by admin » Tue Aug 17, 2021 4:04 am
II. THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF RACE
In the modern and scientific study of race we have long since discarded the Adamic theory that man is descended from a single pair, created a few thousand years ago in a mythical Garden of Eden somewhere in Asia, to spread later over the earth in successive waves.
It is a fact, however, that Asia was the chief area of evolution and differentiation of man and that the various groups had their main development there and not on the peninsula we call Europe.
Many of the races of Europe, both living and extinct, did come from the East through Asia Minor or by way of the African littoral, but most of the direct ancestors of existing populations have inhabited Europe for many thousands of years. During that time numerous races of men have passed over the scene. Some undoubtedly have utterly vanished and some have left their blood behind them in the Europeans of to-day.
We now know, since the elaboration o f the Mendelian Laws of Inheritance, that certain bodily characters, such as skull shape, stature, eye color, hair color and nose form, some of which are so-called unit characters, are transmitted in accordance with fixed laws, and, further, that various characters which are normally correlated or linked together in pure races may, after a prolonged admixture of races, pass down separately and form what is known as disharmonic combinations. Such disharmonic combinations are, for example, a tall brunet or a short blond; blue eyes associated with brunet hair or brown eyes with blond hair.
The process of intermixture of characters has gone far in existing populations and through the ease of modern methods of transportation this process is going much further in Europe and in America. The results of such mixture are not blends or intermediate types, but rather mosaics of contrasted characters. Such blends, if any, as ultimately occur are too remote to concern us here.
The crossing of an individual of pure brunet race with an individual of pure blond race produces in the first generation offspring which are distinctly dark. In subsequent generations, brunets and blonds appear in various proportions but the former tend to be much the more numerous. The blond is consequently said to be recessive to the brunet because it recedes from view in the first generation. This or any similar recessive or suppressed trait is not lost to the germ plasm, but reappears in later generations of the hybridized stock. A similar rule prevails with other physical characters.
In defining race in Europe it is necessary not only to consider pure groups or pure types but also the distribution of characters belonging to each particular subspecies of man found there. The interbreeding of these populations has progressed to such an extent that in many cases such an analysis of physical characters is necessary to reconstruct the elements which have entered into their ethnic composition. To rely on averages alone leads to misunderstanding and to disregard of the relative proportion of pure, as contrasted with mixed types.
Sometimes we find a character appearing here and there as the sole remnant of a once numerous race, for example, the rare appearance in European populations of a skull of the Neanderthal type, a race widely spread over Europe 40,000 years ago, or of the Cro-Magnon type, the predominant race 16,000 years ago. Before the fossil remains of the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon races were studied and understood such reversional specimens were considered pathological, instead of being recognized as the reappearance of an ancient and submerged type.
These physical characters are to all intents and purposes immutable and they do not change during the lifetime of a language or an empire. The skull shape of the Egyptian fellaheen, in the unchanging environment of the Nile Valley, is absolutely identical in measurements, proportions and capacity with skulls found in the predynastic tombs dating back more than six thousand years.
There exists to-day a widespread and fatuous belief in the power of environment, as well as of education and opportunity to alter heredity, which arises from the dogma of the brotherhood of man, derived in its turn from the loose thinkers of the French Revolution and their American mimics. Such beliefs have done much damage in the past and if allowed to go uncontradicted, may do even more serious damage in the future. Thus the view that the Negro slave was an unfortunate cousin of the white man, deeply tanned by the tropic sun and denied the blessings of Christianity and civilization, played no small part with the sentimentalists of the Civil War period and it has taken us fifty years to learn that speaking English, wearing good clothes and going to school and to church do not transform a Negro into a white man. Nor was a Syrian or Egyptian freedman transformed into a Roman by wearing a toga and applauding his favorite gladiator in the amphitheatre. Americans will have a similar experience with the Polish Jew, whose dwarf stature, peculiar mentality and ruthless concentration on self-interest are being engrafted upon the stock of the nation.
Recent attempts have been made in the interest of inferior races among our immigrants to show that the shape of the skull does change, not merely in a century, but in a single generation. In 1910, the report of the anthropological expert of the Congressional Immigration Commission gravely declared that a round skull Jew on his way across the Atlantic might and did have a round skull child; but a few years later, in response to the subtle elixir of American institutions as exemplified in an East Side tenement, might and did have a child whose skull was appreciably longer; and that a long skull south Italian, breeding freely, would have precisely the same experience in the reverse direction. In other words the Melting Pot was acting instantly under the influence of a changed environment.
