Etwick and Long, in their _History of Jamaica_, have asserted that

Mulattoes cease to be reproductive in that island beyond the third

generation. Dr. Yvan has pointed out an analogous fact in Java. Dr.

Nott has found that in South Carolina, Mulattoes are endowed with

low fertility, that they have a shorter life than other human races,

and that they frequently die at an early age. Without going so far,

Dr. Simonnot attributes to these half-breeds a sort of ethnological

neutrality, “which only assures them an ephemeral duration as soon as

they are abandoned to themselves.”

Nothing is easier than to oppose contrary facts to the foregoing. I

can even invoke the testimony of some of the same authors whom I have

just quoted. Nott, after having in a general manner formulated the

aphorisms which I have just summed up, admits that they only apply

to South Carolina, whilst in Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama, the

Mulattoes are robust, fruitful, and energetic. I find that Dr. Yvan

himself states that his observations only concern Java, and that he

had pointed out the fact as exceptional.

On the other hand, Hombron declares that in our colonies “Negresses

and Whites show a moderate fertility; Mulatto women and Whites are

extremely fertile as well as Mulatto men and women.”

“Even in such conditions of life as those of the Gulf of Mexico, the

Mulatto,” according to M. Rufz, “is well developed, strong, alert,

more adapted than the Negro for industrial application, and very

productive.” According to M. Audain, in the Dominican Republic of

St. Domingo, “one-third are Negroes, two-thirds Mulattoes, and an

insignificant proportion Whites.” For a long time this population has

not been fed by any fresh arrivals; its continuance is entirely due

to itself.

More quotations, I think, are useless. When added to the numbers of

M. Martin de Moussey, who makes no exception concerning Mulattoes,

they are sufficient to demonstrate the following general fact, viz.,

that the Mulatto is as energetic and as fruitful as other races, at

least in a very great majority of those parts of the globe where this

mixed population has been formed.

IV. Nevertheless, I do not deny the facts advanced by Etwick, Long,

Nott, Yvan, and Simonnot. I accept them without so much as discussing

them. But what do they prove in the presence of the remaining

facts which are so numerous and so conclusive? At the most that

the development of the mulatto race can be favoured, retarded, or

hindered by _local_ circumstances. In other terms, that it depends

upon the influences exercised by the whole of the conditions of life

(_milieu_).

We see, then, in the formation of the mixed races, the reappearance

of this element, whose action plays so large a part in the natural

history of man, and great attention should be paid to it.

In the result of the crossing of the Negro and the White in Jamaica,

Java, &c., its intervention could be foreseen. The two races are

strangers to these countries, which are known to be very destructive

to foreign races. The question of crossing is complicated in these

cases, by the phenomena and difficulties of _acclimatisation_. Can

we feel surprised that unions contracted under such conditions of

existence should only present precarious guarantees for the future?

We must here, moreover, take into account an element which is

constantly neglected, and whose importance in questions of this

nature has always struck me strongly. I mean _morality_. It therefore

forms _one of the conditions of life_ (milieu). Now, if we pay

attention to the details, which are not numerous, but which are

very significant, given by some travellers upon the existence of

Europeans in the colonies, in Jamaica in particular; if we compare

these melancholy facts with those furnished by daily observation, an

entirely new light will be thrown upon the questions of _crossing_

and _acclimatisation_. We shall be obliged to recognise that the

death of the fathers, and the extinction of the descendants, are

often only the consequence of, and the punishment for, the deplorable

_moral conditions of life_, in which they have lived.

V. But the _physical conditions of life_ have also their peculiar

action. The following example may be quoted as a proof.

M. Simonnot has noticed natives of Senegambia, “who combine a

perfectly black skin, with all the characteristic forms of the Moor,

even at all ages.” According to him, these _black Moors_ are a mixed

race. If this is the case, it must, at least, be recognised that the

white blood predominates considerably, since all the forms belong

to this type. In order that the _colour_ of the Negro should be

persistent, in spite of this profound semitic influence, a _local

action_, that is, an _action of the conditions of life_, must have

neutralised the ordinary laws of the mixture of races, and united the

_colour_ of one race with the _features_ and _forms_ of another.

If this conclusion requires confirmation, the facts quoted by Prosper

Lucas will be sufficient. He treats of unions between Negroes and

Whites accomplished in Europe. In the same family we find the

black blood predominate at first, then lose its influence, and by

degrees become effaced almost entirely in the children of the later

generations. In one of these observations, the mother belonged to the

black race; so that infidelity was unable to effect any change in

the conditions of the experiment. It was then the conditions of life

which gradually blanched these half-breeds, who would all have been

black upon the borders of Senegal.

VI. Some anthropologists, although recognising the multiplicity and

fertility of the crossings between human races, only see in this fact

a _confusion of blood_, and complain that nowhere do they find a

mixed race of recent origin which is well characterised. Consequently

they deny that the crossing can have any influence in the formation

of the races with mixed but constant characters which form part of

the population of the globe.

This objection rests upon a disregard of the phenomena which

accompany the formation of animal races by the production of

mongrels. All breeders know well that a determinate and settled

race cannot at once be produced by crossing. In such a case, the

conflict and the compromises, of which I have spoken above, become

more marked, for the very reason that we have to blend two natures

which are dissimilar in some respects. _Immediate_ and _direct

heredity_ alone continually produces phenomena of _fusion_ or of

_juxtaposition_, or else causes the appearance of new features, the

_resultant_ of two different characters. _Mediate_ and _indirect

heredity_, as well as _atavism_, continually intervene and produce

numerous irregularities in the succeeding generations. The more the

races differ and are _equal in respect to blood_, the more marked

and persistent are these irregularities. In 1800 the Ancon race still

gave irregular products. For more than twenty years M. Malingié has

failed in settling his charmois race, so that it might itself serve

for fresh crossings.

The clever breeder, whom I have just mentioned, as well as all other

breeders, have moreover only attained their end by means of minute

care in the choice of the animals from which they breed. Now, between

human races there can be no question of _selection_. The unions have

always taken place by chance. Moreover, in the immense majority

of cases, the continual intervention of individuals of pure race

increases, and prolongs the confusion. This absence of uniformity,

which astonishes polygenists, is easily explained by those who only

consider human groups as _races_. From a general point of view it

is very instructive; if it brings forward _diversity of races_, it

attests _specific unity_. It is not between species that crossing

presents similar phenomena. But nevertheless, through this disorder,

there appear in the mixed populations of our colonies, general common

characters, which have attracted the attention of travellers, and

have been described.

Moreover, when, in consequence of some circumstance, the products of

these crossings are isolated and protected from new mixtures, the

race becomes characterised with rapidity. The Cafusos, Basters, and

Griquas, may be quoted as examples. Even the Pitcairn islanders, at

the time of Beechey’s visit, were beginning to become uniform.

VII. In the crossings between unequal human races, the father almost

always belongs to the superior race. In every case, and especially

in transient amours, woman refuses to lower herself; man is less

delicate.

From the point of view of the future of the mixed races, the

predominant action of one sex over the product should have then

great importance. The question has been put since the origin of

societies, as is testified by the laws of Manou; it has been

repeatedly discussed by thinkers and physiologists. Each sex has had

its champions; and numerous facts have been quoted on both sides.

Considering everything, it appears to me impossible to avoid deciding

in favour of _equality of action_.

Nevertheless this equality is purely virtual; it can, in fact,

only exist on the condition of an equal generating energy in both

parents. As soon as the equilibrium is interrupted, the stronger sex

predominates, and the product shows this superiority. The experiments

of Girou de Buzareingue upon the procreation of the sexes, appeared

to me to be most decisive in this respect.

Now what is true of the whole of the organism is equally true of

its different parts, functions, and energies. In the formation of a

new being, the action of heredity is divided into as many _cases_

as there are _characters_ to transmit. Both father and mother tend

to reproduce themselves in their offspring; there is, consequently,

a struggle between both natures. But the battle, if we may use the

expression, results in a number of single combats in which each

parent may be in turn victor or vanquished.

This very simple consideration, which is deduced from a number of

facts of detail, explains many results which cause surprise to

physiologists, anthropologists, etc. After having attributed a

preponderating action to the mother, Nott declares with surprise,

that, in point of intelligence, the Mulatto approaches more to his

white father. But is not the intellectual energy of the latter

superior to that of the mother? And is it not natural that it should

gain the ascendant in the struggle between the two hereditary powers?

We know how far this victory can go, and how the two natures can, so

to speak, divide the product of this crossing between them. Lislet

Geoffroy, entirely a Negro physically, though entirely a White in

character, intelligence, and aptitudes, is a striking example of it.

This victory of the superior energies is again shown in another very

remarkable manner, in the crossing of white and black races. The

former is, of all races, most sensible to malarious influences,

the latter best able to resist them. On this account it is almost

exempt from yellow fever. The Mulatto inherits this double power

of resistance. Nott assures us that a proportion of one fourth of

black blood is as sure a protection against the yellow fever, as

vaccination against the small-pox.

We may now understand, that, in crossing between different races,

the half-breeds possess the characters which, in each of them,

predominate over the corresponding characters of the other. If the

energies are in equilibrium, there will generally be a compromise.

The Negro and the White differ essentially in colour and the texture

of the hair; the colour of the eyes varies almost as much in one as

in the other. In the Mulatto, the two first characters almost always

betray the double origin of the individual; the third is uncertain.

On the contrary, in half-breeds of the white and the indigenous

American, the eyes and hair are almost always derived from the

latter. Humboldt has remarked that these two characters are

persistent even after several generations, in unilateral crossing

towards the White. M. Ferdinand Denis recognised a descendant of the

caciques by the eyes. On the other hand, in the same crossings, the

colour of the White overcomes that of the American at the second, and

sometimes even at the first generation.

The crossing of the Slav and the Bouriate presents similar facts. The

half-breeds invariably have the hair and eyes of the second.

VIII. “In Brazil,” says Martin de Moussy, “mixed races of every

origin increase, and form a new population which becomes more

_indigenous_ every day, if we may use the expression, and always more

similar to the white type, which, according to what takes place in

the whole of South America, will, in the end, absorb all the rest.”

An analogous fact has been pointed out at Buenos Ayres, in Paraguay,

etc.

Can we then consider this result as a sign of the ascendancy of

the white race? I do not think so. I rather consider it as the

consequence of the general tendency pointed out above.

In the countries which we are discussing, the Negress or Indian woman

readily crosses with the White. The female issue of these unions,

proud of the blood of her father, would consider herself degraded

if wedded to an individual of coloured race, and reserves all her

favours for those to whom she approximates by reason of the crossing.

The Quadroon reasons and acts in the same manner. In these regions,

where colour decides caste, it is always men of whiter race, and

especially the pure white, that the women prefer to marry.

The consequence of this is, that the crossing, although apparently

left to chance, is in reality _unilateral_, and always directed

towards the superior race. It is accomplished under the influence of

a real _unconscious selection_, and the predominance of the white

blood is the result of this selection.

Sooner or later it will also result in the fulfilment of the

prediction of Martin de Moussy. The mixed races will in a great

measure return to the superior race. But, when brought back to the

white type by this circuitous path, and through all these degrees

of crossing, they will possess one very great advantage over their

European counterpart: they will be acclimatised.

The reverse phenomena appear, according to Squiers, to be taking

place in Peru. Here the mixed population tends to return to the

indigenous type. The fact is explained, at least in part, by the

relations which, since the commencement of the conquest, were

established between the conquerors and the conquered race.

The former could not affect unlimited contempt for a conquered race

who were as civilised as themselves. Their leaders made alliances at

an early period with the families of the Incas, and this example was

followed. Consequently colour cannot exercise the same influence in

Peru as in Brazil or at Buenos Ayres. The numerical predominance of

the local race and the conditions of life had then a free field, and

their double influence is shown in the result pointed out by Squiers.

IX. Can human crossing, so general in our days, be a new phenomenon

in the history of mankind? Evidently not. In the past as in the

present, every contact between two races of any continuance, every

immigration, and every conquest has led to the formation of a mixed

race. It is one of the inevitable consequences of human instincts and

of physiological laws.

