The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

9. Arctic Kingdom. This latter kingdom deserves a little more attention than the others. It comprises all the northern regions of the two continents. The southern limit is somewhat arbitrarily fixed by Agassiz at the zone of forests. In no region of the world does man meet with such identical conditions of existence, for all are governed by cold. It would seem, therefore, to be better able than any other to justify the author’s theory, and yet facts agree but very slightly with it.

Agassiz characterises this kingdom by the existence of one plant and six species of animals, five mammals and one bird. The plant is the Iceland lichen (cenomyce rangiferina). Now, this lichen is so little characteristic of polar regions that it is found in many parts of France, and even in the neighbourhood of Paris at Fontainebleau. M. Decaisne believes that our hares and rabbits live upon it in winter, as the reindeer do in Lapland. Further, the observations recently made in Greenland by the German Polar Expedition, show that in this country, which, of all countries in the Arctic Kingdom, should most readily adapt itself to the conceptions of Agassiz, and which is inhabited by pure-blooded Esquimaux, possesses scarcely one vegetable species which can be said to be peculiar to it, and that a great number of them are found in the Alps, and upon the summits of the Vosges. It is a result of the return of heat after the glacial epoch, the species which resisted it having emigrated in altitude as well as in latitude.

In animal species, the white bear and the walrus are really polar. The same may be said of the Greenland seal considered as a species. But as a type we meet with it everywhere; as a genus it inhabits all the seas of Europe. The reindeer inhabited France in the Quaternary epoch; it was living in Germany in Cæsar’s time; it descended yearly to the Caspian Sea during the lifetime of Pallas. The true whale used to visit our coast before it was driven away by man. Finally, at this day, the eider duck builds yearly in Denmark, ten to fifteen degrees south of the Polar circle. Thus, in the six species mentioned by Agassiz as peculiar to his Arctic Kingdom, three at least belong equally to his European Kingdom.

Agassiz was certainly more capable than anyone else of nicely characterising the region in question, if it had been possible to do so. He failed, because there is in reality no such thing as a true Arctic fauna. The cause of this lies in the extension of more southern fauna, which become impoverished as they advanced northwards, but change their character very slightly. In reality, this kingdom is broken up into independent provinces, or rather, is connected with regions situated more to the south, and consequently better divided. The Polar region, says Lacordaire, in speaking of insects, is characterised less by the speciality of its products than by their scarcity. All these facts, again, are the consequence of the peopling of the Arctic regions after the glacial epoch.

It would seem that man at least might present at the pole the homogeneity supposed by the theory. It is not so, however, whatever may be the assertions of Agassiz upon this subject. “A peculiar race of man,” he says, “live there, known in America by the name of Esquimaux, elsewhere by that of Lapps, Samoyedes or Tchouktchis.... The uniformity of their characters throughout the whole extent of the Arctic seas unites them in a striking manner with the fauna with which they are so closely connected.”

There are, in these words of Agassiz, grave ethnological and anthropological errors. The uniformity of characters of which he speaks does not exist at all. It will suffice to remind my readers that the Lapps are one of the most brachycephalic, and the Esquimaux one of the most dolichocephalic races with which we are acquainted. In fact, these two races are so entirely distinct that no anthropologist has ever dreamt of establishing a connection between them.

As to the Samoyedes and Tchouktchis, they have not always inhabited the icy lands where we now meet with them. The former have still a recollection of having come from the south, and M. de Tchiatchef has discovered the original stock upon the confines of China. The latter settled at Behring’s Straits but a short time ago to free themselves from Russian conquest, against which they had bravely struggled. They subjugated and absorbed the Yukagires, their predecessors. They differ, moreover, equally from Esquimaux and Lapps.

Thus, in the Arctic Kingdom, where all the most favourable conditions for the display of any truth which the ideas of Agassiz may possess are brought together, everything protests against these ideas. In spite of his vast knowledge, he could not characterise it zoologically in a precise manner; the special fauna which he admits does not exist; the identity of populations which he proclaimed disappears under the slightest examination.

Finally, the theory which attaches a human race to every centre of appearance as a local product of that centre, ought to be rejected by anyone who sets the least value upon the results of observation.