What the Melting Pot actually does in practice can be seen in Mexico, where the absorption of the blood of the original Spanish conquerors by the native Indian population has produced the racial mixture which we call Mexican and which is now engaged in demonstrating its incapacity for self-government. The world has seen many such mixtures and the character of a mongrel race is only just beginning to be understood at its true value.
It must be borne in mind that the specializations which characterize the higher races are of relatively recent development, are highly unstable and when mixed with generalized or primitive characters tend to disappear. Whether we like to admit it or not, the result of the mixture of two races, in the long run, gives us a race reverting to the more ancient, generalized and lower type. The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro; the cross between a white man and a Hindu is a Hindu; and the cross between any of the three European races and a Jew is a Jew.
In the crossing of the blond and brunet elements of a population, the more deeply rooted and ancient dark traits are prepotent or dominant. This is matter of every-day observation and the working of this law of nature is not influenced or affected by democratic institutions or by religious beliefs. Nature cares not for the individual nor how he may be modified by environment. She is concerned only with the perpetuation of the species or type and heredity alone is the medium through which she acts.
As measured in terms of centuries these characters are fixed and rigid and the only benefit to be derived from a changed environment and better food conditions is the opportunity afforded a race which has lived under adverse conditions to achieve its maximum development but the limits of that development are fixed for it by heredity and not by environment.
In dealing with European populations the best method of determining race has been found to lie in a comparison of proportions of the skull, the so-called cephalic index. This is the ratio of maximum width, taken at the widest part of the skull above the ears, to maximum length. Skulls with an index of 75 or less, that is, those with a width that is three-fourths of the length or less, are considered dolichocephalic or long skulls. Skulls of an index of 80 or over are round or brachycephalic skulls. Intermediate indices, between 75 and 80, are considered mesaticephalic. These are cranial indices. To allow for the flesh on living specimens about two per cent is to be added to this index and the result is the cephalic index. In the following pages only long and round skulls are considered and the intermediate forms are assigned to the dolichocephalic group.
This cephalic index, though an extremely important if not the controlling character, is, nevertheless, but a single character and must be checked up with other somatological traits. Normally, a long skull is associated with a long face and a round skull with a round face.
The use of this test, the cephalic index, enables us to divide the great bulk of the European populations into three distinct subspecies of man, one northern and one southern, both dolichocephalic or characterized by a long skull and a central subspecies which is brachycephalic or characterized by a round skull.
The first is the Nordic or Baltic subspecies. This race is long skulled, very tall, fair skinned with blond or brown hair and light colored eyes. The Nordics inhabit the countries around the North and Baltic Seas and include not only the great Scandinavian and Teutonic groups, but also other early peoples who first appear in southern Europe and in Asia as representatives of Aryan language and culture.
The second is the dark Mediterranean or Iberian subspecies, occupying the shores of the inland sea and extending along the Atlantic coast until it reaches the Nordic species. It also spreads far east into southern Asia. It is long skulled like the Nordic race but the absolute size of the skull is less. The eyes and hair are very dark or black and the skin more or less swarthy. The stature is distinctly less than that of the Nordic race and the musculature and bony framework weak.
The third is the Alpine subspecies occupying all central and eastern Europe and extending through Asia Minor to the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs. The Armenoids constitute an Alpine subdivision and may possibly represent the ancestral type of this race which remained in the mountains and high plateaux of Anatolia and western Asia.
The Alpines are round skulled, of medium height and sturdy build both as to skeleton and muscles. The coloration of both hair and eyes was originally very dark and still tends strongly in that direction but many light colored eyes, especially gray, are now common among the Alpine populations of western Europe.
While the inhabitants of Europe betray as a whole their mixed origin, nevertheless, individuals of each of the three main subspecies are found in large numbers and in great purity, as well as sparse remnants of still more ancient races represented by small groups or by individuals and even by single characters.
These three main groups have bodily characters which constitute them distinct subspecies. Each group is a large one and includes several well-marked varieties, which differ even more widely in cultural development than in physical divergence so that when the Mediterranean of England is compared with the Hindu, or the Alpine Savoyard with the Rumanian or Turcoman, a wide gulf is found.
In zoology, related species when grouped together constitute subgenera and genera and the term species implies the existence of a certain definite amount of divergence from the most closely related type but race does not require a similar amount of difference. In man, where all groups are more or less fertile when crossed, so many intermediate or mixed types occur that the word species has at the present day too extended a meaning.
For the sake of clearness the word race and not the word species or subspecies will be used in the following chapters as far as possible.
