The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

VII. The period of suckling is followed by that of childhood, a condition very distinct from those by which it will in turn be followed. The human being is as yet neither male nor female. The first manifestation of sex is one of the most important epochs of life, and it is interesting to observe that the arrival of this epoch varies within very wide limits.

The female, on account of the phenomena to which she is then subject, and which admit the possibility of direct observation, is, in this case, specially adapted for the researches of the anthropologist. Now, taking extreme numbers, obtained by different observers upon several peoples of the globe, we find that the minimum age at which the female becomes pubescent is that of eight to nine years, as observed by Oldfield in the Eboes, and the maximum age, that of eighteen to twenty years, noticed by Rush, among some tribes of North America. Setting aside these exceptional numbers, we find as general extremes, ten to eleven years on the one hand, and fifteen to sixteen on the other.

The variation we see is great, and we are naturally led to ask if it is at all constant in human groups. The numerous statistics which have been collected upon this subject, seem to justify us in giving an absolutely negative reply to the question.

And, in the first place, there is no doubt that here conditions of life play an important part. From the researches of M. Brierre de Boismont, it appears that, in the same locality, the higher or lower social position, and the consequent difference in mode of living, produces an average variation of fourteen months. In Paris, the women of the lower classes are pubescent at fourteen years and ten months, those of the middle class at fourteen years and five months; those of the upper class at thirteen years and eight months.

The mode of life is sufficient to produce differences of a very marked character in the age at which the female becomes capable of conception. At Strasbourg, as at Paris, the young country girl is behind those of the town. The difference is about 8½ months for Strasbourg and 4½ for Paris. In Alsace, as upon the banks of the Seine, the hardships of field labour render the functions of the individual life more active at the expense of those connected with the sexual.

Again, we cannot doubt the influence which is certainly exercised by temperature. M. Raciborski, adding to his own investigations those of a large number of other medical men, has even thought himself justified in drawing the conclusion that the age of puberty is advanced or retarded by a little more than a month for each degree of latitude, according as we calculate from the equator or the pole, with the condition only that the temperature increases or decreases with the latitude.

The action of the three causes I have just mentioned are most evident. But, as we have already remarked, food, temperature, and even mode of life do not alone form conditions of life. Many other influences besides these act upon the organism. The greater or less amount of light, and of actinic rays, cannot be without effect.

All these influences explain how it is that the age of puberty varies with the habits in the same race; how women, belonging to the same branch of the white aryan race, may present the extremes which I have alluded to above. From among the latter the Swedes and Norwegians are pubescent at from 15 to 16 years; the English at from 13 to 14; but the English Creoles of Jamaica at from 10 to 11 years. At Antigoa, Negro and White women, transported into the same common conditions of life, no longer present any difference in this respect. We see also how it is that women belonging to the most different populations and races, Swedes, Dacotas, Corfiotas, Potowatomies, English, and Chinese, become pubescent at the same age.

Does then race stand for absolutely nothing in the physiological phenomena under consideration?

Some facts seem to authorize us in holding a contrary opinion. The Esquimaux women of Labrador are as forward in this respect as the Negresses of our colonies. In the Potowatomies (Algonquins) and the Dacotas (Sioux) there seems to be an average difference of a year in the appearance of the first phenomena of puberty. Several other observations of the same nature might be quoted from various travellers. There is, however, nothing to astonish us in these facts. They are only the reproduction in the human species, of what we observe every day in our domestic animals and cultivated plants, all of which have forward and backward races.