Fig. 21.—Cafusa Woman.
Not only does a mixed race arise wherever two races inhabit the same district, but within the last few centuries it is well known that a large fraction of the world’s population has actually come into existence by race-crossing. This is nowhere so evident as on the American continent, where since the Spanish conquest such districts as Mexico are largely peopled by the mestizo descendants of Spaniards and native Americans, while the importation of African slaves in the West Indies has given rise to a mulatto population. By taking into account such intercrossing of races, anthropologists have a reason to give for the endless shades of diversity among mankind, without attempting the hopeless task of classifying every little uncertain group of men into a special race. The water-carrier from Cairo, in [Fig. 22], may serve as an example of the difficulty of making a systematic arrangement to set each man down to his precise race. This man speaks Arabic, and is a Moslem, but he is not an Arab proper, neither is he an Egyptian of the old kingdom, but the child of a land where the Nubian, Copt, Syrian, Bedouin, and many other peoples have mingled for ages, and in fact his ancestry may come out of three quarters of the globe. Among the natives of India, a variety of complexion and feature is found which cannot be classified exactly by race. But it must be remembered that several very distinct varieties of men have contributed to the population of the country, namely the dark-brown indigenes or hill-tribes, the yellow Mongolians who have crossed the frontiers from Tibet, and the fairer ancient Aryans or Indo-Europeans who poured in from the north-west; not to mention others, the mixture of these nations going on for ages has of course produced numberless crosses. So in Europe, taking the fair nations of the Baltic and the dark nations of the Mediterranean as two distinct races or varieties, their intercrossing may explain the infinite diversity of brown hair and intermediate complexion to be met with. If then it may be considered that man was already divided into a few great main races in remote antiquity, their intermarriage through ages since will go far to account for the innumerable slighter varieties which shade into one another.
Fig. 22.—Cairene.
It is not enough to look at a race of men as a mere body of people happening to have a common type or likeness. For the reason of their likeness is plain, and indeed our calling them a race means that we consider them a breed whose common nature is inherited from common ancestors. Now experience of the animal world shows that a race or breed, while capable of carrying on its likeness from generation to generation, is also capable of varying. In fact, the skilful cattle-breeder, by carefully choosing and pairing individuals which vary in a particular direction, can within a few years form a special breed of cattle or sheep. Without such direct interference of man, special races or breeds of animals form themselves under new conditions of climate and food, as in the familiar instances of the Shetland ponies, or the mustangs of the Mexican plains which have bred from the horses brought over by the Spaniards. It naturally suggests itself that the races of man may be thus accounted for as breeds, varied from one original stock. It may be strongly argued in this direction that not only do the bodily and mental varieties of mankind blend gradually into one another, but that even the most dissimilar races can intermarry in all directions, producing mixed or sub-races which, when left to themselves, continue their own kind. Advocates of the polygenist theory, that there are several distinct races of man, sprung from independent origins, have denied that certain races, such as the English and native Australians, produce fertile half-breeds. But the evidence tends more and more to establish crossing as possible between all races, which goes to prove that all the varieties of mankind are zoologically of one species. While this principle seems to rest on firm ground, it must be admitted that our knowledge of the manner and causes of race-variation among mankind is still very imperfect. The great races, black, brown, yellow, white, had already settled into their well-known characters before written record began, so that their formation is hidden far back in the præhistoric period. Nor are alterations of such amount known to have taken place in any people within the range of history. It has been plausibly argued that our rude primitive ancestors, being less able than their posterity to make themselves independent of climate by shelter and fire and stores of food, were more exposed to alter in body under the influence of the new climates they migrated into. Even in modern times, it seems possible to trace something of race-change going on under new conditions of life. Thus Dr. Beddoe’s measurements prove that in England the manufacturing town-life has given rise to a population an inch or two less in stature than their forefathers when they came in from their country villages. So in the Rocky Mountains there are clans of Snake Indians whose stunted forms and low features, due to generations of needy outcast life, mark them off from their better nourished kinsfolk in the plains. It is asserted that the pure negro in the United States has undergone a change in a few generations which has left him a shade lighter in complexion and altered his features, while the pure white in the same region has become less rosy, with darker and more glossy hair, more prominent cheek-bones and massive lower jaw. These are perhaps the best authenticated cases of race-change. There is great difficulty in watching a race undergoing variation, which is everywhere masked by the greater changes caused by new nations coming in to mingle and intermarry with the old. He who should argue from the Greek sculptures that the national type has changed since the age of Perikles, would be met with the answer that the remains of the old stock have long been inextricably blended with others. The points which have now been brought forward will suffice to show the uncertainty and difficulty of any attempt to trace exactly the origin and course of the races of man. Yet at the same time there is a ground-work to go upon in the fact that these races are not found spread indiscriminately over the earth’s surface, but certain races plainly belong to certain regions, seeming each to have taken shape under the influences of climate and soil in its proper district, where it flourished, and whence it spread far and wide, modifying itself and mingling with other races as it went. The following brief sketch may give an idea how the spreading and mixture of the great races may have taken place. It embodies well-considered views of eminent anatomists, especially Professors Huxley and Flower. Though such a scheme cannot be presented as proved and certain, it is desirable to clear and fix our ideas by understanding that man’s distribution over the earth did not take place by promiscuous scattering of tribes, but along great lines of movement whose regularity can be often discerned, where it cannot be precisely followed out.
