Man and His Migrations

by R. G. Latham

The same in the North. The Berbers reach from the Valley of the Nile to the Canaries, and from the [Mediterranean] to the parts about Borneo. In Borneo there are said to be thirty different languages.

Such are areas in size, and in relation to each other; like the bishoprics and curacies of our church, large and small, with a difficulty in ascertaining the average. However, the simple epithets great and small are suggestive; since the former implies an encroaching, the latter a receding population.

A distribution over continents is one thing; a distribution over islands another. The first is easiest made when the world is young and when the previous occupants create no obstacles. The second implies maritime skill and enterprise, and maritime skill improves with the experience of mankind. One of the greatest facts of ethnological distribution and dispersion belongs to this class. All the islands of the Pacific are peopled by the members of one stock, or family—the Polynesian. These we find as far north as the Sandwich Islands, as far south as New Zealand, and in Easter Island half-way between Asia and America. So much for the dispersion. But this is not all: the distribution is as remarkable. Madagascar is an African rather than an Asiatic island; within easy sail of Africa; the exact island for an African population. Yet, ethnologically, it is Asiatic—the same family which we find in Sumatra, Borneo, the Moluccas, the Mariannes, the Carolines, and Polynesia being Malagasi also.

Contrast between contiguous populations.—Ethnological resemblance by no means coincides with geographical contiguity. The general character of the circumpolar families of the Arctic Circle is that of the Laplander, the Samoeid, and the Eskimo. Yet the zone of population that encircles the inhospitable shores of the Polar Sea is not exclusively either Lap or Samoeid—nor yet Eskimo. In Europe, the Laplander finds a contrast on each side. There is the Norwegian on the west; the Finlander on the east. We can explain this. The former is but a recent occupant; not a natural, but an intruder. This we infer from the southern distribution of the other members of his family—who are Danish, German, Dutch, English, and American. For the same reason the Icelander differs from the Greenlander. The Finlander, though more closely allied to the Lap than the Norwegian—belonging to the same great Ugrian family of mankind—is still a southern member of his family; a family whose continuation extends to the Lower Volga, and prolongations of which are found in Hungary. East of the Finlander, the Russian displaces the typically circumpolar Samoeid; whilst at the mouth of the Lena we have the Yakuts—Turk in blood, and tongue, and, to a certain extent, in form also.

In America the circumpolar population is generally Eskimo. Yet at one point, we find even the verge of the Arctic shore occupied by a population of tall, fine-looking athletes, six feet high, well-made, and handsome in countenance. These are the Digothi Indians, called also Loucheux. Their locality is the mouth of the McKenzie River; but their language shows that their origin is further south—i. e. that they are Koluches within the Eskimo area.

In Southern Africa we have the Hottentot in geographical proximity to the [Kaffre], yet the contrast between the two is considerable. Similar examples are numerous. What do they denote? Generally, but not always, they denote encroachment and displacement; encroachment which tells us which of the two families has been the stronger, and displacement which has the following effect. It obliterates those intermediate and transitional forms which connect varieties, and so brings the more extreme cases of difference in geographical contact, and in ethnological contrast; hence encroachment, displacement, and the obliteration of transitional forms are terms required for the full application of the phænomena of distribution as an instrument of ethnological criticism.

Continuity and isolation.—In Siberia there are two isolated populations—the Yakuts on the Lower Lena, and the Soiot on the Upper Yenesey. The former, as aforesaid, are Turk; but they are surrounded by nations other than Turk. They are cut off from the rest of the stock.

The Soiot in like manner are surrounded by strange populations. Their true relations are the Samoeids of the Icy Sea; but between these two branches of the stock there is a heterogeneous population of Turks and Yeneseians—so-called.

The great Iroquois family of America is separated into two parts—one northern and one southern. Between these lie certain members of the Algonkin class. Like the Soiot, and the Northern Samoeids, the two branches of the Iroquois are separated.