SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14824, 15 November 1913, Page 9

SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR.

THE RACES OF MAN.—V

(By Sir Ray Laxkkstew, X.C.8., F.R.S.)

(Special rights secured by "The Press.' , )

We have yet to take a brief survey of the third great stock of humanity— the Africo-Melanesian or Negroids^— and also to consider that small fourth stock, the Australian, considered by some authorities as an offshoot of one of the three larger stocks, but regarded by Huxley, with whom I agree, as of equal independence with, and greater antiquity than, the three groat dominant stocks (tho Africa-Melanesian or Negroid, the Indo-European or Caucasian, and the Asio-American or Mongoloid).

The Africo-Molanesians or Negroids are tho woolly-haired races with usually very dark skin (but yellow-brown in the'"Bushmen" of South Africa), with broad, flat noses, and usually full, protruding lips- They have occupied, since historical times, Africa south of tho Sahara, and are found as a disappearing remnant in parts of tho Malay Peninsula and Sumatra (Semangs) and in the Philippines (Aetas), and even in India. Tho littlo people of tho Andaman islands belong here, and also the. well-grown black Papuans of New Guinea, who havo sometimes an aquiline nose (perhaps duo to race mixture). Closely allied to tho last are the so-called Melanesians, who inhabit New Caledonia, Fiji, and neighbouring islands, and havo been to some extent mixed,,with. Polynesians and Malays. This far eastern branch of the negro race also reached tho Australian continent, where it has mixed in various degrees with the early and peculiar Australian stock, which was represented in a pure state by the now extinct, natives of Tasmania (only 2000 in number when first discovered).

The African section of tho AfricaMelanesian stock may be divided first of all into the Negroes and tho Bushmen, tho latter being distinguished by their yellow-brown skin as opposed to tho black skin of tho Negroes, their short stature (sft), their straight face and bulging forehead (orthognathous), and their tendency to "steatopygia" in tho women, that is to say, the development of great masses of firm fat on the sides of the thighs and on the buttocks. Tho nose is extremely broad and flat. These people (who by mixture with other races have also given rise to the so-called "Hottennre rapidly dying out, and avo confined now to tho Kalahari desert of South Africa. They are a primitive, hunting people, and have a remarkable habit of drawing on rocks and the walls of caves. Though their work is inferior in artistic quality, it resembles some of that found in cave-shelters in Spain very closely. The fact that two "Negroid" skeletons have been foui'd in a cavo at 'Men+one, near Nice, proved by their position to be of early Aurignacuui age, and tho fact that the prehistoric' people of this age (the earliest of the "la+er Palaeolithic epoch") are identified with the artists who decorated the caves of Southern Franco and Northern Spain with coloured drawings of bison, mammoth, and other animals, suggests that tV same race which is to-day represented by the disappearing Bushmen of South Africa, furnished in remote palaeolithic days some 50,000 years ago, a flourishing body of immigrants to Southern Europe, whose cultural development may very, well have greatly surpassed i<hat of their modern remnant in S'lU-h Africa. Tin's supposition is ail lie more likely to be correct, since we rave how several statuettes and also > lar>;er sculptured figures of the Aurignacian -age found in Europe, representing women with the steatopygor.s conciiti.in. and also two in which the hair is sculptured as a series of woolly curls disposed in rows, as is the mode of dressing it nt present adopted by many Negro women. It thus "sft>,iis to be probable that besides surriyurs of earlier tribes and varieties of men, there was a Negroid Bushman-like race in Europe, and even in that part which has become cut off as the British Islands (since we find Aurignacian implements here!) long before any one of the three branches of the Caucasian or Indo-European stock had taken up a dominant position.

A few yenrs ago I had the, opportunity of seeing some Bushmen, brought to lOndon \v the enterprising show.aan Farini. He and others, -who i-.-ive shown us Zulu Kf.Sirs. Congo ])ygnii.;s, Guiana Indians, and Kalimik Tart.r:s, have made it obvious that a permanent show, a ''Garden of Babel." giving pitality to successive groups of interesting "na+ives ,, (to be safely returned to their homes after a liijiited sojoarn), could easily lip maintained in LonJm as a commercial snecoss, and, if :> :i:fd under the direction ami puarani. o of the Royal Anthropological Tnstit-iw, could be of great scientific value.

