Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

by Daniel G. Brinton

The amount of brain matter contained in a skull is called its “cerebral or cranial capacity.” This is proved by investigation to average less in the dark than in the light races, and in the same race less in the female than in the male sex. Estimated in cubic centimetres the extremes are about 1250 cub. cent. in the Australians and Bushmen to 1600 cub. cent. in well-developed Europeans. We cannot regard this measurement as a constant exponent of intellectual power, as many men with small brains have possessed fine intellects; but as a general feature it certainly is indicative of brain weight, and therefore of relative intelligence. The average human brain weighs 48 ounces, while that of a large gorilla is not over 20 ounces.

The teeth offer several points of difference in races. In the negro they are unusually white and strong, and in nearly all the black people (Australians, Soudanese, Melanesians, etc.), the “wisdom teeth” are generally furnished with three separate fangs, and are sound, while among whites they have only two fangs, and decay early. The most ancient jaws exhumed in Europe present the former character. The prominence of the canine teeth is a peculiarity of some tribes, while in others the canines are not conical, but resemble the incisors.

The size of the teeth has also been asserted to be an index of race, and an effort has been made to classify peoples into small-toothed (microdonts), medium-toothed (mesodonts), and large-toothed (megadonts).[7] But this scheme includes in the first mentioned class the Polynesians with the Europeans, and in the second the African negro with the Chinese, which looks as if the plan has little value.

The milk-teeth have a much closer resemblance to those of the apes than the second dentition, and some naturalists have thought that the forms of the second teeth point often to reversion and are characteristic of races, but this has not been proved.

The teeth and the period of dentition have been studied in man with the view to show that certain races more than others retain the dental forms of the lower animals, but the latest investigations go rather to overthrow than to support these theories.[8]

Turning to the other bones of the skeleton, I shall note a few peculiarities said to be ethnic. The skeleton of a negro usually presents iliac bones more vertical than those of a white man, and the basin is narrower. This peculiarity is measured by what is called the “pelvic index,” by which is meant the ratio of the transverse to the longitudinal diameter. The average ratio is about 90 or 95 to 100.

Another trait of a lower osteology is the unusual length of the arms. This is found to depend upon the relative elongation of the fore-arm and its principal bones, the radius and ulna. From comparisons which have been instituted between the negro and the white, it appears that the proportionate length of their arms is as 78 to 72. The long arms are characteristic of the higher apes and the unripe fetus, and belong, therefore, to a lower phase of development than that reached by the white race.

There is also a peculiarity among many lower peoples in the shape of the shin-bone or tibia. Usually when cut in cross-section, the ends present a triangular surface; but in certain tribes, and in some ancient remains from the caves, the cross-section is elliptical, showing that the tibia has been flattened (platycnemic). This was long regarded as a sign of ethnic inferiority, but of late years the opinion of anatomists has undergone a change, and they attribute it to the special use of some of the muscles of the leg.

The heel-bone, the os calcis or calcaneum, is currently believed to be longer and project further backward in the negro than in the white man. There is no doubt of the projection of the heel, and it is typical of the true negro race, but it does not seem to be owing to the size of the bone, as an examination of a series of calcanca in both races proves. The lengthening is apparent only, and is due to the smallness of the calf and the slenderness of the main tendon, the “tendon of Achilles,” immediately above the heel.[9]

With the pithecoid forms of the bones is often associated another simian mark. The line in the hand known to chiromancy as the “heart” line, in all races but the negro ceases at the base of the middle finger, but in his race, as in the ape, it often extends quite across the palm.