Races and Peoples: Lectures on the Science of Ethnography

by Daniel G. Brinton

Fig. 6.—Primary Arrow-Release.

Fig. 7.—Mediterranean Arrow-Release.

Allied to muscular variation are the peculiar deposits of fatty tissue in certain portions of the system. The Hottentots are remarkable for the prominence of the gluteal region, imparting to their figure a singular projection posteriorly. It is called “steatopygy,” and appears to have been, in part at least, a cultivated deformity, regarded among them as a beauty. The thick lips of the negro, and the long and pendent breasts of the Australian women, are other examples of ethnic hypertrophies.

Fig. 8.—Mongolian Arrow-Release.

Stature and Proportion.—Differences in stature are tribal, but not racial. The smallest peoples known, the Negrillos, the Aetas, the Lapps, belong to different races, as do the tallest, the Patagonians, the Polynesians, the Anglo-Americans. The researches of Paolo Riccardi and others prove that stature is correlated with nutrition; the better the food, other things being equal, the taller the men.[14] It is also markedly hereditary; the stature of children will average that of their parents.

What is called the “canon of proportions” of the human body varies with the race and the nation. There is indeed an ideal, an artistic canon, which the sculptor or the painter seeks to body forth in his productions; and this seems in close conformity with an extensive average of the proportions of the highest peoples; but it is never found in individuals, and it is essentially unlike in man and woman, in youth and age, in the blonde and brunette.[15] Nor is the ideal of the artist also that which is consonant with the greatest muscular development or highest powers of endurance.

Special Senses.—It cannot be said that the different races display positive discrepancies in the special senses. Their development appears to depend on cultivation, and all races respond equally to equal training. There is, to be sure, a higher musical sense in the native African than in the native American, but quite as much difference is seen between European nations.