Fig. 23.—Andaman Islanders.
That there is a real connexion between the colour of races and the climate they belong to, seems most likely from the so-called black peoples. Ancient writers were satisfied to account for the colour of the Æthiopians by saying that the sun had burnt them black, and though modern anthropologists would not settle the question in this off-hand way, yet the map of the world shows that this darkest race-type is principally found in a tropical climate. The main line of black races stretches along the hot and fertile regions of the equator, from Guinea in West Africa to that great island of the Eastern Archipelago, which has its name of New Guinea from its negro-like natives. In a former geological period an equatorial continent (to which Sclater has given the name of Lemuria) may even have stretched across from Africa to the far East, uniting these now separate lands. The attention of anthropologists has been particularly attracted by a line of islands in the Sea of Bengal, the Andamans, which might have been part of this former continent, and were found inhabited by a scanty population of rude and childlike savages. These Mincopis ([Fig. 23]) are small in stature (the men under five feet), with skin of blackness, and hair very flat in section and frizzled, which from their habit of shaving their heads must be imagined by the reader. But while in these points resembling the African negro, they are unlike him in having skulls not narrow, but broad and rounded, nor have they lips so full, a nose so wide, or jaws so projecting as his. It has occurred to anatomists, and the opinion has been strengthened by Flower’s study of their skulls, that the Andaman tribes may be a remnant of a very early human stock, perhaps the best representatives of the primitive negro type which has since altered in various points in its spread over its wide district of the world. The African negro race, with its special marks of narrow skull, projecting jaws, black-brown skin, woolly hair, flattened nose, full and out-turned lips, has already been here described (see [pages 61 to 67]). Its type perhaps shows itself most perfectly in the nations near the equator, as in Guinea, but it spreads far and wide over the continent, shading off by crossing with lighter coloured races on its borders, such as the Berbers in the north, and the Arabs on the east coast. As the race spreads southward into Congo and the Kafir regions, there is noticed a less full negro complexion and feature, looking as though migration from the central region into new climates had somewhat modified the type. In this respect the small-grown Hottentot-Bushman tribes of South Africa (see [Figs. 8, 12] c) are most remarkable, for while keeping much negro character in the narrow skull, frizzy hair, and cast of features, their skin is of a lighter tint of brownish-yellow. There is nothing to suggest that this came by crossing the negro type with a fairer race, indeed there is no evidence of such a race to cross with. If the Bushman is a special modification of the Negro, then this is an excellent case of the transformation of races when placed under new conditions. To return now to Southern Asia, there are found in the Malay Peninsula and the Philippines scanty forest-tribes apparently allied to the Andamaners and classed under the general term Negritos (i.e. “little blacks”), seeming to belong to a race once widely spread over this part of the world, whose remnants have been driven by stronger new come races to find refuge in the mountains. [Fig. 24], represents one of them, an Aheta from the island of Luzon. Lastly come the wide-spread and complicated varieties of the eastern negro race in the region known as Melanesia, the “black islands,” extending from New Guinea to Fiji. The group of various islanders ([Fig. 25]) belonging to Bishop Patteson’s mission, shows plainly the resemblance to the African negro, though with some marked points of difference, as in the brows being more strongly ridged, and the nose being more prominent, even aquiline—a striking contrast to the African. The Melanesians about New Guinea are called Papuas from their woolly hair (Malay papuwah = frizzed), which is often grown into enormous mops. The great variety of colour in Melanesia, from the full brown-black down to chocolate or nut-brown, shows that there has been much crossing with lighter populations. Such mixture is evident in the coast-people of Fiji, where the dark Melanesian race is indeed predominant, but crossed with the lighter Polynesian race to which much of the language and civilization of the islands belongs. Lastly, the Tasmanians were a distant outlying population belonging to the eastern blacks.
Fig. 24.—Aheta (Negrito), Philippine Islands.