RACES AND PEOPLES
LECTURES
ON THE
SCIENCE OF ETHNOGRAPHY
BY
DANIEL G. BRINTON, A.M., M.D.,
Professor of Ethnology at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia,
and of American Archæology and Linguistics in the University of Pennsylvania;
President of the American Folk-Lore Society and of the
Numismatic and Antiquarian Society of Philadelphia; Member
of the Anthropological Societies of Berlin and Vienna and of
the Ethnographical Societies of Paris and Florence, of
the Royal Society of Antiquaries, Copenhagen, the
Royal Academy of History of Madrid, the
American Philosophical Society, the
American Antiquarian Society,
Etc., Etc., Etc.

PHILADELPHIA
DAVID McKAY, Publisher
1901

Copyright
By D. G. Brinton.

TO
HORATIO HALE,
PHILOLOGIST TO THE UNITED STATES EXPLORING
EXPEDITION IN 1838-42,
WHOSE MANY AND VALUABLE
CONTRIBUTIONS TO LINGUISTICS AND ETHNOGRAPHY
PLACE HIM TO-DAY AMONG THE FOREMOST AUTHORITIES
ON THESE SCIENCES,
THIS VOLUME
IS INSCRIBED IN RESPECT AND FRIENDSHIP
BY THE AUTHOR.

PREFACE.

The lectures which appear in this volume were delivered at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, in the early months of 1890. They have since been written out, and references added in the foot-notes to a number of works and articles, which will enable the student to pursue his readings on any point in which he may be interested. My endeavor has been to present the results of the latest and most accurate researches on the subjects treated; though no one can be better aware than myself that in compressing such an extensive science into so limited a space, I have often necessarily been superficial. It is some excuse for the publication, if one is needed, that I am not aware of any other recent work upon this science written in the English language.

Philadelphia, August, 1890.

CONTENTS.

MAPS, SCHEMES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

	PAGE
[Figs. 1 and 2. Long and short skulls]	21
[Fig. 3. Lines of sutures in the skull]	22
[Fig. 4. Lines and angles of skull measurements]	25
[Fig. 5. Cross-sections of hairs]	32
[Fig. 6. Primary arrow-release]	34
[Fig. 7. Mediterranean arrow-release]	34
[Fig. 8. Mongolian arrow-release]	35
[Scheme of Principal Physical Elements]	49
[Scheme of Languages]	64
[Scheme of Geologic Time during the Age of Man in the Eastern Hemisphere]	96
[General Ethnographic Scheme]	99
[Scheme of the Eurafrican Race: South Mediterranean Branch]	104
[Scheme of the Eurafrican Race: North Mediterranean Branch]	140
[Scheme of Aryac Migration]	153
[Scheme of the Austafrican Race]	174
[Scheme of the Asian Race]	194
[Scheme of Insular and Littoral Peoples]	220
[Outlines of the Eastern Hemisphere in the Early Quaternary]	88
[Ethnic Chart of the Eurafrican Race]	112
[Ethnic Chart of Africa]	176
[Ethnic Chart of Eurasia and Asia]	198
[Ethnic Chart of Hindostan]	244
[Indian Tribes of the United States]	256

LECTURES ON ETHNOGRAPHY.

LECTURE I.
THE PHYSICAL ELEMENTS OF ETHNOGRAPHY.

Contents.—Differences and resemblances in individuals and races the basis of Ethnography. The Bones. Craniology. Its limited value. Long and short skulls. Sutures. Inca bone. The orbital index. The nasal index. The maxillary and facial angles. The cranial capacity. The teeth. The iliac bones. Length of the arms. The flattened tibia. The projecting heel. The heart line. The Color. Its extent; cause; scale of colors. Color of the eyes. The Hair. Shape in cross section; abundance. The muscular structure; anomalies in; muscular habits; arrow releases. Steatopygy. Stature and proportion; the “canon of proportion;” special senses; the color sense. Ethnic relations of the sexes. Correlation of physical traits to vital powers. Causes of the fixation of ethnic traits. Climate; food supply; natural selection; conscious selection; the physical ideal; sexual preference; abhorrence of incest; exogamous marriages. Causes of variation in types. The mingling of races. Physical criteria of racial superiority. Review of physical elements.

That no two persons are identical in appearance is such a truism that we are apt to overlook its significance. The parent can rarely be recognized from the traits of the child, the brother from those of the sister, the family from its members.

On the other hand, the individual peculiarities become lost in those of the race. It is a common statement that to our eyes all Chinamen look alike, or that one cannot distinguish an Indian “buck” from a “squaw.” Yet you recognize very well the one as a Chinaman, the other as an Indian. The traits of the race thus overslaugh the variable characters of the family, the sex or the individual, and maintain themselves uniform and unalterable in the pure blood of the stock through all experience.

This fact is the corner-stone of the science of Ethnography, whose aim is to study the differences, physical and mental, between men in masses, and ascertain which of these differences are least variable and hence of most value in classifying the human species into its several natural varieties or types.

In daily life and current literature the existence of such varieties is fully recognized. The European and African, or White and Black races, are those most familiar to us; but the American Indian and the Mongolian are not rare, and are recognized also as distinct from each other and ourselves. These common terms for the races are not quite accurate; but they illustrate a tendency to identify the most prominent types of the species with the great continental areas, and in this I shall show that the popular judgment is in accord with scientific reasoning.

If an ordinary observer were asked what the traits are which fix the racial type in his mind, he would certainly omit many which are highly esteemed by the man of science. He would have nothing to say, for instance, about the internal structures or organs, because they are not visible; but in approaching the subject from a scientific direction, we must lay most stress upon these, as their peculiarities decide the external traits which strike the eye.

Nor does the casual observer note the mental or physical differences which exist between the races whom he recognizes; yet these are not less permanent and not less important than those which concern the physical economy only. In both these directions the student of ethnography as a science must pursue careful researches.

In the present lecture I shall pass in review the physical elements held to be most weighty in the discrimination of racial types; and, first, those relating to

The Bones.—Most important are the measurements of the skull, that science called craniology, or craniometry.

Ethnologists who are merely anatomists have made too much of this science. They have applied it to the exclusion of other elements, and have given it a prominence which it does not deserve. The shape of the skull is no distinction of race in the individual; only in the mass, in the average of large numbers, has it importance. Even here its value is not racial. Within the limits of the same people, as among the Slavonians, for example, the most different skulls are found, and even the pure-blood natives of some small islands in the Pacific Ocean present widely various forms.[1]

Experiments on the lower animals prove that the skull is easily moulded by trifling causes. Darwin found that he could produce long, or short, or non-symmetrical skulls in rabbits by training.[2] The shape also bears a relation to stature. As a general rule short men have short or rounded heads, tall men have long heads. The longest skulled nation in Europe are the Norwegians, who are also the tallest; the roundest are the Auvergnats, who, of all the European whites, are the shortest.

Nevertheless, employed cautiously, in large averages, and with a careful regard for all the other ethnic elements, the measurements of the skull are extremely useful as accessory data of comparison.

Some craniologists have run up these measurements to more than a hundred; but those worth mentioning in this connection are but few. There is, first, the proportion which the length of the head has to its breadth. This makes the distinction between long, medium and broad skulls, “dolicho-cephalic,” “meso-cephalic,” and “brachy-cephalic.” In the medium skull the transverse bears to the longitudinal diameter the proportion of about 80:100. The proportion 75:100 would make quite a long skull, and 85:100 quite a broad skull, the extreme variations not exceeding 70:100-90:100. (Figs. 1 and 2.)

Figs. 1 and 2.—Long and Short Skulls.

The Asiatic race or typical Mongolians are generally brachy-cephalic, the Eskimos and African negroes dolicho-cephalic; while the whites of Europe and American Indians present great diversity.

The lengthening of the skull may be anteriorly or posteriorly, and this is probably more significant of brain power than its width. In the black race the lengthening is occipital, that is at the rear, indicating a preponderance of the lower mental powers.

Fig. 3.—Lines of Sutures in the Skull.

The height of the skull is another measurement which is much respected by craniologists; but they are far from agreed as to the points from which the lines shall be drawn, so that it is difficult to compare their results.[3] The “sutures,” or lines of union between the several bones of the skull, present indications of great value. In the lower races they are much simpler than in the higher, and they become obliterated earlier in life; the bones of the skull thus uniting into a compact mass and preventing further expansion of the cavity occupied by the brain.[4] (Fig. 3.) Occasionally small separated bones are found in these sutures, more frequently in some races than in others. One of these, toward the back of the head, occurs so constantly in certain American tribes that it has been named the “Inca bone.”[5]

In many savage tribes there are artificial deformations of the skull, which render it useless as a means of comparison. The “Flathead Indians” are an example, and many Peruvian skulls are thus pressed out of shape. It is singular that this violence to such an important organ does not seem to be attended with any injurious result on the intellectual powers.

The orbit of the eyes is another feature which varies in races. The proportion of the short to the long diameter furnishes what is known as the “orbital index.” The Mongolians present nearest a circular orbit, the proportion being sometimes 93:100; while the lowest range has been found in skulls from ancient French cemeteries, presenting an index of 61:100. The latter are technically called “microsemes;” the former “megasemes,” while the mean are “mesosemes.”[6]

In a similar manner the aperture of the nostrils varies and constitutes quite an important element of comparison known as the “nasal index.” Where this aperture is narrow, the nose is thin and prominent; when broad, the nose is large and flat. The former are “leptorhinian,” the latter “platyrhinian,” while the medium size is “mesorhinian.” This division coincides closely with that of the chief races. Almost all the white race are leptorhinian, the negroes platyrhinian, the true Asiatics mesorhinian. The Eskimos have the narrowest nasal aperture, the Bushmen the widest.

The projection of the maxillaries, or upper and lower jaws, beyond the line of the face, is a highly significant trait. When well marked it forms the “prognathic,” when slight the “orthognathic” type. It is much more observable in the black than in the white race, and is more pronounced in the old than in the young. It is considered to correspond to a stronger development of the merely animal instincts.

The relation of the lower to the upper part of the head is measured mainly by two angles, the one the “maxillary,” the other the “facial” angle. The former is the angle subtended by lines drawn from the most projecting portion of the maxillaries to the most prominent points of the forehead above and the chin below. (The angle M G S in the accompanying diagram, Fig. 4.) This supplies data for two important elements, the prognathism and the prominence of the chin. The latter is an essential feature of man. None of the lower animals possesses a true chin, while man is never without one. The more acute the maxillary angle, the less of chin is there, and the more prognathic the subject. The averages run as follows:

Fig. 4.—Lines and angles of skull measurement.