It is quite natural that polygenists should have neglected facts of

this nature. In their opinion a population with _mixed_ characters

is a _species_ as much as any other, which is intermediate between

two given specific types. But the indifference or the mistake of

monogenists is less easily explained. They are evidently ignorant of

the phenomena of crossings among plants and animals. When they meet

with a race of undecided characters, and which presents more or less

distant analogies with two different types, they have generally felt

embarrassed, and have put the question on one side, or have at most

invoked the action of conditions of life in a vague manner.

It is quite true that the latter, when effecting a resemblance

between foreign races and the local race, leads to results analogous

to those which result from crossing. We have seen an example of

it in the United States. Yet crossing has its peculiar phenomena,

which are persistent even after several generations. Moreover, to

the indications drawn from physical and physiological characters we

may add others borrowed from very different orders of facts, and

which, in many cases, permit us to draw a conclusion with remarkable

certainty. The mixture of beliefs, customs, and manners often

furnishes valuable information. But the comparison of languages

generally throws an unexpected light upon problems apparently most

difficult. From time to time legends and history confirm inductions

drawn from the orders of facts which I have just pointed out, and

testify to the correctness of views which, at first sight, might

appear conjectural.

As an example I will quote the Zulu Kaffirs. They are one of the

groups of which some polygenists make a distinct species. They are

in fact distinguished from other negro races by several characters.

But by these characters they are brought nearer to the white type.

Moreover, various travellers inform us that they present a great

variability of feature. Missionaries who have lived among them add

that, in the same family, and under conditions which render all

crossing impossible, individuals are met with who have the hair and

colour of a Negro, and others whose hair is smooth and whose colour

is brown. These facts alone would authorise the conclusion that the

Zulus are a mixed race.

Philology confirms this conclusion. Philologists agree in placing the

Kaffir languages in the group of Zimbian languages, whose grammar

and vocabulary are fundamentally negro, but which also include arab,

nilotic, and malgach elements. Thus language, as well as physical

characters, points to a mixture of blood.

The chronicle discovered by Captain Guillain justifies these

conclusions by giving the history of the arab colonies from Quiloa to

Sofala. It relates the wars which were raised for the possession of

the gold mines; it shows the conquerors driving out the conquered,

and compelling them to go southwards to seek a new country. It is

evident that the latter have crossed Delagoa Bay, where they have

left the black race in its state of original inferiority, and have

gone further to ally themselves voluntarily or involuntarily with

tribes whose type has thus risen.

In fact, far from being a _species_, the Zulus are a _mixed race_ of

Negroes and Arabs, whose formation is so recent that mediate heredity

and atavism still betray the double origin, which is also attested

by philology, but in which the negro element preserves a very great

superiority.

X. The investigation of mixed populations, the determination of the

part played by each of the elements which have assisted in their

formation, belong to the most interesting questions of anthropology.

This study ought not to stop at populations in which the mixture of

characters is evident at first sight. It ought also to bear upon

those which are generally regarded as quite pure. We should then find

that mixture of races has penetrated where it was scarcely suspected.

In China and especially in Japan, the white allophylian blood is

mixed with the yellow blood in different proportions; the white

semitic blood has penetrated into the heart of Africa; the negro and

houzouana types have mutually penetrated each other and produced all

the Kaffir populations situated west of the Zulus of Arabian origin;

the Malay races are the result of the amalgamation, in different

proportions, of Whites, Yellows, and Blacks; the Malays proper, far

from constituting a _species_, as polygenists consider them, are only

one _population_, in which, under the influence of Islamism, these

various elements have been more completely fused, etc.

I have quoted at random the various preceding examples, to show how

the most extreme types of mankind have contributed to form a certain

number of races. Need I insist upon the mixtures which have been

accomplished between the secondary types derived from the first? In

Europe what population can pretend to purity of blood? The Basques

themselves, who apparently ought to be well protected by their

country, institutions, and language against the invasion of foreign

blood, show upon certain points, in the heart of their mountains,

the evident traces of the juxtaposition and fusion of very different

races.

As for the other nations ranging from Lapland to the Mediterranean,

classical history, although it does not go back a great distance

in point of time, is a sufficient proof that crossings are the

inevitable result of invasions, wars, and political and social

events. Asia presents, as we know, the same spectacle; and, in

the heart of Africa, the Jagas, playing the part of the hordes of

Gengis-Khan, have mixed together the African tribes from one ocean

to the other.

XI. I need scarcely allude here to the general facts which follow

from the detailed history of races. Short though it be, this appeal

to the reader’s memory will, I hope, give a sufficient motive for the

following conclusions.

Conditions of life and heredity have fashioned the first human races,

a certain number of which, on account of their isolation, have been

able to preserve for an indefinite time this first characteristic.

Perhaps it was during this very distant period that the three great

types of the Negro, the Yellow, and the White were characterised.

The migratory and conquering instincts of man have brought about a

meeting between these primary races, and consequently a crossing

between them.

Since the appearance of mixed races, crossing itself has only acted

under the domination of the conditions of life and heredity.

The great movements of nations have only taken place at long

intervals, and as it were form so many crises. In the interval

between these crises, the races which have been formed by the

crossing have had time to settle and become uniform.

The consolidation of the mixed races, the relative uniformity of

characters effected by the crossing, have taken place very slowly,

in consequence of the absolute want of selection. Consequently every

mixed race which has become uniform is also very ancient.

Human instincts have produced the mixture of mixed races, just as

they have produced that of the primary races.

Every mixed race, when uniform and settled, has been able to play the

part of a primary race in fresh crossings. Mankind, in its present

state, has thus been formed, certainly for the greatest part, by the

successive crossing of a number of races at present undetermined.

The most ancient races which we know, the quaternary races, are still

represented in our own days, either by populations generally small

in number, or by isolated individuals, in whom atavism reproduces

the characters of our remote ancestors. This is a fact which will be

proved further on.

CHAPTER XXIV.

INFLUENCE OF CROSSING UPON MIXED HUMAN RACES.

I. Has the crossing of human races been, or will it be, advantageous

or detrimental to the species considered as a whole? The followers

of Morton in America, and of MM. de Gobineau and Perrier in France,

have stated that human crossing had, or would have in the future,

disastrous consequences. Has this opinion any foundation? Let us

study the facts.

M. Gobineau appeals to history, and goes back to the earliest ages

of mankind. According to him, three fundamental races, the black,

the yellow, and the white, were formed originally. The yellow race

occupied the whole of America; the negro race all the southern

parts of the old continent as far as the Caspian Sea; the white

race was localised in Central Asia. The two former, degraded from

an intellectual and moral as well as from a physical point of view,

and unable to elevate themselves unaided above the savage state,

only existed as _tribes_. The third was the only one which united

bodily beauty with a warlike spirit, to the faculty of initiative,

of organization and progress, which gives rise to societies and to

civilization. The day came when the yellow race burst upon Asia, and,

avoiding the central region occupied by the whites, went to people

the western regions of the old world. Then, this wave, continuing

its course, submerged the white race, which, in its turn, began to

emigrate; and by the mixture of its blood with that of the inferior

races, produced all the _peoples_ who have succeeded each other

upon the earth. At the beginning of this new era, the white blood,

being more pure and more abundant, produced superior civilizations.

Becoming rarer at each new emigration, it lost its influence, and

civilization diminished in every respect. The last effort of this

renovating race was the Germanic invasion which destroyed the

Roman world. It is now exhausted. The white blood, vitiated by the

mixture, has everywhere lost its first efficacy. Mankind for this

very reason is in a full decline. The fusion will soon be complete.

Every individual will have in his veins one-third of white blood and

two-thirds of coloured blood, and we shall then inevitably return to

barbarism. Finally, the repeated crossings will have rendered the

human species barren; it will then die out and disappear.

Such is, in a few words, the theory of M. de Gobineau. Let us accept

it with all its hypotheses, including that of the migration from

America to Asia, which is contrary to all our knowledge upon this

point. Does it follow that the author is consistent? In order to be

so, he ought to point out the privileged race, founding by itself

one at least of those great societies, one of those _civilizations_,

as M. de Gobineau calls them, recorded by history. Now the author is

unable to point out a single example, and is obliged to admit that

the _exclusively white civilization_ has existed in Central Asia

without leaving any other trace than the _tumuli_ which have for a

long time been attributed to Scythians, Tchoudes, etc. But everyone

knows the state of the whites, when they left their Asiatic centre.

In India they were the Aryans, still a half-pastoral race; in Europe,

the barbarians who destroyed the Roman world. Had either of them a

civilization equal to that of the Egyptians or the Greeks?

M. de Gobineau enumerates ten civilizations, namely, Assyrian,

Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Italian, German, Alleghanian,

Mexican, and Peruvian. All, according to him, were produced in

consequence of the mixture of whites with coloured races. But

admitting that such has been the case, is it not evident that this

mixture has everywhere given rise to an immense progress. The ruins

of Nineveh Thebes, Athens, Rome, and even those of Palanqué,

certainly point to populations of a different civilization to that of

the people who raised the tumuli in Central Asia.

In order to draw their logical consequences from the facts which he

admits or supposes, M. de Gobineau should regard the formation of

half-breeds as the most powerful element of progress. As we have

seen he adopts the opposite opinion. He considers that all these

civilizations, which were splendid in the case of the Assyrians and

Egyptians, have been dwindling away and diminishing, and what remains

in our own days, only deserves our scorn.

Without being blinded by self-conceit, we may protest against this

conclusion. Doubtless we no longer raise towers of Babel, nor do

we build pyramids. Gigantic works which are useless, or undertaken

for the glorification of a single man, do not belong to our time.

But when some generally useful work arises, do we recoil before the

magnitude of the task? The time truly has been badly chosen to accuse

us of feebleness. The Suez Canal has been made on a different scale

to the small trench of the Pharaohs, and in tunnelling the Alps for a

railway, we have accomplished what antiquity had never dared to dream

of.

It is still true that, taken _en masse_, we are less artistic than

the Athenians. But without leaving the domain of the arts, there are

points in which we surpass them. To judge from the anecdotes which

throw light upon the nature of the talent of their greatest artists,

painting and music among the Greeks were not up to the level of

sculpture. If we have not our Phidias, they had not their Raphael,

their Michael Angelo, their Beethoven, nor their Rossini.

But, when he condemns us to a radical inferiority, M. de Gobineau

especially forgets the most striking character of modern times. He

disregards the _scientific development_, which is without example

or analogy in the past, and which gives an absolutely fresh

appearance to our civilization. We who are sprung from races crossed

a hundred times, are at least the equals of our forefathers, but no

longer resemble them. Inferior in some respects, we make up for it

thoroughly in other respects. We manifest human power under different

aspects.

Highly gifted though man may be, he cannot at once reach all the

limits of the field which is open to his activity. For this reason,

in time as well as in space, we find by the side of inferior peoples

and _races_, other peoples and _races_ which are superior, equal

among themselves, but different. Such is the real information gained

by a comparison of the present and past condition of mankind.

II. M. Perrier is a polygenist and an autochthonist; he makes use

of the expression _pure race_ as equivalent to the term _species_.

Being a physician, and a learned one, he touches upon anatomical

and physiological questions, and upon the limited fertility and

sterility of half-breeds, and reproduces some of the opinions which

I have already attacked. He pays particular attention to present

populations, and endeavours to prove the superiority of those which

he regards as pure. He quotes the Arabs in particular, and praises

their ancient and modern civilizations. But on this point I make the

same objection to him which I made to M. de Gobineau. We know very

little of the Himyarites and the Adites. Caussin de Perceval shows

them to have played at different times the part of conquerors; but

they were conquerors who were barbarians, and whose manners were

thoroughly savage. When they left their deserts under the impulse

of Islamism, did they appear with the marks of civilized peoples?

