Anthropology

by Edward B. Tylor

Not to go into nicer distinctions of cranial measurement, let us now glance at the evident points of the living face. To some extent feature directly follows the shape of the skull beneath. Thus the contrast just mentioned, between the forward-sloping negro skull and its more upright form in the white race, is as plainly seen in the portraits of a Swaheli negro and a Persian, given in [Fig. 11]. On looking at the female portraits in [Fig. 12], the Barolong girl (South Africa) may be selected as an example of the effect of narrowness of skull (b), in contrast with the broader Tatar, and North American faces (d, f). She also shows the convex African forehead, while they, as well as the Hottentot (c), show the effect of high cheek-bones. The Tatar and Japanese faces (d, e) show the skew-eyelids of the Mongolian race. Much of the character of the human face depends on the shape of the softer parts—nose, lips, cheeks, chin, &c., which are often excellent marks to distinguish race. Contrasts in the form of nose may even exceed that here shown between the aquiline of the Persian and the snub of the Negro in [Figs. 11 and 13]. European travellers in Tartary in the middle ages described its flat-nosed inhabitants as having no noses at all, but breathing through holes in their faces. By pushing the tips of our own noses upward, we can in some degree imitate the manner in which various other races, notably the negro, show the opening of the nostrils in full face. Our thin, close-fitting lips, differ in the extreme from those of the negro, well seen in the portrait ([Fig. 13]) of Jacob Wainwright, Livingstone’s faithful boy. We cannot imitate the negro lip by mere pouting, but must push the edges up and down with the fingers to show more of the inner lip. The expression of the human face, on which intelligence and feeling write themselves in visible characters, requires an artist’s training to understand and describe. The mere contour of the features, as taken by photography in an unchanging attitude, has delicate characters which we appreciate by long experience in studying faces, but which elude exact description or measurement. With the purpose of calling attention to some well-marked peculiarities of the human face in different races, a small group of female faces ([Fig. 12]) is here given, all young, and such as would be considered among their own people as at least moderately handsome. Setting aside hair and complexion, there is still enough difference in the actual outline of the features to distinguish the Negro, Kafir, Hottentot, Tatar, Japanese, and North American faces from the English face below.

Fig. 14.—Section of negro skin, much magnified (after Kölliker). a, dermis, or true skin; b, c, rete mucosum; d, epidermis, or scarf-skin.

The colour of the skin, that important mark of race, may be best understood by looking at the darkest variety. The dark hue of the negro does not lie so deep as the innermost or true skin, which is substantially alike among all races of mankind. The seat of the colouring is well shown in [Fig. 14], a highly magnified section of the skin of a negro. Here a shows the surface of the true skin with its papillæ; this is covered by the mucous layer, the innermost cells of which (b) are deeply coloured by small grains of black or brown pigment, the colour shading down to brownish or yellowish toward the outer surface of this mucous layer (c), while even the outside scarf-skin (d) is slightly tinged. The negro, in spite of his name, is not black, but deep brown, and even this darkest hue does not appear at the beginning of life, for the new-born negro child is reddish brown, soon becoming slaty grey, and then darkening. Nor does the darkest tint ever extend over the negro’s whole body, but his soles and palms are brown. When Blumenbach, the anthropologist, saw Kemble play Othello (made up in the usual way, with blackened face and black gloves, to represent a negro) he complained that the whole illusion was spoilt for him when the actor opened his hands. The brown races, such as the native Americans, have the colouring of the skin in a less degree than the Africans, and with them also it is not till some time after birth that the full depth of complexion is reached. The colouring of the dark races appears to be similar in nature to the temporary freckling and sun-burning of the fair white race. Also, Europeans have permanent dark colouring in some portions of the skin, though not exposed to the sun; the areola of the breast, for instance; while in certain affections, known by the medical name of melanism, patches closely resembling negro skin appear on the body. On the whole it seems that the distinction of colour, from the fairest Englishman to the darkest African, has no hard and fast lines, but varies gradually from one tint to another. It is instructive to notice that there occur in the various races certain individuals in whom the colouring matter of the skin is wanting, the so-called albinos. The contrast between their morbid whiteness and any ordinary fairness of complexion is most remarkable in the negro albinos (to call them by this self-contradictory term), who have the well-known African features, but in dead white, as it were a cast of a negro in plaster.

