Human Origins

by S. Laing

We are confined therefore to Europe for anything like positive evidence of these anatomical characters of prehistoric and primæval man, and can only draw inferences from implements as to those of other portions of the earth and other races. Fortunately these racial characters are very persistent, especially those of the skull and stature, and they exist in ample abundance throughout the historic, prehistoric, and neolithic ages, to enable us to draw very certain conclusions. Thus at present, and as far as we can see back with certainty, the races which have inhabited Europe may be classified under the heads, tall and short, long-headed and broad-headed, and those of intermediate types, which latter may be dismissed for the present, though constituting a majority of most modern countries, as they are almost certainly not primitive, but the result of intercrossing.

Colour, complexion, and hair are also very persistent, though, as we have pointed out, we have no certain evidence by which to test them beyond the historical period. But the form of skulls, jaws, teeth, and other parts of the skeleton remain wonderfully constant in races where there has been little or no intermixture.

The first great division is in the form of the skull. Comparing the extreme breadth of the skull with its extreme length from front to back, if the breadth does not exceed three-fourths or 75 per cent. of the length, the skull is said to be dolicocephalic or long-headed; if it equals or exceeds 83 per cent. it is called brachycephalic, i.e. short or broad-headed. Intermediate indices between 75 and 83 per cent. are called sub-dolicocephalic, or sub-brachycephalic, according as they approach one or the other of these extremes, but these are of less importance, as they probably are the result of intercrossing.

The prognathism also of the jaws, the form of the eye-orbits and nasal bones, the superciliary ridges, the proportion of the frontal to the posterior regions of the skull, the stature and proportions of the limbs, are also both characteristic and persistent features, and correspond generally with the type of the skull.

The controversy as to the origin of the Aryans has led to a great deal of argument as to these ethnological traits in prehistoric and neolithic times, and the interesting volume of Canon Taylor's on the Origin of the Aryans, and Professor Huxley's article on the same subject in the Nineteenth Century for November 1890, give a summary of the latest researches on the subject. We shall have to refer to these more fully in discussing the question as to the place or places of human origins; but for the present it is sufficient to state the general result at which the latest science has arrived.

The theory of a common Asiatic centre from which all the races of mankind have migrated is given up as unsupported by the slightest vestige of evidence. When we first know anything of the Aryan and other European races, we find them occupying substantially very much the same regions as at present. There are four distinct European types, two tall and two short, two long-headed and two broad-headed. Of these two were fair, and two dark, and one, apparently the oldest in Western Europe and in the Mediterranean region, and probably represented by the Iberians, and now by the Spanish Basques, was short, dark, and long-headed; a second short, dark, and broad-headed, who are probably represented by the ancient Ligurians, and survive now in the Auvergnats and Savoyards; a third, tall, fair, and long-headed, whose original seats were in the regions of the Baltic and North Sea, and who were always an energetic and conquering race; and the fourth, like the third, tall and fair, but with broad heads, and possibly not a primitive race, but the result of some very ancient intermixture of the third or Northern type with some of the broad-headed races.

Now as far back as frequent human remains enable us to form some satisfactory conclusion, that is up to the early neolithic period, we find similar race-types already existing, and to a considerable extent in the same localities. In modern and historical times we find, according to Canon Taylor, "all the anthropological tests agreeing in exhibiting two extreme types—the African, with long heads, long eye-orbits, and flat hair; and the Mongolian, with round heads, round orbits, and round hair. The European type is intermediate—the head, orbits, and sections of hair are oval. In the east of Europe we find an approximation to the Asiatic type; in the south of Europe to the African."

More specifically, we find in Europe the four races mentioned above of tall and short long-heads, and tall and short broad-heads. The question is, how far back can any of these races be identified?

The preservation of human remains depends mainly on the practice of burying the dead. Until the corpse is placed in a tomb protected by a stone coffin or dolmen, or in a grave dug in a cave, or otherwise sheltered from rains, floods, and wild beasts, the chances of its preservation are few and far between. Now it is not until the neolithic period that the custom of burying the dead became general, and even then it was not universal, and in many nations even in historical times corpses were burnt, not buried. It was connected doubtless with ideas of a future existence, which either required troublesome ghosts to be put securely out of the way, or to retain a shadowy existence by some mysterious connection with the body which had once served them for a habitation. Such ideas, however, only come with some advance of civilization, and it is questionable whether in palæolithic times the human animal had any more notion of preserving the body after death than the other animals by which he was surrounded.

This neolithic habit moreover of burying, though it preserves many relics of its own time, increases the difficulty when we come to deal with those of an earlier age. A great many caves which had been inhabited by palæolithic man were selected as fitting spots for the graves of their neolithic successors, and thus the remains of the two periods became intermixed. It is never safe to rely on the antiquity of skulls and skeletons found in association with palæolithic implements and extinct animals, unless the exploration has been made with the greatest care by some well-known scientific observer, or the circumstances of the case are such as to preclude the possibility of later interments. Thus in the famous cavern of Aurignac there is no doubt that it had been long a palæolithic station, and that many of the human remains date back to this period; but whether the fourteen skeletons which were found in it, and lost owing to the pietistic zeal of the Mayor who directed their burial, were really palæolithic, is a disputed point, or rather the better opinion is that they were part of a secondary neolithic interment.