Certainly not. It was only after their conquests, and in consequence

of the crossings which they underwent, that we find the great

Arabian civilizations rise in Africa, Asia, and in Spain. Was the

civilization, which was developed upon the spot, and which has been

brought to light by Palgrave, equal to that of the Almohades, the

Almoravides, or the Abassides? Evidently not. Here, again, crossing

is found to have given rise to most striking progress.

M. Perrier lays especial stress upon physical perfection, and

particularly upon that of women. Let us accept this criterion. Is

purity of blood the sole cause of this beauty? If this were so, in

the same country, the purest populations should show the fairest

women. But in France, for example, the inhabitants of Auvergne,

secluded among their mountains, are undoubtedly of a purer race than

the inhabitants of the plains in Southern France, where so many

different races have come in contact. Well, can the women of Upper

Auvergne dispute the prize with the grisette of Arles, Toulouse, or

of Montpellier? These three feminine types are very distinct; they

clearly point to a mixture of blood. They are not the less remarkable

in the matter of beauty, and are undoubtedly superior to the women

of Auvergne. In Sicily, where all the Mediterranean populations are

confused together, I have observed analogous facts at Taormina,

Palermo, Trapani, etc.

As to the possibility of meeting with women remarkable for their

personal attractions among mixed races, even when the Negro enters as

an element in their composition, the reputation of women of colour,

mulattoes and quadroons, is a sufficient proof. All travellers bear

witness to the charm which they exercise upon Europeans. Taylor is

most explicit upon this point, and it is at Tristan d’Acunha, a

distant island half-way between the Cape and South America, that he

makes his observations. In this isolated spot, a mixed population

of Whites and Negroes has settled. The English traveller speaks as

follows: “All who are born in the island are mulattoes, though of a

very slightly pronounced type, and of very fine proportions. Almost

all have the European, much more than the Negro type. I do not

recollect ever having seen such splendid heads and figures as among

their young girls. And yet I know all the coasts of the earth: Bali

and its Malays, Havana and its Creoles, Tahiti and its nymphs, and

the United States with their distinguished women.” It is evident

that we here have a most impartial judgment in favour of mulattoes,

and given by an experienced judge.

Thus female beauty is met with among certain mixed races, and is

wanting among other races which are rightly regarded as the purest,

the Bosjesmans and the Esquimaux. The adversaries of human crossings

cannot then regard it as an argument in their favour.

III. Although modern crossings only go back three centuries, they

have already produced results which make it certain that races

remarkable from every point of view may be produced by crossing. The

Paulists of Brazil are a striking example of the fact. The province

of Saint Paul has been peopled by Portuguese and inhabitants of

the Azores from the old world, who have formed alliances with the

Gayanazes, a hunting and pacific tribe, and with the Carijos, who

are warlike and agricultural. From these unions, which have been

regularly contracted, there has sprung a race whose men have always

been remarkable for their fine proportions, their physical power,

indomitable courage, and endurance of fatigue. As for the women,

their beauty has given rise to a Brazilian proverb which proves

their superiority. This population shows its pre-eminence in every

respect. If it was once remarkable for the expeditions of adventurers

in search of gold or slaves, it was also the first to plant the

sugar-cane in Brazil, and to breed immense herds of cattle. “In the

present day,” says F. Denis, “the highest moral development as well

as the most remarkable intellectual movements appear to come from

Saint Paul.”

Such praises paid to a population which is almost entirely the result

of a mixture of races, by a sagacious observer, who has long lived

in Brazil, form a contrast to the reproaches cast upon American

half-breeds by an immense majority of travellers. As a general rule

they are painted in the blackest colours. Although they are allowed

to possess physical beauty, and perhaps also a prompt and ready

intelligence, they are said to be almost entirely without morality.

Let us admit that they differ as much from the Paulists in this

respect as has been stated: the explanation of the contrast is not

difficult to find.

At Saint Paul, the earliest unions were from the first regularly

contracted, thanks to the intervention of Fathers Nobrega and

Anchieta. In consequence of different circumstances, the _mamalucos_,

who were the result of these marriages, were at once accepted as the

equals of the pure Whites. Here the crossing then was accomplished

under normal conditions, a fact, perhaps, unique in the history of

our colonies.

In reality, the mixture of races elsewhere owes its origin to the

worst passions; prejudices of blood have caused half-breeds to be

regarded as tainted by the vice to which they owed their origin,

as outcasts from _society_, or one might say, _outlawed_. Now what

branch of the pure white race being born, growing, and thriving

under contempt and oppression, would preserve an elevated and moral

character? Moreover, would the white fathers furnish examples capable

of influencing for good the children which they had abandoned? The

contrary is evidently the case. Unrestrained debauchery on one

side, and servile submission on the other, are the elements in the

production of a half-breed race. What could heredity transmit in the

way of moral character to the products of such unions?

If anything should surprise us, it is that half-breeds produced

under such detestable conditions should already have been able to

raise themselves. Now this has happened, even with the mulattoes,

in all cases where prejudices of race have been less deeply rooted,

and have yielded to personal merit. In Brazil, most of the artists

and musicians are mulattoes, say MM. Troyer and de Lisboa. In

confirmation of this testimony, M. Lagos added that the political

capacity and scientific instinct are scarcely less developed among

them than artistic aptitude. Several are doctors and medical

practitioners of the highest distinction. Lastly, M. Torres Caïcedo

enumerated to me among the mulattoes of his country, orators, poets,

public men, and a vice-president of New Grenada, who was at the same

time a distinguished author.

If the case is not the same where a social condemnation weighs

upon the man of colour, the reason is that the moral and social

conditions of life never lose their rights any more than the physical

conditions. But the preceding will, I think, be a sufficient proof

that, when placed under normal conditions, the half-breed of the

Negro and the European would certainly justify in every place the

words of the old traveller Thevenot: “The mulatto can do all that the

white man can do; his intelligence is equal to ours.”

IV. Although I protest against the doctrines which tend to depreciate

mixed races, I am far from pretending that the crossing is at

all times and in all places fortunate. Undoubtedly, if the union

has taken place between inferior races, the product will remain

at the level of the parents. But these unions are few in number.

Even in South America, the Zambo is relatively rare. The Negro

appearing everywhere in slavery, has been despised by the indigenous

populations, who, in spite of their dependent condition, have

preserved their individual liberty, and have avoided union with the

Negro.

It is the White who, impelled by his restless ardour, has invaded

the world, and is every day multiplying his conquests and colonies.

It is he who has searched out the home of the coloured races, and

who everywhere mingles his blood with their own. Almost all the

half-breed populations recognize him as their father, and this

gives rise to a double result. These races are at once raised above

the maternal race, and the two brought closer together, as if they

possessed a common element.

Will this connection extend as far as fusion, as Serres and Maury

have admitted? Will all our present races sooner or later be replaced

by a single homogeneous race, everywhere endowed with the same

aptitudes and governed by a common civilization? I do not think

so; and what has just been said justifies the statement that this

uniformity is impossible.

Doubtless the mixture of races, favoured and multiplied by the

growing facility of communication, appears to me to prepare a new

era. The races of the future, differing less in blood, and brought

together by railways and steamers, will have far more inclinations,

wants, and interests in common. Hence a state of things will

rise superior to that with which we are acquainted, although our

civilization ought, it seems to me, to continue growing in spite of

present evils and approaching storms. We know how the Greek, Roman,

and the modern world were developed in succession; the modern future

will embrace the entire globe.

But, although this civilization will become more general and more

widely spread, it will not suppress certain differences in the

conditions of life. As long as there are poles and an equator,

continents and islands, or mountains and plains, races will exist

distinguished by characters of every kind, and superior or inferior

in a physical, intellectual, and moral point of view. In spite of

crossings, varieties and inequalities will continue. But as a whole,

mankind will be perfected; it will have grown; and the civilizations

of the future, without causing those of the past to be forgotten,

will outstrip them in some as yet unknown direction, just as ours

have outstripped those of our predecessors.

* * * * *

V. I have just closed the statement of the most general questions

raised by the history of the human race.

The principal point to determine is the _unity_ or the _multiplicity

of the species_. There are some anthropologists, even men of high

distinction, who regard it as almost an idle question, as merely a

question of dogma or of philosophy. Nevertheless, a little reflection

is sufficient to make it intelligible, that the science is entirely

changed according as it is regarded from a monogenist’s or a

polygenist’s point of view. I have already pointed out this fact; and

beg permission to return to it in a few words.

After the fundamental question of unity comes that of _antiquity_.

This is put similarly in the two doctrines. But the problem is simple

and absolute for the monogenist, but multiple and relative for the

polygenist.

The _question of the place of origin_, which next presents itself,

only exists in reality for the believer in the specific unity

of human groups. The doctrine of autochthonism, though greatly

multiplying the question, reduces it to very simple terms, since

it declares that all the populations were born upon the spot whose

foreign origin it does not establish, and only admits movements of

expansion.

For the polygenist the _general question of migrations_ does not

exist. For particular cases autochthonism supplies everything. He

who regards the Polynesians as having appeared on the islands of the

Pacific has not to seek whence they might have come.

The _question of acclimatisation_ for the polygenist is reduced to a

small number of facts almost exclusively modern, human populations

being in his eyes naturally formed for living under the conditions of

life in which they were born.

The _question of the formation of races_ disappears entirely for the

polygenist, since the different species admitted by him have appeared

with all the characters which distinguish the different human groups.

At most he has to concern himself with the results of some modern

crossings which are too evident to be denied.

The _question of primitive man_ does not exist for the polygenist,

since he recognizes all _his species_ with the characters which they

have had from the commencement.

No one, I think, will dispute the truth of these propositions, which

compel the conclusion that anthropology is an entirely different

science to the monogenist and the polygenist.

Polygenism seems to simplify the science in a singular manner; it

will be said that it suppresses its most apparent difficulties.

In reality it only does so by veiling or denying them, and thus

conduces to inaccuracy. At the same time it gives rise to others,

which, although less easily perceived, are nevertheless more

important, for they are essentially of a physiological nature, and

cannot be solved by the general laws of physiology.

Monogenism seems at first to complicate and multiply the problems. In

reality it only states them clearly. By that very means, it causes

the necessity of long and persevering studies to be felt, which it

rewards from time to time with great discoveries. It has required

almost a century and the combined efforts of travellers, geographers,

physicians, linguists, and anthropologists to establish the origin

of the Polynesians, to follow their migrations, and to determine the

date of them. But when this work is once set on the right track,

human history is found to be enriched by a magnificent page, which

gives another testimony to the intelligent activity of the human race

and its conquests over nature.

BOOK VIII.

FOSSIL HUMAN RACES.

CHAPTER XXV.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

I. Tertiary man is only known to us from a few faint traces of his

industry. Of tertiary man himself we know nothing. Portions of his

skeleton have been discovered from time to time, it has been thought,

in France, Switzerland, and especially in Italy. Closer study has,

however, always forced us to refer to a comparatively much later

period these human remains, which, at first sight, were regarded as

tertiary.

It is different with quaternary man. We have much better and more

precise information about him than about many existing races. The

caves which he inhabited, those in which he buried his dead, and

the alluvial deposits formed by rivers, which have borne away his

corpses, have preserved numerous bones for our study. As many as

forty different places in all, especially in the western portion of

Europe, have supplied our museums with as many as forty skulls, more

or less intact, and numerous fragments of the cranium and face, which

science has been able to utilize, as well as a great number of the

bones of the trunk and limbs, and even some entire skeletons. The

most remarkable specimen, freed from the earth which covered it, but

still left in its place, was brought from Mentone by M. Rivière and

is now to be seen in the Anthropological Gallery of the Paris Museum.

Such is the accumulation of facts, already very considerable, which

M. Hamy and I have consulted in arranging the first part of our

_Crania-Ethnica_. The importance of the skull in anthropology is

well known. It is of itself sufficient to furnish the principal

elements of the distinction of human races. The study and comparison

of quaternary skulls enables us, therefore, to form a tolerably

definite conception of these ancient populations, of the principal

relations and most striking differences which, from this period,

have distinguished human groups. The examination of the bones of the

trunk and limbs tends, moreover, to confirm the results furnished by

that of the skull. Thus we feel ourselves justified in expressing the

hope that the future, by completing our work in many respects, by

modifying it perhaps in others, and by filling up gaps in it, will at

least confirm the essential conclusions.