The facial angle is that subtended by the same line, from the most prominent point of the upper jaw to the most prominent part of the forehead, and a second line drawn horizontally through the center of the aperture of the ear. (The lines M G, D N.) It expresses the relative prominence of the forehead and capacity of the anterior portion of the brain. The more acute this angle, the lower is the brain capacity. The following are its averages:

The amount of brain matter contained in a skull is called its “cerebral or cranial capacity.” This is proved by investigation to average less in the dark than in the light races, and in the same race less in the female than in the male sex. Estimated in cubic centimetres the extremes are about 1250 cub. cent. in the Australians and Bushmen to 1600 cub. cent. in well-developed Europeans. We cannot regard this measurement as a constant exponent of intellectual power, as many men with small brains have possessed fine intellects; but as a general feature it certainly is indicative of brain weight, and therefore of relative intelligence. The average human brain weighs 48 ounces, while that of a large gorilla is not over 20 ounces.

The teeth offer several points of difference in races. In the negro they are unusually white and strong, and in nearly all the black people (Australians, Soudanese, Melanesians, etc.), the “wisdom teeth” are generally furnished with three separate fangs, and are sound, while among whites they have only two fangs, and decay early. The most ancient jaws exhumed in Europe present the former character. The prominence of the canine teeth is a peculiarity of some tribes, while in others the canines are not conical, but resemble the incisors.

The size of the teeth has also been asserted to be an index of race, and an effort has been made to classify peoples into small-toothed (microdonts), medium-toothed (mesodonts), and large-toothed (megadonts).[7] But this scheme includes in the first mentioned class the Polynesians with the Europeans, and in the second the African negro with the Chinese, which looks as if the plan has little value.

The milk-teeth have a much closer resemblance to those of the apes than the second dentition, and some naturalists have thought that the forms of the second teeth point often to reversion and are characteristic of races, but this has not been proved.

The teeth and the period of dentition have been studied in man with the view to show that certain races more than others retain the dental forms of the lower animals, but the latest investigations go rather to overthrow than to support these theories.[8]

Turning to the other bones of the skeleton, I shall note a few peculiarities said to be ethnic. The skeleton of a negro usually presents iliac bones more vertical than those of a white man, and the basin is narrower. This peculiarity is measured by what is called the “pelvic index,” by which is meant the ratio of the transverse to the longitudinal diameter. The average ratio is about 90 or 95 to 100.

Another trait of a lower osteology is the unusual length of the arms. This is found to depend upon the relative elongation of the fore-arm and its principal bones, the radius and ulna. From comparisons which have been instituted between the negro and the white, it appears that the proportionate length of their arms is as 78 to 72. The long arms are characteristic of the higher apes and the unripe fetus, and belong, therefore, to a lower phase of development than that reached by the white race.

There is also a peculiarity among many lower peoples in the shape of the shin-bone or tibia. Usually when cut in cross-section, the ends present a triangular surface; but in certain tribes, and in some ancient remains from the caves, the cross-section is elliptical, showing that the tibia has been flattened (platycnemic). This was long regarded as a sign of ethnic inferiority, but of late years the opinion of anatomists has undergone a change, and they attribute it to the special use of some of the muscles of the leg.

The heel-bone, the os calcis or calcaneum, is currently believed to be longer and project further backward in the negro than in the white man. There is no doubt of the projection of the heel, and it is typical of the true negro race, but it does not seem to be owing to the size of the bone, as an examination of a series of calcanca in both races proves. The lengthening is apparent only, and is due to the smallness of the calf and the slenderness of the main tendon, the “tendon of Achilles,” immediately above the heel.[9]

With the pithecoid forms of the bones is often associated another simian mark. The line in the hand known to chiromancy as the “heart” line, in all races but the negro ceases at the base of the middle finger, but in his race, as in the ape, it often extends quite across the palm.

The bones offer the most enduring, but not the most obvious distinctions of races. The latter are unquestionably those presented by

The Color.—This it is which first strikes the eye, and from which the most familiar names of the types have been drawn. The black and white, the yellow, the red and the brown races, are terms far older than the science of ethnography, and have always been employed in its terminology.

Why it is that these different hues should indelibly mark whole races, is not entirely explained. The pigment or coloring matter of the skin is deposited from the capillaries on the surface of the dermis or true skin, and beneath the epidermis or scarf skin.[10] I have seen a negro so badly scalded that the latter was detached in large fragments, and with it came most of his color, leaving the spot a dirty light brown.

The coloration of the negro, however, extends much beyond the skin. It is found in a less degree on all his mucous membrane, in his muscles, and even in the pia mater and the grey substance of his brain.

The effort has been made to measure the colors of different peoples by a color scale. One such was devised by Broca, presenting over thirty shades, and another by Dr. Radde, in Germany; but on long journeys, or as furnished by different manufacturers, these scales undergo changes in the shades, so that they have not proved of the value anticipated.

As to the physiological cause of color, you know that the direct action of the sun on the skin is to stimulate the capillary action, and lead to an increased deposit of pigment, which we call “tan.” This pigment is largely carbon, a chemical element, principally excreted by the lungs in the form of carbonic oxide. When from any cause, such as a peculiar diet, or a congenital disproportion of lungs to liver, the carbonic oxide is less rapidly thrown off by the former organs, there will be an increased tendency to pigmentary deposit on the skin. This is visibly the fact in the African blacks, whose livers are larger in proportion to their lungs than in any other race.[11]

While all the truly black tribes dwell in or near the tropics, all the arctic dwellers are dark, as the Lapps, Samoyeds and Eskimos; therefore, it is not climate alone which has to do with the change. The Americans differ little in color among themselves from what part soever of the continent they come, and the Mongolians, though many have lived time immemorial in the cold and temperate zone, are never really white when of unmixed descent.

A practical scale for the colors of the skin is the following:

The color of the eyes should next have attention. Their hue is very characteristic of races and of families. Light eyes with dark skins are rare exceptions. Other things equal, they are lighter in men than in women. Extensive statistics have been collected in Europe to ascertain the prevalence of certain colors, and instructive results have been obtained.[12] The division usually adopted is into dark and light eyes.

The eye must be examined at some little distance so as to catch the total effect.

Next in the order of prominence is

The Hair.—Indeed, Haeckel and others have based upon its character the main divisions of mankind. That of some races is straight, of others more or less curled. This difference depends upon the shape of the hairs in cross-section. The more closely they assimilate true cylinders, the straighter they hang; while the flatter they are, the more they approach the appearance of wool. (Fig. 5.) The variation of the two diameters (transverse and longitudinal) is from 25:100 to 90:100. The straightest is found among the Malayans and Mongolians; the wooliest among the Hottentots, Papuas and African negroes. The white race is intermediate, with curly or wavy hair. It is noteworthy that all woolly-haired peoples have also long, narrow heads and protruding jaws.

Fig. 5.—Cross Sections of Hairs.

The amount of hair on the face and body is also a point of some moment. As a rule, the American and Mongolian peoples have little, the Europeans and Australians abundance. Crossing of races seems to strengthen its growth, and the Ainos of the Japanese Archipelago, a mixed people, are probably the hairiest of the species. The strongest growth on the head is seen among the Cafusos of Brazil, a hybrid of the Indian and negro.

The Muscular Structure.—The development of the muscular structure offers notable differences in the various races. The blacks, both in Africa and elsewhere, have the gastrocnemii or calf muscles of the leg very slightly developed; while in both them and the Mongolians the facial muscles have their fibres more closely interwoven than the whites, thus preventing an equal mobility of facial expression.

The anomalies of the muscular structure seem about as frequent in one race as in another. The most of them are regressive, imitating the muscles of the apes, monkeys, and lower mammals. Indeed, a learned anatomist has said that the abnormal anatomy of the muscles supplies all the gaps which separate man from the higher apes, as all the simian characteristics reappear from time to time in his structure.[13]

Certain motions or positions, such as I may call “muscular habits,” are characteristic of extensive groups of tribes. The method of resting is one such. The Japanese squats on his hams, the Australian stands on one leg, supporting himself by a spear or pole, and so on. The methods of arrow-release have been profitably studied by Professor E. S. Morse. He finds them so characteristic that he classifies them ethnographically, with reference to savagery and civilization, and locality. The three most important are the primary, the Mediterranean, and the Mongolian releases. The first is that of many savage tribes, the second was practiced principally by the white race, the last by the Mongolians and their neighbors. (Figs. 6, 7, 8.) The last two are the most effective, and thus gave superiority in combat.

Fig. 6.—Primary Arrow-Release.

Fig. 7.—Mediterranean Arrow-Release.

Allied to muscular variation are the peculiar deposits of fatty tissue in certain portions of the system. The Hottentots are remarkable for the prominence of the gluteal region, imparting to their figure a singular projection posteriorly. It is called “steatopygy,” and appears to have been, in part at least, a cultivated deformity, regarded among them as a beauty. The thick lips of the negro, and the long and pendent breasts of the Australian women, are other examples of ethnic hypertrophies.

Fig. 8.—Mongolian Arrow-Release.

Stature and Proportion.—Differences in stature are tribal, but not racial. The smallest peoples known, the Negrillos, the Aetas, the Lapps, belong to different races, as do the tallest, the Patagonians, the Polynesians, the Anglo-Americans. The researches of Paolo Riccardi and others prove that stature is correlated with nutrition; the better the food, other things being equal, the taller the men.[14] It is also markedly hereditary; the stature of children will average that of their parents.

What is called the “canon of proportions” of the human body varies with the race and the nation. There is indeed an ideal, an artistic canon, which the sculptor or the painter seeks to body forth in his productions; and this seems in close conformity with an extensive average of the proportions of the highest peoples; but it is never found in individuals, and it is essentially unlike in man and woman, in youth and age, in the blonde and brunette.[15] Nor is the ideal of the artist also that which is consonant with the greatest muscular development or highest powers of endurance.

Special Senses.—It cannot be said that the different races display positive discrepancies in the special senses. Their development appears to depend on cultivation, and all races respond equally to equal training. There is, to be sure, a higher musical sense in the native African than in the native American, but quite as much difference is seen between European nations.

Much has been written of the color-sense as a trait of nations. It has been said that some tribes, some races, appreciate hues more keenly than others; that within historic times marked gains in this respect are noticeable. I think these statements are incorrect. The savage of any race distinguishes precisely the difference of hues when it is to his material interest so to do; but concerns himself not at all about colors which have no effect on his life. He is well acquainted with the colors of the animals he hunts, and has a word for every shade of hue. This proves that his color-sense is as acute as that of civilized people, and merely lacks specific training.