The old idea that fertility or infertility of races of animals was the measure of species is now abandoned. One of the greatest difficulties in classifying man is his perverse predisposition to mismate. This is a matter of daily observation, especially among the women of the better classes, probably because of their wider range of choice.
There must have existed many subspecies and species, if not genera, of men since the Pliocene and new discoveries of their remains may be expected at any time and in any part of the eastern hemisphere.
The cephalic index is of less value in the classification of Asiatic populations but the distribution of round and long skulls is similar to that in Europe. The vast central plateau of that continent is inhabited by round skulls. In fact, Thibet and the western Himalayas were probably the centre of radiation of all the round skulls of the world. In India and Persia south of this central area occurs a long skull race related to Mediterranean man in Europe.
Both skull types occur much intermixed among the American Indians and the cephalic index is of little value in classifying the Amerinds. No satisfactory explanation of the variability of the skull shape in the western hemisphere has as yet been found, but the total range of variation of physical characters among them, from northern Canada to southern Patagonia, is less than the range of such variation from Normandy to Provence in France.
In Africa the cephalic index is also of small classification value because all of the populations are characterized by a long skull.
The distinction between a long skull and a round skull in mankind probably goes back at least to early Paleolithic times, if not to a period still more remote. It is of such great antiquity that when new species or races appear in Europe at the close of the Paleolithic, between 10,000 and 7,000 years B.C., the skull characters among them are as clearly defined as they are to-day.
The fact that two distinct species of mankind have long skulls, as have the north European and the African Negro, is no necessary indication of relationship and in that instance is merely a case of parallel specialization, but the fact, however, that the Swede has a long skull and the Savoyard a round skull does prove them to be racially distinct.
The claim that the Nordic race is a mere variation of the Mediterranean race and that the latter is in turn derived from the Ethiopian Negro rests upon a mistaken idea that a dolichocephaly in common must mean identity of origin, as well as upon a failure to take into consideration many somatological characters of almost equal value with the cephalic index. Indeed, the cephalic index, being merely a ratio, may be identical for skulls differing in every other proportion and detail, as well as in absolute size and capacity.
Eye color is of very great importance in race determination because all blue, gray or green eyes in the world to-day came originally from the same source, namely, the Nordic race of northern Europe. This light colored eye has appeared nowhere else on earth, is a specialization of this subspecies of man only and consequently is of extreme value in the classification of European races. Dark colored eyes are all but universal among wild mammals and entirely so among the primates, man's nearest relatives. It may be taken as an absolute certainty that all the original races of man had dark eyes.
One subspecies of man and one alone specialized in light colored eyes. This same subspecies also evolved light brown or blond hair, a character far less deeply rooted than eye color, as blond children tend to grow darker with advancing years and populations partly of Nordic extraction, such as those of Lombardy, upon admixture with darker races lose their blond hair more readily than their light colored eyes. In short, light colored eyes are far more common than light colored hair. In crosses between Alpines and Nordics, the Alpine stature and the Nordic eye appear to prevail. Light color in eyes is largely due to a greater or less absence of pigment but it is not associated with weak eyesight, as in the case of Albinos. In fact, among marksmen, it has been noted that nearly all the great rifle-shots in England or America have had light colored eyes.
Blond hair also comes everywhere from the Nordic subspecies and from nowhere else. Whenever we find blondness among the darker races of the earth we may be sure some Nordic wanderer has passed that way. When individuals of perfect blond type occur, as sometimes in Greek islands, we may suspect a recent visit of sailors from a passing ship but when only single characters remain spread thinly, but widely, over considerable areas, like the blondness of the Atlas Berbers or of the Albanian mountaineers, we must search in the dim past for the origin of these blurred traits of early invaders.
The range of blond hair color in pure Nordic peoples runs from flaxen and red to shades of chestnut and brown. The darker shades may indicate crossing in some cases, but absolutely black hair certainly does mean an ancestral cross with a dark race — in England with the Mediterranean race.
It must be clearly understood that blondness of hair and of eye is not a final test of Nordic race. The Nordics include all the blonds, and also those of darker hair or eye when possessed of a preponderance of other Nordic characters. In this sense the word "blond" means those lighter shades of hair or eye color in contrast to the very dark or black shades which are termed brunet. The meaning of "blond" as now used is therefore not limited to the lighter or flaxen shades as in colloquial speech.
In England among Nordic populations there are large numbers of individuals with hazel brown eyes joined with the light brown or chestnut hair which is the typical hair shade of the English and Americans. This combination is also common in Holland and Westphalia and is frequently associated with a very fair skin. These men are all of "blond" aspect and constitution and consequently are to be classed as members of the Nordic race.