It is evident that I here speak in M. Hamy’s name as well as my own.

The truth is, that what I am about to say on the subject of fossil

man is almost the summary, not only of our book, but of many other

general studies and of many discussions. It belongs, in fact, as much

to my coadjutor as to myself.

II. Let us, in the first place, briefly describe the climate in which

the fossil human races lived.

The quaternary or glacial period imposed severe conditions of

existence on man. What then existed of Europe was surrounded on all

sides by the sea, and was subject to all the consequences of an

insular climate, that is to say; it was very damp, and moderately

uniform in temperature, but chilled, to a great extent at least,

by the Polar ice which extended even into France. The heavy rains,

frequent in all seasons, took the form of falls of snow upon the high

lands, and supported vast glaciers, the traces of which may still

be seen in all our mountain chains. Immense water-courses hollowed

out valleys in some parts, and deposited thick beds of alluvium in

others. This vexed and watery land supported a fauna comprising,

besides existing species, others which have partly disappeared,

partly emigrated to distant countries. Thus, on the one hand, there

were the mammoth (_elephas primigenius_), the woolly rhinoceros

(_rhinoceros tichorhinus_), the gigantic Irish elk (_megaceros

hibernicus_), the cave bear (_ursus spelæus_), the cave hyæna

(_hyæna spelæa_), the cave tiger (_felis spelæa_), the horse (_equus

caballus_); on the other hand, the reindeer (_cervus tarandus_), the

elk (_cervus alces_), the musk-ox (_ovibos moschatus_), the aurochs

(_bison europæus_), the hippopotamus (_hippopotamus amphibius_), and

the lion (_felis leo spelæa_).

All these animals lived side by side during the greater part of the

quaternary period. They afterwards became by degrees either extinct

or separated. At the commencement of the present period, France, in

which at one time they were all to be found, only retains the horse;

and we must admit further, with M. Toussaint, that our beasts of

burden and draught, are descended from fossil species, an opinion

which is far from universal amongst palæontologists. We may remark

in passing, that the same uncertainty exists upon the subject of the

spotted hyæna and the grizzly bear, regarded by some palæontologists

as _races_ referable to the cave species.

Man was, in Europe, the contemporary of all these species.

The phenomena which have given to these countries their latest

characters, have not always had the same violence, nor have they

either commenced or terminated abruptly. They offered periods of

repose and of relative activity, till the time when the continents

assumed their definite proportions, when the glaciers were first

confined within their present limits.

The modifications of living beings accord with these oscillations of

the inorganic world. The principal animal species seem to predominate

in turn; the human races appear in succession, increase and decline.

During the deposition of the _lower alluvium_ (bas niveaux) of our

valleys, the mammoth, rhinoceros, and great carnivora, seem to have

played the principal part. Man disputed the ground with them, and

fed upon their flesh. The struggle against the conditions of life,

and the wild beasts of the ancient world was terrible. The race of

these primitive times bears in a high degree the mark of this savage

nature.

During the period in which the _mean inferior alluvium_ (_moyens

niveaux inférieurs_) were formed, the great animal species still

inhabited the whole of Europe. The number of their representatives

seems, however, to be diminishing; less formidable species begin to

multiply, and the horse, in particular, forms, at least in places,

large herds, which offered an abundant source of nourishment to

man. The latter was represented especially by a race endowed with

remarkable aptitudes. At first, we find it struggling with as much

vigour as the preceding one, and under almost identical conditions;

but, by degrees, perfecting all its methods of action, and adapting

them to the new conditions introduced by the advance of time.

A great modification in the fauna corresponds to the deposition of

the _mean upper alluvium_ (_moyens niveaux supérieurs_). The great

carnivora and the mammoth become more and more rare, till at length

they disappear altogether; the horse no longer predominates; the

reindeer has taken its place, and wanders in vast herds over lands

which are gradually subsiding. Man has profited by these changes. New

races, perfectly distinct from the preceding ones, appear upon our

soil. That of the preceding age develops and attains a certain degree

of civilization, attested by true works of art.

At length, the bottom of the ocean rises, and Europe is complete.

The polar ice is confined within its present limits, and the insular

climate gives place to a continental one, with its extremes of heat

and cold. The glaciers of our mountains gradually contract, and

withdraw to higher regions. The animal species, no longer finding in

the same latitude the temperature suitable to them, emigrate, some to

the south, others to the north, or to the higher mountains.

Man must necessarily have felt the consequence of these changes.

When the animals which formed the basis of his nourishment

disappeared, never to return, a part at least of the population must

have followed, and emigrated at the same time. The rising societies

were thus shaken to their very foundations, and whilst some tribes

went off in opposite directions, those which remained behind,

experienced a decline of which we may observe the traces in the works

which they have bequeathed to us. They were but too easily absorbed

by superior races, who brought domestic animals with them, and

substituted the pastoral life for that of the hunter.

III. The man of the quaternary period has left here and there

a few of his bones by the side of those animals who were his

contemporaries. The human bones in question belong, however, almost

exclusively to Europe. The fossil man of other parts of the world is

almost unknown to us. Lund is said to have discovered it in certain

caves in Brazil. But unfortunately we have no other details of this

discovery than a short note and two drawings of small dimensions,

published quite recently by MM. Lacerta and R. Peixoto. Much has

been said about the skull discovered by Whitney in California.

Unfortunately, the description of this specimen has not appeared,

so that doubts have, on several occasions, been expressed as to the

existence of the fossil itself. The recent testimony of M. Pinart has

removed them, but has, at the same time, created the most serious

doubts as to the antiquity of this specimen, which seems to have been

found in disturbed grounds.

The restriction of the discovery of human fossils to Europe is much

to be regretted. We have no authority for regarding Europe as the

starting point of the species, nor as the theatre of the formation of

the primitive races. We should rather seek them in Asia. It was upon

the slopes of the Himalaya, at the base of the great central mass,

that Falconer hoped to find tertiary man. Assiduous and persevering

search can alone verify the prophecies of the eminent palæontologist.

This task might be performed by some of the learned officers of

the English army, by some of the military surgeons sent out by the

great institutions of London. Let us hope that they will set to work;

that they will utilize for this end, the leisure they enjoy when on

leave in some _sanitarium_ of the Himalayas or Nilgheries. There is

every reason to hope that they will enrich science with important and

magnificent discoveries.

IV. A few general facts, the interest of which will at once be

evident, may already be disentangled from details without leaving

European soil. We will first establish the fact, that in quaternary

ages, man did not present that uniformity of characters, which a

recent origin would lead us to expect. The _species_ is already

composed of several _races_; these races appear successively or

simultaneously; they live side by side; and perhaps, as M. Dupont has

thought, the _war of races_ may be traced as far back as this period.

The presence of these clearly characterised human groups in the

quaternary period, is enough to furnish a strong presumption in

favour of the previous existence of man. The influence of very

dissimilar and long-continued actions, can alone explain the

differences which separate the man of the Vézère in France from that

of the Lesse in Belgium.

V. In spite of some opinions which were brought forward at a time

when science was less advanced, and when terms of comparison were

wanting, we may assert that no fossil skull belongs to the African or

Melanesian Negro type. The true Negro did not exist in Europe during

the quaternary epoch.

We do not, however, conclude from this that the type must have come

into existence later, and dates from the present geological period.

Fresh research, especially in Asia, and in countries inhabited

by black nations, can alone decide this point with certainty.

Nevertheless, up to the present time, the results of observation have

been but little favourable to the opinion of some anthropologists,

who have regarded the Negro races as anterior to all others.

VI. In fossil, as well as in modern skulls, we find between races

and individuals oscillations of a more or less striking character.

It is, however, an important fact that these oscillations are often

of less extent in known fossil races than those observed in existing

populations. I shall only quote one example. The cephalic index of

the most ancient European race, taken from the Neanderthal man, in

which the characters are exaggerated, is 72; that of the La Truchère

skull, which belongs to the latter part of the quaternary period,

is 84·32, a difference of 12·32. Now, at the present time, the mean

cephalic index of the Esquimaux is 69·30, that of South Germans

86·20, a difference of 16·90. Thus, between the two extreme races

separated by the greater part of the glacial period, the oscillation

of the cephalic index is less than between two modern contemporary

races. Moreover, the latter range between wider limits, both above

and below the mean, than the two fossil races. This fact may perhaps

be explained by several considerations, which I cannot enter into

here.

I should, moreover, observe that the Lagoa Santa skull found by Lund,

and which has just been described by MM. Lacerta and Peixoto, effaces

in a great measure the differences which I have just pointed out.

According to the Brazilian savants, its cephalic index is 69·72,

descending almost as low as the mean index of the Esquimaux.

It is interesting to find that this smaller variability of fossil

races is established in one of the very characters which has been the

principal cause of the comparisons of some of our inferior existing

races with apes. Among quaternary skulls there are some which may

be considered as presenting the mean degree of orthognathism of

the white races themselves. The Nagy-Sap skull, the No. 1 of the

Trou du frontal, one of the women of Grenelle, etc., may be quoted

as examples. Others, such as the No. 2 of the Trou du frontal,

another woman of Grenelle, the old man of Cro-Magnon, several crania

from Solutré, are more or less prognathous. There are some which

equal, or even exceed, in this respect the mean of our Negro races.

Nevertheless, there are none which attain a degree of prognathism

equal to that presented by certain examples of the inferior

Australian types, or of the Kaffir race.

Another order of facts, which, without possessing the importance of

the preceding, are still of real value, present similar results. I

allude to the stature and to its variations. M. Hamy has determined

it by the measurement of the femur and humerus. It appears from his

investigations that the maximum presented by the Mentone skeleton is

1·85 m. (6·06 ft.), and the minimum, taken from one of the Furfooz

skeletons, is 1·50 m. (4·92 ft.) The difference between these two

numbers, 0·35 m. (1·14 ft.), is far smaller than that which exists

between the extremes of the table given above.

The mean of the numbers found by M. Hamy, 1·764 m. (5·839 ft.),

places the race of Cro-Magnon very near to the Patagonians of

Musters; but the Furfooz race, with its mean of 1·530 m. (5·019 ft.),

stands well above the Bosjesmans and Mincopies. It occupies almost

the same position as the Lapps.

Oscillations have taken place in time as well as in space. The

most ancient race is not the tallest. The skeletons of Neanderthal

and Brux give a mean of only 1·705 m. (5·593 ft.). The race of

Cro-Magnon, superior in height to all others, is chronologically

intermediate between them.

The preceding generalizations rest, it is true, upon a number of

observations as yet too limited to be regarded as conclusive. But

they at least confute some assertions, and tend to dissipate more

than one prejudice.

VII. Dolichocephalic or brachycephalic, large or small, orthognathous

or prognathous, quaternary man is always man in the full acceptance

of the word. Whenever the remains have been sufficient to enable

us to form an opinion, we have found the foot and the hand which

characterised our species, the vertebral column has displayed the

double curvature to which Lawrence ascribes such great importance,

and which was made by Serres the attribute of the human kingdom, as

he understood it. The more we study the subject, the more are we

convinced that every bone of the skeleton, from the most massive

to the smallest, carries with it, in its form and proportions, a

certificate of origin which it is impossible to mistake.

By reason of its special importance, the skull deserves consideration

for a moment from this point of view.

We will first state that all the bones of the modern human skull are

to be found in the fossil skull under the same forms, and presenting

the same relations. Whether we consider them separately or as a

whole, they cannot fail to awaken the recollection of what we see

around us every day. Even the immense development of the superciliary

ridges in the Neanderthal man cannot disguise the entirely human

character of this exceptional skull, which I shall presently discuss

more at length.

