIG. 36.—Finn (woman).]
[Illustration: FIG. 37.—Malays.]
[Illustration: FIG. 38.—Malays.]
In pursuing beyond this point the examination of the races of the world,
the problem becomes more obscure. On the Malay peninsula, at the extreme
south-east corner of Asia, appear the first members of the Malay race,
seemingly a distant branch of the Mongoloid, which spreads over Sumatra,
Java, and other islands of the Eastern Archipelago. Figs. 37 and 38 give
portraits of the more civilised Malays, while Fig. 39 shows the Dayaks
of Borneo, who represent the race in a wilder and perhaps less mixed
state. From the Malay Archipelago there stretch into the Pacific the
island ranges first of Micronesia and then of Polynesia, till we reach
Easter Island to the east and New Zealand to the south. The Micronesians
and Polynesians show connexion with the Malays in language, and more or
less in bodily make. But they are not Malays proper, and there are seen
among them high faces, narrow noses, and small mouths which remind us
of the European face, as in the Micronesian, Fig. 40, who stands here
to represent this varied group of peoples. The Maoris are still further
from being pure Malays, as is seen by their more curly hair, often
prominent and even aquiline noses. It seems likely that an Asiatic race
closely allied to Malays may have spread over the South Sea Islands,
altering their special type by crossing with the dark Melanesians, so
that now the populations of different island groups often vary much in
appearance. This race of sailors even found their way to Madagascar,
where their descendants have more or less blended with a population from
the continent of Africa.
[Illustration: FIG. 39.—Dayaks.]
[Illustration: FIG. 40.—Kingsmill Islander.]
Turning now to the double continent of America, we find in this New World
a problem of race remarkably different from that of the Old World. The
traveller who should cross the earth from Nova Zemlya to the Cape of Good
Hope or Van Diemen’s Land would find in its various climates various
strongly-marked kinds of men, white, yellow, brown, and black. But if
Columbus had surveyed America from the Arctic to the Antarctic regions,
he would have found no such extreme unlikeness in the inhabitants. Apart
from the Europeans and Africans who have poured in since the fifteenth
century, the native Americans in general might be, as has often been
said, of one race. Not that they are all alike, but their differences in
stature, form of skull, feature, and complexion, though considerable,
seem variations of a secondary kind. It is not as if several races had
formed each its proper type in its proper region, but as if the country
had been peopled by migrating tribes of a ready-made race, who had only
to spread and acclimatise themselves over both tropical and temperate
zones, much as the European horses have done since the time of Columbus,
and less perfectly the white men themselves. The race to which most
anthropologists refer the native Americans is the Mongoloid of East Asia,
who are capable of accommodating themselves to the extremest climates,
and who by the form of skull, the light-brown skin, straight black hair,
and black eyes, show considerable agreement with the American tribes.
Figs. 41 and 42 represent the wild hunting-tribes of North America in one
of the finest forms now existing, the Colorado Indians, while in Fig.
43 the Cauixana Indians may stand as examples of the rude and sluggish
forest-men of Brazil. While tribes of America and Asia may thus be of
one original stock, we must look cautiously at theories as to the ocean
and island routes by which Asiatics may have migrated to people the New
World. It is probable that man had appeared there, as in the Old World,
in an earlier geological period than the present, so that the first
kinship between the Mongols and the North American Indians may go back
to a time when there was no ocean between them. What looks like later
communication between the two continents, is that the stunted Eskimo
with their narrow roof-topped skulls may be a branch of the Japanese
stock, while there are signs of the comparatively civilized Mexicans and
Peruvians having in some way received arts and ideas from Asiatic nations.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.—Colorado Indian (North America).]
[Illustration: FIG. 42.—Colorado Indian (North America).]
[Illustration: FIG. 43.—Cauixana Indians (South America).]
