The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

Phenomena of atavism acting on the colouring are of frequent occurrence among animals.

They are equally prevalent in the human species. This consideration causes me to attach real importance to the opinion of M. de Salles, who attributes red hair to the earliest men. In fact, among all human races, individuals have been noticed whose hair more or less approaches to this tint.

The experiments of Darwin upon the effects of crossing between very different races of pigeons led to the same conclusion. He found that the crossings resulted in the reappearance of certain peculiarities of colour in the mongrels, which were peculiar to the original species, and which had disappeared in the two parent races. Now in our colonies the offspring of a Mulatto and a White frequently has red hair. In Europe also, M. Hamy has remarked that children are born with red hair, when one of the parents is decidedly dark and the other decidedly fair. In all cases of this nature, we should say that the primitive character reasserts itself, being accidentally acquired by the reciprocal neutralisation of opposed ethnical characters.

When examined under the microscope, the cutaneous pigment which gives the human body its characteristic colour, doubtless shows different tints, but yellow is always present as a colouring element. If we apply to man the laws which Isidore Geoffroy has deduced from his observations upon animals, we are led to conclude that this colour originally predominated. When the White is crossed with the Negro, the yellow colouring element at once asserts itself and generally appears to predominate. In the colonies the general term of yellows is sometimes given to mulattos. This result is again explained by the experiments of Darwin; and the conclusion is admissible that the original colour of man more or less approximated to this tint.

Certain facts which have been observed among Negroes seem also to confirm this conclusion. Among the most strongly characterised peoples belonging to this type, the appearance has been noticed of individuals of a lighter colour, sometimes almost resembling the Whites in this respect, sometimes tending more or less to yellow, without presenting any of the phenomena of teratological albinism. These individual peculiarities of colour may be attributed to atavism. Now among no white or yellow race have facts been noticed which can be regarded as reciprocal to the preceding.

Nothing therefore authorises us to regard the Negro race as having preceded the other two; and, on the contrary, the contrast which I have just pointed out leads to the conclusion that the ancestors of the negro were a race of a much lighter colour.

On the other hand, we know that the Aryan race is the latest. The question of priority thus lies between the Semitic, the Allophylian, and the group of yellow races. What I have said above of the fundamental colour being present as an element in the colour of all races, and the phenomena of crossing, point with some probability in favour of the latter.

Philology seems to confirm this view. Monosyllabic languages, which imply the first attempts at human speech, only exist among the yellow races. All the Negro races and the Allophylian Whites speak agglutinative languages, which answer to the second form which man gave to the expression of his thoughts. Aryans and Semites both have inflectional languages.

Philology then seems to lead to the same conclusion as physiology, and even to give an appearance of greater probability to these conjectures, which I only give for what they are worth.

III. We know nothing of primitive man; we acknowledge that, from want of information, it would be impossible to recognise him. All that the present state of our knowledge allows us to say is that, according to all appearance he ought to be characterised by a certain amount of prognathism, and have neither a black skin nor woolly hair. It is also fairly probable that his colour would resemble that of the yellow races, and his hair be more or less red. Finally everything tends to the conclusion that the language of our earliest ancestors was a more or less pronounced monosyllabic one.