THE PYGMY RACES OF MEN
The tradition of the existence of dwarfs, not as isolated examples,
but as a race with their own customs, government, and language is
familiar among civilised people, and exists among scattered and remote
savages. We have all heard of them in that treasury of primitive
beliefs--the nursery. Therefore, the fact that there are at this
moment in various parts of the world dwarf or pygmy tribes of men,
living in proximity to but apart from those races which have a stature
identical with our own, has a great fascination and interest. Some few
races of men have an average height of an inch, or thereabouts,
greater than that of the people of the British Islands, whilst some
are shorter by as much as two or three inches. But, on the whole, it
may be said that, putting aside the pygmy races, of which I am about
to write, mankind generally does not show a very striking range of
normal stature--the mass in any race or region of the globe varying
from 5 ft. 4 in. to 5 ft. 8 in., and tending to the higher rather than
the lower figure.
The pygmy races are sharply separated from normal mankind by as much
as a foot, and even more, in average stature, ranging from 4 ft. to
something less than 4 ft. 11 in. in height. They are, enumerating them
in the order of their purity of race and completeness of their
isolation: (1) The Mincopies, or Andaman Islanders; (2) the Congo
pygmies (comprising the tribes known as the Akkas, or Tiki-Tikis, the
Bambutis, the Watwas, the Obongos, and Bayagas); (3) the bushmen of
South Africa; (4) the Aetas of the Philippine Islands; (5) the Samangs
of Malacca, and very similar isolated pygmy tribes which have been
observed in New Guinea, and also in the Solomon Islands and in
Formosa. The Veddas of Ceylon, the Senois of Malacca, and the Toalas
of Celebes are apparently races which have resulted from the
"crossing" of true pygmies with other normal-statured races inhabiting
the islands in which they are found. The Brahouis of Beloochistan and
the "monkey-men," or Bandra-Loks, east of the Indus, appear also to
belong to the pygmy race.
Next to their agreement in small size, the most interesting facts
about the pygmies we have just enumerated is that, notwithstanding the
wide area over which they are found in scattered, isolated
communities--viz. from the Congo to South Africa on the one hand, and,
on the other hand, from Central Africa to the Indian Ocean, and on to
New Guinea, the Philippine Islands, and Formosa--yet they all have
short, round skulls of full average brain capacity, and have their
hair growing in tightly curled-up peppercorn-like tufts--two
characters found combined in no other race. They usually have
finely-developed, straight foreheads, and the jaws do not project
strongly; the lips are usually fine and thin, and the nose, though
very broad, is not always greatly flattened. They are well-shaped,
well-proportioned little people, neither grotesque nor deformed. To a
great extent their corporeal features suggest an infantile or
child-like stage of development, and the same is true of their
intellectual condition and of their productions. Their habitations are
very primitive, either caves or low clay-made huts, of the shape of
half an egg. They do not make pottery, and neither keep herds nor till
the ground, contenting themselves with such food as wild fruits and
roots and the animals they kill with spear or arrow or capture in
traps. They do not mutilate or bedaub their bodies (though the
Andamanese indulge in a kind of "tattooing"). Among them the struggle
for life does not exist in its more brutal forms. They take care of
the sick and feeble, the children, and the old people. Cannibalism is
unknown amongst them; they punish murder and theft. They are honest,
and, moreover, are monogamous, and punish adultery, which is rare
among them. Their religion is remarkably simple. It is limited to
reverence for a Supreme Being, without any offering of sacrifice, and
they do not worship ancestors nor exhibit the superstitions known as
"animism." It has been argued that these characteristics, taken
together, indicate a primitive condition of humanity. On the other
hand, many writers regard them as degenerate offshoots of negro-like
races of larger stature and more complicated mental development.