It is doubtful whether any close kinship exists between the pygmy tribes of the Congo (best known by the name of one set of them, the Akkas) and the .Bushmen. The Bushmen (for wnom there is no other name, current) are called "Abatwa" by the Zulus, ?»„ T r nara « might Veil be used E™"L ° They have been ■hi ' v il l* lr capons found there, ° a ™,W «■ far north as Xvassatant date U V a,,ganrika ' at nO Clis " ™'; The Akkas. or pypmy w -" uo .is sometimes applied.

causing confusion with Negrito and other such names — all of which should be abandoned) ar> even smaller than the Bushmen, but are dark brown, and, to some extent, interbred with ordinary negroes. They have the body covered with a light downy hair, as was known to the ancient Greeks. It is doubtful how far the pygmy Andaman islanders (or Mincopees) and the Semangs and Aetas of the East Indian region, who are undoubtedly of Negroid stock, are specially related to them. It is possible that the conditions which favour "pygmism" hare recurred in separate localities, but no one knows what those conditions are.

Tho ordinary-sized " Negroids of Africa—south of tho Sahara—are the "true negroes." They are divided into (a) the Western "Soudanese of the Guinea Coast and interier. (b) tho Eastern Soudanese, and (c) the Bant-us of Central and Southern Africa, who speak Bantu languages, and include a great variety of groups, such as tho Zulus (Xoia), the Mashona, the Beehuana, tho Manuyema, the. Fans, tho Batanga, and the Lacustrians. or peoples around the great lakes Victoria, and Albert Nyanza. tho kingdoms of Uganda, TJnyorb, and Karngwe.

The division of the peoples of Africa into wandering tribes, who have no documents, no monuments, and -a memory of only a few hundred years past, and tho arrival among them from timo to timo in tho remote past and continually up to Tecent times'of invading groups of Mediterranean Caucasians, of Arabs from the East, of Abyssinian Hnmites and Gollas, of Egyptians and Malays, and adventurers of all kinds (oven Europeans from tho earliest days of civilisation), who have founded temporary empires find left traces of their presence by interbreeding, by buildings, metal work, and pottery, by language, arts and traditions, renders it impossible to decipher the story of man in Africa south of the Sahara. All that is gathered from tho natives themselves refers only to quite recent times, and the only conclusion which can bo formulated is that none of these people havo been long whore they are now. and wore, many of them, more settled and cultivated in remote times than at present. ' ■

Tt is worth bearing in mind that whilst all tho negro tribes of Africa are and have been always, so far as tradition goes, skilful metal-workers, and possessed of the knpwledgo of smelting iron from time immemorial, yet these races were preceded by people who had not the use of metal, aud made stone implements resembling those of the early Palaeolithic period of Europe. Those rough stone implements are found in the Nile valley, in gravels on the Zambesi, and elsewhere in South Africa. We have no reason to sunpose that they were made by tho direct ancestors of the negro stock. AVo know as yet nothing of those earlier inhabitants of Africa, nor of their relation either to true negroes or to the yellow-skinned' bushmen.

The island of Madagascar, though nearer to Africa than to Asia, was populated about 2000 years ago by a primitive Malay race, wJio, as their language shows, came from MalayoPolynesia (not from the later historical Malay States), and are the Hovas of today. Arab traders visited the island in early times, and brought negro slaves (Bantus) from the African mainland, who have multiplied, and form a large part of the population* which shows a cortaiu amount of mixture with the Hovas. but for the most part the two races are very distinct, the small, yellow-faced Hovas, with straight, black hair, rather sharp features, and slim figures, contrasting with the Betsilocs, the puro African people of the south of the island, with short, curly hair, black skins, and' freouently of Gl't in height, * ■

I have already pointed to the pro-] bability that the extinct Tasmanian people and the early, population of tho Australian continent were a very primitive race, distinct from the roids of the neighbouring islands. Their* form of skull'and other features in tho skeleton, as well as the extraordinary low condition of tho Tasmanians, in regard both to language and the use oi tools and weapons, point to this conclusion. The primitive race has been largely mixed with Negroid immigrants in Australia, but still is very distinct from the latter. It is probable that this primitive Australian race existed elsewhere in tropical Asia, and has been destroyed or in part absorbed by other more advanced races. The Veddas of Ceylon are, it is sometimes supposed, in part the mixe/1 descendants of such a primitive race, and many of the populations of Hindostan may be due to the mixture of this primitnve race with later invaders, Negroids, and Caucasians of various types. Thero are not wanting those who would carry speculation so far as to suggest that the ancient Neander-men of the earlier Palaeolithic river gravels and cave doposits of Europe are: a branch of the same stock as the Tasmanians and primitive Australians. Such connexions are possible, but we must beware of entertaining plausible fancies in a matter about which so little is at present known.

