On the phenomena of hybridity in the genus Homo

by Paul Broca

SECTION II.

OF EUGENESIC HYBRIDITY IN MANKIND.

If the opinion I wish to combat were not supported by authors of If, perhaps, be superfluous to demonstrate that there exists in the human species eugenesic hybrids. Most of the readers of these pages must reconcile themselves to this qualification, for assuredly men of a pure race are very rare in the country they inhabit. Nothing is, in fact, more clear than that many modern nations, to commence with the French, have been formed by the intermixture of two or more races. My excellent teacher, Gerdy,[16] has devoted a long chapter, in his Physiology, to this subject, and has, after great research, arrived at the conclusion that all, or nearly all, actual races have been crossed more than once, and that the primitive types of mankind, altered and modified by so many crossings, are no longer represented upon the earth. There is here much exaggeration: for there are races who, by a peculiar geographical situation, and the prejudices of caste or religion, have remained in a state of purity; and on the other hand, as M. P. Bérard[17] remarks, it is not sufficient for the production of a mongrel race, that two groups of different races should become allied and fused. If in either of the groups there exists too great a numerical inequality, the mongrels resume, after the lapse of a few generations, nearly all the traits of the more numerous race, and are fused in it. It is for this reason that, despite of numerous crossings, many races have preserved all their characters from remote antiquity. I have already had occasion to observe that the Fellahs of present Egypt are exactly like the figures represented upon the Pharaonic epoch.[18] No country has, however, been so frequently conquered as Egypt, which from Cambyses to Mehemet-Ali, for more than twenty-three centuries has been governed and oppressed by peoples of foreign races, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, and Mamelukes. The Macedonian colonies, founded by Alexander and his successors, soon lost their ethnological character.[19] Southern Italy has not preserved the impress of the Norman race. It would be vain to search in Asia Minor for the descendants of the Gauls with fair hair,[20] who once established themselves in Galatia; and though the Visigoths possessed Spain for more than two centuries, and have never been expelled from it, and we may without exaggeration compute the number of the conquerors at several hundred thousand, and though their blood, mitigated by intermixture, runs to this day in the veins of an immense number of Spaniards, the latter have preserved no trace of their Germanic origin.

But when the intermixture of races is effected in nearly equal proportions, or if it be the result, not of one invasion, but of a constant and abundant immigration, the case is altogether different, and the fusion of the ethnological elements gives rise to a hybrid population, in which the number of individuals of a pure race is constantly diminishing, so that at the termination of a few centuries the representatives of the two primitive types become the exceptions. In a long Memoir “On the Ethnology of France,” which I lately read before the Anthropological Society of Paris, I have shown to what extent intermixture may modify the physiognomy of a people. Examining in the first place the records of history on hand, the origin of the populations of our departments, and appreciating as much as possible the proportion of the elements which we find in combination; determining, also, for each region the principal and the accessory stocks, I have been enabled to find in the present French nation, in the midst of the innumerable variations of stature, complexion, hair, eyes, cephalic shapes, etc., which may everywhere be expected in mixed races; I have been able to detect, I repeat, the characters of these different races, and to recognise the more or less marked and dominant impress of the Celts, Kimris, Romans, and Germans. I was even enabled, on the statistics of recruiting, to give to my inquiries, in regard to stature, a rigorous precision. I cannot in this place enter into any details: I am obliged to refer the reader to the Memoir, which is published by the Anthropological Society. In point of fact, it was merely because eminent men have for some years doubted the existence of eugenesic hybridity in mankind, that it became necessary to demonstrate so evident a proposition, that the population of France in at least nineteen-twentieths of our territory, presents in unequal degrees the characters of mixed races.

This single example might suffice; but I have no doubt that by examining in a similar manner the historical origin and the actual condition of the peoples of Northern Italy, Southern Germany, Great Britain—not to speak of the United States, where the fusion of blood is probably inexplicable—it might be demonstrated with equal certainty, that these different races have given birth, by their intermixture, to ethnological modifications still recognisable. In all these countries is the instability of anthropological characters in contrast with the fixity which is the mark of pure races; and we might say, without fear of error, that the greater part of Western Europe is inhabited by mixed races.

Moreover, the authors who have denied the existence of mixed races, have not denied that there are in Europe and elsewhere, numerous vivacious populations, formed by the intermixture of two or several distinct races. They merely asserted that mongrel breeds, whatever their origin, were necessarily inferior in reference to fecundity to individuals of pure blood, and that their direct descendants would become extinct after a few generations, unless they contracted new alliances with the mother races, or at least with one of them. If we object to this, that the mixed populations possess everywhere, as those of France and Great Britain, a vitality and fecundity which leaves nothing to be desired, they reply that this proves nothing; that the cross breeds are prolific in a collateral line, as is observed in cases of paragenesic hybridity, and they add that two cases may present themselves:

1. If among the two primitive races these obtain a very large numerical inequality, the predominant race soon absorbs the other. After two or three generations, the less numerous race counts scarcely one representative, and the cross-breeds are fused in the more numerous race. The latter thus returns to a state of original purity. The mixed race has only a transitory duration, and leaves no trace of its existence.

2. If, on the contrary, the two races, though numerically unequal, are in sufficient proportion that neither can absorb the other, both persist indefinitely beside each other upon the same soil. The hybrid race which they engender, seems also to persist indefinitely; but only in appearance, for they constantly intermarry with the pure races, while the latter marry between themselves. The mixed race gains thus, in every generation, a contingent equal to what it loses, those which represent it at present are not the descendants of those who represented the mixed race five or six generations back. It is not maintained by itself: existing only under the condition of being sustained by the races from which it is issued, and if there arrived a time when it is completely isolated from these two races, and reduced to its own forces, it would necessarily become extinct after a few generations.