Anthropology

20. Race Origins

Almost every one sooner or later becomes interested in the problem of the origin of the human races and the history of their development. We see mankind divided into a number of varieties that differ strikingly in appearance. If these varieties are modifications of a single ancestral form, what caused them to alter, and what has been the history of the change?

In the present state of science, we cannot wholly answer these important questions. We know very little about the causes that change human types; and we possess only incomplete information as to the history of races. Stray bits of evidence here and there are too scattered to afford many helpful clues. The very earliest men, as we know them from fossils, are too far removed from any of the living varieties, are too primitive, to link very definitely with the existing races, which can all be regarded as intergrading varieties of a single species, Homo sapiens. In the latter half of the Old Stone Age, in the Aurignacian period, at a time estimated to have been from twenty to twenty-five thousand years ago, we commence to encounter fossils which seem to foreshadow the modern races. The so-called Grimaldi type of man from this period possesses Negroid affinities, the contemporary Cro-Magnon and perhaps Brünn types evince Caucasian ones. But we know neither the origin nor the precise descendants of these fossil races.[3] They appear and then vanish from the scene. About all that we can conclude from this fragment of evidence is that the races of man as they are spread over the earth to-day must have been at least some tens of thousands of years in forming. What caused them to differentiate, on which part of the earth’s surface each took on its peculiarities, how they further subdivided, what were the connecting links between them, and what happened to these lost links—on all these points the answer of anthropology is as yet incomplete.

It is no different in other fields of biology. As long as the zoölogist or botanist reviews his grand classifications or the wide sweep of organic evolution for fifty million years back, he seems to obtain striking and simple results. When he turns his attention to a small group, attempting to trace in detail its subvarieties, and the relations and history of these, the task is seen to be intricate and the accumulated knowledge is usually insufficient to solve more than a fraction of the problems that arise.

There is, then, nothing unusual in the situation of partial bafflement in which anthropology still finds itself as regards the human races.

21. Race Classification

What remains is the possibility of making an accurate survey of the living races in the hope that the relationships which a classification brings out may indicate something as to the former development of the races. If for instance it could be established that the Ainu or aborigines of Japan are closely similar in their bodies to the peoples of Europe, we would then infer that they are a branch of the Caucasian stock, that their origin took place far to the west of their present habitat, and that they have no connection with the Mongolian Japanese among whom they now live. This is working by indirect evidence, it is true; but sooner or later that is the method to which science always finds itself reduced.

The desirability of a trustworthy classification of the human races will therefore be generally accepted without further argument. But the making of such a classification proves to be more difficult than might be imagined. To begin with, a race is only a sort of average of a large number of individuals; and averages differ from one another much less than individuals. Popular impression exaggerates the differences, accurate measurements reduce them. It is true that a Negro and a north European cannot possibly be confused: they happen to represent extreme types. Yet as soon as we operate with less divergent races we find that variations between individuals of the same race are often greater than differences between the races. The tallest individuals of a short race are taller than the shortest individuals of a tall race. This is called overlapping; and it occurs to such an extent as to make it frequently difficult for the physical anthropologist to establish clear-cut types.

In addition, the lines of demarcation between races have time and again been obliterated by interbreeding. Adjacent peoples, even hostile ones, intermarry. The number of marriages in one generation may be small; but the cumulative effect of a thousand years is often quite disconcerting. The half-breeds or hybrids are also as fertile as each of the original types. There is no question but that some populations are nothing but the product of such race crossing. Thus there is a belt extending across the entire breadth of Africa of which it is difficult to say whether the inhabitants belong to the Negro or to the Caucasian type. If we construct a racial map and represent the demarcation between Negro and Caucasian by a line, we are really misrepresenting the situation. The truth could be expressed only by inserting a transition zone of mixed color. Yet as soon as we allow such transitions, the definiteness of our classification begins to crumble.

In spite of these difficulties, some general truths can be discovered from a careful race classification, and certain constant principles of importance emerge from all the diversity.

22. Traits on Which Classification Rests

Since every human being obviously possesses a large number of physical features or traits, the first thing that the prospective classifier of race must do is to determine how much weight he will attach to each of these features.

The most striking of all traits probably is stature or bodily height. Yet this is a trait which experience has shown to be of relatively limited value for classifactory purposes. The imagination is easily impressed by a few inches when they show at the top of a man and make him half a head taller or shorter than oneself. Except for a few groups which numerically are rather insignificant, there is no human race that averages less than 5 feet in height. There is none at all that averages taller than 5 feet 10 inches. This means that practically the whole range of human variability in height, from the race standpoint, falls within less than a foot. The majority of averages of populations do not differ more than 2 inches from the general human average of 5 feet 5 inches.

