Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

by Daniel G. Brinton

I. Negritic Stock.	1. Negrito Group.	Mincopies, Aetas, Schobaengs, Mantras, Semangs, Sakaies.
	2. Papuan Group.	Papuas, New Guineans.
	3. Melanesian Group.	Natives of Feejee Islands, New Caledonia, Loyalty Islands, New Hebrides, etc.
II. Malayic Stock.	1. Malayan Group.	Malays, Sumatrese, Javanese, Battaks, Dayaks, Macassars, Tagalas, Hovas (of Madagascar).
	2. Polynesian Group.	Polynesians, Micronesians, Maoris.
III. Australic Stock.	1. Australian Group.	Tasmanians, Australians.
	2. Dravidian Group.	Dravidas, Tamuls, Telugus, Canarese, Malayalas, Todas, Khonds, Mundas, Santals, Kohls, Bhillas.

It was Darwin’s theory that the distant progenitor of man was an amphibious marine animal, and certainly from earliest times he has had a predilection for water-ways and the sea-coast. The lines of these have always directed his wanderings, and it is not surprising therefore that nowhere do we find the physical types of the race so confusingly amalgamated as in the insular littoral peoples. Not only is transit easier in these localities, but on islands especially there is a more rapid intermingling and a closer interbreeding than is apt to occur in continental areas. This not only blends types, but it has another effect. It is well known from observation on the lower animals that such close unions result in the formation of more plastic organisms, liable to present wide variations, and to develop into contrasting characters.[146] This holds good also of mental products. For instance, you might suppose that the dialects of the same island or the same small archipelago would offer very slight differences. The reverse is the case. In the same area the dialects of an island differ far more than on the mainland. This is a fact well known to linguists, and is parallel to the physical variations.[147] The ethnographer, therefore, is prepared to attach less importance to corporeal and linguistic differences in insular than in continental peoples.

Physical Geography of Oceanica.—The island world of the Indian and Pacific Oceans is divided geologically into two regions, Australasia and Polynesia. The former, as its name denotes, is really a southeasterly prolongation of the continent of Asia, and was united to it in late tertiary times. The huge islands of Sumatra, Java and Borneo are separated from the Malayan and Siamese peninsulas by channels scarcely a couple of hundred feet deep; and from these a chain of islands extends uninterruptedly to the semi-continent of Australia. All these islands are of tertiary formation, and the subsidence which separated them from the main took place at the close of that geologic epoch.

The Polynesian islands, on the other hand, are of recent construction. They are submarine towers of coral, erected on the crests of sunken mountain ranges rising on the floor of a profoundly deep sea. Nevertheless the flora and fauna of Polynesia resemble that of Australasia in its strongly Asiatic character.

The islands of the Indian Ocean present some singular anomalies. Ceylon, though so close to the Indian peninsula, is not a geological fragment of it; while Madagascar, though four thousand miles away, was unquestionably once a part of Southern Hindostan.[148] This, however, was in remote eocene tertiary times, and long before man appeared. The hypothesis, therefore, advanced by Hæckel and favored by Peschel and other ethnographers, that the Indian Ocean was once filled by the continent “Lemuria,” and that there man appeared on the globe, must be dismissed so far as man is concerned, as in conflict with more accurate observations.

Yet one must acknowledge that it has some plausibility from the present ethnography of the islands and coasts of the Indian Ocean. There is a general consensus of opinion that the earliest occupants of these regions were an undersized black race, resembling in many respects the negrillos of Austafrica. Upon these was superimposed an Asiatic stock represented by the modern Malays; and the union of these two strains gave rise to the anomalous tribes which occupy Southern Hindostan, Australia, and some of the islands.

This historic scheme, which has a great deal in its favor, permits me to classify the great island-world and its adjacent mainland into three ethnographic categories as represented on the diagram.

Of these the most ancient is

I. The Negritic Stock.

This embraces three subdivisions, (1) the Negritos, (2) the Papuas, (3) the Melanesians.