Ethnic Relations of the Sexes.—There are some curious facts in reference to the relative position of the sexes in different peoples. As a rule the expression of sex in form and feature is less in the lower than in the higher races. Travelers frequently refer to the difficulty of distinguishing the men from the women among the American Indians or the Chinese. Investigate the fact, and you will find that it is not that the women are less feminine in appearance, but the men less masculine. In other words, the expression of sex in such peoples is less in man than in woman. This seems to be true also of the highest ideals of manhood in artistic conception. The Greek Apollo, the traditional Christ, present a feminine type of the male. This was carried to its excess in the Greek Hermaphrodite.

The reason for this approximation to the female in art-ideals is probably the zoological fact that the law of beauty in the human species is the reverse of that in all the other higher mammals, the female sex with us being the handsomer. This also becomes more evident in the comparison of the best developed peoples.

On the other hand, the muscular force of the sexes presents the greatest contrast in nations of the highest culture. The average European woman of twenty-five or thirty has one-third less muscular power than the average European man. But among the Afghans, the Patagonians, the Druses and other tribes, the women are as tall and as strong as the men; and in Siam, Ashanti, Ancient Gaul, and elsewhere, not only the field-laborers but the soldiers were principally women, selected because of their greater physical force and courage.

As the value of mere brute force in a social organization lessens in comparison to mental powers, the condition of woman improves, and her faculties find appropriate play. Her brain capacity, though absolutely less, is relatively more than man’s. That is, the difference of the whole average weight of woman and man is greater in proportion than the difference of their brain weights.

It is believed, also, that the viability or prospect of life in woman is greater in higher than in lower peoples; and generally greater than in men. European statistics show that 106 boys are born to 100 girls: but at twelve years of age the sexes are equal, the boys suffering a greater mortality. At eighty years of age, there are nearly three women living to one man, indicating a superior longevity.

Correlation of Physical Traits to Vital Powers.—The physical traits are correlated to the physiological functions in such a manner as profoundly to influence the destiny of nations. They enable or disable man with reference to the climatic and other conditions of his surroundings. For instance, certain races can support given temperature better than others. The intense heat and humidity of Central Africa or Southern India are destructive to the pure whites, while the climate north of the fortieth parallel soon exterminates the blacks. The food on which the Australian thrives destroys the digestive powers of the European. Exemption and liability to diseases differ noticeably in races. The white race is more liable to yellow fever, malarial diseases, syphilis, scarlet fever and sunstroke; the colored races to measles, tuberculosis, leprosy, elephantiasis, and pneumonia.

Indeed, from the physical point of view, the pure white is weaker than the dark races, worse prepared for the combat of life, with inferior viability. This has been shown by the careful researches of statisticians.[16] But in the white this is more than compensated by the development of the nervous system and the intellectual power. He can bear greater mental strain than any other race, and the activity of his mind supplies him with means to overcome the inferiority of his body, and thus places him at the head of the whole species.

The tolerance of disease is an obscure but momentous element in the comparison of races. It is almost a proverb among the Spanish-American physicians that “when an Indian falls sick, he dies.” The greater longevity of the European peoples is due to their ability to support disease long and frequently, without succumbing to it. On the other hand, surgical injuries, wounds and cuts, appear to heal more rapidly among savage peoples.[17] It is clear that in civilized conditions this is less important than tolerance.

The Causes of the Fixation of Ethnic Traits.—These causes are mainly related to climate and the food-supply. The former embraces the questions of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure (altitude), malarial or zymotic poisons, and the like. All these bear directly upon the relative activity of the great physiological organs, the lungs, heart, liver, skin and kidneys, and to their action we must undoubtedly turn for the origin of the traits I have named. On the food-supply, liquid and solid, whether mainly animal, fish or vegetable, whether abundant or scanty, whether rich in phosphates and nitrogenous constituents or the reverse, depend the condition of the digestive organs, the nutrition of the individual, and the development of numerous physical idiosyncrasies. Nutrition controls the direction of organic development, and it is essentially on arrested or imperfect, in contrast to completed development, that the differences of races depend.

These are the physiological and generally unavoidable influences which went to the fixation of racial types. They are those which placed early man under the dominion of natural, unconscious evolution, like all the lower animals. To them may be added natural selection from accidental variations becoming permanent when proving of value in the struggle for existence, as shown in the black hue of equatorial tribes, special muscular development, etc.

But I do not look on these as the main agents in the fixation of special traits. No doubt such agencies primarily evolved them, but their cultivation and perpetuation were distinctly owing to conscious selection in early man. Our species is largely outside the general laws of organic evolution, and that by virtue of the self-consciousness which is the privilege of it alone among organized beings.

This conscious selection was applied in two most potent directions, the one to maintaining the physical ideal, the other toward sexual preference.

As soon as the purely physical influences mentioned had impressed a tendency toward a certain type on the early community, this was recognized, cultivated and deepened by man’s conscious endeavors. Every race, when free from external influence, assigns to its highest ideal of manly or womanly beauty its special racial traits, and seeks to develop these to the utmost. African travelers tell us that the negroes of the Soudan look with loathing on the white skin of the European; and in ancient Mexico when children were born of a very light color, as occasionally happened, they were put to death. On the other hand the earliest records of the white race exalt especially the element of whiteness. The writer of the Song of Solomon celebrates his bride as “fairest among women,” with a neck “like a tower of ivory;”[18] and one of the oldest of Irish hero-tales, the Wooing of Emer, chants the praises of “Tara, the whitest of maidens.”[19] Though both Greeks and Egyptians were of the dark type of the Mediterranean peoples, their noblest gods, Apollo and Osiris, were represented “fair in hue, and with light or golden hair.”[20]

The persistent admiration of an ideal leads to its constant cultivation by careful preservation and sexual selection. Thus the peoples who have little hair on the face and body, as most Chinese and American Indians, usually do not like any, and carefully extirpate it. The negroes prefer a flat nose, and a child which develops one of a pointed type has it artificially flattened. In Melanesia if a child is born of a lighter hue than is approved by the village, it is assiduously held over the smoke of a fire in order to blacken it. The custom of destroying infants markedly aberrant from the national type is nigh universal in primitive life. Such usages served to fix and perpetuate the racial traits.

A yet more powerful factor was sexual preference. This worked in a variety of ways. If is well known to stock breeders that the closer animals are bred in-and-in, that is, the nearer the relationship of father and mother, the more prominently the traits of the parents appear in their children and become fixed in the breed. It is evident that in the earliest epoch of the human family, the closest inter-breeding must have prevailed without restriction, as it does in every species of the lower animals. By its influences the racial traits were rapidly strengthened and indelibly impressed. This, however, was long before the dawn of history, for it is a most remarkable fact that never in historic times has a tribe been known that allowed incestuous relations, unless as in ancient Egypt and Persia, for a sacrificial or ceremonial purpose. The lowest Australians, the degraded Utes, look with horror on the union of brother and sister. The general principle of marriage in savage races is that of “exogamy,” marriage outside the clan or family, the latter being counted in the female line only. This strange but universal abhorrence has been explained by Darwin as primarily the result of sexual indifference arising between members of the same household, and the high zest of novelty in that appetite. Whatever the cause, the consequences will easily be seen. The racial traits once fixed in the period before this abhorrence arose would remain largely stationary afterwards, and by exogamous marriages would be rendered uniform over a wide area.

This form of conscious selection has properly been rated as one of the prime factors in the problem of race differentiation.[21] The apparently miscellaneous and violent union of the sexes in savage tribes is in fact governed by the most stringent traditional laws, and their confused cohabitations are so only to the mind of the European observer, not to the tribal conscience.[22]

Causes of Variation in Types.—The physical type once fixed by the influences just mentioned remains very stable; yet may fall under the influence of conditions which will greatly modify it.

Changes in climatic surroundings and of the food supply exert a visible effect. These generally come about by migration, though geologic action has occasionally completely altered the climate of a given locality, as at the glacial epoch, which change would have the same effect as migration.

How far migration may alter race-types after many generations is not yet defined. The Spanish-American of pure white blood, whose ancestors have lived for three centuries in tropical America, the citizen of the United States who traces his genealogy to the passengers in the Mayflower or the Welcome, have departed extremely little from the standard of the Andalusian or the Englishman of to-day, though the contrary is often asserted by those who have not personally studied the variants in the countries compared. Conditions of climate and food materially impress the individual, but not the race. The Greeks of Nubia are as dark as Nubians, but let their children return to Greece and the Nubian hue is lost. This is a general truth and holds good of all the slight impressions made upon pure races by unaccustomed environments.

Another cause of variation is the recurrence to remote ancestral traits, or the appearance of what seem merely accidental variations, which may be perpetuated. It is not very unusual in pure African negroes and Chinese to observe instances of reddish hair and gray or brown eyes.

Those peculiar congenital conditions known as albinism and melanism may be frequent and are unquestionably transmissible by descent.[23]

The Mingling of Races.—But the mightiest cause in the change of types is intermarriage between races, what the French call métissage. This has taken place from distantly remote epochs, especially along the lines where two races come into contact. In such regions we always find numerous mixed breeds, leading to a shading of one race into another by imperceptible degrees.

The widespread custom of exogamous marriage fostered the blending of types, and it was greatly increased in early days by the institution of human slavery, the habit of selling captives taken in war, the purchase of wives and concubines, and the rule in early conquest that the men of the conquered were killed or sent off, and the women retained as the spoils of the victors. In all ages man has been migratory, and very remote relics of his arts show that war and commerce led to extensive intermixture of races long before history took up the thread of his wanderings.

It is noticeable, however, that these prolonged interminglings have not produced another race. The nearest approach to it is in the Australians, but these do not refute my statement as we shall see later. Many ethnologists have indeed classed the mixed types as separate races, running the number of the sub-species of the genus homo up to thirty or forty. But this was hasty generalization.

I would impress upon you this fact, that since the intermingling of two races does not produce a third race, it is not likely that any of the existing races arose from a fusion of two others. The result of observation shows that after two or three generations the tendency in mixed breeds is to recur to one or the other of the original stocks, not to establish a different variety.

Were it not for such constant crossings, we have reason to believe that the race types would resist all environment and retain their traits under all known conditions. It is only where the element of métissage prominently enters that we are unable to assign individuals to one or another race.

Such being the case, it is a fair comparison to set one race over against another and deduce the

Physical Criteria of Racial Superiority.—We are accustomed familiarly to speak of “higher” and “lower” races, and we are justified in this even from merely physical considerations. These indeed bear intimate relations to mental capacity, and where the body presents many points of arrested or retarded development, we may be sure that the mind will also.

There are two explanations of the presence of the inferior physical traits in certain races of men; the one, that of the evolutionists, that they are reversions or perpetuations of the ape-like (simian, pithecoid) features of the lower animal which was man’s immediate ancestor; the other, that of the special creationists, that they are instances of surviving fetal peculiarities, or else deficiency or excess of development from unknown causes.

