The Hindu is in the main a narrow headed, dark skinned Caucasian, not very different from the Mediterranean. When he entered India he probably found there an aboriginal population which may have been Negroid but more likely was related to the Australians or perhaps constituted a dark proto-Caucasian or Indo-Australian race. A fairly thorough intermixture has taken place in India during the last three thousand years, with the result that the originally pure Caucasian type of the Hindu has been somewhat modified, while most of the less numerous or less vigorous aboriginal population has become submerged. The definite Caucasian type is best preserved in the north; the traces of the dark skinned aboriginal race are strongest in southern India.
25. Mongoloid Races
The Mongoloid stock divides into the Mongolian proper of eastern Asia, the Malaysian of the East Indies, and the American Indian. The differences between these three types are not very great. The Mongolian proper is the most extreme or pronounced form. It was probably the latest to develop its present characteristics. For instance, the oblique or “Mongolian” eye is a peculiarity restricted to the people of eastern Asia. The original Mongoloid stock must be looked upon as having been more like present-day Malaysians or American Indians, or intermediate between them. From this generalized type peoples like the Chinese gradually diverged, adding the epicanthic fold of the oblique eye and other peculiarities, while the less civilized peoples of America and Oceania kept more nearly to the ancient type.
Within the East Indies, a more and a less specifically Mongoloid strain can at times be distinguished. The latter has often been called Indonesian. In certain respects, such as relatively short stature and broad nose, it approaches the Indo-Australian type described below. Among the American Mongoloids, the Eskimo appears to be the most particularized subvariety.
26. Negroid Races
The Negroid stock falls into two large divisions, the African Negro proper, and the Oceanic Melanesian; besides a third division, the Dwarf Blacks or Negritos, who are very few in numbers but possess a wide and irregular distribution. The Negroes and the Melanesians, in spite of their being separated by the breadth of the Indian Ocean, are clearly close relatives. A trained observer can distinguish them at sight, but a novice would take a Papuan from New Guinea or a Melanesian from the Solomon or Fiji Islands to be an African. Perhaps the most conspicuous difference is that the broad nose of the African Negro is flat, the broad nose of the Melanesian often aquiline. How these two so similar Negroid branches came to be located on the opposite sides of a great ocean is a fact that remains unexplained.
The Negrito or Dwarf Negroid race has representatives in New Guinea, in the Philippines, in the Malay Peninsula, in the Andaman Islands, and in equatorial Africa. These peoples are the true pygmies of the human species. Wherever they are racially pure the adult males are less than 5 feet in stature. They also differ from other Negroids in being relatively broad headed. Their skin color, hair texture, nose form, and most other traits are, however, the same as those of the other Negroids. Their scattered distribution is difficult to account for. It is possible that they are an ancient and primitive type which once inhabited much wider stretches of territory than now in Africa, Asia, and Oceania. On account of their inoffensiveness and backwardness, the Negritos, according to this theory, were gradually crowded to the wall by the larger, more energetic populations with which they came in contact, until only a few scattered fragments of them now remain.
The Bushmen and in some degree the Hottentots of South Africa may also be provisionally included with the Negritos, although distinctive in a number of respects. They are yellowish-brown in complexion, long headed, short and flat eared, short legged, hollow backed, and steatopygous. On the whole Negroid characteristics prevail among them. They are, for instance, frizzy-haired. Their extremely short stature may justify their tentative inclusion among the Negritos.
27. Peoples of Doubtful Position
One thing is common to the peoples who are here reckoned as of doubtful position in the classification: they all present certain Caucasian affinities without being similar enough to the recognized Caucasians to be included with them. This is true of the black, wavy-haired, prognathous, beetling-browed Australians, whose first appearance suggests that they are Negroids, as it is of the brown Polynesians, who appear to have Mongoloid connections through the Malaysians. In India, Indo-China, and the East Indies live a scattered series of uncivilized peoples more or less alike in being dark, short, slender, wavy haired, longish headed, broad nosed. The brows are knit, the eyes deep set, the mouth large, beard development medium. Resemblances are on the one hand toward the Caucasian type, on the other toward the Australian, just as the geographical position is intermediate. The name Indo-Australian is thus appropriate for this group. Typical representatives are the Vedda of Ceylon; the Irula and some of the Kolarian tribes of India; many of the Moi of several parts of Indo-China; the Senoi or Sakai of the Malay Peninsula; the Toala of Celebes. These are almost invariably hill or jungle people, who evidently represent an old stratum of population, pushed back by Caucasians or Mongoloids, or almost absorbed by them. The dark strain in India seems more probably due to these people than to any true Negroid infusion. Possibly the Indo-Australians branched off from the Caucasian stem at a very early time before the Caucasian stock was as “white” as it is now. In the lapse of ages the greater number of the Caucasians in and near Europe took on, more and more, their present characteristics, whereas this backward branch in the region of the Indian Ocean kept its primitive and undifferentiated traits. This is a tempting theory to pursue, but it extends so far into the realm of the hypothetical that its just appraisal must be left to the specialist.