In all fossil races we find the essentially human character of the

predominance of the cranium over the face. With them, as with us, the

bony framework which contains the brain becomes longer, narrower,

or shorter, at the same time increasing in size; it rises or is

flattened, but always preserves a capacity comparable to that of the

crania of the present day. In the Neanderthal cranium, which has been

termed the most _brutal_ known, the cranial capacity, calculated by

men who, we may be sure, did not wish to exaggerate, was as much

as 1220 cubic centimetres (74·420 cub. in.). Even M. Schaaffhausen

considers it as equal to that of the Malays, and superior to that of

Hindoos of small stature. In the Brazilian skull from Lagoa Santa it

is 1388 cubic centimetres (84·66 cub. in.).

We can, therefore, with perfect safety apply to the fossil man, with

which we are acquainted, the words of Huxley: “Neither in quaternary

ages nor at the present time does any intermediary being fill the gap

which separates man from the Troglodyte. To deny the existence of

this gap would be as reprehensible as absurd.”

The eminent naturalist who wrote this sentence did not the less seize

every occasion which presented itself to point out, in the different

human races, what are called _simian traits_ and _characters_. Is

there then in Huxley an unfortunate contradiction? Evidently not. It

is in his case, as in that of all true naturalists, only an abuse of

language, against which I have already protested. Belonging to the

white race, which they naturally regard as the normal type, confining

their attention to the very substantial anatomical similarities which

exist between the man and the ape, they compare constantly and solely

the white on the one hand, with the anthropoid ape on the other.

They forget that the _oscillations of morphological characters_,

the inevitable result of the formation of the human races, must

necessarily sometimes increase and sometimes diminish, in however

small a degree, the distance which separates the extreme terms; they

allow themselves to employ these figurative expressions, and I should

let them pass without comment were they not sometimes understood

literally, either voluntarily or involuntarily. We know that the

English naturalist has himself been obliged to protest strongly

against the conclusions which have been drawn from his words or

writings.

Huxley allows that the oscillations are never so great as to cause

confusion. The _human character_, therefore, does not alter in

nature; it does not become _simian_. The oscillations to which I

allude may sometimes be observed in the same individual and even

in the same bone. In the old man of Cro-Magnon, of whom I shall

presently speak at some length, the femur is the broadest and

thickest that M. Broca has ever measured in man, and we have found

others of still greater size. Now, in the chimpanzee this same bone

is broader and much thinner. Are we therefore justified in saying

that the femur of Les Eyzies is partly _simian_ and partly _more than

human_?

Finally, what has really been proved, is the conclusion of Huxley

which I have just quoted. Believers in _pithecoid man_ must be

content to seek him elsewhere than in the only fossil races with

which we are acquainted, and to have recourse to the unknown. There

may be some who will murmur at this necessity, and protest in the

name of _philosophy_. Let them say what they will, we are content

with having experience and observation on our side.

VIII. If we consider the general formation of the skull, all fossil

races may be referred to two fundamental types; the one distinctly

dolichocephalic, and the other advancing by degrees from metacephaly

to a very strongly marked brachycephaly.

Animated discussions were held some years ago to decide which of

these two types preceded the other. This question again is connected

with a number of general ideas which may be designated as the

_mongoloid theory_.

At the conclusion of some excavations among ancient tombs and a few

dolmens, Serres announced in 1854 that the inhabitants of France

reckoned Mongolians among their ancestors. Some time previous to

this, some Scandinavian savants, among others S. Nilsson, Retzius,

Eschricht, etc., had connected with the Lapps, that is to say with

the Finnish race, round-headed skeletons which had been discovered

in the neolithic tombs and the peat-bogs of Scania. M. Pruner Bey,

combining these earlier notions with the data recently acquired

concerning the antiquity of man, has formulated by degrees a complete

theory, remarkable for its simplicity and for the light which it

throws upon the whole past history of the populations of France.

In the opinion of this eminent anthropologist, there still exists

at the present time a vast human formation which he designates

_mongoloid_, because it appears to him to be connected in certain

respects with the Mongol type, properly so called, whilst at the same

time preserving a certain number of characters in which it resembles

the white races. This great race, as it is understood by M. Pruner

Bey, occupies the greater portion of the north of the old continent,

and extends even into America. It is, moreover, represented in the

centre and south of Europe by several more or less isolated groups,

such as the Basques. Certain historical populations, such as the

Ligurians, have belonged to it. There is every indication of its

having once occupied the whole of Europe. Now, this race itself is

descended from the primitive quaternary race, as it is known to us

through the fossil skulls found by M. Dupont at Furfooz in the valley

of the Lesse. The parentage and filiation of these races appear to M.

Pruner Bey to be attested by the general form of the skull and by its

proportions, which in all these races are more or less brachycephalic.

The opponents of these general views brought forward the existence

of the crania found in the Neanderthal in Prussia, in the Engis

cave in Belgium, in the tufa beds of La Denise in Auvergne, in the

loess of the Rhine at Eguisheim in Alsace. All these heads are

dolichocephalic. They were said to be more ancient than those of

Furfooz. But at this time there were doubts of a different nature

with regard to nearly all these bones which might have appeared

legitimate, and the theory of M. Pruner Bey gained by this means

many strong adherents. When writing in 1875 my _Rapport sur les

progrès de l’Anthropologie_, I felt obliged to ascribe anteriority

to the brachycephalic type, though at the same time making formal

reservations, especially in favour of the Eguisheim skull. The

discovery at Cro-Magnon, in Périgord, which followed soon after,

showed how carefully we must guard against drawing too hasty

conclusions. It was evident, that, in presence of these great

dolichocepliali, incontestably anterior to the men of the Lesse, the

mongoloid theory must undergo serious modifications which I did not

hesitate to acknowledge.

Since then science has been enriched by new discoveries, and many

points have been cleared up. The old beds of the Seine, studied

with remarkable intelligence by M. Belgrand, have furnished us with

a _relative chronometer_, the indications of which have been fully

appreciated by M. Hamy. The work presented by him at the Stockholm

Congress leaves no room for doubt. Till the present time the

dolichoceplialic type only has been found in the _lowest gravels_ of

the plain of Grenelle. It is therefore represented by the _Canstadt

race_. It reappears in the form of the _Cro-Magnon race_, in the

_alluvial beds_ at the level of and below the erratic blocks at a

depth of from 3 to 4 m. (10 to 13 ft.). Skulls which approach more or

less to the brachycephalic type are only found above this level at a

depth of from 2·50 m. to 1·40 m. (8 ft. 2 in. to 4 ft. 7 in.).

The superposition, and consequently the succession of types, is here

evident. Does this authorise us to consider the dolichocephalic type

as having everywhere preceded the brachycephalic? We ought perhaps

still to retain some doubts on this point. Some fragments, belonging

probably to the latter, have been discovered at Clichy, very little

above a cranial vault of the Canstadt race, and the beautiful skull

from Nagy-Sap in Hungary was obtained from a well characterized

loess, the age of which does not however appear to have been

determined.

Perhaps, when fresh facts are forthcoming to dispel the latest

doubts, we shall find that the two types appeared at almost the

same time upon the lands which were one day to become Europe; but

at present everything argues in favour of the anteriority of the

dolichocephali. In America the only known fossil skull leads to the

same conclusion.

However this may be, the mongoloid theory can no longer be accepted

as absolute. The man of Cro-Magnon and that of Furfooz cannot be

placed in the same group, and considered as belonging to the same

race. The idea of M. Pruner Bey is, nevertheless, partly true; and

the honour of having connected living with fossil populations cannot

be denied to this eminent anthropologist. Still, what he has said

of one race must be applied to the rest. The inhabitants of Western

Europe are connected with the quaternary period, not by a single

root, but by six at least, and perhaps more.

IX. A methodical distribution of the different races of a species is

never an easy task. The difficulty is very strongly felt in the study

of living human races; it is still greater in dealing with fossil

races. Even if the materials were as abundant as they are rare, we

no longer have the perfect individual, and cannot attempt to apply

the _natural method_; we are forced to be content with a _systematic

classification_. This is what M. Hamy and I have been obliged to do;

and without sharing the absolute opinions which were once advanced by

Retzius, we took the general form of the skull as the starting point

for our classification. In so doing we have, moreover, only imitated

palæontologists in their studies upon fossil animals.

We have already seen that considerations drawn from this method lead

to a division of fossil man into two groups, the one dolichocephalic,

and the other brachycephalic. The Lagoa Santa skull, which must from

all appearance be the type of a distinct race, is evidently connected

with the former. The accounts of this fossil are, however, at present

so incomplete, that I cannot stop to consider it in such a rapid

sketch as this.

In these two fundamental groups differences exist side by side with

the common character. In the former these differences are very great

and strongly marked; they are generally less so in the latter. Thus

we have clearly distinguished the two dolichocephalic types, while we

have placed in the same chapter, and as it were in a kind of family,

part at least of the brachycephalic races.

Several objections may be raised against this nomenclature, of which

we are well aware. We understood perfectly that the skull of La

Truchère is as distinct from those of Furfooz as the Neanderthal

skull is from that of Cro-Magnon. On the one hand, however, this

skull is the extreme limit of a graduated series, from which it

seemed to us difficult to detach it; on the other, this fossil, at

the time when we were writing, was perfectly unique. Even at the

present time it has only again been met with in the neolithic period.

Thus, in giving it a place in our table, we did not wish to separate

in an absolute manner an individual case.

As to the other types which we have placed in the same chapter,

they form a true natural group, each at the same time having its

special characters, which by careful study we are able to recognise.

The races may, therefore, be clearly defined. The Grenelle race,

especially, will always be very distinct from the two Furfooz races.

Nevertheless, we here no longer meet with decisive characters which

strike us at the first glance, and the ethnical affinities are

evidently closer. It will, perhaps, at some future time be possible

to trace these three branches to the common source from which they

have all sprung. In short, we must represent the present state of

our knowledge without interfering with the rights of the future. Our

nomenclature satisfies, we believe, this condition.

We admit then two dolichocephalic races, those of Canstadt and

of Cro-Magnon. The more or less brachycephalic races are four in

number. Under the title of Furfooz races we have included two races

discovered in that famous locality. The Grenelle race and that of La

Truchère also take their names from that of the localities where they

were found.

Let us rapidly review all these races.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE CANSTADT RACE.

I. The name of this race is that of the village near which the first

human fossil was found. In 1700, Duke Eberhard Ludwig of Wurtemberg

excavated a Roman oppidum in the neighbourhood of Stuttgard. A

portion of the cranial vault of a man was discovered in the midst of

a number of animal bones. Geology and palæontology were, however,

still in their infancy; and the nature of this precious fragment was

unknown till Jaeger, in 1835, recognised its value as an argument

in favour of the coexistence of man with the great extinct mammals.

After close study, thanks to the kindness of M. Fraas, M. Hamy and I

have been able, without any difficulty, to connect it with the famous

Neanderthal skull.

II. The latter was discovered in 1857 in a small cavern near

Düsseldorf. The skeleton was perfect. Unfortunately, the workmen who

discovered it, broke and dispersed the bones, of which part only

were saved by Dr. Fuhlrott. When exhibited the same year at the

Congress of Bonn, they became the subject of long-continued study

and discussion. M. Schaaffhausen, although himself sometimes going

beyond the truth, took his position from the first upon the right

ground. Some anatomists wished, however, to consider this specimen

as a special _species_, and even a fresh _genus_. It was especially

considered as intermediate between man and apes, and here and there

traces may still be found of these opinions.

The only cause of these exaggerations is a feature, striking it is

true, which is presented by this cranial vault. In the Neanderthal

man the frontal sinuses have an exceptional development, and the

superciliary ridges, almost lost in the middle of the glabella,

form a most strange protuberance above the orbit. This conformation

has not failed to be compared to the _bony ridges_ which the

anthropomorphous apes possess in the same place. Then, starting from

this fact, it has been thought necessary to find in the rest of the

cranium characters in harmony with this _simian feature_. Stress

has been laid upon its slight elevation, the lengthened form, the

projection of the occipital region, etc.