The following are the principal traits of the kind:

Simplicity and early union of cranial sutures.

Presence of the frontal process of the temporal bone.

Wide nasal aperture, with synostosis of the nasal bones.

Prominence of the jaws.

Recession of the chin.

Early appearance, size and permanence of the “wisdom” teeth.

Unusual length of the humerus.

Perforation of the humerus.

Continuation of the “heart” line across the hand.

Obliquity (narrowness) of the pelvis.

Deficiency of the calf of the leg.

Flattening of the tibia.

Elongation of the heel (os calcis).

When all or many of these traits are present, the individual approaches physically the type of the anthropoid apes, and a race presenting many of them is properly called a “lower” race. On the other hand, where they are not present, the race is “higher,” as it maintains in their integrity the special traits of the genus Man, and is true to the type of the species.

The adult who retains the more numerous fetal, infantile or simian traits, is unquestionably inferior to him whose development has progressed beyond them, nearer to the ideal form of the species, as revealed by a study of the symmetry of the parts of the body, and their relation to the erect stature.

Measured by these criteria, the European or white race stands at the head of the list, the African or negro at its foot.

The investigations of anthropologists extend much beyond the outlines I have now presented you. All parts of the body have been minutely scanned, measured and weighed, in order to erect a science of the comparative anatomy of the races. Much of value has been discovered; but nothing absolutely characteristic, nothing which enables us to divide more sharply one race from another than the facts I have given you. It is a question, indeed, whether not too much, but too exclusive attention has not been devoted by many anthropologists to the purely physical aspects of their science. They have multiplied useless anatomical refinements and a pedantic nomenclature. The more valuable general distinctions and their technical terms I present to you in the following table:—

Scheme of Principal Physical Elements.

LECTURE II.
THE PSYCHICAL ELEMENTS OF ETHNOGRAPHY.

Contents.—The mental differences of races. Ethnic psychology. Cause of psychical development.

I. The Associative Elements. 1. The Social Instincts; sexual impulse; primitive marriage; conception of love; parental affection; filial and fraternal affection; friendship; ancestral worship; the gens or clan; the tribe; personal loyalty; the social organization; systems of consanguinity; position of woman in the state; ethical standards; modesty. 2. Language; universality of; primeval speech; rise of linguistic stocks; their number; grammatical structure; classes of languages; morphologic scheme; relation of language to thought; significance of language in ethnography. 3. Religion: universality of; early forms; family and tribal religions; universal or world religions; ethnic study of religions; comparison of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism; material and ideal religions; associative influences of religions. 4. The Arts of Life: architecture; agriculture; domestication of animals; inventions.

II. The Dispersive Elements: adaptability of man to surroundings. 1. The Migratory Instincts; love of roaming; early commerce; lines of traffic and migration. 2. The Combative Instincts: primitive condition of war; love of combat; its advantages; heroes; development through conflict.

The mental differences of races and nations are real and profound. Some of them are just as valuable for ethnic classification as any of the physical elements I referred to in the last lecture, although purely physical anthropologists are loath to admit this. No one can deny, however, that it is the psychical endowment of a tribe or a people which decides fatally its luck in the fight of the world. Those, therefore, who would master the highest significance of ethnography in its function as the key to history, will devote to this branch of it their most earnest attention.

The study of the general mental peculiarities of a people is called “ethnic psychology.” As a science, it may be treated by various methods, applicable to the different aims of research. For our present purpose, which is to study the growth, migrations and comminglings of races and peoples, the most suggestive method will be to classify their mental distinctions under the two main headings of Associative and Dispersive Elements. The predominance of one or the other of these is ever eminently formative in the character and history of a people, and both must be constantly considered with reference to their bearings on the progress of a nation toward civilization.

The psychical development of men and nations finds its chief explanation, less in the natural surroundings, the climate, soil, and water-currents, as is taught by some philosophers, than in their relations and connections with each other, their friendships, federations and enmities, their intercourse in commerce, love and war. Around these must center the chief studies of ethnographic science, for they contain and present the means for reaching its highest, almost its only aim—the comprehension of the social and intellectual progress of the species.

I. The Associative Elements.

The sense of fellowship, the gregarious instinct, was inherited by our first fathers from their anthropoid ancestors. The “river drift” men, who dwelt on the banks of the Thames and the Somme before the glacial epoch, were gathered into small communities, as their remains testify. The most savage tribes, Fuegians and Australians, roam about in detached bands. They are not under the control of a chief, but are led to such union by much the same motives as prompt buffaloes to gather in a herd.

These fundamental mental elements which impel to association are:

1. The Social Instincts.

Strongest of them all is the sexual impulse. The foundation of every community is the bond of the man and woman, and the nature of this bond is the surest test of a community’s position in the scale of culture. It is not likely that miscellaneous cohabitation, or that slightly modified form of it called “communal marriage,” ever existed. No instance of it has been known to history.[24] In the most brutal tribes the man asserts his right of ownership in the woman. The rare custom of “polyandry,” where a woman has several husbands at once, gives her no general license.

It is equally true that the tender sentiments of love appear to be less known to the lowest savages than they are to beasts and birds. The process of mating is by brute force, marriage is by robbery, and the women are in a wretched slavery. Mutual affection has no existence. Such is the state of affairs among the Australians, the western Eskimos, the Athapascas, the Mosquitos, and many other tribes.[25]

But it is gratifying to find that we have to mount but a step higher in the scale to find the germs of a nobler understanding of the sex relation. In many tribes of but moderate culture, their languages supply us with evidence that the sentiment of love was awake among them, and this is corroborated by the incidents we learn of their domestic life. This I have shown in considerable detail by an analysis of the words for love and affection in the languages of the Algonkins, Nahuas, Mayas, Qquichuas, Tupis and Guaranis, all prominent tribes of the American Indians.[26]

Some of the songs and stories of this race seem to reveal even a capability for romantic love, such as would do credit to a modern novel. This is the more astonishing, as in the African and Mongolian races this ethereal sentiment is practically absent, the idealism of passion being something foreign to those varieties of man.

The sequel of the sexual impulse is the formation of the family through the development of parental affection. This instinct is as strong in many of the lower animals as in human beings. In primitive conditions it is largely confined to the female parent, the father paying but slight attention to the welfare of his offspring. To this, rather than to a doubt of paternity, should we attribute the very common habit in such communities, of reckoning ancestry in the female line only.

Akin to this is filial and fraternal affection, leading to a preservation of the family bond through generations, and in spite of local separation. It is surprising how strong is this sentiment even in conditions of low culture. The Polynesians preserved their genealogies through twenty generations; the Haidah Indians of Vancouver’s Island boast of fifteen or eighteen.

The sentiment of friendship has been supposed by some to be an acquisition of higher culture. Nothing is more erroneous. Dr. Carl Lumholtz tells me he has seen touching examples of it among Australian cannibals, and the records of travelers are full of instances of devoted affection in members of savage tribes, both toward each other and toward persons of other races. There are established rites in early social conditions, by which a stranger is received into the bond of fellowship and the sanctity of friendship.[27] This is often by a transfer of the blood of the one to the body of the other, or a symbolic ceremony to that effect, the meaning being that the stranger is thus admitted to the rights of kinship in the gens or clan. Springing from this clannish affection is the custom of ancestral worship, which adds a link to the bond of the family. It is so widely spread that Herbert Spencer has endeavored to derive from it all other forms of religion. But this is a hasty generalization. The religious sentiment had many other primitive forms of expression.

Through these various personal affections we reach the development of the family into the gens, the clan or totem, all of whose members, whether by consanguinity or adoption, are held to represent one interest.

The union of several gentes under one control constitutes the tribe, which is the first step toward what is properly a state. The tribe passes beyond the ties of affinity by embracing in certain common interests persons who are not recognized as allied in blood. Yet it is curious to note that the tribal sentiments are among the very strongest mankind ever exhibits, surpassing those of family affection. Brutus felt no hesitation in sacrificing his son for the common weal. Classical antiquity is full of admonitions and examples to the same effect. So powerful is the devotion of the Polynesians that they have been known when a canoe was capsized where sharks abounded, to form a ring around their chief, and sacrifice themselves one by one to the ravenous fish, that he might escape.

This sentiment of personal loyalty has been in history the main strength of many a government, and has in it something chivalric and noble, which challenges our admiration; yet it is quite opposed to the principles of republicanism and the equal rights of individuals, and we must condemn it as belonging to a lower stage of evolution than that to which we have arrived.

The result of these gregarious instincts is the formation of the social organization, the bond under which first the primitive horde and later the members of the developed commonwealth consented to live. From first to last, wherever found, communities of men are bound together by ties of consanguinity and affection rather than mere self-interest. Those writers who pretend that society once existed without the idea of kinship, with promiscuity in the sexual relation, and without some recognized controlling power, have failed to produce such an example from actual life.

These ties led to the systems of “consanguinity and affinity” which recur with singular sameness at a certain stage of culture the world over. They give rise to what is called the totemic or gentile phase of society, in which its members are organized into “gentes” or clans, “phratries” or associations of clans, and the tribe, which embraces several such phratries. This theory affected the disposition of property, which belonged to the clan and not to the individual, and the form of government, which was usually by a council appointed from the various clans. The recognition of the wide prevalence of these ideas in the ancient world has led to profound modifications of our views respecting its institutions, and a better understanding of many of the events of history.[28]

In social organizations one of the criteria of excellence is the position of woman. Upon this depends the life of the family and the development of morality. Those nations which have gained the most enduring conquests in power and culture have conceded to woman a prominent place in social life. In ancient Egypt, in Etruria, in republican Rome, women owned property, and enjoyed equal rights under the law. Where woman is enslaved, as among the Australian tribes, progress is scarcely possible; where she is imprisoned, as in Mohammedan countries, progress may be rapid for a time, but is not permanent. Unusual mental ability in a man is generally inherited from his mother, and a nation which studies to prevent women from acquiring an education and from taking an active part in affairs, is preparing the way to engender citizens of inferior minds.

Among other ethnic traits, the appreciation of the ethical standard differs notably. Long ago the observant Montaigne commented on the conflicting views of morals in nations, and remarked rather cynically that what was good on one side of a river was deemed wicked on the other. This is especially noticeable in the sense of justice, the rights of property, and the regard for truth. No Asiatic nation respects truth telling, or can be made to see that it is abstractly desirable when it conflicts with their immediate interests. The rights of property are generally construed entirely differently to ourselves among nations in the lower grades of culture, because the idea of independent personal ownership does not exist among them. What they have belongs to the clan or the horde, and they merely have the use of it.

