The first step is to have a clear idea of what actually exists at the present moment. There are an almost endless number of minor varieties of the human race, but none of them of sufficient importance to imply diversity of origin, with the exception of four, or at the most five or six fundamental types, which stand so widely apart that it is difficult to imagine that they are all descended from a common pair of ancestors. These are the white, yellow, and black races of the Old World, the copper-coloured of America, and perhaps the olive-coloured of Malaysia and Polynesia, and the pygmy races of Africa and Eastern Asia. The difficulty of supposing these races to have all sprung from a single pair will at once be apparent if we personify this pair under the name of Adam for the first man and Eve for the first woman, and ask ourselves the question, what do we suppose to have been their colour?
But colour alone, though the most obvious, is by no means the sole criterion of difference of race. The evidence is cumulative, and other equally marked and persistent characters, both of physical structure and of physiological and mental peculiarities, stand out as distinctly as differences of colour in the great typical races. For instance, the hair is a very persistent index of race. When the section of it is circular, the hair is straight and lank; when flattened, woolly; and when oval, curly or wavy. Now these characters are so persistent that many of the best anthropologists have taken hair as the surest test of race. Everywhere the lank and straight hair and circular section go with the yellow and copper-coloured races; the woolly hair and flat section with the black; and the wavy hair and oval section with the white races.
The solid framework of the skeleton also affords very distinctive types of race, especially where it is looked at in a general way as applicable to great masses of pure races, and not to individuals of mixed race, like most Europeans. The skull is most important, for it affords the measure of the size and shape of the brain, which is the highest organ, and that on which the differentiation of man from the lower animals mainly depends. The size of the brain alone does not always afford a conclusive proof of mental superiority, for it varies with sex, height, and other individual characters, and often seems to depend more on quality than on quantity. Still, if we take general averages, we find that superior and civilized races have larger brains than inferior and savage ones. Thus the average brain of the European is about 1500 cubic centimètres, while that of the Australian and Bushman does not exceed 1200.
The shape as well as the size of the skull affords another test of race which is often appealed to. The main distinction taken is between dolichocephalic and brachycephalic, or long and broad skulls. Here also we must look at general averages rather than at individuals, for there is often considerable variation within the same race, especially among the mesocephalic, or medium between the two extremes, which is generally the prevalent form where there has been much intermixture of races. But if we take widely different types there can be no doubt that the long or broad skull is a characteristic and persistent feature. The formation of the jaws and teeth affords another important test. Some races are what is called prognathous, that is, the jaws project, and the teeth are set in sockets sloping outwards, so that the lower part of the face approximates to the form of a muzzle; others are orthognathous, or have the jaws and teeth vertical. And the form of the chin seems to be wonderfully correlated with the general character and energy of the race. It is hard to say why, but as a matter of fact a weak chin generally denotes a weak, and a strong chin a strong, race or individual. Thus the chimpanzee and other apes have no chin, the negro and lower races generally have chins weak and receding. The races who, like the Iberians, have been conquered or driven from plains to mountains, have had poor chins; while their successive conquerors, of Aryan race,—Celts, Romans, Teutons, and Scandinavians,—might almost be classified by the prominence and solidity of this feature of the face.
Stature is another very persistent feature. The pygmy races of Equatorial Africa described by Stanley have remained the same since the early records of Egypt, while the pure Aryan races of the north temperate zone, Gauls, Germans, and Scandinavians, have from the first dawn of history amazed the shorter races of the south by their tall stature, huge limbs, blue eyes, and yellow hair. Here and there isolated tall races may be found where the race has become thoroughly acclimatized to a suitable environment, as among some negro tribes, and the Araucanian Indians of Patagonia; but as a rule the inferior races are short, the bulk of the civilized races of the world of intermediate stature, and the great conquering races of the north temperate zone decidedly tall.
Other tests are afforded by the shape of the eye-orbits and nasal bones, and other characters, all of which agree, in the words of Isaac Taylor in his Origin of the Aryans, in "exhibiting two extreme types—the African with long heads, long orbits, and flat hair; and the Mongolian with round heads, round orbits, and round hair. The European type is intermediate, the head, the orbit, and the hair being oval. In the East of Europe we find an approximation to the Asiatic type; in the South of Europe to the African."
Taking these prominent anthropological characters as tests, we find four distinct types among the earliest inhabitants of Europe, which can be traced back from historic to neolithic times. They consist of two long-headed and two short-headed races, and in each case one is tall and the other short. The dolichocephalic are recognized everywhere throughout Western Europe and on the Mediterranean basin, including North Africa, as the oldest race, and they are thought still to survive in the original type in some of the people of Wales and Ireland and the Spanish Basques; while they doubtless form a large portion, intermixed with other races, of the blood of the existing populations of Great Britain and Ireland, of Western and Southern France, of Spain, Portugal, Sicily, Sardinia, North Africa, and other Mediterranean districts. This is known as the Iberian race, and it can be traced clearly beyond history and the knowledge of metals, into the neolithic stone age, and may possibly be descended from some of the vastly older palæolithic types such as that of Cro-Magnon. The type is everywhere a feeble one, of short stature, dolichocephalic skull, narrow oval face, orthognathic teeth, weak chin, and swarthy complexion. We have only to compare a skull of this type with one of ruder and stronger races, to understand how the latter must have survived as conquerors in the struggle for existence in the early ages of the world, before gunpowder and military discipline had placed civilization in a better position to contend with brute force and energy. Huxley sums up the latest evidence as to the distinctive types of these historic and prehistoric races of Europe as follows—
1. Blond long-heads of tall stature who appear with least admixture in Scandinavia, North Germany, and parts of the British Islands.
2. Brunette broad-heads of short stature in Central France, the Central European Highlands, and Piedmont. These are identified with the Ligurian race, and their most typical modern representatives are the Auvergnats and Savoyards.
3. Mongoloid brunette broad-heads of short stature in Arctic and Eastern Europe, and Central Asia, represented by the Lapps and other tribes of Northern Russia, passing into the Mongols and Chinese of Eastern Asia.