There is no name by which the whole series of these small-sized people
is indicated excepting the ancient designation of "pygmies." Many
careful students of human races separate the pygmies of Africa as
"negrilloes" from the pygmies of Asia, whom they designate
"negritoes," and it is held that the negrilloes (Congo pygmies and
bushmen) hold the same relation to African negroes and Zulus as the
negritoes (Andamanese, and scattered tribes in New Guinea, the
Philippines, Formosa and the Solomon Islands, as well as in Malacca
and Annam and in the north-west and in other parts of Hindustan) hold
to the full-sized, frizzly haired Papuans. This, no doubt, is a
convenient way of stating the case, but the important fact remains
that the pygmies of purest race, both of Africa and Asia, have the
remarkable characteristics in common which we have noted above. Their
bodily and mental peculiarities certainly suggest, whether the
suggestion can be verified or not, the former existence in the
tropical regions of Africa and Asia of a widely spread pygmy race of
uniform character, a race which has been, to a large extent, destroyed
by other races of larger and more powerful individuals, but has also
in many regions (especially on the Asiatic Continent) intermarried
with the surrounding larger people, and given rise to hybrid races. At
the same time, it seems that in other regions this race has, by
isolation in forests and mountain ranges and by the exercise of
special skill in the use of poisoned arrows and in the arts of
concealment, evasion, and terrorising, succeeded in maintaining its
existence and primitive independence dating from remote prehistoric
times.
Whether we regard the pygmies as one race or as the result of local
modification of larger races, it is noteworthy that they are of
lighter tint than the black races close to or among whom they live.
Some, both of the African and Asiatic pygmies, are very dark
brown--practically black--but many are of a paler and yellowish tint.
We must not forget that the babies and quite young children of negroes
are nearly "white." The Asiatic pygmies, notably the Andamanese, are
darker than their African fellows. It must necessarily be difficult in
studying such a race to make due allowance not merely for admixture of
blood from surrounding populations, but to estimate correctly what the
little people have learnt in the way of art and habit from their
neighbours and what is their own. The Andaman Islanders, though
provided with metal by trading, still use the sharp-edged splinters of
volcanic glass-stone to shave their heads, which they keep entirely
bald!
It is one of the merits of the showman's enterprise in modern times
that he brings to a great city like London groups of interesting
savages, without imposture and without ill-treatment, and enables us
to see and talk with them almost as though we had travelled to their
remote native forests. It would certainly be a successful and worthy
enterprise on the part of the Anthropological Society of London to
start a garden and houses such as those maintained by the Zoological
Society, but arranged so as to receive some five or six groups of
interesting "savages." The society would be responsible for careful
and humane treatment of their guests, and return them after a sojourn,
say, of a couple years, to their native country and replace them by
specimens of other races. Under the auspices of showmen I have seen
Zulu Kaffirs, Guiana Indians, North American Indians, Kalmuck Tartars,
South African bushmen, and Congo pygmies in London, besides many
hundreds of African negroes of various tribes. Farini's bushmen and
Harrison's Congo pygmies were perfect samples of the dwarf race about
which I am writing. But I also saw and examined carefully, in 1872, at
Naples, with my friend Professor Panceri, the two African pygmies,
Tebo and Chairallah, who were the first to reach Europe. They were
subsequently adopted by and lived for some years under the care of
Count Miniscalchi Erizzo. They were very intelligent, and learnt to
read and to write well, and to play difficult music on the piano, with
feeling and appreciation. We were especially concerned to determine by
the stage of growth of their teeth and other indications whether they
were merely ordinary young negroes, as some anthropologists supposed,
or really representatives of the dwarf race as asserted by the
traveller Miani, who bought them, in exchange for a dog and a calf, in
the country of the Mombootoos, south of the Welle River, and west of
the Albert Nyanza. They were still young and growing when we examined
them, but Tebo ceased growth when he had reached a stature of 4 ft. 8
in. We had no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that they were,
when we saw them, really of exceptionally small stature for their age
as indicated by the teeth which were in place in their jaws.
[Illustration: Fig. 23.--Copy of a figure from a group drawn on a
Greek vase (dating from 300 B.C.), representing a number of the
pygmies of the remote Upper Nile engaged in battle. The resemblance of
the peaked cap and of the beard to those of the little figures carved
by Black Forest peasants and intended to represent the mythical
"gnomes" or dwarf mining-elves is noteworthy. (From Saglio and
Derenberg's "Dictionnaire des Antiquites Grecs et Romaines.")]