The basis of ethics in all undeveloped conditions is not general but special; it relates to the tribe and the family, and is in direct conflict with the philosopher Kant’s famous “categorical imperative,” which makes the basis the welfare of the whole species. Hence, in primitive culture and survivals there is a dual system of morals, the one of kindness, love, help and peace, applicable to the members of our own clan, tribe or community; the other of robbery, hatred, enmity and murder, to be practiced against all the rest of the world; and the latter is regarded as quite as much a sacred duty as the former.[29] Ethics, therefore, while a powerfully associative element in the one direction, becomes dispersive or segregating in others, unless the sense of duty is taught as a universal and not as a class or national conception.

The sentiment of modesty is developed by man in society, and he alone among animals possesses it. Whatever has been said to the contrary, it is never absent. Frequently, indeed, its manifestation is not according to our usages, and is thus overlooked. Women with us expose their faces, which a Moorish lady would think most indelicate. The Bedawin women consider it immodest to have the back of the head uncovered; the Siamese think nothing of displaying nude limbs, but on no account would show the uncovered sole of the foot. In certain African courts, the men wear long robes while the women appear nude. The necessary functions of the body are everywhere veiled by retirement, and in the most savage tribes, a regard for decency is constantly noted.

The second chief associative principle is

2. Language.

Unlike the elements of affection which I have been tracing, language is not a legacy from a brute ancestor. It is the peculiar property of the genus Man, and no tribe has ever been known without a developed grammatical articulate speech, with abundance of expressions for all its ideas. The stories of savages so rude that they were forced to eke out their words with gestures, and could not make themselves intelligible in the dark, are fables. The languages of the most barbarous communities are always ample in forms, and often surprisingly flexible, rich and sonorous.

We must indeed suppose a time when the speech of primeval man had a feeble, imperfect beginning. “The origin of language” has been a favorite theme for philologists to speculate about, with sparse fruit for their readers. We can, indeed, picture to ourselves something like what it must have been in its very early stages, by studying a number of very simple languages, and noting what parts of the grammar and dictionary they dispense with. Following this plan, I once undertook to show what might have been the language of man far back in palæolithic times. It probably had no “parts of speech,” such as nouns, pronouns, prepositions or adjectives; it had no gender, number nor case, no numerals and no conjugations. The different sounds, vowels or consonants, conveyed specific significations, and each phrase was summed up in a single word.[30]

In some such way language began. But remember that this is quite another question from the origin of languages, or, to use the proper term, of linguistic stocks. They are very numerous, and many of comparatively late birth. Those convolutions of the brain which preside over speech once developed, man did not have to repeat his long and toilsome task of acquiring linguistic facility. Children are always originating new words and expressions, and if two or three infants are left much together, they will soon have a tongue of their own, unlike anything they hear around them. Numerous examples of this character have been collected by Horatio Hale, and upon them he has based an entirely satisfactory theory of the source of that multiplicity of languages which we find in various parts of the globe.[31] In the unstable life of barbarous epochs, very young children were often left without parents or protectors, or wandered off and were lost. Most of them doubtless perished, but those who survived developed a tongue of their own, nearly all whose radicals would be totally different from those of the language of their parents. Thus in early times numerous dialects, numerous independent tongues, came to be spoken within limited areas by the same ethnic stock.

It is a common error to suppose that there was once but one or a few languages, from which all others have been derived. The reverse is the case. Within the historic period, the number of languages has been steadily diminishing. We know of scores which have become extinct, as many American tongues; others, like the Celtic, are in plain process of disappearance. We can almost predict the time when the work and the thought of the world will be carried on in less than half a dozen tongues, if indeed that many survive as really active.

If we take a comprehensive survey of the grammatical structure of all known tongues, we are cheered by the discovery that they can be divided into a few great classes or groups. The similarities of each group are not in words or sounds, but in the plan of “expressing the proposition,” or placing words together in a phrase to convey an idea.

This may be accomplished in one of four ways:

1. By isolation. The words representing the parts of the phrase may be ranged one after another without any change. This is the case in the Chinese and the languages of Farther India.

2. By agglutination. The principal word in the phrase may have added to it or placed before it a number of syllables expressing the relations to it of the other ideas. Most African and North Asian tongues are agglutinative.

3. By incorporation. The accessory words are either inserted within the verbal members of the sentence, or attached to it in abbreviated forms, so that the phrase has the appearance of one word. Most American languages belong to this type.

4. By inflection. Each word of the sentence indicates by its own form its relation to the main proposition. All Aryan and Semitic idioms are more or less inflected.

These distinctions have great ethnographic interest. They almost deserve to be called racial traits. Thus, the inflected languages belonged originally solely to the European race; the isolating languages are still confined wholly to the Sinitic branch of the Asian race; the incorporative languages are found nowhere of such pure type and so numerous as in the American race; while the agglutinative type is that alone which is found in independent examples in every race.

Scheme of Languages.

The principles on which languages should be compared are frequently misunderstood, and this is one of the reasons why the value of linguistics to ethnography has so often been underrated.

The first rule which should be observed is to rank grammatical structure far above verbal coincidences. The neglect of this rule will condemn any effort at comparison. For example, there have been writers who have sought to derive the Polynesian, an agglutinative, from the Sanscrit, an inflected tongue; or an American from a Semitic stock. Such attempts reveal an ignorance of the nature of language.

A second rule is that in tracing the etymology of words, the phonetic laws of the special group to which they belong must be followed. This is an even more frequent source of error than the former. Writers of high reputation will trace variations in African or American or Semitic names by the phonetic laws of the Aryac dialects—an absurd error, as the phonetic changes are not at all the same in different linguistic stocks.

Yet a third rule is to appraise correctly the value of verbal identities. Generally, it is placed too high. All developed tongues include many “loan words,” borrowed from a variety of sources. They are not prima facie evidence of ethnic relation; they have frequently been transmitted through other nations, as is the case with thousands of English words.

An absolute verbal identity is always suspicious; or rather it is of no ethnic value. There must be a series of words in the languages compared of the same or similar meanings, but whose forms have been altered by the phonetic laws peculiar to the group, for such lists of words to merit the attention of a scientific linguist.

The question how far languages can be accepted as indicating the relationships of peoples has been a bone of contention. One principle we may lay down, with unimportant exceptions—No nation has ever willingly adopted a foreign tongue. Whenever such a change has taken place, it has been under stress of sovereignty, vi coactum, as the lawyers say. Hence in the savage state, where prolonged domination of one tribe by another rarely occurs, language is an excellent ethnic guide, as in America and ancient Europe.

Another principle is that in a conflict of tongues, as after conquest, that tongue prevails which belongs to the more cultured people, whether this be conqueror or conquered. This is well illustrated by the survival of the Romance languages after the inroads of the Teutonic hordes at the Fall of the Western Empire.

A third maxim in linguistic ethnography is that mixture of languages, especially in grammatical structure, indicates mixture of blood. When, for instance, we find the Maltese a dialect partly Arabic, partly Romance, we may correctly infer that the people of the island are descended from both these stocks. This holds good even of loan words, when they are numerous; for though such have no influence on the grammatical structure of a tongue, they testify to some relations between nations, which we may be sure corresponded to others of a sexual nature.

The “American citizens of African descent” speak English only; and though they have been in contact with the white race for but three or four generations, the majority of those now living are related to it by blood, that is, are mulattoes.

The mental aptitude of a nation is closely dependent on the type of its idiom. The mind is profoundly influenced by its current modes of vocal expression. When the form of the phrase is such that each idea is kept clear and apart, as it is in nature, and yet its relations to other ideas in the phrase and the sentence are properly indicated by the grammatical construction, the intellect is stimulated by wider variety in images and a nicer precision in their outlines and relations. This is the case in the highest degree with the languages of inflection, and it is no mere coincidence that those peoples who have ever borne the banner in the van of civilization have always spoken inflected tongues. The world will be better off when all others are extinguished, and it is only in deep ignorance of linguistic ethnography that such a language as Volapük—agglutinative in type—could have been offered for adoption as a world-language.

I have said that alone of all animals, man has articulate speech; I now add that also alone of all animals, he is capable of

3. Religion.

Not only is he capable of it; he has never been known to be devoid of it. All statements that tribes have been discovered without any kind of religion are erroneous. Not one of them has borne the test of close investigation.[32] The usual mistake has been to suppose that this or that belief, this or that moral observance, constitutes religion. In fact, there are plenty of immoral religions, and some which are atheistic. The notion of a God or gods is not essential to religion; for that matter, some of the most advanced religious teachers assert that such a notion is incompatible with the highest religion. Religion is simply the recognition of the Unknown as a controlling element in the destiny of man and the world about him. This we shall find in the cult of every nation, and in the heart of every man.

Some nations identified this unknown controlling power with one real or supposed existence, some with another. Those in whom the family sentiment was well developed believed themselves still under the control of their deceased parents, giving rise to “ancestral worship;” more frequently the change from light to darkness, day to night, impressed the children of nature, and led to light and sun worship; in some localities the terrific force displayed in the cyclone or the thunder-storm seemed the mightiest revelation of the Unknown, and we have the Lightning and Storm Myths; elsewhere, any odd or strange object, any unexplained motion, was attributed to the divine, the super-natural. The last mentioned mental state gave rise to those low cults called “fetichism” and “animism,” while the former are supposed to be somewhat higher and are distinguished as “polytheisms.” In all of them, the prevailing sentiment is fear of the Unknown; the spirit of worship is propitiatory, the gods being regarded as jealous and inclined to malevolence; the cult is of the nature of sorcery, certain formulas, rites and sacrifices being held to placate or neutralize the ill-will or bad temper of the divinities. In its lowest forms this is called “shamanism;” in its highest, it is seen in all dogmatic religions.

In early conditions, each tribe has its own gods, which are not supposed to be superior, except in force, to the gods of neighboring tribes. No attempt is made to extend their worship beyond the tribe, and in their images they are liable to be captured, as are their votaries. Special prisons for such captive gods were constructed in ancient Rome and Cuzco.

These “tribal religions” prevailed everywhere in early historic times. The religion of the ancient Israelites, such as we find it portrayed in the Pentateuch, was of this character. In later days, profoundly religious minds of philosophic cast perceived that tribal cults do not satisfy the loftiest aspirations of the religious sentiment. The conceptions of the highest truths must be universal conceptions, and in obedience to this the Universal or World-religions were formed.

The earliest of these was preached by Sakya Muni, Prince of Kapilavastu, in India, about 500 B. C. It is known as Buddhism, and has now the largest number of believers of any one faith. The second was that taught by Christ, and the third is Islam, introduced by Mohammed in the seventh century. It is noteworthy that all these world-religions were framed by members of the white race. None has been devised by members of the other races, for the doctrines advanced by Confutse and Laotse in China are philosophic systems rather than religions.