The natural hue of skin farthest from that of the negro is the complexion of the fair race of Northern Europe, of which perfect types are to be met with in Scandinavia, North Germany, and England. In such fair or blonde people the almost transparent skin has its pink tinge by showing the small blood-vessels through it. In the nations of Southern Europe, such as Italians and Spaniards, the browner complexion to some extent hides this red, which among darker peoples in other quarters of the world ceases to be discernible. Thus the difference between light and dark races is well observed in their blushing, which is caused by the rush of hot red blood into the vessels near the surface of the body. Albinos shows this with the utmost intenseness, not only a general glow appearing, but the patches of colour being clearly marked out. The blush, vivid through the blonde skin of the Dane, is more obscurely seen in the Spanish brunette; but in the dark-brown Peruvian, or the yet blacker African, though a hand or a thermometer put to the cheek will detect the blush by its heat, the somewhat increased depth of colour is hardly perceptible to the eye. The contrary effect, paleness, caused by retreat of blood from the surface, is in like manner masked by dark tints of skin.

As a character of race, the colour of the skin has from ancient times been reckoned the most distinctive of all. The Egyptian painters, three or four thousand years ago used regular tints for this purpose, as may be seen in paintings at the British Museum. These colours do not pretend to be exact, as is seen by the native Egyptian gentlemen being painted dark brick-red, but the ladies pale yellow, so as to signify in an exaggerated way their lighter complexion. It was in this conventional manner that they coloured the four principal races of mankind known to them, the Egyptians themselves red-brown, the nations of Palestine yellow-brown, the Libyans yellow-white, and the Æthiopians coal-black (see [page 4]). In the history of the world, colour has often been the sign by which nations accounting themselves the nobler have marked off their inferiors. The Sanskrit word for caste is varna, that is, “colour;” and this shows how their distinction of high and low caste arose. India was inhabited by dark indigenous peoples before the fairer Aryan race invaded the land, and the descendants of conquerors and conquered are still in some measure to be traced among the light-complexioned high-caste, and the dark-complexioned low-caste families. Nor has the distinction of colour ceased in the midst of modern civilization. The Englishman’s white skin is to him, as of old, a caste-mark of separation from the yellow, brown, or black “natives,” as he contemptuously calls them, in other quarters of the globe.

The range of complexion among mankind, beginning with the tint of the fair-whites of Northern Europe and the dark-whites of Southern Europe, passes to the brownish-yellow of the Malays, and the full-brown of American tribes, the deep-brown of Australians, and the black-brown of Negros. Until modern times these race-tints have generally been described with too little care, and named as conventionally as the Egyptians painted them. Now, however, the traveller by using Broca’s set of pattern colours, records the colour of any tribe he is observing, with the accuracy of a mercer matching a piece of silk. The evaporation from the human skin is accompanied by a smell which differs in different races. The peculiar rancid scent by which the African negro may be detected even at a distance is the most marked of these. The odour of the brown American tribes is again different, while they have been known, to express dislike at the white man’s smell. This peculiarity, which not only indicates difference in the secretions of the skin, but seems connected with liability to certain fevers, &c., is a race-character of some importance.

