36. Anatomical Evidence on Evolutionary Rank
But first of all it may be well to consider the relatively simple evidence which has to do with the physical form and structure of race types. If one human race should prove definitely nearer to the apes in its anatomy than the other races, there would be reason to believe that it had lagged in evolution. Also there would be some presumption that its arrears were mental as well as physical.
But the facts do not run consistently. One thinks of the Negro as simian. His jaws are prognathous; his forehead recedes; his nose is both broad and low. Further, it is among Caucasians that the antithetical traits occur. In straightness of jaws and forehead, prominence and narrowness of nose, Caucasians in general exceed the Mongoloids. Thus the order as regards these particular traits is: ape, Negroid, Mongoloid, Caucasian. With ourselves at one end and the monkey at the other, the scale somehow seems right. It appeals, and seems significant. Facts of this sort are therefore readily observed, come to be remembered, and rise spontaneously to mind in an argument on race differences.
However, there are numerous items that conflict with this sequence. For instance, one of the most conspicuous differences of man from the apes is his relative hairlessness. Of the three main stocks, however, it is the Caucasian that is the most hairy. Both Mongoloids and Negroids are more smooth-skinned on face and on body.
In hair texture, the straight-haired Mongoloid is nearest the apes, the wavy-haired Caucasian comes next, and the woolly Negroid is the most characteristically human, or at least unsimian.
In the length of head hair, in which man differs notably from the monkeys, the relatively short-haired Negro once more approximates most closely to the ape, but the long-haired Mongoloid surpasses the intermediate Caucasian in degree of departure.
Lip color reverses this order. The apes’ lips are thin and grayish; Mongoloid lips come next; then those of Caucasians; the full, vivid, red lips of the Negro are the most unapelike of all.
It is unnecessary to multiply examples. If one human racial stock falls below others in certain traits, it rises above them in other features, insofar as “below” and “above” may be measurable in terms of degree of resemblance to the apes. The only way in which a decision could be arrived at along this line of consideration would be to count all features to see whether the Negro or the Caucasian or the Mongoloid was the most unapelike in the plurality of cases. It is possible that in such a reckoning the Caucasian would emerge with a lead. But it is even more clear that whichever way the majority fell, it would be a well divided count. If the Negro were more apelike than the Caucasian in all of his features, or in eight out of ten, the fact would be heavily significant. With his simian resemblances aggregating to those of the Caucasian in a ratio of say four to three, the margin would be so close as to lose nearly all its meaning. It is apparently some such ratio as this, or an even more balanced one, that would emerge, so far as we can judge, if it were feasible to take a census of all features.
It should be added that such a method of comparison as this suffers from two drawbacks. First, the most closely related forms now and then diverge sharply in certain particulars; and second, a form which on the whole is highly specialized may yet have remained more primitive, or have reverted to greater primitiveness in a few of its traits, than relatively unevolved races or species.
Thus, the anthropoid apes are brachycephalic, but all known types of Palæolithic man are dolichocephalic. Matched against the apes, the long-headed Negro would therefore seem to be the most humanly specialized stock. Compared however with the fossil human forms, the Negro is the most primitive in this feature, and the Mongoloid and Alpine Caucasian could be said to have evolved the farthest because their heads are the roundest. Yet their degree of brachycephaly is approximately that of the anthropoid apes. To which criterion shall be given precedence? It is impossible to say. Quite likely the round-headedness of the apes represents a special trait which they acquired since their divergence from the common hominid ancestral stem. If so, their round-headedness and that of the Mongoloids is simply a case of convergent evolution, of a character repeating independently, and therefore no evidence of Mongoloid primitiveness. Yet, if so, the long-headedness common to the early human races and the modern Negroids would probably also mean nothing.
It is even clearer that other traits have been acquired independently, have been secondarily evolved over again. Thus the supraorbital ridges. When one observes the consistency with which these are heavy in practically all Neandertal specimens; how they are still more conspicuous in Pithecanthropus and Rhodesian man; how the male gorilla shows them enormously developed; and that among living races they are perhaps strongest in the lowly Australian, it is tempting to look upon this bony development as a definite sign of primitiveness. Yet there is an array of contradicting facts. The youthful gorilla and adult orang are without supraorbital development. The male gorilla has his powerful brows for the same reason that he has the crest along the top of his skull: they are needed as attachments for his powerful musculature. They are evidently a secondary sex character developed within the species. So among fossil men there seem to have been two strains: one represented by Pithecanthropus and Neandertal man and the Rhodesian race, which tended toward supraorbital massiveness; and another, of which Piltdown man is representative, which was smooth of forehead. Among living races the Asiatic Mongoloids lack marked supraorbital development; the closely related American Indians possess it rather strongly; Caucasians and Negroes show little of the feature; Australians most of all. Evidently it would be unsafe to build much conclusion on either the presence or absence of supraorbital ridges.
Perhaps these instances will suffice to show that even the mere physical rating of human races is far from a simple or easy task. It is doubtful whether as yet it is valid to speak of one race as physically higher or more advanced, or more human and less brutish, than another. This is not an outright denial of the possibility of such differential ratings: it is a denial only of the belief that such differentials have been established as demonstrable.