The three World-religions named have rapidly extinguished the various tribal religions, and it is easy to foresee that in a few generations they will virtually embrace the religious sentiments of all mankind. They are all three on the increase, Christianity the most rapidly by the extension of the nations adhering to it, but Mohammedanism can claim in the present century the greater number of proselytes, its fields being in Central Asia, India, and Central Africa.

In the ethnographic study of religions for the purpose of estimating their influence on the life and character of nations, we must take notice especially of three points: 1. The ethical contents of a faith; 2. The philosophic “theory of things” on which it is based (cosmogony, theosophy, etc.), and 3. Its power over the emotions, as upon this rests its practical potency.

As currently taught, no one of the three world-religions named is fully adequate on all these points. The cosmogony of Christianity is a series of Assyrian and Hebrew myths contradicted by modern science, and its ethical purity has been often sullied by efforts to place faith in dogmas above the law of conscience. Mohammedanism, a more genuine monotheism than Christianity, in some respects higher in practical morality (temperance, charity, equality), and certainly superior in power over the emotions, is weak in its doctrine of fatalism and in its degradation of woman. Buddhism is tainted by a profound distrust of the value of the individual life, by a false theory of the universe, and by its borrowed doctrine of metempsychosis; but rises high in its appeals to the sense of justice and right within the mind.

A religion tends to elevate its votaries in the proportion that it withdraws their minds from merely material aims, and sets before them stimulating ideals. This is the distinction between “material” and “ideal” cults. Where the rites are directed mainly to conjuration, where the prayers are for good luck in life, where the myths are mere stories of exaggerated human shapes, there the faith is material. Such were all the religions of the African blacks and of the Eastern and Northern Asiatic tribes. They have never developed any thing higher. Among the whites, however, and in a less degree among the American Indians, there were mythical ideal figures, ranked among the gods, who embodied grand ideal conceptions of the possible perfectibility of man, and served as examples and models for the religious sentiment.[33]

The associative influence of a religion, whether tribal or universal in theory, is singularly powerful. The Mohammedan who looks toward Mecca, the Christian who turns toward Rome, feels a like bond of sympathy with his fellow worshippers of every race and color, as did the Israelite who wended his way to Jerusalem, or the Nahuatl who travelled to the sacred city of Cholula. The pilgrimages, the Crusades, the ecclesiastical Councils of past ages, have collected nations together under the control of ideas stronger than any which practical life can offer.

Other bonds of union are those derived from the practice of

4. The Arts of Life.

Unquestionably the earliest of these to exert such an influence was the construction of a shelter, in other words architecture. We know that even glacial man had learned enough to make himself a house, though it was probably inferior to that of the muskrat. In early conditions one structure sheltered several families. Such are called “communal houses,” and some ethnologists have argued that they are well nigh universal down to a very late day in the evolution of domestic architecture. The temple, the fortified refuge, the city with its grouped homes shut in by a common wall of defence—all these illustrate how architecture has ever tended to bring men together, and strengthen their instincts of association.

Later in time but wider in its influence in the same direction was the growth of agriculture. This art completely revolutionized the habits of life, and rendered possible the advent of civilization. The tribe, dependent on hunting and fishing or on natural products for a livelihood, is necessarily migratory and separative in its habits. The tillage of the ground with equal necessity demands a stable residence and a centralization of individuals. The areas of primitive culture, the sites of the earliest cities, were always in situations favorable to agricultural pursuits.

Along with the cultivation of food-plants went hand-in-hand the domestication of animals. The horse was trained independently in both Europe and Asia, some species of the dog in all continents, the ox for draft and the cow for milk principally in Asia, and the camel for the deserts of Arabia and Africa. These humble aids brought together distant tribes, and assimilated their characters.

The prosecution of the various special arts, as pottery, metal work, textile-fabrics, etc., led to the formation of guilds and the association of workers in particular localities favorable to obtaining and utilizing the raw products. Each such conquest of the inventive faculties drew men into closer bonds of harmonious labor, and opened for them new avenues of joint industry. The pre-historic past of the race is measured by archæologists by the rise and extension of new arts, not because of themselves, but because they are indicative of improved social conditions, greater aggregations of men, more potent actions in history. The fine arts, in crowning the useful arts with the iridescent glory of the ideal, impart to the handiwork of men that universality of motive which unites all into one brotherhood.

The second class of psychic traits are:

II. The Dispersive Elements.

These have been of the utmost moment in the history of the species, and a controlling factor in the records of every people. They are derived from two quite different impulses in human nature; the one, a natural propensity to roam, the other, a predisposition to contest.

Both have been favored by the ability of the species to adapt itself to its surroundings, far surpassing that of any other animal. There is no zone and no altitude offering the necessary food supplies that man does not inhabit. The cat, with its traditional “nine lives,” perishes in the upper Andes, where men live in populous cities. No one breed of dogs can follow man to all latitudes. His powers of locomotion are equally surprising. He can walk the swift horse to death, and his steady and tireless gait will in the long-run leave every competitor behind. An Indian will track a deer for days and capture it through its utter fatigue. A Tebu thinks little of passing three days under the sun of the Sahara without drinking. Such powers as these endow man with the highest migratory faculties of any animal, and give rise to or have been developed from

1. The Migratory Instincts.

Many species of animals, especially birds, change their habitat with the seasons, the object usually being to obtain a better food supply. So do most hunting and fishing tribes, and for the same reason. Often these periodical journeys extend hundred of miles and embrace the whole tribe.

This must also have been the case with primeval man when he occupied the world in “palæolithic” time. His home was along the shores of seas and the banks of streams. Up and down these natural highways he pursued his wanderings, until he had extended his roamings over most of the habitable land.

What prompted him and all savage tribes is not always the search for food. The desire for a more genial climate, the pressure of foes, and often mere causeless restlessness, act as motive forces in the movements of an unstable population. Certain peoples, as the Gypsies, seem endowed with an hereditary instinct for vagabondage. The nomadic hordes of the Asiatic steppes and the wastes of the Sahara transmit a restlessness to their descendants which in itself is an obstacle to a sedentary life.

Such vagrant tribes became the colporteurs and commercial travellers of early society. They invented means or transportation, and conveyed the products of one region to another. Only of late have we learned to appreciate the wide extent of pre-historic commerce. Long before Abraham settled in Ur of the Chaldees (say 2000 B. C.), a well-travelled commercial road stretched from the cities of Mesopotamia, through Egypt to the Pillars of Hercules, and thence into Europe.[34] When Hendrick Hudson sailed into the bay of New York, the commercial relations of the tribes who lived on its shores had already extended to the coast of the Pacific.[35]

These lines of early traffic were also the lines of the migrations of nations. They were fixed by the physical geography of regions, and have rightly attracted the careful attention of ethnographers. Along them, nation has blended into nation, race fused with race. The conviction that early man was not sedentary, but mobile, by nature a migratory species, wandering widely over the face of the earth, is one which has been brought home to the ethnologist by the science of prehistoric archæology, and it is full of significance.

2. The Combative Instinct.

The philosopher Hobbes taught that the natural condition of man in society is one of perpetual warfare with his neighbors. This grim theory is sadly attested by a study of savage life. The wretched Fuegians, the miserable Australians, with really nothing worth living for, let alone dying for, fall to cutting each other’s throats the moment that tribe encounters tribe. So it has been in all ages, so it has been in all stages of culture. The warrior, the hero, is the one who wins the hearts of women by his fame, and the devotion of men by his prowess. Civilization helps not at all. In no century of the world’s history have such destructive battles been fought as in the nineteenth; at no former period have the powers of the earth collected such gigantic armies and navies as to-day.

This love of combat at once separates and unites nations. To destroy the common foe, the bonds of national or tribal unity are drawn the tighter; and the aversion to the enemy tends to the preservation of the ethnic type.

In spite of the countless miseries which follow in its train, war has probably been the highest stimulus to racial progress. It is the most potent excitant known of all the faculties. The intense instinct of self-preservation will prompt to an intellectual energy which nothing else can awake. The grandest works of imagination, the immortal outbursts of the poets, from Homer to Whitman, have been under the stimulus of the war-cry ringing in their ears.

The world-conquerors and the holy wars, Alexander and Napoleon, the Crusades and the Mohammedan invasions, have been landmarks in history, a destruction of the effete, an introduction of the new and the viable. Guizot’s bold statement that in the decisive battles of the world it has been, not the strongest battalions, but the truest idea which has conquered, may be a profound ethnologic truth. Certain it is that in weighing the psychical elements of man’s nature and their influence on the past history of the species, we must assign to his combative instincts a most prominent place as stimulants, and we must recognize, amid all the miseries which they have brought upon him, the part they have played in his development. That they have always resulted in promoting the “survival of the fittest,” it is hard to believe, and there is much to make us doubt; but that a great deal of the unfit has thus been destroyed, we may reasonably accept.

What has been true always, is true to-day. It is force, might, which forever exercises “the right of eminent domain;” and this principle is as necessary as it is indestructible. Proudhon was logical, when, in his treatise on War and Peace, he placed war and the duty of waging war at the basis of all society, and defended it as the necessary condition of civilization, inasmuch as it alone is the highest form of judicial action, the last appeal of the oppressed. Never, we may be sure, will the human species be ready or willing to forego this, the greatest of all their privileges.

LECTURE III.
THE BEGINNINGS AND SUBDIVISIONS OF RACES.

Contents.—The origin of Man. Theories of monogenism and polygenism; of evolution; heterogenesis. Identities point to one origin. Birthplace of the species. The oldest human relics. Remains of the highest apes. Question of climate. Negative arguments. Darwin’s belief that the species originated in Africa confirmed; but with modifications. Quaternary geography of Europe and Africa. Northern Africa united with Southern Europe. Former shore lines. The Sahara Sea. The quaternary continents of “Eurafrica,” and “Austafrica.” Relics of man in them. Man in pre-glacial times. The Glacial Age. Effect on man. Scheme of geologic time during the Age of Man. His development into races. Approximate date of this. Localities where it occurred. The “areas of characterization.” Relations of continents to races. Theory of Linnaeus; of modern ethnography. Classification of races. General ethnographic scheme. Sub-divisions of races; branches; stocks; groups; peoples; tribes; nations. Other terms; ethnos and ethnic; culture; civilization. Stadia of culture.

In the rapid survey contained in the previous lectures you have seen in how many points the races differ. No wonder that the question has often been seriously mooted by scientific men, Could they all have been derived from one common ancestral stock? This is the old debate about “the unity of the human race,” still surviving under the more learned terms of monogenism or polygenism.