We come last to the white men, whose nations have all through history
been growing more and more dominant intellectually, morally, and
politically on the earth. Though commonly spoken of as one variety
of mankind, it is plain that they are not a single uniform race, but
a varied and mixed population. It is a step toward classing them to
separate them into two great divisions, the dark-whites and fair-whites
(melanochroi, xanthochroi). Ancient portraits have come down to
us of the dark-white nations, as Assyrians, Phœnicians, Persians,
Greeks, Romans; and when beside these are placed moderns such as the
Andalusians, and the dark Welshmen or Bretons, and people from the
Caucasus, it will be evident that the resemblance running through all
these can only be in broad and general characters. They have a dusky or
brownish-white skin, black or deep brown eyes, black hair, mostly wavy
or curly; their skulls vary much in proportions, though seldom extremely
broad or narrow, while the profile is upright, the nose straight or
aquiline, the lips less full than in other races. Rather for form’s
sake than for a real type of the dark-whites, a group of Georgians are
shown in Fig. 44. Opposite them Fig. 45, a group of Swedes, somewhat
better represents the fair-whites, whose transparent skin, flaxen hair,
and blue eyes may be seen as well, though not as often, in England as
in Scandinavia or North Germany. The earliest recorded appearance of
fair-whites may be in the paintings where Egyptian artists represent
with yellowish-white skin and blue eyes certain natives of North Africa,
a district where remnants of blonde tribes are still known. These fair
Libyans, as well as the fair red-haired people who appear about Syria,
and are known to us as forming a type among the Jews, may perhaps be
connected in race with the fair nations who were already settled over
the north of Europe when the classic writers begin to give accounts of
its barbarous inhabitants, from the Goths northward to the dwellers
in Thule. The intermarriage of the dark and fair varieties which has
gone on since these early times, has resulted in numberless varieties
of brown-haired people, between fair and dark in complexion. But as to
the origin and first home of the fair and dark races themselves, it is
hard to form an opinion. Language does much toward tracing the early
history of the white nations, but it does not clear up the difficulty of
separating fair-whites from dark-whites. Both sorts have been living
united by national language, as at this day German is spoken by the fair
Hanoverian and the darker Austrian. Among Keltic people, the Scotch
Highlanders often remind us of the tall red-haired Gauls described in
classical history, but there are also passages which prove that smaller
darker Kelts like the modern Welsh and Bretons existed then as well. As
a help in clearing up this problem, which so affects our own ancestry,
Huxley suggests that the fair-whites were the original stock, and that
these crossing with the brown races of the far south may have given rise
to the various kinds of dark-whites. However this may be, such mixture
of the white and brown races seems indeed to have largely formed the
population of countries where they meet. The Moors of North Africa, and
many so-called Arabs who are darker than white men, may be thus accounted
for. It is thus that in India millions who speak Hindu languages show by
their tint that their race is mixed between that of the Aryan conquerors
of the land and its darker indigenes. An instructive instance of this
very combination is to be seen in the Gypsies, low-caste wanderers who
found their way from India and spread over Europe not many centuries
since. Fig. 46, a Gypsy woman from Wallachia, is a favourable type of
these latest incomers from the East, whose broken-down Hindu dialect
shows that part of their ancestry comes from our Aryan forefathers, while
their complexion, swarthiest in the population of our country, marks also
descent belonging to a darker zone of the human species.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.—Georgians.]
[Illustration: FIG. 45.—Swedes.]
[Illustration: FIG. 46.—Gypsy.]
Thus to map out the nations of the world among a few main varieties
of man, and their combinations, is, in spite of its difficulty and
uncertainty, a profitable task. But to account for the origin of these
great primary varieties or races themselves, and exactly to assign to
them their earliest homes, cannot be usefully attempted in the present
scantiness of evidence. If man’s first appearance was in a geological
period when the distribution of land and sea and the climates of the
earth were not as now, then on both sides of the globe, outside the
present tropical zones, there were regions whose warmth and luxuriant
vegetation would have favoured man’s life with least need of civilized
arts, and whence successive waves of population may have spread over
cooler climates. It may perhaps be reasonable to imagine as latest-formed
the white race of the temperate region, least able to bear extreme heat
or live without the appliances of culture, but gifted with the powers of
knowing and ruling which give them sway over the world.