Everywhere that these dwarfish people are found, whether in Africa, India, or Malaysia, they present the appearance of being an aboriginal race, now largely annihilated by the incursions of larger and better-armed people, but once widespread and numerous. As to their place of origin, whether in Africa, India, or the island region, it is useless to speculate, as the facts on which an opinion could be based are not known. Wherever found they are in close relation to the black races, the negroes of Africa, the Papuans of Polynesia, and evidences of a considerable degree of mixture of races exist. This is especially the case in Polynesia and India, where the Negritos appear to shade off into the full-sized blacks through an intermediate series of half-breeds.
Yet one fact of ethnological importance needs to be mentioned. The Negritos and Pygmies are everywhere brachycephalic, or short-headed, with the exception of the Bushmen, who are dolichocephalic, or partially so. Negroes and Papuans are strongly dolichocephalic. In this respect the Pygmy peoples agree more closely with the short-headed Mongolian or yellow races than with the long-headed negro or black races, though in general features they come near the latter.
In truth, this race of dwarfs may be the primitive stock from which the Mongolians branched off on the one hand, and the Negroes on the other, since they are in some measure intermediate between the two. Latham says of the Rajmalis mountaineers, "Some say their physiognomy is Mongolian, others that it is African." Quatrefages is strongly of the opinion that the negro is of Indian origin, and reached Africa through migration. He bases his opinion on the negroid characters of existing tribes in India, Persia, and elsewhere in Asia, and on the similar characters of the aboriginal Polynesians. As regards the Pygmies, they probably spread over the whole of this section of the earth at a period of remote antiquity, and very long ago developed the racial differences which appear to exist between separate tribes. Distinctions of this kind can be seen in the East, and a marked one is pointed out by Stanley between the Wambutti and the Akka, as already stated.
Wherever found the Pygmies are hunters, usually making the deep forest their home, and are masters through their agility, cunning, and deadly weapons of the whole world of lower animals. Physically they are probably not far removed from the man-ape, their remote ancestor, for they retain various ape-like characters, as in aspect of face, shape of body, occasional hairiness, diminutive size, shortness of legs, imperfect development of the calf, occasional waddling gait in walking, and the other particulars above pointed out. There are certainly abundant reasons for believing them to be, as we have suggested, the final result of the first great conflict in the evolution of man, that with the lower animals.
This assured mastery once gained, the occasion for further development of this people ceased while they remained in the forest habitat which they had inherited from their ape ancestors. Here the problem of food getting was fully solved and there was nothing to instigate any new step in evolution. The period of conflict ended, a period of rest supervened, and, so far as the Pygmies are concerned, this period still continues. Though later races, their probable descendants, have left the forest and set up new stages of development through new conflicts with adverse conditions, the Pygmies remain in their resting state, and, if left to themselves, might continue in this state for ages in the future as they have done for ages in the past. As the case now stands, however, annihilation threatens some of them, while educative and other influences from without may bring to an end the physical and mental isolation of the others.
In considering the Pygmies as they exist to-day, in fact, it is impossible to say how far their habits and possessions are original with themselves and how far they have been derived from others. There can be no question that they have been influenced by the customs of surrounding peoples of higher culture, and that they have received implements and methods from without. To get down to the pure Pygmy, as an outcome of evolution within himself, we would need to strip off all these adventitious aids, if we could distinguish them from the conditions native to the race, and thus behold him as he was before he fell under the influence of men of higher grade. Were it possible to isolate him in this way, and present his original self, we should have before us an ethnological specimen of the highest interest and importance, as the ultimate resultant of the first great stage in the evolution of man from his ape ancestor.