As to that other question, whether man came into being as such by a gradual development, evolution, or transformation, from some lower mammal, this may be regarded as the only hypothesis now known to science, and must, therefore, be accepted, at least provisionally, until some better is proposed. It is the only theory consistent with man’s place in the zoölogical world, and is borne out by numerous anatomical analogies, which have been referred to in my first lecture.

In fact, we are driven to it by necessity. No other origin of species than by transformation of earlier forms has been suggested, even by those who reject it. I do not speak of specific creation, for that supposition does not belong to science, but to an obscurant mysticism, which is the negative of all true knowledge.

But within the limits of the transformation theory there is more than one method by which varying forms are produced, and one of these may prove applicable to man, in whose earliest remains we have so far found no positive indications of a lower physical character than he now has.[36] So far, the “missing link” is as much out of sight as ever it was; so far, man appears to have been always what he is to-day.

May he not, as a species, have come into being through a short series of well-marked varieties, each produced by what is called “heterogenesis,” that is, the birth of children unlike their parents? All children are unlike their parents, more or less; and though at present this unlikeness is strictly within the limits of the several races, it is the opinion of some who have studied the matter, that in earlier geologic epochs changes in organic forms were more rapid and more profound than at present.

I am aware that this suggestion of heterogenesis looks like a return to the ancient doctrine called generatio equivoca, which, in its old form, is certainly obsolete. But there is no question that in many existing plants and animals we find singular evidence that from a given form another may arise, widely different in structure, and perpetuate itself indefinitely. I am convinced that the importance of these facts has never been properly appreciated by students of the origin of species, and of the origin of men in particular.

This, or any hypothesis of evolution, renders the supposition quite needless that the various races had distinct ancestral origins. Any evolutionist who accepts the view that man is but a differentiation from some anthropoid ape, is straining at a gnat after swallowing the camel, if he hesitates to believe that the comparatively slight differences between the races may not have originated from like influences. Furthermore, the resemblances between the various races are altogether too numerous and exact to render it likely that they could have been acquired through several ancestries running back to various lower zoological forms; a consideration greatly strengthened by the fact that man is the only species of his genus, and there is even no genus of his class closely related to himself. The chances that such a perfected animal should have been twice or oftener developed from the apes, monkeys or lemurs—his nearest cousins—are so small that we must dismiss the supposition.

It seems to me, indeed, that any one who will patiently study the parallelisms of growth in the arts and sciences, in poetry and objects of utility, throughout the various races of men, cannot doubt of their psychical identity. Still more, if he will acquaint himself with the modern science of Folk-lore, and will note how the very same tales, customs, proverbs, superstitions, games, habits, and so on, recur spontaneously in tribes severed by thousands of leagues, he will not think it possible that creatures so wholly identical could have been produced by independent lines of evolution.

The Birthplace of the Species.—Accepting the theories therefore of the evolutionists and the monogenists as the most plausible in the present state of science, it is quite proper to inquire where primeval man first appeared, and what were his social conditions and personal appearance.

To some it may seem premature to put such questions. They are needlessly timid. It is never too soon to propound any question in science; always too soon to declare that any has been finally and irrevocably answered.

Beginning our search for the birthplace of the species, we may consider that it will be indicated by the cumulative evidence of three conditions. We may look for it, (1) where the oldest relics of man or his industries have been found; (2) where the remains of the highest of the lower mammals, especially the man-like apes, have been exhumed, as it is assumed that man himself descended from some such form; and (3) where we know from palæontologic evidence a climate prevailed suited to man’s unprotected early conditions.

The first of these lines of investigation leads us to the science of “pre-historic archæology.” We shall discover that a study of this branch of learning is indispensable not only in this connection, but to solve many other questions in ethnography. Here its answer is unexpected. We have been taught by long tradition and venerable documents to look for the first home of primeval man “somewhere in Asia,” as Professor Max Müller generously puts it. He is inclined to think that from the highlands of that continent the tribes dispersed in various directions, some going to the extreme north, and then southward into Europe. Others would have it that the species itself came into life in the boreal regions, in that epoch when a mild climate prevailed there.

Such dreams meet no countenance from pre-historic archæology. The oldest remains of man’s arts, the first rude flints which he shaped into utensils and weapons, have not been discovered in Asia, and do not occur at all in the northern latitudes of either continent. They have been exhumed from the late tertiary or early quaternary deposits of southern England, of France, of the Iberian peninsula, and of the valleys of the Atlas in northern Africa. They have been searched for most diligently but in vain in Scandinavia, Germany, Russia, Siberia, and Canada. Not any of the older types of so-called “palæolithic” implements have been reported in early deposits in those countries.[37] But in the “river drift” of the Thames, the Somme, the Garonne, and the Tagus, quantities of rough stone implements have been disinterred, proving that in a remote epoch, at a time when the hippopotamus and rhinoceros, the African elephant and the extinct apes, found a congenial home near the present sites of London, Paris and Lisbon, man also was there. These relics, especially those found in Portugal, Central Spain and Southern France, are the very oldest proofs of the presence of man on the earth yet brought to light.

Where, now, do we find the remains of the highest of the lower animals? By a remarkable coincidence, in the same region. Of all the anthropoid apes yet known to the palæontologist, that most closely simulating man is the so-called Dryopithecus fontani, whose bones have been disinterred in the upper valleys of the Garonne, in Southern France. Its height was about that of a man, its teeth strongly resembled those of the Australians, and its food was chiefly vegetables and fruits. Other remains of a similar character have been found in Italy.[38]

It is well known to geologists that the apes and monkeys or Simiadæ were abundant and highly developed in Southern Europe in the pliocene and early pleistocene, just the time, as near as we can fix it, that man first appeared there. These facts answer the third of our inquiries—that for a climate suitable to man in an unprotected early condition, when he had to contend with the elements and the parsimony of nature, ill-provided as he is with many of the natural advantages possessed by other animals. At that date Southern Europe and Northern Africa were under what are called sub-tropical conditions, possessing a climate not wholly tropical, but yet singularly mild and equable. This we know from the remains, both animal and vegetable, preserved in the deposits of that epoch.

A series of negative arguments strengthens this conclusion. Where we find no remains of apes or monkeys of the higher class, we cannot place the scene of man’s ancestral evolution. This excludes America, where no tailless and no narrow-nosed (catarhine) monkeys and no large apes have been found; it excludes Australia, and all portions of the Old World north of the Alps and the Himalayas.

In view of such facts, Darwin reached the conclusion that it is most probable that our earliest progenitors lived on the African continent. There to this day we find on the one hand the human beings most closely allied to the lower animals, and the two species of these, the gorilla and the chimpanzee, now man’s nearest relations among the brutes.[39]

Darwin was disturbed in this conclusion by the presence of the large apes to whom I have referred in Southern Europe in late tertiary times. This, however, merely requires a modification in his conclusion, the general tenor of which, to the effect that man was first developed in the warm regions of the western or Atlantic portion of the Old World, somewhere within the present or ancient area of Africa, and not in Asia, has been steadily strengthened since the great evolutionist wrote his remarkable work on the Descent of Man.

Quaternary Geography of Europe and Africa.—The modification which I refer to is the obvious fact that since the late tertiary epoch, and especially during and after the glacial epoch, some material changes have taken place in the physical geography of Europe and Africa. To these I must now ask your particular attention, as they controlled not only the scene of man’s origin, but the lines of his early migrations.

When primal man, with no weapon or tool but one chipped from a stone flake, roamed over France, England and the Iberian peninsula, along with the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus and the elephant, the coast lines of Europe and North Africa were quite unlike those of to-day. England and Ireland were united to the mainland, and neither the Straits of Dover nor St. George’s Channel had been furrowed by the waves. Huge forests, such as can yet be traced near Cromer, covered the plains which are now the bottom of the German Ocean. In the broad shallow sea to the north, the mountainous regions of Scandinavia rose as islands, and between them and the Ural Mountains its waters spread uninterruptedly.

To the south, Northern Africa was united to Southern Europe by two wide land-bridges, one at the Straits of Gibraltar, one connecting Tunis with Sicily and Italy. The eastern portion of the Mediterranean was a contracted fresh-water lake, pouring its waters into a broad stream which connected the Atlantic with the Indian Oceans. This stream covered most of the present desert of the Sahara, the delta of Egypt, and a large portion of Arabia and Southern Asia. Its northern beach extended along the southern base of the Atlas Mountains from the River Dra on the Atlantic to the Gulf of Gabes in the Mediterranean; thence northward between Malta and Sicily to the Straits of Otranto; by the Ionian islands easterly till it intersected the present coast-line near the mouth of the Orontes; northeasterly to about Diarbekir, whence it trended south and east along the foot of the Zagros mountains to the Persian Gulf. From that point it followed the present coast-line to the mouth of the Indus, and thence pursued the base of the great northern mountain range to the mouth of the Ganges, covering the north of Hindustan, while the southern elevations of that spacious peninsula, as well as a large part of southern and western Arabia, rose as extensive irregular islands above the water. Toward them the mainland of equatorial Africa extended much nearer than at present. It included in its area the island of Madagascar, and reached far beyond into the Indian Ocean. Toward the north, peninsulas and chains of islands, now the summits of the plateaus and mountains of the central Sahara, reached nearly or quite to the present shore-line of the Mediterranean, about Tripolis.[40]

This disposition of the water left two great land areas in the old world, probably not actually united though separated only by narrow straits, one between the modern Tripolis and Tunis, and another on the northern Syrian coast. I represent these areas on the accompanying map, not indeed minutely, but approximately.

The general accuracy of the contours delineated are now fully recognized by geologists. They are attested by the remaining beach-lines of this primitive ocean, by the geographical distribution of its contemporary fauna and flora, and by the proofs of elevation and submergence along the shores and in the bottom of the adjacent seas and oceans. The “great sink” of the western Sahara, the vast “schotts,” or shallow saltwater ponds south of the Atlas, the salt Dead Sea at the bottom of a profound depression, prove that the drying up of the ancient ocean is scarcely yet complete.

Outlines of the Eastern Hemisphere in the Early Quaternary.

So familiar have these ancient continental areas become to geological students that they have been named like a newly-discovered island or cape. The northern continent has been called Eurasia, compounded of the words Europe and Asia, and the southern Indo-Africa, from a supposed union of India and Africa.[41]

Neither of these names is quite acceptable. The former leaves out of account the connection of Europe with Africa, which is of the first importance in the study of early man; and the latter assumes a geographic union between India and Africa, which is not likely to have existed in the period of man’s life on earth. I prefer the two names which I have inserted on the map; Eurafrica, indicating the connection between Europe and Africa, and Austafrica, designating the whole of the continent south of the ancient dividing sea. The name Asia should be confined to the Central Asian plateau and the regions watered by the countless streams which flow from it toward the north, east and south.

