The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

America has, moreover, its distinct races with which the foreign elements have more or less blended. She has also had her quaternary man. This is a fact which must not be overlooked, and by which the problem is singularly complicated. We shall presently see that geological revolutions do not involve the disappearance of existing human races. There can be no doubt that in America there are descendants of men who were contemporary with the mastodon, just as, in Europe, we find the descendants of those who were contemporaries of the mammoth. Unfortunately our knowledge of the physical characters of the American fossil man is as yet very slight.

III. It does not, however, seem to me the less probable that the most pronounced ethnological elements, such as White, Yellow, and Black, which we encounter at the present time, have overspread this continent by means of migration. This fact is proved by history in a certain number of cases; and some very simple considerations seem to me to render others no less probable.

For example, we only find black men in America in those places which are washed by either the Kouro-Sivo, or the Equatorial Current of the Atlantic or its divisions. A glance at the maps of Captain Kerhallet will at once show us the rarity and the distribution of these tribes. It is evident that the more or less pure black elements have been brought from the Asiatic Archipelagos and from Africa through some accident at sea; they have there mixed with the local races, and have formed those small isolated groups which are distinguished by their colour from the surrounding tribes.

The presence of Semitic types in America, certain traditions of Guiana, and the use in this country of a weapon entirely characteristic of the ancient Canary Islanders, can be easily explained in the same manner, and the explanation rests upon positive facts. Twice during the last century, in 1731 and 1764, small ships passing from one point of the Canary Islands to another have been driven by storms into the region of the trade winds and equatorial current, and have drifted as far as America. What has happened in our time must often have happened before. We cannot then be surprised at finding upon the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, tribes which are more or less related to the African Whites by their physical characters.

IV. The geographical position of the continents at once explains why the yellow type has so many representatives in America. Supposing, which seems to be contradicted by some evidences, that the coast-lines have not altered since the latest geological era, the facilities presented by the passage are quite sufficient, and the Asiatic races have profited by them to a considerable extent. America was known to them long before Europeans possessed anything beyond legends on this subject, the meaning of which is still hotly disputed.

It is to De Guignes that we owe the discovery of this fact, the importance of which is evident. He revealed to Europe what he had learnt in Chinese books. These books speak of a country called Fou-Sang, situated at a distance, to the east of China far beyond the limits of Asia. De Guignes did not hesitate to identify it with America. To the proofs drawn from the Chinese books, he added some isolated and hitherto forgotten facts which were borrowed from Europeans, from George Horne, Gomara, etc.

The work of the French Orientalist was received with a very singular, yet accountable repugnance. Apart from the mistrust excited by every unexpected discovery, many people were annoyed to find that Europeans had been preceded by Asiatics in the New World; it seemed to them to be dethroning Christopher Columbus. A Prussian, who had become a naturalized Frenchman, gave the support of his great learning to all who required no more than the contradiction of the fact, and it was almost unanimously agreed that De Guignes had deceived himself. More justice is now done to him, and anyone who will study the question in an unprejudiced spirit, cannot but acknowledge that he is right.

Klaproth held that Fou-Sang was nothing else than Japan. He forgot that the country of which the Chinese writers spoke contained copper, gold and silver, but no iron. This characteristic, which is inapplicable to Japan, agrees, on the contrary, in every respect with America. To support his assertion, he maintained that the Chinese could neither recognize their direction nor measure distances in their voyages with precision. He forgot that they were acquainted with the compass 2000 years before our era, and that they possessed maps far superior to the vague conjectures of the Middle Ages.

As to the supposed error in distance of which Klaproth speaks, there was no such thing. Paravey informs us that Fou-Sang was placed at a distance of 20,000 Li from China. Now a Li, according to M. Pothier, is equal to 444·5 metres (486 yards). In following the course of the Kouro-Sivo, these numbers would exactly bring us to California, where the abandoned junks were stranded; they prove what was indicated by the theory, that this current had been the route for voyages to and from America.