With a little partiality, and by only comparing it with modern

skulls, which are considered as normal, a separate species of being

has been made of the Neanderthal man. By degrees, however, other

crania equally fossil have been connected with this type. Indeed,

in several parts of Europe those characters which were too hastily

declared to be unique have been observed in dolmens in less ancient

burial places, in historical persons, and even in individuals

living at the present time. There was, then, no alternative but to

conclude that the Neanderthal man belonged to a formation which was

unquestionably human, to a _race_, certain features of which were

merely exaggerated in his case.

This race is none the less remarkable and perfectly characterized.

In all individuals of the male sex we find a greater or less

development of the superciliary prominences, which were so striking

in the Neanderthal man. The low and narrow forehead appears still

more receding in consequence of this contrast. The cranial vault is

much flattened. Tolerably regular in its two anterior thirds, it

rises towards the upper portion of the occiput, and is prolonged

backwards. The entire skull is relatively narrow, and we have already

seen that the cephalic index descends as low as 72. These bones

are also remarkable for their thickness, which in the Eguisheim

cranium reaches 11 millimetres (0·43 in.). Some of these features

are modified in the female skull. The superciliary ridges disappear

almost entirely. The occipital protuberance, and especially the

prominence of its upper portion, are much less marked. The cephalic

index rises one or two units, but the flattening of the vault and

the other characters are persistent.

The Neanderthal cranium, and all those which may also be connected

with the Canstadt type, are incomplete and without the face. One

skull alone, the age of which unfortunately is not determined with

certainty, enables us to fill up this gap. It is that from Forbes

Quarry near Gibraltar. In this case the cranium, and particularly the

forehead, exactly coincide with the description given above of the

Neanderthal cranium. Immense and almost circular orbits, the index

of which rises almost to 68·83, well agree with the vestiges in the

Neanderthal cranium, and hide by their external border the temporal

region. Below, the malar bones descend almost vertically; the nasal

bones are prominent; the nasal orifices very broad. The superior

maxillary bone is sensibly prognathous, and lastly the dental arch

is of a horse-shoe shape narrowing backwards. The whole is rude and

massive. A face recently discovered by M. Piette in the Gourdan

grotto, and which will shortly be described by M. Hamy, confirms the

connection which we have established between the Forbes Quarry skull

and the remains of the Canstadt race. Found in the inferior beds of

the cave, among flints of the Moustier type, this specimen reproduces

with some modifications the characters which we have just described.

The inferior maxillary bone recalls that of Arcy.

If these characters are united to those presented by the celebrated

maxillary bone of Naulette, we must add that the chin in the Canstadt

man is but slightly prominent, and that the lower part of the face

was sometimes more peculiar, in this respect, than the greater number

of the skulls of Negroes from Guinea. The researches of M. Hamy have,

however, shown that the singular maxillary bone discovered by M.

Dupont, was again only the exaggerated realization of a type which is

met with elsewhere under considerable modifications.

In short, the cranium and face of the Canstadt man must, as a rule,

have presented a strangely savage aspect.

The body appears to have harmonised with the head. The few bones of

the limbs, preserved more or less intact, indicate a stature of only

1m.68 to 1m.72 (5ft. 6in., to 5ft. 8in.); yet their proportions are

athletic. They are very thick relatively to their length, and the

protuberances and depressions serving for muscular attachments are

remarkably developed. Moreover, the tibia discovered in a quarry at

Clichy by M. Bertrand, presented the flattened form which has been

designated _platycnemic_, and the ribs of the Neanderthal skeleton

were sensibly more rounded than is generally the case.

III. As far as we know at present, the Canstadt race is undoubtedly

the most ancient European one. It disputed the ground with the great

extinct mammals, with the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros, the cave

bear, and the cave hyæna. It belongs, therefore, to the earliest ages

of the quaternary epoch. In the opinion of M. Schaaffhausen, it may

be traced to an earlier period still, and is identical with tertiary

man surviving the latest geological revolution.

The naturalist who has made us so well acquainted with the

Neanderthal man, only invokes, in support of his opinion, what he

calls the _typical inferiority_ of this man, and of those who are

connected with him. This reason would to many be an insufficient

motive for the view which he has taken. But I have observed above,

that we are justified in assuming that man followed into Europe

the great mammals which were driven by the cold into more southern

countries. There can, then, be nothing strange in the idea that the

race, to which everything points as having been the most ancient upon

our soil, should also have been the one to accomplish the migration.

But were the Saint-Prest, the Monte Aperto, and especially the Thénay

men only its pioneers? The future alone can answer this question

either in the affirmative or negative.

However this may be, the remains of human industry indicate a

well-marked progress since the earliest ages. Tools and arms became

more numerous and perfect. Deer’s antlers and bear’s jaw-bones are

worked into weapons and tools; in addition to scrapers and borers,

the form of which becomes more and more marked, we find knives,

chisels, and hammers, set in handles: hatchets of much greater size,

sometimes comparatively thin, flat upon one side but retouched upon

the other, sometimes thick and rudely cut on both sides, with or

without a handle, belong to the _moustierien_ and _acheuléen_ types

of M. de Mortillet; they assume definite forms by which we are

able to recognise several modifications characteristic of certain

localities; the arrow is larger and the lance has become a formidable

weapon. In the midst of the lowest quaternary alluvial deposits, we

meet with small heaps of _coscinopora globularis_, and other small

chalk fossils, all pierced either naturally or artificially. The

only possible explanation is to consider these polypi and shells as

having once formed necklaces or bracelets, the thread of which has

disappeared. Thus, the taste for adornment, so largely developed in

modern savages, was displayed as early as this period.

If we compare the industries, still very modest, with those of the

present day, we shall be able to form for ourselves an approximate

idea of what the race of Canstadt was when it occupied perhaps nearly

the whole of Europe. With M. Lartet we see in the obsidian lances of

New Caledonia, the flint heads of the lower alluvium of the Somme;

the hatchet of certain Australians reminds us, as it did Sir Charles

Lyell, of the Abbeville hatchet. It is with the latter and with the

Bosjesmans, that I should be tempted to connect the Neanderthal man

and his fellows. Like them, he seems to have most frequently led a

wandering life. But few of his dwellings, or places of meeting, are

known to us, such as the Naulette cavern. Nothing seems to indicate

that he had places of burial such as we find later. Everything tends

to show, moreover, that he lived entirely as a hunter, and there

is nothing to justify us in supposing that he was acquainted with

agriculture, which is carried to such a remarkable pitch by certain

Melanesian negroes.

IV. Judging from the geological distribution of the remains which

have been met with up to the present time, the Canstadt race during

the quaternary period principally occupied the basins of the Seine

and the Rhine, and extended perhaps as far as Stängenäs in the

Bohuslän; certainly as far as the Olmo in central Italy; as Brux in

Bohemia; as the Pyrenees in France, and probably as far as Gibraltar.

This race is not restricted in point of geological time. The

attention roused by the strange characters of the Neanderthal cranium

was the means of instituting widespread investigations, which have

rapidly drawn this specimen from the isolation in which, at first,

it seemed to be placed. B. Davis, Busk, Turner, King, Carter Blake,

Pruner Bey, Vogt, Huxley and Hamy have been particularly successful

in these investigations, and have brought to light relations which

are now generally adopted.

The result obtained from all these labours is that the Canstadt type,

sometimes remarkably pure, and sometimes again more or less modified

by crossings, is found in the dolmens and in the cemeteries of the

Gallo-Roman period, in those of the Middle Ages, and in modern tombs

from Scandinavia to Spain, from Portugal to Italy, and from Scotland

and Ireland to the valley of the Danube, in the Crimea at Minsk, and

as far as Orenbourg in Russia. This area of habitation comprises, we

see, the entire space of time which has elapsed from the quaternary

period to the present day, and the whole of Europe.

The remark has with justice been made by M. Hamy, that there

probably exist in India, in the midst of populations driven back

by the Aryan invasion, representatives of the Neanderthal type.

Nevertheless, to find them with any degree of certainty, we must go

as far as Australia. Our investigations have on this point confirmed

those of Huxley. Among the races of this great island there is

one, distributed particularly in the province of Victoria, in the

neighbourhood of Port Western, which reproduces in a remarkable

manner the characters of the Canstadt race.

Finally, the Canstadt race has had representatives in America also.

One of the drawings published by MM. Lacerta and Peixoto leaves no

room for doubt on this point. It represents almost the whole of

the upper part of a cranial vault found in the province of Ceara,

the resemblance of which with that of Eguisheim is very striking.

Unfortunately, the Brazilian naturalists say nothing about the

situation of this precious fragment at the moment of its discovery,

and we do not know whether the cranium in question is a fossil or

whether it belongs to the present epoch.

V. All these facts, which I have been obliged to sum up in a few

lines, raise an important problem, and lead to an interesting

conclusion.

Are we, in the first place, justified in connecting ethnologically

the crania of a more or less Neanderthal type, discovered in

the Antipodes as well as in Europe, with the races, the remains

of which have been preserved by the quaternary alluvium? Is not

the reproduction of this type purely accidental? Do not the most

ancient crania owe their remarkable characters to some pathological

condition, to a simple deviation from the normal development, and

particularly to a premature union of the bones of the cranium?

These several opinions have been maintained, and the latter in

particular has had adherents. It rests principally upon the condition

of the ossified sutures of the Neanderthal cranium. But these same

sutures may be observed in the Canstadt cranium. M. Sauvage found in

the almost infantine frontal bone of La Denise all the Neanderthal

characters, although the medio-frontal suture as yet only existed in

part. It is entirely open in the cranium of the young man, discovered

in a Poitou tumulus, described by M. Pruner Bey, and which it is

impossible not to connect with the preceding.

Thus we cannot attribute to the premature ossification of the

sutures, the form of the crania of the men of Canstadt. For a much

stronger reason, the clearly marked characters of the forehead and

face which remain cannot support this theory, and we must allow that

the whole constitutes a true ethnical type.

Since we meet with this type disseminated through time and space,

always fundamentally the same, and sometimes reappearing in all its

primitive purity, we are forced to choose between the two following

interpretations; we have here either an _example of atavism_, the

importance of which is attested by its generality: or else the

reproduction of these exceptional forms, in the midst of _the most

varied populations_ and under the _most different conditions of

life_, is due to mere _chance_.

The laws which govern the formation and maintenance of animal and

vegetable races, and from which man cannot escape, do not allow

the admission of the latter conclusion. This is why M. Hamy and I

have regarded the Canstadt race as one of the elements of modern

populations. In Europe it has blended with succeeding races, but

asserts its past existence by the marks which it impresses, even at

the present day, upon some rare individuals. In Australia, perhaps,

it has some direct descendants in the tribes of North Western.

VI. The epithets _brutal_ and _simian_, too often applied to the

Neanderthal cranium, and to those which resemble it, the conjectures

made with regard to the individual to whom they belonged, might lead

us to think that a certain moral and intellectual inferiority was

naturally connected with this form of cranium. It can easily be shown

that this conclusion rests upon a most worthless foundation.

At the Paris Congress, M. Vogt quoted the example of one of his

friends, Dr. Emmayer, whose cranium exactly recalls that of

Neanderthal, and who is nevertheless a highly distinguished lunacy

doctor. In passing through the Copenhagen Museum, I was struck by

the Neanderthal characters presented by one of the crania in the

collection; it proved to be that of Kay Lykke, a Danish gentleman,

who played some part in the political affairs of the 17th century.

M. Godron has published the drawing of the skull of Saint Mansuy,

Bishop of Toul in the 4th century, and this head even exaggerates

some of the most striking features of the Neanderthal cranium. The

forehead is still more receding, the vault more depressed, and the

head so long that the cephalic index is 69·41. Lastly the skull of

Bruce, the Scotch hero, is also a reproduction of the Canstadt type.

In presence of these facts, we must assuredly acknowledge that even

the individual whose remains were found in the Neanderthal cave

was capable of possessing all the moral and intellectual qualities

compatible with his inferior social condition.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE CRO-MAGNON RACE.