Relics of Man.—Such was the configuration of land in the Eastern hemisphere when man first appeared. We know he was there at that time. I have referred to his rude stone (palæolithic) implements exhumed from the river-drift of the Thames and the Somme, a deposit which dates from a time when the hippopotamus bathed in those rivers; still older seem some rough implements discovered in gravel layers near Madrid, Spain, deposited by some large river in early quaternary times. The worked flints near Lisbon were manufactured when a wide fresh-water lake existed where now not a trace of it is visible on the surface, and according to some archæologists, are the most ancient manufactured products yet discovered.[42]

In numerous parts of North Africa, as near Tlemcen in the province of Oran, and in Tunisia, the oldest forms of stone implements have been found in place beneath massive layers of quaternary travertin,[43] and in some of the most barren portions of the Libyan desert, now utterly sterile, the travertin contains abundant remains of leaves and grasses, along with chipped flints, proving that at the recession of this diluvial sea not only was the vegetation luxuriant, but man was then on the spot, as a hunter and fisher.[44]

Not less certain is it that he was a most ancient occupant of Austafrica. Chert implements of the true “river-drift” type have been discovered “in place” in quaternary stratified gravels near Thebes, and elsewhere in the Nile valley; and in the diamond field of the Cape of Good Hope, palæolithic forms have been exhumed from diluvial strata forty or fifty feet below the surface of the soil.[45]

From similar evidence we know that man spread widely over the habitable earth in that remote time. It is known to archæologists as the earliest period of the Stone Age, and the implements attributed to it are singularly alike in size and form. They seem to indicate a race of beings who were unprogressive, lacking perchance the stimulus of necessity in their mild climate and with their few needs.

The Glacial Age.—But a wonderful change took place in their conditions of life. Slowly, from some yet unexplained cause, mighty ice-sheets, thousands of feet in thickness, gathered around the poles, and collected on the flanks of the northern mountains. With silent but irresistible might they advanced over land and sea, crushing beneath them all animal and vegetable life, changing the perennial summer of Eurafrica to an Arctic winter, or at best to an Alpine climate. The tropical animals fled, the plants perished, and under the enormous weight of the ice-mass, the ocean bottom in the north was depressed a thousand feet or more. This in turn brought about material oscillations in the land levels to the south. The bed of the Mediterranean sank, that of the Sahara Sea slightly rose, leaving the latter little more than a swamp, while the former assumed the shape which we now see.

These alterations in the land areas and climatic conditions exerted the profoundest influence on the destiny of man. When with the increasing cold the other animals native to warm regions had fled or perished, he remained to encounter with undaunted mind the rigors of the boreal climate. Instead of depressing or extinguishing him, these very obstacles seem to have been the spurs to his intellectual progress.

Men were still in the lower stages of culture, with no knowledge of metal, not capable of polishing stones, without a domestic animal or trace of agriculture. Yet everywhere these artisans possessed skill and sentiments far above that of the highest anthropoid ape described by the zoölogist. They knew the use of fire, they constructed shelters, they dwelt together in bands, they possessed some means of navigating streams, they ate both vegetable and animal food, they decorated themselves with colored earth and ornaments, they wielded a club, they twisted fibres into ropes and strings, if occasion required they fastened together skins for clothing. All this is proved by a careful study of what tools and implements they have left us.

Development into Races.—Whatever may have been the physical type of men at their beginning, in culture they were upon the same level for a long while after they had dispersed over the globe.

When, where and how did they develop into the several distinct races that we now know?

We can answer these questions, not fully, but to some extent.

Man developed into certain strongly marked sub-species or races long before the dawn of history. More than six thousand years ago the racial traits of the black, the white, and the yellow races, and even of their subdivisions, were as pronounced and as ineffaceable as they are to-day. This we know from the representations on the Egyptian monuments of the third and sixth dynasties, from the comparative study of ancient skulls, and from the uniform testimony of the earliest writings, wherever we find them.

This permanent fixation of traits, this profound impression of peculiar features, was probably no rapid process, but a very slow one. It took place between the close of the glacial epoch and the proto-historic period. This interim gives time enough; at the lowest calculation, it was twenty thousand years, while others have placed it at a hundred thousand. The division of the species into races unquestionably was completed long before the present geologic period, and under conditions widely diverse from those now existing.[46]

As within these wide limits of time we can reply to the question when the races became such, so within similar broad boundaries of space we can answer where their peculiar types were developed.

At the dawn of history, all the clearly marked sub-species of man bore distinct relations in number and distribution to the great continental areas into which the habitable land of the globe is divided. Nearly the whole of Europe and its geographical appendix, North Africa, were in the possession of the white race; the true negro type was limited to Central and Southern Africa and its appended islands; the yellow or Mongolian type was scarcely found outside of Asia; and the American sub-species was absolutely confined to that continent.

The “Areas of Characterization.”—In claiming that each sub-species had its origin and developed its physical peculiarities in the land areas here assigned to it, the ethnographer is supported by the unanimous verdict of modern zoölogical science. “Whatever be the cause,” writes the Rev. Samuel Haughton, “the distribution of fauna shows clearly that forces have been at work, developing in each great continent animal forms peculiar to itself, and differing from the animal forms developed by other continents.”[47]

In ethnography, those geographical areas whose physical conditions have left a durable impress on their human inhabitants have been called either “geographical provinces” (Bastian) or “areas of characterization” (de Quatrefages). I prefer and shall adopt the latter as more indicative of the meaning of the term. It signifies that like physio-geographical conditions prevailing over a given area inhabited for many generations by the same peoples have impressed upon them certain traits, physical and psychical, which have become hereditary and continue indeterminately, even under changed conditions of existence.

This general law is the recognized basis of modern scientific ethnography.[48] It is open to numerous limitations, and its application must never be made without the consideration of accessory and modifying circumstances. For instance, certain areas are much more potent than others in the influence they exert on man: some act more powerfully on his mind than on his body, or the reverse; some peoples are more susceptible to physical influences of a given class than others; and the length of time required is variable.

Scheme of Geologic Time during the Age of Man in the Eastern Hemisphere.

According to the analogy of other organic beings, man would have been more impressible to his surroundings in the early history of his existence as a species, the young, either as an individual or a genus, being more plastic than the old. Furthermore, in his then condition of culture, or absence of culture, he had less to oppose to the assaults of his environment.

Classification of Races.—It is not possible in the present status of the science of man to point out precisely how the various conditions of the great continental areas reacted on the homogeneous primitive type to develop the races as we know them. The same difficulty encounters us with other animals and with plants. We know, however, that at the dawn of history each of these areas was peopled by nations resembling each other much more than they resembled nations of any of the other areas.

In addition to the great continents there were many lesser regions, peninsulas and islands, usually on the borders of the main areas of characterization, where intermingling of types was sure to arise, and other types be formed, who in turn received some particular impress from their environment.

These considerations prompt me to offer the following as the most appropriate scheme in the present condition of science for the subdivision of the species Man into its several races or varieties.

I. The Eurafrican Race.—Traits.—Color white, hair wavy, nose narrow, jaws straight, skull variable, languages inflectional, religions ideal.

II. The Austafrican Race.—Traits.—Color black, hair woolly, nose flat, jaws protruding, skull long, languages agglutinative, religions material.

III. The Asian Race.—Traits.—Color yellowish or brownish, hair straight, nose flat or medium, jaws straight, skull broad and high, languages isolating or agglutinative, religions material.

IV. The American Race.—Traits.—Color coppery, hair straight, nose narrow, jaws straight, skull variable, languages incorporating, religions ideal.

V. Insular or Litoral Peoples.—Traits.—Color dark, hair lank or wavy, languages agglutinative.

In this scheme the more prominent and permanent traits are named first. While individuals of pure blood can easily be found in all the races who do not correspond in all particulars to these descriptions, I do not hesitate to assert that ninety-five per cent. of the whole of the pure blood of any of the races here classified will correspond to the standards given.

Subdivisions of Races.—The further subdivisions of ethnography follow to some extent the important doctrine of the “areas of characterization,” that is, they are geographical; but as the classification of men advances in minuteness, other considerations become paramount, notably, language and government. These elements allow us to subdivide a race into its branches; a branch into its stocks; a stock into its groups, and these again into tribes, peoples, or nations.

Classified in this manner, the human species presents the subdivisions shown on the adjacent scheme:

General Ethnographic Scheme.

That these distinctions may be plain I append definitions of the ethnographic terms employed.

Race.—A variety or sub-species of the species Man, presenting a number of distinct and permanent (hereditary) traits of the character above described.

Branch.—A portion of a race separated geographically, linguistically, or otherwise, from other portions of the race.

Stock.—A portion of a branch united by some prominent trait, especially language, offering presumptive evidence of demonstrable relationship. The individual elements of a stock are its peoples.

A group consists of a number of these peoples who are connected together by a closer tie, geographical, linguistic, or physical, than that which unites the members of the stock.

A tribe is a body of men collected under one government. They are presumably of the same race and dialect.

A nation, on the other hand, is a body of men under one government, frequently of different languages and races. Its members have no presumed relationship further than that they belong to the same species.

There are some other terms the precise meaning of which should be defined before we proceed, the more so as there is not that uniformity in their use among ethnographers which were desirable.

This very word ethnos, with its adjective ethnic, is an example. What is an ethnos? I know no better word for it in English than a people, as I have already explained this word,—one of the elements of a stock all whose members, there is reason to believe, have a demonstrable relationship. Thus we should speak of the Aryan stock, made up of the Latin, Greek, Celtic and other peoples. The relationship among the members of a people is closer than that between the members of a stock. People corresponds to the Old English folk (German Volk), but folk in the modern English scientific terms “folk-lore,” “folk-medicine,” has acquired a different signification.

Culture and civilization are other terms not always correctly employed. The former is the broader, the generic word. All forms of human society show more or less culture; but civilization is a certain stage of culture, and a rather high one, when men unite under settled governments to form a state or commonwealth (civitas) with acknowledged individual rights (civis). This presupposes a knowledge of various arts and developed mental powers.

Much attention was paid by older writers to dividing the progress of culture into a number of stages or stadia. One of these, an American author, Lewis H. Morgan, suggested an elaborate scheme according to which the periods of man’s development should correspond with historical conditions of culture, and these he divided into lower, middle and upper states of savagery, barbarism, and civilization, each characterized by the introduction of some new art.

The problem is far too complicated to admit of any such mechanical solution. The possession of a given art, as the bow and arrow, or smelting iron, does not lift a people, nor is it an indication of their culture. Peoples low in one point are high in others; they develop along different lines, with scarcely a common measure, and their place in a general scheme must be determined by an exhaustive investigation of all their powers and conquests, and perhaps a comparison with some other standards than those which we have been brought up to consider the best.