22. Traits on Which Classification Rests
Since every human being obviously possesses a large number of physical features or traits, the first thing that the prospective classifier of race must do is to determine how much weight he will attach to each of these features.
The most striking of all traits probably is stature or bodily height. Yet this is a trait which experience has shown to be of relatively limited value for classifactory purposes. The imagination is easily impressed by a few inches when they show at the top of a man and make him half a head taller or shorter than oneself. Except for a few groups which numerically are rather insignificant, there is no human race that averages less than 5 feet in height. There is none at all that averages taller than 5 feet 10 inches. This means that practically the whole range of human variability in height, from the race standpoint, falls within less than a foot. The majority of averages of populations do not differ more than 2 inches from the general human average of 5 feet 5 inches.
Then, too, stature has been proved to be rather readily influenced by environment. Each of us is a fraction of an inch taller when he gets up in the morning than when he goes to bed at night. Two races might differ by as much as a couple of inches in their heredity, and yet if all the individuals of the shorter race were well nourished in a favorable environment, and all those of the taller group were underfed and overworked, the naturally shorter race might well be actually the taller one.
The cephalic index, which expresses in percentage form the ratio of the length and the breadth of the head, is perhaps the most commonly used anthropological measurement.[4] It has certain definite advantages. The head measurements are easily made with accuracy. The index is nearly the same on the living head and on the dead skull; or one is easily converted into the other. This enables present and past generations to be compared. The index is also virtually the same for men and for women, for children and for adults. Finally, it seems to be little affected by environment. The consequence is that head form has been widely investigated. There are few groups of people of consequence whose average cephalic index we do not know fairly accurately. The difficulty about the cephalic index from the point of view of race classification is that it does not yield broad enough results. This index is often useful in distinguishing subtypes, nation from nation, or tribe from tribe; but the primary races are not uniform. There is, for instance, no typical head form for the Caucasian race. There are narrow headed, medium headed, and broad headed Caucasians. The same is true of the American Indians, who are on the whole rather uniform, yet vary much in head form.
The nasal index, which expresses the relation of length and breadth of nose, runs much more constant in the great races. Practically all Negroids are broad-nosed, practically all Caucasians narrow-nosed, and the majority of peoples of Mongolian affinities medium-nosed. But the nasal index varies according to the age of the person; it is utterly different in a living individual and a skull;[5] it seems to reflect heredity less directly than the cephalic index; and finally it tells us nothing about the elevation or profile or general formation of the nose.
Prognathism, or the degree of the protrusion of the jaws, is a conspicuous feature of the profile, and would seem to be of some historic importance as a sign of primitiveness, because all other mammals are more prognathous than man. The trait also has a general correlation with the fundamental racial types. Negroes are almost all prognathous, people of Mongolian type moderately so, Caucasians very slightly. Prognathism is however difficult to measure or to denote in figures. Various apparatuses have been devised without wholly satisfactory results.
The capacity of the skull is measured by filling it with shot or millet seed. The latter yields figures that are lower by 50 or 100 c.c. The average, by shot measure, for males the world over is about 1,450 to 1,500 c.c., for females about 10 per cent lower. European males range from 1,500 to 1,600, Asiatic Mongoloids but little less, American Indians and Polynesians from 1,400 to 1,500, Bushmen, Australians, Tasmanians, Negritos, Veddas from 1,300 to 1,400. These last groups are all small bodied. It appears that cranial capacity is considerably dependent on bodily size. Slender as well as short races run to small capacities. The heavy Bantu surpass the slighter framed Sudanese, and Hindus stand well below European Caucasians; just as the shorter Japanese average less than the Chinese. Broad headed populations show greater cranial capacity than narrow headed ones: Alpine Europeans (§ [24]) generally surpass Nordics in spite of their shorter stature. Individual variability is also unusually great in this measurement. The largest and smallest skulled healthy individuals of the same sex in one population differ sometimes by 500, 600, or 700 c.c., or more than one-third of the racial average. Overlapping between races is accordingly particularly marked in cranial capacity. Furthermore, the measurement obviously cannot be taken on the living. In spite of its interest as an alleged and perhaps partially valid index of mental faculty, cranial capacity is thus of restricted value in distinguishing races.
