guished from each other by certain physical traits. With the possible exception of the Eskimo, the inhabitants of America when the whites first came here were all of common stock and we may properly speak of an Indian race. In language, institutions and laws, they differed as much as did the north-Europeans of whom Cæsar wrote. The Germans, in spite of the claim of Tacitus that they were a pure, unmixed people tracing their descent from one god, were a mixed people descended from various stocks; and it is incorrect to speak of them as a race unless the term is limited to some definite part of the people. There were Aryan peoples speaking related languages but there was no Aryan race. Common language, culture, residence and nationality do not preclude differences in race. Nor does inclusion in the same race preclude individual differences which may be, and often are, quite as great as those which separate the races themselves. We are here considering, not these personal differences, but those between groups of individuals. Whether there is any relation between the physical peculiarities which may exist and civilization is another and very different problem, and the student must be warned at the outset not to confuse the two. Deeply ingrained in human nature is the tendency to believe that we and our own ancestors have been and are superior people. Our men are the finest, our women the most beautiful. We come to prefer our own traits, to consider them as highest and best, and to forget that other groups have like notions and hence different standards. First then let us see what differences are to be found, and later consider their significance. Color is perhaps the first character to attract attention. In the human being this ranges from black to white and depends upon the amount of coloring matter in the pigment cells of the skin, hair and eyes. The color of hair and eyes varies more in the white groups than in all others. The eyes range from very light blue to dark brown, the hair from flaxen yellow to black. Outside the white group the hair is brown or black and the eyes are always brown. Roughly speaking we may divide living men into four groups: 1. Black: Negroes just south of the Sahara, and in a few isolated spots in South Africa: Melanesians. 2. Chocolate: through coffee and olive to reddishbrown: the American Indians, Polynesians. 3. Yellow: (dull leather to muddy white): most of the Asians, northern Africans, Hottentots, Bushmen, Eskimo, Lapps, Malaysians. 4. White: (some groups verging towards yellow or brown): Europeans, some Asians, Ainus of northern Japan. "The general rule is that eyes and hair vary together, both being either light or dark, as if in correspondence. Nevertheless, such ideal combinations do not characterize a majority of most European populations. Thus, in Germany, of six million school children observed on a given day, not one-half of them showed the simple combination of dark eyes and dark hair or of light eyes and light hair. Even among the Jews, Virchow found less than forty per cent characterized by the same tinge of hair and eyes. In parts of Russia the proportion of pure types is scarcely above half; in Denmark, less than forty per cent were consistently pure." 2 ... 2 RIPLEY, W. Z. Races of Europe, p. 65. Barring the exceptional cases of dwarfs or giants the average stature of human groups ranges from four feet four inches to five feet ten inches. Ripley states that more than ninety-nine per cent of the human species is above the average height of five feet and one inch. The pigmy groups of the Congo basin are at the lowest level, but most of the Negroes are as tall as any other groups. Great variations in height are found in the same group. The Hottentots are taller than the Bushmen; the Creeks and Cherokees than the Pueblo Indians. The Scotch and white Americans are about as tall as the Polynesians five feet eight or nine. There are parts of France where the average is but five feet two inches and where twothirds of the men are below five feet three, while in other districts the average is much higher. It appears that favorable conditions of food and climate have much to do with stature and Americans have often been found to be taller than their European ancestors. The hair ranges from the straight locks of the Indians to the tightly twisted kinks of some of the Negroes. The curling depends on the cross section, straight hair being nearly circular, while the more elliptical the cross section the greater the twist. There are also differences in the distribution of the hair, only the Australoids and Whites having hair on the back while some, like the Mongols, are almost beardless. The nose varies from the narrow type of the White through the broader form of the Mongol to the broad, flat, depressed type of the Negro. There are also other differences less often observed. Such are the greater breadth of the Negro's chest and his narrower pelvis so that the body form of the sexes is almost the same. He has also a greater development of the heel. There are also differences in the proportions of the body, in the length of arms and legs, in the structure of the skin, the deposition of fat, the curvature of the sacrum and the relative size of hands and feet, which with many other features cannot be considered in detail. About the middle of the nineteenth century, European students realized that there were marked differences in the head forms of men, and that apparently these differences were very persistent and could be used as tests of race. The head is nearly always longer than it is broad, and by dividing the breadth by the length we get what is known as the cephalic index. The actual range of observed cases is from 62 to 103. Heads with an index under 75 are called dolichocephalic (long-headed); between 75 and 80, mesocephalic; and above 80, brachycephalic (round-headed). In the dolichocephalic division belong most of the Negroes, Papuans, Australians, Eskimo, the Corsicans and Portuguese. In the second are the Bushmen and Hausas in South Africa, Japanese, northern Chinese, many Polynesians and North American Indians, Flemings, Sicilians and Basques. In the brachycephalic division are Magyars, Walloons, Russian and Galician Jews, South Chinese and Mongols. It is almost impossible to make any general classification of the Europeans or white Americans on this basis for all classes are represented. "Measurements on the students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are fairly typical for the Anglo-Saxon people. Out of a total of 486 men, four were characterized at one extreme by an index below 70; the upper limit was marked by four men with an index of 87. The series of heads culminated at an index of 77, possessed by 72 students. • "The most conspicuous feature of our map of cephalic index for western Europe is that here within a limited area all the extremes of head form known to the human race are crowded together. In other words, the so-called white race of Europe is not physically a uniform and intermediate type in the proportions of head between the brachycephalic Asiatics and the long-headed Negroes of Africa. A few years ago it was believed that this was true. In the high Alps of northwestern Italy are communes with an average index of 89, an extreme of round-headedness not equaled anywhere else in the world save in the Balkan Peninsula and in Asia Minor. This type of head prevails all through the Alps, quite irrespective of political frontiers. Yet within three hundred miles as the crow flies, in the island of Corsica, are communes with an average cephalic index of 73. Nor is this all. Pass to northern Scandinavia, and we find among the Lapps, again, one of the broadest-headed peoples of the earth." 3 ... • .. Ripley makes this difference in head form one of the bases of his classification of the European peoples. This is perfectly proper. Unfortunately, however, other students, believing that the north-Europeans had been the leaders in education and civilization and holding that they were preeminently long-headed, have made some very extravagant claims. Thus Ammon in a book in which he has really collected much valuable evidence delivers himself of this tribute to his ancestors: 3 RIPLEY, W. Z. о. с., pp. 41-54. |