In Nordic populations the women are, in general, lighter haired than the men, a fact which points to a blond past and a darker future for those populations. Women in all human races, as the females among all mammals, tend to exhibit the older, more generalized and primitive traits of the past of the race. The male in his individual development indicates the direction in which the race is tending under the influence of variation and selection.
It is interesting to note in connection with the more primitive physique of the female, that in the spiritual sphere also women retain the ancient and intuitive knowledge that the great mass of mankind is not free and equal but bond and unequal.
The color of the skin is a character of importance but one that is exceedingly hard to measure as the range of variation in Europe between skins of extreme fairness and those that are exceedingly swarthy is almost complete. The Nordic race in its purity has an absolutely fair skin and is consequently the white man par excellence.
Many members of the Nordic race otherwise apparently pure have skins, as well as hair, more or less dark, so that the determinative value of this character is uncertain. There can be no doubt that the quality of the skin and the extreme range of its variation in color from black, brown, red, yellow to ivory-white are excellent measures of the specific or subgeneric distinctions between the larger groups of mankind but in dealing with European populations it is sometimes difficult to correlate the shades of fairness with other physical characters.
In general, hair color and skin color are linked together, but it often happens that an individual with all other Nordic characters in great purity has a skin of an olive or dark tint. Even more frequently we find individuals with absolutely pure brunet traits in possession of a skin of almost ivory whiteness and of great clarity. This last combination is very frequent among the brunets of the British Isles. That these are, to some extent, disharmonic combinations we may be certain but beyond that our knowledge does not lead. Women, however, of fair skin have always been the objects of keen envy by those of the sex whose skins are black, yellow or red.
Stature is another character of greater value than skin color and, perhaps, than hair color and is one of much importance in European classification for on that continent we have the most extreme variations of human height.
Exceedingly adverse economic conditions may inhibit a race from attaining the full measure of its growth and to this extent environment plays its part in determining stature but fundamentally it is race, always race, that sets the limit. The tall Scot and the dwarfed Sardinian owe their respective sizes to race and not to oatmeal or olive oil. It is probable, however, that the fact that the stature of the Irish is, on the average, shorter than that of the Scotch is due partly to economic conditions and partly to the depressive effect of a considerable population of primitive short stock.
The Mediterranean race is everywhere marked by a relatively short stature, sometimes greatly depressed, as in south Italy and in Sardinia, and also by a comparatively light bony framework and feeble muscular development.
The Alpine race is taller than the Mediterranean, although shorter than the Nordic, and is characterized by a stocky and sturdy build. The Alpines rarely, if ever, show the long necks and graceful figures so often found in the other two races.
The Nordic race is nearly everywhere distinguished by great stature. Almost the tallest stature in the world is found among the pure Nordic populations of the Scottish and English borders while the native British of Pre-Nordic brunet blood are for the most part relatively short. No one can question the race value of stature who observes on the streets of London the contrast between the Piccadilly gentleman of Nordic race and the cockney costermonger of the old Neolithic type.
In some cases where these three European races have become mixed stature seems to be one of the first Nordic characters to vanish, but wherever in Europe we find great stature in a population otherwise lacking in Nordic characters we may suspect a Nordic crossing, as in the case of a large proportion of the inhabitants of Burgundy, of the Tyrol and of the Dalmatian Alps south to Albania.
These four characters, skull shape, eye color, hair color and stature, are sufficient to enable us to differentiate clearly between the three main subspecies of Europe, but if we wish to discuss the minor variations in each race and mixtures between them, we must go much further and take up other proportions of the skull than the cephalic index, as well as the shape and position of the eyes, the proportions and shape of the jaws, the chin and other features.
The nose is an exceedingly important character. The original human nose was, of course, broad and bridgeless. This trait is shown clearly in new-born infants who recapitulate in their development the various stages of the evolution of the human genus. A bridgeless nose with wide, flaring nostrils is a very primitive character and is still retained by some of the larger divisions of mankind throughout the world. It appears occasionally in white populations of European origin but is everywhere a very ancient, generalized and low character.
The high bridge and long, narrow nose, the so-called Roman, Norman or aquiline nose, is characteristic of the most highly specialized races of mankind. While an apparently unimportant character, this feature is one of the very best clews to racial origin and in the details of its form, and especially in the lateral shape of the nostrils, is a race determinant of the greatest value.
The lips, whether thin or fleshy or whether cleancut or everted, are race characters. Thick, protruding, everted lips are very ancient traits and are characteristic of many primitive races. A high instep also has long been esteemed an indication of patrician type while the flat foot is often the test of lowly origin.