The texture of the hair is now universally regarded as one of the most valuable criteria for classifying races, possibly the most significant of all. Hair is distinguished as woolly in the Negro, straight in the Mongolian, and wavy or intermediate in the Caucasian. This texture depends principally on the diameters of each individual hair, as they are revealed in cross-section under the microscope; in part also on the degree of straightness or curvature of the root sacs of the hair in the skin. Hair texture seems to run rather rigidly along hereditary racial lines, and to be uninfluenced by factors of age, sex, climate, or nourishment.
Hairiness of the body as a whole is another trait to which more and more attention is coming to be paid. The fullness or scantiness of the beard, and the degree of development of the down which covers the body, are its most conspicuous manifestations. Caucasians are definitely a hairy race, Mongoloids and most Negroids glabrous or smooth-skinned. It is largely on the basis of their hairiness that races like the Australians have been separated from the Negroids, and the Ainus from the Japanese.
Except possibly for stature, color is probably the most conspicuous trait of any race. Under color must be included the complexion of the skin, the color of the hair, and the color of the eyes. All of these however present difficulties to the anthropometrist. The pigment in every human skin is the same: it differs only in amount. We have therefore a complete series of transition shades, and it is difficult to express these differences of shade quantitatively. They readily impress the eye, but it is far from easy to denote them accurately in numbers. Environment also affects skin color markedly. A day’s exposure to the sun will darken an individual’s complexion by several shades. In spite of these drawbacks, however, complexion remains sufficiently important to have to be considered in every classification.
Hair color and eye color are practically immune against direct change by environment. They unquestionably are excellent hereditary criteria, although they offer much the same resistance to measurement as does complexion. The utility of these two traits is however limited by another factor: their narrow distribution. Blue eyes and blond hair are racially characteristic of only a single subrace, that of northern Europe. In central Europe they are already much toned down: the prevailing type here is brunet. In southern Europe, blue eyes and blondness scarcely occur at all except where admixture with northern peoples can be traced. Outside of the Caucasian stock, black hair and black eyes are the universal rule for the human family.
Obviously it would be easiest to arrive at a clear-cut classification by grouping all the peoples of the earth according to a single trait, such as the shape of the nose, or color. But any such classification must be artificial and largely unsound, just because it disregards the majority of traits. The only classification that can claim to rest upon a true or natural basis is one which takes into consideration as many traits as possible, and weights the important more heavily than the unimportant features. If the outcome of such a grouping is to leave some peoples intermediate or of doubtful place in the classification, this result is unfortunate but must be accepted.
Racial Classification of Mankind
| Primary Stocks and Races | Texture of Hair of Head | Hair of Body and Face | Head | Nose | Prognathism | Skin Color | Stature | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caucasian or “White” | ||||||||
| Nordic | Wavy | Abundant | Narrow | Narrow | Slight | Very “white” | Tall | Hair blond, eyes light. |
| Alpine | ” | ” | Broad | ” | ” | White | Above aver. | Hair brown, eyes brown. |
| Mediterranean | ” | ” | Narrow | ” | ” | Dark white | Medium | |
| Hindu | ” | ” | ” | Variable | Moderate | Brown | Above aver. | Probable Australoid admixture in South. |
| Mongoloid or “Yellow” | ||||||||
| Mongolian | Straight | Slight | Broad | Medium | Medium | Light brown | Below aver. | “Mongolian” eye, broad face. |
| Malaysian | ” | ” | ” | ” | ” | Brown | ” | |
| American Indian | ” | ” | Variable | ” | ” | ” | Tall to med. | Broad face. |
| Negroid or “Black” | ||||||||
| Negro | Woolly | Slight | Narrow | Broad | Strong | “Black” | Tall | |
| Melanesian | ” | ” | ” | ” | ” | ” | Medium | |
| Dwarf Black | ” | ” | Broad | ” | Moderate | ” | Very short | Bushmen show several special features. |
| Of Doubtful Classification | ||||||||
| Australian | Wavy | Abundant | Narrow | Broad | Strong | Black | Above aver. | Negroid traits preponderate, some Caucasian resemblances. |
| Vedda, Irula, Kolarians, Moi, Senoi, Toala, etc. | ” | Moderate | ” | ” | Medium | Dark brown | Short | Generalized pre-Caucasian with Australoid resemblances. “Indo Australians.” |
| Polynesian | ” | ” | Variable | Medium | ” | Brown | Tall | Perhaps Mongoloid with some Caucasian traits and local Negroid admixture. |
| Ainu | ” | Abundant | Narrow | ” | ” | Light brown | Medium | A generalized Caucasian or divergent Mongoloid type. |
Hair and eyes are “black” unless otherwise stated in Remarks.