The part of the human body which shows the greatest variety of colour in different individuals, is the iris of the eye. This is the more noticeable because the adjacent parts vary particularly little among mankind. The sclerotic coat, which in a healthy European is almost what it is called, the “white” of the eye, only takes a slightly yellow tinge among the darkest races, as the African negro. Again, in ordinary eyes of all races, the pupil in the centre of the iris appears absolutely black, being in fact transparent, and showing through to the black pigment lining the choroid coat at the back of the eye. But the iris itself, if examined in a number of types of men, has most various colour. In understanding the coloration of the eye, as of the skin, the peculiarities of albinos are instructive. The pink of their eyes (as of white rabbits) is caused by absence of the black pigment above-mentioned, so that light passing out through the iris and pupil is tinged red from the blood-vessels at the back; thus their eyes may be seen to blush with the rest of the face. This want of the protecting black pigment also accounts for the sensitiveness to light which makes albinos avoid a glare; it was for this reason that the Dutch gave them the name of kakkerlaken, or “cockroaches,” these creatures also shunning the light. Prof. Broca, in his scale of colours of eyes, arranges shades of orange, green, blue, and violet-grey. But one has only to look closely into any eye to see the impossibility of recording its complex pattern of colours; indeed what is done is to observe it from a distance so that its tints blend into one uniform hue. It need hardly be said that what are popularly called black eyes are far from having the iris really black like the pupil; eyes described as black are commonly of the deepest shades of brown or violet. These so-called black eyes are by far the most numerous in the world, belonging not only to brown-black, brown, and yellow races, but even prevailing among the darker varieties of the white race, such as Greeks and Spaniards. Aristotle remarks that the colour of the eyes follows that of the skin. Indeed it is plain that there is a connection of the colours of the skin, eyes, and hair among mankind. In races with the darker skin and black hair, the darkest eyes generally prevail, while a fair complexion is usually accompanied by the lighter tints of iris, especially blue. A fair Saxon with black eyes, or a full-grown negro with pale blue eyes, would be looked at with surprise. Yet we know by our own country-people how difficult it is to lay down exact rules as to matching colours in complexion. Thus the combination of black hair with dark blue or grey eyes is frequent in some districts of Great Britain. Dr. Barnard Davis and Dr. Beddoe think it indicates Keltic blood.

From ancient times, the colour and form of the hair have been noticed as distinctive marks of race. Thus Strabo mentions the Æthiopians as black men with woolly hair, and Tacitus describes the German warriors of his day with their fierce blue eyes and tawny hair. As to colour of hair, the most usual is black, or shades so dark as to be taken for black, which belongs not only to the dark-skinned Africans and Americans, but to the yellow Chinese and the dark-whites such as Hindus or Jews. Mr. Sorby remarks that blackness of hair is due to black pigment being present in such quantity as to overpower whatever red or yellow pigment the hair may also contain. In the fair-white peoples of Northern Europe, on the contrary, flaxen or chestnut hair prevails. Thus we see that there is a connection between fair hair and fair skin, and dark hair and dark skin. But it is impossible to lay down a rule for intermediate tints, for the red-brown or auburn hair common in fair-skinned peoples occurs among darker races, and dark-brown hair has a still wider range. Our own extremely mixed nation shows every variety from flaxen and golden to raven black. As to the form of the hair, its well-known differences may be seen in the female portraits in [Fig. 12], where the Africans on the left show the woolly or frizzy kind, where the hair naturally curls into little corkscrew-spirals, while the Asiatic and American heads on the right have straight hair like a horse’s mane. Between these extreme kinds are the flowing or wavy hair, and the curly hair which winds in large spirals; the English hair in the figure is rather of the latter variety. If cross sections of single hairs are examined under the microscope, their differences of form are seen as in four of the sections by Pruner-Bey ([Fig. 15]). The almost circular Mongolian hair (a) hangs straight; the more curly European hair (b) has an oval or elliptical section; the woolly African hair (c) is more flattened; while the frizzy Papuan hair (d) is a yet more extreme example of the flattened ribbon-like kind. Curly and woolly hair has a lop-sided growth from the root which gives the twist. Not only the colour and form of the hair, but its quantity, vary in different races. Thus the heads of the Bushmen are more scantily furnished with hair than ours, while among the Crow Indians it was common for the warrior’s coarse black hair to sweep on the ground behind him. The body-hair also is scanty in some races and plentiful in others. Thus the Ainos, the indigenes of Yeso, are a shaggy people, while the Japanese possessors of their island are comparatively hairless. So strong is the contrast, that the Japanese have invented a legend that in ancient times the Aino mothers suckled young bears, which gradually developed into men.