The Akkas living near the sources of the Nile were known to the
ancient Egyptians, and were the foundation of stories and fabulous
exaggerations among the ancient Greeks. Even before Homer these
stories existed, and the little people were called "pygmies," which
means "of the length of the forearm" (Greek, pugme). Homer refers to
the wars of these pygmies with the cranes, and as a matter of fact the
African pygmies do wage a kind of war upon the great cranes which
swarm in the marsh-land of their country. Naturally enough the really
small size of the African pygmies (they are about 4 ft. in height,
some two or three inches less, some as much as eight inches more) was
exaggerated by report and tradition, just as the really big eggs of
the great extinct ostrich-like bird of Madagascar were represented in
the story of Sindbad, in the "Arabian Nights," as being as large as
the dome of a temple, and the bird large in proportion. The Egyptians,
as we have seen, knew the pygmy Akkas, and Egyptian fact was ever the
romance of the Greeks.
Herodotus mentions the African pygmies from beyond the Libyan desert,
citing, as is his wont, the accounts of certain travellers with whom
he had conversed, and a later Greek writer tells of a pygmy race in
India, a statement which our present knowledge confirms. It is a
curious fact that Swift's Lilliputians are thus traceable to the
Central African dwarf race, for Greek legend related that Hercules
visited the country of the pygmies, where on waking from sleep he
found one division of the army guarding his right leg, another his
left, and others his arms. Hercules got up, swept them all into the
lion's skin which he used as a cloak, and went on his way, shaking out
his small tormentors from their prison as though they were so many
ants. It seems fairly certain that Swift derived the initial scene in
his story of Gulliver's adventures among the Lilliputians from this
legend.
Miani's pygmies were members of a tribe discovered by the
distinguished traveller Schweinfurth, who, in 1870, was the first to
visit the country of the Niam-Niam, to the west of the sources of the
Nile, and had the honour of showing that the myths of the ancient
Greeks as to a nation of pygmies were based on fact, and that the
definite words of Aristotle as to the existence of these pygmy people
on the upper reaches of the Nile were correct. Schweinfurth found to
the south of the Niam-Niam country a tribe of full-statured negroes
called the Mombootoos, whose chief, Moonza, kept close to the Royal
residence a colony of pygmies who were called in that country by the
name "Akkas." Schweinfurth ascertained that they are spread to the
number of many thousands along the borders of the great Congo forest
and form numerous tribes. They are very generally well treated by
their more powerful neighbours, as by Moonza. Partly from fear of
their poisoned arrows and their crafty methods of attack and
subsequent disappearance into the forest, partly on account of a
superstitious dread of them, the Congo pygmies are not only tolerated,
but protected, by the larger people. They alone are at home in the
steaming darkness of the immeasurable forest into which no other
natives dare to enter.
It is a remarkable fact that the Egyptologist Mariette had, before
these discoveries, found on an ancient Egyptian monument the portrait
of a dwarf inscribed with the word "akka"--the identical name by which
they are known at this day in the region where Schweinfurth found
them.
Public interest in the pygmy race was rearoused three years ago by the
announcement that the party of English naturalists at that time
exploring the interior of New Guinea had come across a tribe of these
little people in the mountains of that island. The existence of these
pygmies in New Guinea was already well known, but fuller accounts of
them will be valuable. The Italian traveller Beccari, in 1876, speaks
of them as "Karonis," and states that they occupy a chain of mountains
parallel to the north coast of the north-west peninsular of the
island. D'Albertis, Lawes, and other travellers have seen and
described individuals of the pygmy race of the mountains of New
Guinea. It is interesting to find that they are described as having
the body covered with fine, woolly hair, a feature which is recorded
by Schweinfurth, by Stanley, and by an ancient Greek writer, in regard
to the Congo pygmies of Africa, and led in former times to the notion
that the old traditions and accounts of African pygmies referred, not
to human beings, but to chimpanzees!
The Laplanders are the only very small-sized people in Europe, but
they run from 5 ft. upwards, whereas the negrites and negrillos run
from about 4 ft. to less than 5 ft. The Lapps (of whom there are about
25,000 in Finmark and Lapmark) are a thick-set, round-headed
(brachycephalic), dark-yellow race, and have always been credited with
powers of witchcraft and magic by their neighbours and by modern
sailors. They live in immediate contact with the Finns (both are
Mongolian races), who are very tall and have fair hair and blue eyes.