The absence or abundance of hair and beard and the relative absence or abundance of body hair are characters of no little value in classification. Abundant body hair is, to a large extent, peculiar to populations of the very highest as well as the very lowest species, being characteristic of the north European as well as of the Australian savages. It merely means the retention in both these groups of a very early and primitive trait which has been lost by the Negroes, Mongols and Amerinds.
The Nordic and Alpine races are far better equipped with head and body hair than the Mediterranean, which is throughout its range a glabrous or relatively naked race but among the Nordics the extreme blond types are less equipped with body hair or down than are darker members of the race. A contrast in color between head hair and beard, the latter always being lighter than the former, may be one of the results of an ancient crossing of races.
The so-called red haired branch of the Nordic race has special characters in addition to red hair, such as a greenish cast of eye, a skin of delicate texture tending either to great clarity or to freckles and certain peculiar temperamental traits. This was probably a variety closely related to the blonds and it first appears in history in association with them.
While the three main European races are the subject of this book and while it is not the intention of the author to deal with the other human types, it is desirable in connection with the discussion of this character, hair, to state that the three European subspecies are subdivisions of one of the primary groups or species of the genus Homo which, taken together, we may call the Caucasian for lack of a better name.
The existing classification of man must be radically revised, as the differences between the most divergent human types are far greater than are usually deemed sufficient to constitute separate species and even subgenera in the animal kingdom at large. Outside of the three European sub-species the greater portion of the genus Homo can be roughly divided into the Negroes and Negroids, and the Mongols and Mongoloids.
The former apparently originated in south Asia and entered Africa by way of the northeastern corner of that continent. Africa south of the Sahara is now the chief home of this race, though remnants of Negroid aborigines are found throughout south Asia from India to the Philippines, while the very distinct black Melanesians and the Australoids lie farther to the east and south.
The Mongoloids include the round skulled Mongols and their derivatives, the Amerinds or American Indians. This group is essentially Asiatic and occupies the centre and the eastern half of that continent.
A description of these Negroids and Mongoloids and their derivatives, as well as of certain aberrant species of man, lies outside the scope of this work.
In the structure of the head hair of all races of mankind we find a regular progression from extreme kinkiness to lanky straightness and this straightness or curliness depends on the shape of the cross section of the hair itself. This cross section has three distinct forms, corresponding with the most extreme divergences among human species.
The cross section of the hair of the Negroes is a flat ellipse with the result that they all have kinky hair. This kinkiness of the Negroes' hair is also due somewhat to the acute angle at which the hair is set into the skin and the peppercorn form of hair probably represents an extreme specialization.
The cross section of the hair of the Mongols and their derivatives, the Amerinds, is a complete circle and their hair is perfectly straight and lank.
The cross section of the hair of the so-called Caucasians, including the Mediterranean, Alpine and Nordic subspecies, is an oval ellipse and consequently is intermediate between the cross sections of the Negroes and Mongoloids. Hair of this structure is wavy or curly, never either kinky or absolutely straight and is characteristic of all the European populations almost without exception.
Of these three hair types the straighter forms most closely represent the earliest human form of hair.
We have confined the discussion to the most important characters but there are many other valuable aids to classification to be found in the proportions of the body and the relative length of the limbs. In this latter respect, it is a matter of common knowledge that there occur two distinct types, the one long legged and short bodied, the other long bodied and short legged.
Without going into further physical details, it is probable that all relative proportions in the body, the features, the skeleton and the skull which are fixed and constant and lie outside of the range of individual variation represent dim inheritances from the past. Every generation of human beings carries the blood of thousands of ancestors, stretching back through thousands of years, superimposed upon a prehuman inheritance of still greater antiquity and the face and body of every living man offer an intricate mass of hieroglyphs that science will some day learn to read and interpret.
Only the foregoing main characters will be used as the basis for determining race and attention will be called later to such temperamental and spiritual traits as seem to be associated with distinct physical types.
We shall discuss only European populations and, as said, shall not deal with exotic and alien races scattered among them nor with those quarters of the globe where the races of man are such that other physical characters must be called upon to provide clear definitions.
A fascinating subject would open up if we were to dwell upon the effect of racial combinations and disharmonies, as, for instance, where the mixed Nordic and Alpine populations of Lombardy usually retain the skull shape, hair color and stature of the Alpine race, with the light eye color of the Nordic race, or where the mountain populations along the east coast of the Adriatic from the Tyrol to Albania have the stature of the Nordic race and an Alpine skull and coloration.