“The possession of arts and acquirements, the most simple improvements of human life, and such as belong to the very infancy of human society, distinctively appropriate, and the origin of which is recorded by mythical legends peculiar to each division of mankind, seems to carry back the era of their separation to the first ages of the world.”
With regard to the physical character of the Americans, it appears, according to Dr Martius, that the principal characteristic is the truncation, or flatness, of the occipital portion of the cranium; the forehead wide, but low, supposed upon rather insufficient data to be moulded to this shape by artificial means; and the nose arched. In the new as in the old continent, the diversities of physical character do not correspond with the ethnical divisions. The principal criterion of the latter adopted by Dr Prichard is the affinity of languages; and, when this is insufficient to found any probable opinions, conjectures derived from geographical or traditional evidence are called in aid. Upon these grounds the Americans are arranged and described by the author, into the details of which, for the same reason as before stated, we regret not being able to follow him.
Since, however, the first pages of this article were written, a discovery has been announced connected with the physiology of the American aborigenes, which, if subsequently verified, will be of much importance, both as to the anthropological classification of the Americans, and as to the natural history of man generally. In a letter addressed to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, and republished in the Philosophical Magazine for July last, is an account of the researches of Dr Lund, who has been for some time engaged in geological investigation in Minas Geraes, a province of Brazil. While examining the caverns of calcareous rocks, he has found in one of them, mixed with the bones of extinct races of animals, human bones, having all the character of fossils; they are stated to be in part petrified, and in part penetrated with iron particles, which gave to them a metallic lustre resembling bronze; they were of extraordinary weight; the crania presented the narrow forehead, prominent zygomatic bones, the facial angle, the maxillary and orbital conformation of the American race. The depression of the forehead in many instances is said to amount to a total disappearance. With the bones was found a smooth stone, about ten inches in circumference, apparently intended to bruise seeds or hard substances. In other caverns were found human bones, but unaccompanied with those of other animals. These facts, if confirmed, will furnish us with most important evidence as to the past state of the Americans, and the ancient history and physiology of the human race; but the novelty of the results, and the recent date of the communication, induce us to abstain from hasty comment.
The general physiological comparison of human races, the similarity of periodic changes, and the average duration of life, are points upon which we can very briefly touch. Dr Prichard considers the different ages at which women are said to be marriageable in different climates to be very much exaggerated. He states his reasons, which do not appear to us to be very conclusive. The exceptional cases from the normal physiology would be more interesting, had we space for them, than the analogies, for which probably all our readers would be prepared. Thus, among the most curious national anomalies are the Quichuas and Aymaras, who, from the constant habit of breathing an attenuated atmosphere, have their chests enormously expanded; the Mandans, who, without any apparent cause, have the hair grizzled or grey in youth. Among the instances of individual peculiarity, no one is more extraordinary than the horned man, whose entire person was covered with a rugged bark, or hide, having bristles here and there, which hide he was said to shed annually; and this peculiar form of monstrosity appears to have been capable of hereditary transmission, as he had six children with a similar covering. How he procured a wife to bear these children to him does not appear. The children were, it is to be presumed, not equally successful, as the breed of these human rhinoceri has become extinct. Some curious instances of longevity are collected. Of 15 negroes, the names and residences of whom are given, the average age is 135 years; from European nations, there are 1310 recorded instances of persons aged from 100 to 110, and 3 from 180 to 190. We do no more than briefly notice these exceptions, as we are anxious to devote our small remaining space to what will by many be considered the most interesting portions of the book, viz. the author’s psychological view of the different races of mankind, or the comparison of their different mental faculties.
“Though inhabiting, from immemorial times, regions in juxtaposition, and almost contiguous to each other, no two races of men can be more strongly contrasted than were the ancient Egyptian and Syro-Arabian races; one nation, full of energy, of restless activity, changing many times their manner of existence—sometimes nomadic, feeding their flocks in desert places—now settled, and cultivating the earth, and filling their land with populous villages, and towns, and fenced cities—then spreading themselves, impelled by the love of glory and zeal of proselytism, over distant countries; the other, reposing ever in luxurious ease and wealth on the rich soil, watered by their slimy river, never quitting it for a foreign clime or displaying, unless forced, the least change in their position or habits of life. The intellectual character, the metaphysical belief, and the religious sentiments and practices of the two nations were equally diverse; one adoring an invisible and eternal spirit, at whose almighty word the universe started into existence, and ‘the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy;’ the other adorning splendid temples with costly magnificence, in which, with mysterious and grotesque rites, they paid a strange and portentous worship to some foul and grovelling object—a snake, a tortoise, a crocodile, or an ape. The destiny of the two races has been equally different: both may be said still to exist; one in their living representatives, their ever-roving, energetic descendants; the other reposing in their own land—a vast sepulchre, where the successive generations of thirty centuries, all embalmed, men, women, and children, with their domestic animals, lie beneath their dry preserving soil, expecting vainly the summons to judgment—the fated time for which is to some of them long past—before the tribunal of Sarapis, or in the hall of Osymandyas.”
We are far from agreeing with this estimate of the ancient Egyptians. Their progress in mechanical arts, their hieroglyphical literature, and even their theology, with its mystic trine, marked them as a people far surpassing their contemporaries; and they were not the less great because their greatness is now extinct. The Arian[C] tribes, though unskilled in many of the most useful arts of life, yet had—
“National poetry, and a culture of language and thought, altogether surprising when compared with their external condition and habits. They had bards or scalds, vates, who were supposed, under divine impulse, to celebrate the history of ancient times, and connect them with revelations of the future, and with a refined and metaphysical system of dogmas, which were handed down from age to age, and from one tribe to another, as the primeval creed and possession of the enlightened race. Among them in the West, as well as in the remote East, the doctrine of metempsychosis held a conspicuous place, implying belief in an after state of rewards and punishment, and a moral government of the world. With it was connected the notion that the material universe had undergone, and was destined to undergo, a repetition of catastrophes by fire and water; and after each destruction, to be renewed in fresh beauty, when a golden age was again to commence, destined in a fated time to corruption and decay. The emanation of all beings from the soul of the universe, and their refusion in it, which were tenets closely connected with this system of dogmas, border on a species of Pantheism, and are liable to all the difficulties attendant upon that doctrine.
“Among most of the Indo-European nations, the conservation of religious dogmas, patriarchal tradition, and national poetry, was confided, not to accidental reminiscences and popular recitations, but to a distinct order of persons, who were venerated as mediators between the invisible powers and their fellow mortals, as the depositories of sacred lore, and interpreters of the will of the gods, expressed of old to the first men, and handed down, either orally in divine poems, or preserved in a sacred literature, known only to the initiated. In most instances they were an hereditary caste, Druids, Brahmans, or Magi.
“Among the Allophylian nations, on the other hand a rude and sensual superstition prevailed, which ascribed life and mysterious powers to the inanimate objects. The religion of fetisses, of charms, and spells and talismans, was in the hands not of a learned caste, the twice-born sons of Brama, but of shamans or sorcerers, who, by feigning swoons and convulsions, by horrible cries and yells, by cutting themselves with knives, by whirling and contortions, assumed the appearance of something preternatural and portentous, and impressed the multitude with the belief that they were possessed by demons. Of this latter description were the wizards of the Finns and Lappes, the angekoks of the Esquimaux; and such are the shamans of all the countries in Northern Asia, where neither Buddhism nor Islamism has yet penetrated.”
Of the American nations, the prevailing opinion, according to Loskiel, is—