The Doctrine of Evolution: Its Basis and Its Scope

by Henry Edward Crampton

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The American Indians taken collectively constitute a group that is well set off from the rest of mankind by such characters as taller stature, small, straight, and black eyes, a large nose that is usually bridged or aquiline, a skull of medium roundness, and the yellow copper color of the skin. The common origin with the Mongols is demonstrated by the straight and long, coarse, black hair and by the absence of a beard; the mustache also is almost always absent.

All of us have seen Indians belonging to the tribes of the plains, which serve as excellent examples of this grand division. Many have also visited the homes of the Pueblo Indians, and have learned how uniform is the physical appearance of the tribes living in various parts of the United States. Indeed throughout all of North America the basic characteristics of Indians prove to be strikingly conservative, although in the Eskimo there are some departures which seem to indicate a closer connection of these peoples with the Mongols, probably as the result of some more recent influx from the neighboring and not very distant region of northeastern Siberia. Extending our survey southward through Central America, the Aztecs and Mayas are found to possess many of the same characters, though in some respects they are transitional to the Caribs of the northern edge of South America and to the Indians of South America. Traveling still farther southward, we meet the very tall Patagonian, still an Indian in essential respects, and finally, the Yahgan and Alacaluf of the Fuegian region, the most degenerate members of the race. The last-mentioned people are dull and brutish and most degraded in all respects, and stand at the lowest end of the red Indian series as regards intellectual ability and cultural attainment.

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We now come to the last of the four great divisions of the human species which includes the races usually spoken of as Africans or Ethiopians. But these races are by no means restricted to the continent of Africa, for quite as typical black types are found in far-distant lands such as Australia and many islands of the Pacific Ocean. The races assigned to this division group themselves about two subordinate types,—the tall negro proper and the shorter or dwarf negrito,—and each of these has representatives both in Africa and in the oceanic territory.

The black slaves of America were all descended from typical negros brought from the western part of Africa, and they provide us with adequate illustrations of Ethiopians as a group. In them the stature is above the average of men in general, specifically about five feet ten inches. The short jet-black hair is strikingly different from the head covering of the other great groups of human races; each individual hair is so flat in cross-section that it curls into a very tight close spiral, and this brings about a frizzly appearance of the whole head covering. There is little or no beard, the skin is soft and velvety and of various shades approaching black in color. The skull is long, the cheek bones are small, but the most distinctive characteristics of the head are found in the apelike ridges over the eyes and in the very broad flat nose which projects only slightly and turns up so that the nostrils open forward to a marked degree, while in the jaws there is an astonishing divergence from the Caucasian condition in the great protrusion which causes the angle at the chin to be about sixty degrees.

The warlike Zulus and other peoples of Southern and Central Africa are perhaps the most characteristic races in this division. Their relatives are found to the northward as far as the Sahara desert, along the southern borders of which they have spread out to the eastward and westward. Fusion with other races has taken place along this border so that many of these northern tribes are much lighter than the Zulus in the color of the skin. But many relatives of the taller African negro are found in other parts of the world, namely in Australia, and in New Hebrides and New Caledonia—islands to the north and east of this continent. The Papuan of New Guinea is a typical negro in all true respects, with strongly marked Ethiopian characteristics, though there are some differences which are transitional to the more aberrant natives of Melanesia, which includes many archipelagos like the Fiji, Bismarck, Marshall, and Solomon islands. Undoubtedly the most degenerate member of the tall negro division is the Australian native, the so-called "blackfellow." The bulbous nose and the well-grown beard mark him off from the typical stock, but his obvious relationship to this is indicated by the low brain capacity, the prominent ridges over the eyes, and the heavy projecting jaws.

Taking up the other division of the so-called Ethiopian race, constituting the Negrito section, we may begin with its Oceanic members. The natives of the Andaman Islands, the Kalangs and the Sakais of Java and neighboring regions, and the Aetas of the Philippine Islands agree in a dwarfed stature of four feet or a little over, in their yellowish brown skin color, a round head, and woolly reddish-brown hair. They, too, possess large ridges over the eyes and extremely prominent jaws, and in these latter characteristics particularly we see evidences of their relationship to the negro. But perhaps the most characteristic pygmies are found in Africa. The little Bushmen and Hottentots are low types of the Negrito stock, and they lead us to the lowest men of all, the Akkas of the West Congo region. It is difficult for us to realize how utterly degenerate and apelike these pygmies are. The jaws are disproportionately large as compared with the cranium or brain-case, and project to a degree which brings the skull very close to that of the higher apes; while in mental respects, in the absence of dwellings, and in many other ways they prove to be the lowest of all mankind,—veritable brutes in form and mode of life.

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Without a full series of photographs before us the foregoing sketch of the various races of men cannot make us fully acquainted with all the strange varieties of the human body, but it will suffice to establish two fundamental results. While all men agree in the possession of certain features which set them apart from other members of the primate order, they differ among themselves in such a way as to fall into four well-marked subdivisions branching out from a common starting-point. Furthermore, in each of these primary groups the subordinate types arrange themselves also in the manner of branches arising from a common limb. This is the relation that we have earlier found to be a universal one throughout the animal kingdom, and science believes that it indicates everywhere an evolutionary history—an actual development along different lines of descent of forms which have a common starting-point and ancestry.