The views now most generalJy accepted as to tlio races of man inhabiting the British Islands are as follows: —Wo know nothing as to whence came or whither went those populations of inenr who made flint- implements in these lands when they were still part of the continent of Europe. As yet no ono has a suggestion to offer as to the makers of the "rostrocarinate," or "eagle's beak." flint implements of proglacial, Pliocene age. They were capablo workmen of no mean skill, and at very much later periods men made once again from stone, and , then from iron, tho same shape of implements — beak-like, keeled above, .and with a broad, flat, lower surface. They were followed, after a long period of glacial conditions in this part of the world by the makers of tho-flat leaf-shaped and almond-shaped Chellean and Acheullian flints, and after a time by the Neander races, tho makers of the Moustierian flakes (serapers_ and spear heads), then by the negroid Auriynacians. and other races (Solutrians and Magdalenians) who left their small flint engravers and scrapers and their carved bone and ivory pieces in caves, whilst the mammoth." rhinoceros, bison, horse, and, later, the reindeer, still abounded in this part of the world. Of how these successive peoples came and during some hundreds of thousands of* years, and what groups of population they left behind them" in this country to mix with later immigrant races, \xo know nothing. It is not until we come to tho Neolithic period, when men polished their stone axes (about 15.000 years ago), that there is some indication of a connexion between tradition and the actual remains of man in this country. The "Picts" of tradition are now held to bo the long-headed race of the long "barrows" or burial mounds, swarthy, and of low stature (oft oin). who spread over the whole of Britain as far as the Orkneys. They were tho Pictones or Pictavi whose name survives in the town of Poictiers, and were Iberians, a branch of the groat Mediterranean race. They canie north through Spain, and were originally connected with the Berbers and Hamitic people of North Africa— and were Aryanised (that is to say, received the Aryan language of* the Alpine branch of the Caucasian stock) on their way north leaving the unAryanfsed Basques behind them. They have left their mark on the population of this country to the- present day. Then there came to us later people associated with the dolmens and "resit stone monuments. Later there came over the Channel tribes of Keltic sneech commonly called Kelts, in, the bronze period, about 2000 B.C. (perhaps a good deal later). Words coli-

nected with place-names (such as "aber"), and of animals (such as "ptarmigan") survive to this day from pro-Keltic times. After the Kelts tho Belgre came to us-proto-Teutons.

This vast variety of immigrant peoples who had more or loss settled down to some extent intermixed in different parts of our islands, were "the Ancient Britons," upon tho top of whom arrived the Roman legions at tho beginning of tho Christian Era. Tho Romans contributed during their 500 years of occupation various racial elements to the mixture, probably not largely of true Latin origin. Then we have, between 300 and GOO A.D., large incursions and settlements of Frisians, Saxons, Angles, and others of Teutonic speech. From tho eighth to the tenth century we have Scandinavians, chiefly Danes and Norwegians, invading our coasts, even thoso of Ireland and the far north of Britain, as well as the east, and taking up permanent habitation.

Lastly, wo have tho Xorman invasion in" the eleventh century, mainly consisting of Norsemen (Scandinavians) Itomanised in speech and bringing the Latin culture with them. They not only seized tho fertile, lands of England, ; but took a paternal interest in tho growth of the population. Since the Norman invasion to the present day sporadic arrivals from the mainland have continued—Jews, French, Huguenots. Lombards, German traders have come across tho Channel and become "Englishmen." We thus see that, though the population of these islands is. if we exclude its prehistoric elements, of purely Caucasian stock, yet that it consists of a mixture of many different graces," if we apply that term to minor branches of a great stock or super-race.. The mixture* so produced may perhaps bo legitimately spoken of as a race—the British ni the same way as homes descended from Matcham. Herod, and Eclipse are called the thoroughbred "race." The "thoroughbred" horse is a mixture of Arab, Barb.- and great English warhorse (derived from a heavy European breed), and from the timo when the mixture was established it has been no further changed by new blood. It is ' " OAV b , r , ecl "P ure ." "nd is accounted a race. ' In a similar way tho "soothing pot" of an island population.formed by a. hundred immigrant races may settle down to oik! common character, and '»y free inter-breeding within its own borders and by .abstention from foreign admixture may become a well-marked race- or breed—just as are tho breeds ot our horses, cattle, and dogs.

But there is something more at work in the mixture of human races to form new and permanent strains or secondary races." The sentiment of nationality, the traditions and habits of a strong stock, are transmitted and prevail in human poplations even those comprising only a small or, nt any n< to. not a dominant proportion of that strong stock. Such transmission ami prevalence. is due not to blood and inter-breeding, but to the action of mind on mind—to the infection of one race by the thought of .-mother.