I. In the year 1858, in the valley of the Vézère, near to the

village of Les Eyzies, which had already been rendered famous by

the investigations of the elder M. Lartet and Christy, the workmen

brought to light in the rock-shelter of Cro-Magnon the bones of

three men, a woman and a child, which have been preserved to

science by MM. Berton-Meyron and Delmarès. M. Louis Lartet, to

whom the study of the deposit had been entrusted, determined their

geological age; MM. Broca and Pruner Bey described them with all

the precision which we should expect from their knowledge of the

subject, and the discussions which arose between these two eminent

anthropologists, brought the essential points still more strongly

forward. The Cro-Magnon bones thus became classic almost within a day

of their discovery; and M. Hamy and I could not do better than group

around them the human remains which resemble them. This has been

our reason for choosing the name which we have given to our second

dolichocephalic race.

Like the preceding one, this also has its typical individual who

exaggerates in certain respects the characters of the race, and thus

presents an extreme term of comparison. The contrast is only the more

striking. The only character common to both the Neanderthal man and

the old man of Cro-Magnon lies in the proportions of the cranium. The

cephalic index, here 73·76, differs but very slightly, as we see at

once from what we have already stated. It descends, moreover, as low

as 70·05 in a cranium of the same race found at Solutré; it is 70·52

in the famous Engis cranium. It was this elongation from the front

backwards which led Schmerling to connect the fossil man which he had

just discovered with the Ethiopian rather than with the European.

This, at least, partly accounts for the theory which makes the Negro

the starting point of our race. M. Hamy, in connecting the Engis

cranium with the Cro-Magnon type, has added one more fact to those

which are at variance with this doctrine.

In every other respect the Cro-Magnon head and that of Canstadt

are most dissimilar. Instead of a low and retreating forehead

above superciliary ridges which remind us of the ape, instead

of a flattened vault like that of the Neanderthal skull and its

companions, we here find a large forehead rising above frontal

sinuses but slightly marked, and a vault presenting the finest

proportions. The frontal bone is remarkably developed from before

backward. The fronto-occipital curve is continued with a striking

regularity till within a short distance above the lambda. It is there

bent so as to form a surface which is prolonged upon the cerebral

part of the occipital bone. The cerebral region of the same bone is

carried abruptly downward, and presents numerous strong impressions

of muscular insertions.

This skull, so remarkable for its fine proportion, is also remarkable

for its capacity. According to M. Broca, who could only work under

precautions calculated to diminish the amount, it is equal to at

least 1590 cubic centimetres (96·99 cubic inches). I have already

remarked that this number is far higher than the mean taken from

modern Parisians; it is equally so in comparison with the other

European races.

Thus, in the savage of quaternary ages, who had to fight against the

mammoth with stone weapons for arms, we find all those craniological

characters generally considered as the sign of great intellectual

development.

The features of the face are not less striking than those of the

skull. In the heads which M. Pruner Bey calls _harmonic_, a face

elongated from above downward corresponds to a skull elongated

from behind forward. When there is a disagreement between these

proportions the head is _dysharmonic_. This latter character is

very strongly marked in the old man of Cro-Magnon. The bizygomatic

transverse diameter acquires an extent rare even in harmonic

brachycephali. In his case the facial index descends as low as 63.

This exaggeration in breadth is present also in all the upper and

medial parts of the face. The orbits, almost rectilinear at their

extremities, are remarkable for their slight elevation, being on the

other hand very long. The orbital index descends lower than M. Broca

has ever known it to be: it is only 61.

But this tendency to breadth does not extend to the medial regions

or to the inferior portion of the face. The nose, the bones of

which are boldly projected forward and constitute a strongly marked

protuberance, is narrow; from its index, 45·09, it places the old

man of Cro-Magnon amongst the lepthorhini of M. Broca. The superior

maxillary bone is equally narrowed relatively to the face which

it terminates, and the alveolar arch is projected outward in such

a manner as to produce a very decided prognathism. The inferior

maxillary bone is especially remarkable for the breadth of its

ascending branches which, according to the investigation of M. Broca,

surpass in this respect all other known human jaw-bones. The breadth

in question is 49 m.m. (1·93 inch). Far from being obliterated and

retreating, as in the Canstadt race, the slightly triangular chin

projects forwards.

The cephalic characters of the old man of Cro-Magnon are to be found

more or less strongly marked in all the men of the same race. They

are generally modified in the women. Thus, even in that specimen,

the head of which, unfortunately incomplete, was discovered not far

from that of the old man, we see the beautiful lines of the skull

preserved, and the forehead even rising a little higher still. But

the posterior surface is less pronounced, the dysharmony is less

strong between the skull and the face. The latter is relatively

longer, the orbits are higher, the nose is broader, and the

prognathism is modified. We cannot, however, deny the ethnical

relation of the two heads which were found together, and which thus

constitute definite terms of comparison for the two sexes.

The Cro-Magnon race was tall. The mean height deduced from the

measurements taken by M. Hamy upon a skeleton and the isolated bones

of five men is 1·78 m. (5 feet 10 inches). With the old man of

Cro-Magnon it was about 1·82 m. (5 feet 11·6 inches), and with the

Mentone man, whose skeleton was found by M. Rivière entire and _in

situ_, it was as much as 1·85 m. (6 feet 0·8 inches). The Cro-Magnon

woman measured 1·66 m. (5 feet 5·3 inches). These bones and all those

which have been connected with them, moreover, give indications of

a remarkably strong race. They are thick and solid. In all cases

the muscular impressions are very strongly marked. In the old man

of Cro-Magnon the femurs are also the broadest and thickest that

M. Broca has ever measured, as we have already remarked. The linea

aspera is also of an unusual breadth and thickness, and forms a sort

of prominent column or buttress.

Finally, in the Cro-Magnon men, a fine open forehead, a large,

narrow, and aquiline nose, must have compensated for any strangeness

which the face may have acquired from the probable smallness

of the eyes, from very strong masseters, and from a slightly

lozenge-shaped contour. With these features, the type of which is

in no way disagreeable, and allows of real beauty, this magnificent

race combined a high stature, powerful muscles, and an athletic

constitution. It seems to have been fitted in every way for

struggling against the difficulties and perils of savage life.

II. We have already seen that the Cro-Magnon race was discovered

immediately above that of Canstadt in the alluvial deposits of

Grenelle. It is therefore very old, and was contemporary with the

great mammals, now either extinct or emigrated. More sociable,

doubtless, and more settled than the preceding race, it inhabited

caverns where it left numerous specimens of its handiwork; it buried

its dead under the shelters where they are now found. A great number

of eminent investigators have explored these _scientific quarries_. I

cannot enumerate them all here, but there is one name, the omission

of which would be unpardonable, that, namely, of Edouard Lartet. It

is well known with what persevering intelligence, sometimes alone,

sometimes accompanied by his friend Christy, this man, as modest

as he is learned, has explored these caves, what treasures he has

obtained from them, and the prudence and sagacity which he showed

in the interpretation of his splendid discoveries, and only justice

was done to him in awarding him the title of _founder of human

palæontology_.

Thanks to him, and to those who have followed in his steps, we

possess the essential elements of a history of the Cro-Magnon race.

Almost without leaving this valley of the Vézère, the name of which

stands so high in anthropology, we can, as M. Broca has done, follow

it step by step. In fact, from the village of Les Eyzies to the

rock-shelter of Moustier, within a distance of from seven to eight

miles we meet with no less than eight human settlements, all of which

have become more or less celebrated from the different records which

they have furnished. They are the _Moustier_ cavern, the _Moustier_

shelter, the shelter of _La Madeleine_, the _Cro-Magnon_ shelter and

burial-place, the _Laugerie-Haute_ shelter, the _Laugerie-Basse_

shelter, the _Gorge d’Enfer_ cavern, and the _Les Eyzies_ cavern.

The most ancient, that of Moustier, is connected by its fauna with

the lower alluvium (bas niveaux) of Grenelle, and dates at least

from the close of the age of the bear; that of La Madeleine cannot

be placed much before the present epoch. Between these two extremes

are ranged the other six, and altogether they mark out, so to speak,

the two last periods of the quaternary ages. Yet to obtain a clear

idea of the social and intellectual development of the race, to

learn how far it complied with the modifications of the climate, and

what progress or what decadence these modifications imposed upon

it, we must consult the evidences which it has left in many other

localities, and especially in the caves and shelters of Bruniquel, in

the burial-places of Solutré, in the caves of Gourdan, Duruty, and of

L’Homme-Mort, etc.

The men who frequented the Moustier cavern do not seem to have been

much superior to the Canstadt race, with which they were perhaps

associated, and whose industries they closely imitated. Their

conditions of existence were almost identical with those of the

preceding age. They lived among the great mammals which served them

for food. The horse and the aurochs were the general objects of their

sport. But they fed upon the mammoth, the bear, and even the lion and

the cave hyæna. To meet such enemies as these they employed a species

of spear-head and small lance, smooth upon one side, cut upon the

other, and sharp at the edges, constituting undoubtedly a formidable

weapon. This special form characterises the _Moustier type_ of M. de

Mortillet. The hunters of this epoch cut their arrows upon the same

model, but rarely made use of them; they seem to have despised birds

and small game; the other implements remained almost the same as in

the preceding age.

At Cro-Magnon, the progress is evident. Our fine old man and his

companions had arms and implements of flint, which were more

numerous, more varied and less massive. To judge from the remains of

their kitchen, they must have made frequent use of the bow, to obtain

birds and small mammals, while they still attacked large animals, and

especially the horse, with the lance, spear-head, and perhaps the

dagger.

At Laugerie-Haute, on the Vézère, at Solutré, in the Mâconnais, and

other contemporary settlements, the cutting of the flints reached

a degree of perfection which was truly marvellous. Sometimes

undoubtedly old types reappeared side by side with forms modified

by intelligent experience, and by perfected workmanship. Still

the predominance of the latter is so marked, that it distinctly

characterises this epoch. The points of the lances and javelins

are tapered off more or less in the shape of a walnut, laurel,

or plantain leaf. They are very pointed, and become perfectly

symmetrical. The arrow-heads are the object of most particular care.

M. de Ferry has very well shown that the general form, the weight,

the angle, etc., were calculated in such a manner as to be adapted to

the different distances of flight, to the necessities of the chase.

All these tools, finely cut upon both sides, present, moreover, a

much more remarkable finish than what we meet with in any of the

other implements. They were worthy of being taken for one of the

terms of comparison admitted by M. de Mortillet, and constitute his

_Solutré type_.

Essentially hunters, and certainly warriors, the men of this period

bestowed their chief attention upon their arms. They probably felt a

certain pride in possessing the finest or the best cut weapons; but

the relative indifference which they betrayed in the matter of other

objects, shows us that their chief aim in the finish of their work

was to make their weapons more terrible by increasing their power of

penetration. Several fragments of bone, discovered in places remote

from each other, and belonging to several periods, prove that these

weapons of flint, handled by strong hands, left nothing to be desired

in this respect. I shall only mention the vertebra of a reindeer,

which had been pierced through by a lance or a javelin, and a human

tibia, through the head of which an arrow has passed near to the

kneepan. In both cases the broken flint has remained, testifying to

the good quality of the weapon and to the strength with which it was

used.

At the time of the deposition of the upper river gravels, and when

the predominance of the reindeer was most marked, the industry of the

men of Cro-Magnon underwent a sudden change. Till then flint, and,

in its absence, other hard stones, had furnished both the implement

and the instrument formed by the aid of the former. Doubtless from

the earliest times, bones and the antlers of the stag or reindeer,

had been used from time to time; but they only played an almost

insignificant part in the manufacture of tools or weapons. During the

epoch of which we are speaking, they acquired a growing importance,

and soon furnished almost the only material for weapons. Flint was

now only used to make the implements, and these, on the other hand,

became more numerous, and fitted for the most varied uses. It was

with flints that the troglodytes of Les Eyzies, of Laugerie-Basse,

of La Madeleine, and a great number of other settlements, sawed

and carved their reindeer antlers to make strong harpoons, which

were barbed on one side only. It was with flint that they pointed

needles not much longer than our own, and pierced the eye. In some

specimens the latter is so small that the piercing of it remained a

problem, till Lartet reproduced it with his own hand, using one of

the implements which he had discovered. But the most characteristic

object of the _Magdalénian_ type is the arrow-head, regularly barbed

on both sides, the teeth of which contain little channels, probably

intended as the receptacle of some poisonous substance.