Some writers have supposed that the Lapps are the remnants of a small
race which was formerly spread over the whole of Europe, and was
exterminated or driven out by the larger races. But we have no
evidence in favour of this view and strong evidence against it, since
we now know the skulls and skeletons of a great number of the
prehistoric inhabitants of Europe belonging to the Bronze, to the
Neolithic, and to the Palaeolithic periods. None of these skeletons
belong to an abnormally small-sized race, though the Bronze-age people
were smaller than their predecessors and successors. The cave-dwellers
of the "reindeer" epoch of the Palaeolithic period were big men, with
fine, high skulls, and even the earlier Palaeolithic men of the glacial
period, the man of the Neanderthal, the couple from Spy, and the three
recently dug up near Perigueux (of whom I have written in another
book),[8] were not diminutive men. It is true they were not tall--only
about 5 ft. 4 in. in height--but they were very powerful and muscular,
and totally different physically from the Lapps or from any of the
tropical pygmy men. It is a remarkable fact that in one cave at
Mentone, on the Riviera, explored by the Prince of Monaco, two
skeletons have been found belonging to a shortish negro-like race
(indicated by the form of the skull), and apparently a little later in
date than the Neandermen. We must remember that at that remote date
there was continuous land connection between Europe and Africa. There
is, in fact, no reason to suppose that a pygmy race ever existed in
Europe, though, of course, individuals of exceptionally small stature
are often produced, and in some regions the whole population is
shorter than it is in others.
* * * * *
A very interesting question in connection with the origin and
significance of pygmy races of men is, "Why is any race smaller in
size than another?" Every species among the higher animals has its
standard size from which only in the rarest cases are there
departures. That in itself is a curious fact. How was the standard
size determined, and how is it maintained? The whole question lies
there. At first sight it seems to many people quite simple to account
for "pygmies"; they will tell you that the poor creatures are
half-starved and so unable to grow to full size. That explanation does
not, however, meet the case, for the African and Asiatic pygmy races
are just as well nourished as most of their neighbours. Also if we
look a little further we find that the women of every race are smaller
than the men, and often much smaller. That is not because they are
ill-nourished as compared with the men. And, again, we find very
closely similar species of animals existing side by side, one a large
species and the other a small one, having the same opportunities of
obtaining regular nourishment. There are many instances, but take for
example the beautiful Great Koodoo antelope of Africa, with its fine
spiral horns, which measures 5 ft. at the shoulder, and the Little
Koodoo, a complete miniature of it existing alongside of it, and
standing only 3 ft. 5 in. at the shoulder. Take the two common white
butterflies of this country, the Large White and the Small White, also
the Large Tortoiseshell butterfly and the small. Take the instance of
many plant genera of which larger and smaller species are found
growing side by side. The difference in size in these cases cannot be
traced to any insufficiency of nutrition in the smaller kind.
It is evident that difference of size in animals has some deep-lying
cause, which is not merely the greater or less abundance of food.
Numerous specimens of a perfectly well-formed elephant, closely allied
in structure to the Indian elephant, but only 3 ft. high, are found
fossil in Malta and the neighbouring Mediterranean region, and in
Liberia a species of hippopotamus, distinct from that of other African
regions, is common, which is not bigger than a common pig. Pygmy hogs,
pygmy deer, pygmy buffaloes (and many other pygmy animals) are known
as thriving wild species, so that it seems clear that there are other
causes at work than semi-starvation in the production of pygmy races.
A second suggestion which is sometimes made is that the smaller race,
or smaller species of two allied forms, is the original one, and that
the larger forms have developed from these and established themselves,
without completely destroying the smaller original race. This view has
at various times been favoured in regard to the pygmy race of man.
There is something plausible in the view that these little men are
nearer than normal mankind are to the monkeys, and the fur-like
hairiness of their skin has been cited in support of it; but a fatal
objection is that the men of the pure pygmy race of Africa and Asia
are really not more, but less, monkey-like than many full-sized
savages. They have heads and faces nearer in shape to those of
Europeans than have the Australians, the Tasmanians, and the negroes.
