Pedagogical Anthropology

by Maria Montessori

The pigment, deposited in all races of mankind under the Malpighian layer, produces the various brownish tones. The quantity of cutaneous pigment is a constant racial factor—a hereditary factor. Nevertheless, in certain individuals, it may be influenced by external agents (sunshine, heat) which tend to cause it to vary; such alterations produce individual varieties, and also variations in coloration of the skin between the covered parts of the body and those exposed to the sun or to atmospheric action in general; these variations, one and all, are not hereditary.

At puberty the pigment is increased in certain portions of the body in connection with the generative functions which become established at that time. Besides this, the general pigmentation is intensified; children are whiter than adults.

The Skin and the Hair during the Evolution of the Organism.—In the case of the hair also, the pigment does not remain a constant quantity throughout the different periods of life. Grey hair is a normal sign of the decadence of an organism which has entered upon its involution. As is well known, the hair of the head, the beard, and in general all the piliferous appendages turn white, beginning in the regions where the hair is most abundant, i.e., on the head. In some men, however, the hairs of the beard are the first to turn grey; this is not perfectly normal, it is an inferior manner of growing old. A German proverb says, that he who works much with the head (the thinking class) turns grey first in his hair, and that he who works much with his mouth (the hearty eater) turns grey first in his beard.

The skin also gives manifest signs of decadence in the form of wrinkles. These serve up to a certain point as documentary evidence of the life which the individual has led and the high or low type to which he belongs. Just as in the case of grey hair, it is the class of thinkers who have the most wrinkles on their forehead; those who were given over to baser passions, such as called for labial rather than frontal expression, have on the contrary, more wrinkles around the mouth. We know how the peasant class has a veritable halo of wrinkles around the mouth.

Thinkers, on the contrary, have a single vertical furrow in the middle of the forehead: the line of thought. The transverse lines on the forehead are parallel and unconnected.

Faces with precocious wrinkles may be met with, even in children (denutrition, mental anxiety, dystrophic conditions); and conversely, there are faces which have been preserved unwrinkled up to an advanced age (especially in the case of women of the aristocracy, in whom it may happen that neither suffering nor mental effort has left its traces on their lives).

Pigmentation of the Hair.—This anthropological datum merits special consideration, since it plays so large a part in the æsthetics of the human body; and also preserves certain constant characteristics that serve to differentiate the races. In a study of the hair it is necessary to consider the quantity, the disposition and the form. Abundant, strong, sleek hair is in physiological relation to robustness of body. Thin hair, on the contrary, or hair that is easily extirpated at the slightest pull, or dry hair, indicate insufficient nutrition, which may also be connected with dystrophic or pathological conditions (hereditary syphilis, cretinism).

The normal disposition of the hair is characteristic, but it may assume a number of individual variations, as has recently been shown by Dr. Sergio Sergi, son of our mutual instructor Giuseppe Sergi (Sergio Sergi, Sulla disposizione dei capelli intorno alla fronte—"The disposition of the hair upon the forehead"—Acts of the Società di Antropologia, Vol. 13, No. 1).

The hair, after forming a single whorl or vortex, corresponding to the obelion, flows over the forehead in either two or three divisions, the lines of the parting (either lateral lines or a single central line) corresponding to the natural divisions of the flowing hair. Across the forehead the hair ceases at the line of the roots, which crowns the face cornice-like; it is a sinuous line and rises at the sides in two points, corresponding to the natural partings of the hair. The hair stops normally at the boundary-line of the forehead, which together with the face forms the visage, leaving bare that part which in man corresponds to that portion of the frontal bone that rises erect above the orbital arches, i.e., the human portion of the forehead.

The form of the hair is an ethnical characteristic. Among our European populations the extreme forms are wanting, namely, smooth hair (stiff, coarse, sparse hair peculiar to the red and yellow races, such as the American Indian, Esquinaux, Samoyed and Chinese), and kinky hair (wooly hair, curling in fine, close spirals, such as is found in all its variations among the Australians and the African negroes). Consequently, we cannot use the words smooth or kinky for the purpose of qualifying the forms of hair found in our populations.