The succession of industries which I have just pointed out is,

moreover, by no means invariable. As the investigations and

discoveries increase in number, we are more and more impressed by

the fact that the several colonies of the race under consideration,

yielding to local necessities, or carried away by the accidents of

their development, do not present an unintelligible uniformity. The

last excavations carried out at Solutré by MM. Arcelin and the Abbé

Ducrost, show arms and instruments of the Magdalénian type which

are anterior to those of the Solutré type. In this epoch, as at the

present time, there existed a certain diversity which explains the

coincidence, in point of time, of different industrial types among

this population of similar origin.

III. The lighter, more trusty, and more varied weapons, announce a

change in the life of our troglodytes. They continue, it is true,

to hunt large game when it comes in their way; a few rare mammoths,

surviving the climatic modifications which were going on, still fell

under their hand; the horse also often contributed to their repast.

The reindeer, however, largely predominated in the _débris_ of their

kitchen. Mixed with them are found the remains of small mammals, such

as the hare and the squirrel. Birds also began to be used for food to

a considerable extent. From the bones discovered in the single grotto

of Gourdan, so admirably explored by M. Piette, M. Alph. Edwards has

been able to distinguish twenty distinct species. Lastly, the men

of the Magdalénian age fed also upon fish; but fishing again was to

them a kind of hunting. They evidently did not use the hook, and only

harpooned the larger species, the salmon in Périgord, and the pike in

the Pyrenees.

The conveyance of the large animals which fell under their hand to

their usual dwelling-place, would have been too much even for such

stalwart hunters. They cut them up upon the spot, leaving only the

skeleton of the trunk. We rarely find in the caves more than the

bones of the head and limbs, which, again, are almost always broken.

Like all savages, the troglodytes of the Vézère held the brain and

marrow in high estimation. The long bones which enclosed the latter

have evidently been split in a methodical manner, with a view to

preserving the contents. MM. Lartet and Christy even think that a

special implement was employed in eating these delicate morsels. A

kind of spatula made from the antler of a reindeer, with a conical,

richly carved handle, hollowed and rounded at the extremity, has been

regarded by them as a _marrow spoon_.

The large amount of ashes and burnt wood found in the Vézère

deposits, leaves no room for doubt that fire was used in the cooking

of food. The manner in which it was used is, however, rather a

difficulty. No trace of pottery has been found among these hunters,

and there is nothing to show that they were acquainted with the

_oven_ of the Polynesians. They must, therefore, have gone to work

like the Siberians, who, at the close of the last century, had only

vessels of leather or of wood, and nevertheless were able to boil the

water which they contained by throwing in highly heated flints.

We have no reason for thinking that the Cro-Magnon man was a

cannibal. We find among the _débris_ of his kitchen, none of these

long bones, broken so as to extract the marrow, which could not but

have been mixed with those of the large mammals, had human flesh

formed even accidentally part of their repast. Nevertheless M. Piette

has found at Gourdan several remains of human skulls, bearing the

mark of flint knives, and the trace of blows which seem to have

broken them. Axes and atlases in great quantity, jaw-bones broken or

whole, accompany these fragments of the cranial vault. These facts

may justify the opinion of M. Piette. The Gourdan warriors after

having killed an enemy, doubtless brought his head home, scalped it,

and perhaps mixed the brain in some kind of pottage, as some of the

tribes of the Philippine islands do at the present day. But they did

not eat the flesh of the vanquished, whose decapitated corpses were

probably left on the field of battle.

IV. Needles, like those which I have mentioned above, would not

have been made had there not been something to sew. This fact alone

suggests the idea of clothes. The chase furnished the raw material.

The art of preparing skins must have been carried by these tribes

as far as it has been by the Red-Skins, to judge from the number of

scrapers and smoothers which have been found in their stations. The

marks left by flint knives at the points where long tendons taken

from the limbs of the reindeer were inserted, show how the thread

was procured. The clothes, when sewn, must have been ornamented in

various ways, as they are by savages of the present day. Upon the

skeleton discovered at Laugerie-Basse by M. Massenat, twenty pierced

shells were found placed in pairs upon different parts of the body.

This was not an instance of either necklace or bracelet, but of

ornaments arranged in an almost symmetrical manner upon a garment.

The skeleton of Mentone, discovered by M. Rivière, presented a

similar appearance.

Thus the taste for adornment, so striking at the present day in

the most savage as also in the civilized nations existed in the

troglodytic tribes of the quaternary epoch. There are, moreover,

numerous proofs of this fact. The fragments of necklaces, bracelets,

etc., have been found in a great number of stations. In most cases

marine shells, sometimes fossil and obtained from the tertiary beds,

formed these ornaments. But the Cro-Magnon man combined with these

the teeth of the large carnivora; he cut also with the same intention

plates of ivory, certain soft or hard stones, and even made beads of

clay which were merely dried in the sun. Finally, he tatooed himself,

or at least painted his body with the oxides of iron or manganese,

small stores of which have on several occasions been found in

different stations, and which have left their mark upon the bones of

some skeletons, for example, upon that of Mentone.

V. The Cro-Magnon race has up to this point shown scarcely any

superiority over the hunting tribes of America, unless perhaps it

is in the dexterity which they displayed in flint cutting. But

the artistic instincts which they showed almost from their first

appearance, and the point to which they carried drawing and sculpture

in the Madeleine age, gives them quite an exceptional position

amongst those nations whose evolution has been arrested at the

lowest stage of social life. The relative alleviation of climatic

conditions, the diminution of large and ferocious animals involving

the multiplication of useful species and especially that of the

reindeer, placed at this epoch the Cro-Magnon man in conditions of

welfare unknown to his predecessors. He profited by it in developing

in a most unexpected manner his very superior talents.

As a general rule the greater number of sculptures representing

animals leave, it is true, much to be desired. We can indeed

recognise the reindeer represented in high relief; nor would it be

difficult to recognise as a mammoth the little carving made from

the antler of the reindeer discovered at Montastruc. Nevertheless,

these specimens would give but a poor idea of Magdalénean art. The

ivory dagger-handles found by M. Peccadeau de l’Isle by the side of

the mammoth fortunately confirm this impression. In both a reindeer

is represented crouching, the legs bent, the head stretched out and

the antlers lying along the body so as not to inconvenience the

hand which should hold it. The attitudes are so natural, and the

proportions so exact, that a decorative sculptor of the present day,

in treating the same subject, could scarcely do better than copy his

antique predecessor.

Drawing or rather engraving was much more commonly practised than

sculpture. It offers also more points of interest. Armed with their

point of flint, the quaternary artists engraved in turn the bone and

the antlers of the reindeer, ivory from the mammoth, and stones of

different kinds. Sometimes they endeavoured to reproduce the plants

or animals around them; at other times they followed their own fancy,

and made designs of ornamentation, in which we meet with almost all

the principles reinvented many centuries afterwards. The multiplicity

and the variety of this kind of engraving show much imagination and a

real faculty of invention.

The faculty of imitation is equally striking in drawings representing

real objects, animals in particular. They are often very remarkable

for firmness of touch, showing a perfect comprehension of the whole,

and reproducing the details with such exactness that we are not

only able unerringly to recognise the group but even the species

represented by the artist. Thus we have found successively the

ox, the aurochs, the horse, the reindeer, the elk, the stag, the

steinbock, a cetacean, certain fishes, etc. After these faithful

representations, the models of which we know, there is no reason to

doubt the exactness with which certain extinct animals have been

drawn. This very simple consideration gives great interest to the

drawing of the cave bear found by M. Garrigou upon a piece of Massat

schist, and to those of the mammoth discovered by M. Lartet in the

Périgord caves. Thanks to the latter and to what we know from the

mammoths preserved in ice in Siberia, an artist of the present day

might produce in almost exact detail the portrait of this giant of

the ancient world, which disappeared so long ago.

VI. Man figures very rarely in these drawings or sculptures, and

the representations of our species which have been met with up to

the present time, display a relative inferiority which is indeed

most strange. The small ivory statue found by M. de Vibraye at

Laugerie-Basse scarcely testifies to even the infancy of the art. It

is a woman, whose sex we are able to recognise by a detail doubtless

exaggerated, but long, stiff and with very strange protuberances at

the lower extremity of the loins. The crouching human form found by

M. l’Abbé Landesque in the same locality is still more ill-formed.

The drawings of men or women are scarcely better, and the contrast

sometimes presented upon the same specimen between them and drawings

of animals is most strange. M. l’Abbé Landesque’s _reindeer woman_ is

grotesque, whilst the hind legs of the animal, which alone have been

preserved, present all the qualities which I have noticed above and

which may be observed in the splendid horse’s head engraved upon the

other side of the bone. In M. Massénat’s _aurochs man_, the animal

has much beauty both in form and movement; the man is stiff, without

proportion or truth.

This contrast is too great and too constant to be accidental. It must

be the result of a cause arising perhaps from some superstitious idea

similar to certain modern superstitions. When Catlin had finished

his first portrait of the Red-Skin, some of the tribe looked upon

him as a dangerous sorcerer, who had robbed the model of part of

himself. Perhaps some similar idea may have prevented the artists of

the Vézère from studying the human figure, for it always happens that

when they attempt to reproduce it their graving tool hesitates, and

loses all its good qualities.

These imperfect representations, therefore, tell us nothing of the

appearance or proportions of the race. The most we can say, if

we accept the interpretations of MM. l’Abbé Landesque and Piette,

is that it was remarkably hairy. But this opinion, which rests

chiefly upon the drawing of the _reindeer woman_, seems to me to be

contradicted by that of the _aurochs man_, whose small pointed beard

scarcely extends as far as the angle of the jaw-bone. The horizontal

hatching upon the legs and body cannot, it appears to me, be taken

for hairs, because it crosses at right angles the direction which

would have been taken by the latter. I should much rather consider

them as lines of painting, a kind of decoration which we know to have

been held in high estimation amongst these tribes.

VII. However bad they may be, the drawings which I have just

described furnish us, nevertheless, with some facts respecting the

mode of life pursued by these hunters. That of the _aurochs man_

informs us that they followed the largest game naked, as is often

the case with the Red-Skins, their hair raised in a tuft on the top

of the head, and armed only with the lance or javelin. The _whale

man_ is also naked, and the immense arm which he stretches out as

far as the fin of the fish, seems to indicate that he has fought

and conquered this monster, which had doubtless run aground in some

shallow. But, from this fact alone, it follows that the quaternary

man of Périgord must sometimes have left his mountains and travelled

as far as the sea-shore. His contemporaries in the Pyrenees did

the same, as is proved by the drawings of seals discovered in the

grottoes of Gourdan and Duruthy.

Again, those deposits which are situated at the greatest distance

inland have often furnished objects which can only have been

obtained upon the sea-shore. At Cro-Magnon more than three hundred

shells of _Littorina littorea_, an oceanic species, have been

found. On the other hand the _Cypræa rufa_ and _C. lurida_ found

upon the Laugerie-Basse skeleton, which I have mentioned above, are

unquestionably Mediterranean. Sometimes the molluscs peculiar to

the two regions have been found in the same place. In the Gourdan

grotto, in the middle of the central Pyrenees, M. Piette found five

oceanic species, one Mediterranean, and five common to both seas. The

fossil shells of the Périgord deposits were generally brought from

the _falun_ of Touraine, those of Gourdan must have been collected,

partly in the Landes and in the neighbourhood of Dax, and partly near

Perpignan. In this same grotto M. Piette discovered a pumice-stone,

which had been used in polishing needles, and which he considered had

come from the volcanic region of Agde.