They are more intelligent, shrewd, and skilful than their full-sized
neighbours. It is quite possible that they are a very ancient
race--more ancient, in their isolation and freedom from complicated
customs, habits, and mode of life than other savages--but they are not
primitive in the sense of being ape-like in structure or in want of
mental capacity.
A third possibility in regard to the pygmy people is that they have
been "selected" by natural conditions which favoured the survival of
small individuals, and thus established a small race--just as man has
established small races of horses, dogs, cattle, or what not, by
continually selecting small individuals for breeding, until he has
produced such races as the Shetland pony, the toy terrier, and the
Kerry cow. It is necessary to discover or to suggest (if this
explanation is to be accepted) what precisely is the advantage, in a
state of nature, to a small-sized race in being of small size. The
guess is made that the small people can more easily hide, whether in
forest or among the rocks and caves of mountainous regions, from
aggressive larger-sized mankind. The objection to this view is that
though it may explain the present habits and dwelling-places of some
of the pygmy race, it is not capable of explaining their first
segregation and formation as a distinct race. Another general
advantage which small animals have over larger ones of the same
species is that if the food of the species is widely distributed but
limited in amount, a hundred individuals weighing 5 st. each will
secure more of it than fifty individuals weighing 10 st. each. The
total weight of individuals is the same, but the smaller series will
cover twice the area and have twice as much opportunity to secure the
limited amount of food, whilst, in proportion to their size, requiring
less. It cannot be doubted that, other things being equal, this
obvious relation must tend to limit the increase in size of animals
which have to search for their special food, and must favour small
races.
Some writers have supposed that small limited areas, such as small
islands, favour the production of small races by some mysterious law
of appropriateness similar to that which lays down that "who drives
fat oxen should himself be fat." The pygmy buffalo of the island of
Celebes, the Anoa, is cited as an instance, and the pygmy men of the
Andaman Islands as another. But there are plenty of facts which would
lead to an exactly opposite conclusion. Gigantic tortoises are found
in the Galapagos Islands and in the minute islands of the Indian
Ocean, and never on the big continents. Gigantic birds bigger than
ostriches abounded in the islands of New Zealand and Madagascar. Some
of the tallest races of men are found in the Pacific islands, whilst
the tallest European population is that of the north of the island
called Great Britain. Probably the real relation of islands to the
matter is that owing to their isolation and freedom from the general
competition of the vast variety of living things in continental areas,
they offer unoccupied territory in which either exceptionally small or
exceptionally big races may flourish--if once they reach the island
shelter, or are by variation produced there--without competitive
interference.
An important consideration in regard to the formation and segregation
of a human variety or race is that mankind shows a tendency to
segregate in groups, like with like. To a large extent this is true
also of animals, but in man it acquires a special dominance, owing to
the greater activity in him of psychical or mental influences in all
his proceedings. The "cagots" of mid-France are the descendants of
former leper families. They remain separated from the rest of the
population, and do not now know why, nor do their hostile neighbours.
Such "outcast" or "accursed" tribes and family groups are found also
in Great Britain, and throughout the world. Possibly the "pygmies" owe
their preservation to this tendency. Virchow regarded the Lapps as a
race produced by disease--a pathological product. It is possible that
former liability to disease and present immunity from it is the final
explanation of the tropical pygmy race. In the United States black
pigs are able to eat, without harm, a common marsh herb, the
"Red-root" _Lachnanthes tinctoria_, which kills other pigs. Hence a
black race is established, not because it is black, but because, in
it, blackness is "the outward and visible sign of an inward and
chemical grace"--that is to say, of a physiological or chemical power
of resistance to, and immunity from, the poison of an otherwise
nutritious plant. Such "correlations" were described by Darwin, and
are of extreme importance and interest--far more so than is, at
present, recognised by naturalists. I am inclined to the supposition
that the obvious outward signs, the round head, bombous forehead,
furry skin, and diminutive size of the pygmies are the outcome of an
inward physiological condition peculiar to them, which has enabled
them to resist disease or to eat certain kinds of food, or possibly to
develop great mental acuteness, and so has led to the establishment of
these peculiar small people as a race, without their smallness itself
having anything to do with their selection and preservation. In that
case smallness would be a "by-product," a "correlated" character, not
the "effective life-saving" character.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: "Science from an Easy Chair," Methuen, 1909.]