Then, too, stature has been proved to be rather readily influenced by environment. Each of us is a fraction of an inch taller when he gets up in the morning than when he goes to bed at night. Two races might differ by as much as a couple of inches in their heredity, and yet if all the individuals of the shorter race were well nourished in a favorable environment, and all those of the taller group were underfed and overworked, the naturally shorter race might well be actually the taller one.

The cephalic index, which expresses in percentage form the ratio of the length and the breadth of the head, is perhaps the most commonly used anthropological measurement.[4] It has certain definite advantages. The head measurements are easily made with accuracy. The index is nearly the same on the living head and on the dead skull; or one is easily converted into the other. This enables present and past generations to be compared. The index is also virtually the same for men and for women, for children and for adults. Finally, it seems to be little affected by environment. The consequence is that head form has been widely investigated. There are few groups of people of consequence whose average cephalic index we do not know fairly accurately. The difficulty about the cephalic index from the point of view of race classification is that it does not yield broad enough results. This index is often useful in distinguishing subtypes, nation from nation, or tribe from tribe; but the primary races are not uniform. There is, for instance, no typical head form for the Caucasian race. There are narrow headed, medium headed, and broad headed Caucasians. The same is true of the American Indians, who are on the whole rather uniform, yet vary much in head form.

The nasal index, which expresses the relation of length and breadth of nose, runs much more constant in the great races. Practically all Negroids are broad-nosed, practically all Caucasians narrow-nosed, and the majority of peoples of Mongolian affinities medium-nosed. But the nasal index varies according to the age of the person; it is utterly different in a living individual and a skull;[5] it seems to reflect heredity less directly than the cephalic index; and finally it tells us nothing about the elevation or profile or general formation of the nose.

Prognathism, or the degree of the protrusion of the jaws, is a conspicuous feature of the profile, and would seem to be of some historic importance as a sign of primitiveness, because all other mammals are more prognathous than man. The trait also has a general correlation with the fundamental racial types. Negroes are almost all prognathous, people of Mongolian type moderately so, Caucasians very slightly. Prognathism is however difficult to measure or to denote in figures. Various apparatuses have been devised without wholly satisfactory results.

The capacity of the skull is measured by filling it with shot or millet seed. The latter yields figures that are lower by 50 or 100 c.c. The average, by shot measure, for males the world over is about 1,450 to 1,500 c.c., for females about 10 per cent lower. European males range from 1,500 to 1,600, Asiatic Mongoloids but little less, American Indians and Polynesians from 1,400 to 1,500, Bushmen, Australians, Tasmanians, Negritos, Veddas from 1,300 to 1,400. These last groups are all small bodied. It appears that cranial capacity is considerably dependent on bodily size. Slender as well as short races run to small capacities. The heavy Bantu surpass the slighter framed Sudanese, and Hindus stand well below European Caucasians; just as the shorter Japanese average less than the Chinese. Broad headed populations show greater cranial capacity than narrow headed ones: Alpine Europeans (§ 24) generally surpass Nordics in spite of their shorter stature. Individual variability is also unusually great in this measurement. The largest and smallest skulled healthy individuals of the same sex in one population differ sometimes by 500, 600, or 700 c.c., or more than one-third of the racial average. Overlapping between races is accordingly particularly marked in cranial capacity. Furthermore, the measurement obviously cannot be taken on the living. In spite of its interest as an alleged and perhaps partially valid index of mental faculty, cranial capacity is thus of restricted value in distinguishing races.

The texture of the hair is now universally regarded as one of the most valuable criteria for classifying races, possibly the most significant of all. Hair is distinguished as woolly in the Negro, straight in the Mongolian, and wavy or intermediate in the Caucasian. This texture depends principally on the diameters of each individual hair, as they are revealed in cross-section under the microscope; in part also on the degree of straightness or curvature of the root sacs of the hair in the skin. Hair texture seems to run rather rigidly along hereditary racial lines, and to be uninfluenced by factors of age, sex, climate, or nourishment.

Hairiness of the body as a whole is another trait to which more and more attention is coming to be paid. The fullness or scantiness of the beard, and the degree of development of the down which covers the body, are its most conspicuous manifestations. Caucasians are definitely a hairy race, Mongoloids and most Negroids glabrous or smooth-skinned. It is largely on the basis of their hairiness that races like the Australians have been separated from the Negroids, and the Ainus from the Japanese.

Except possibly for stature, color is probably the most conspicuous trait of any race. Under color must be included the complexion of the skin, the color of the hair, and the color of the eyes. All of these however present difficulties to the anthropometrist. The pigment in every human skin is the same: it differs only in amount. We have therefore a complete series of transition shades, and it is difficult to express these differences of shade quantitatively. They readily impress the eye, but it is far from easy to denote them accurately in numbers. Environment also affects skin color markedly. A day’s exposure to the sun will darken an individual’s complexion by several shades. In spite of these drawbacks, however, complexion remains sufficiently important to have to be considered in every classification.

Hair color and eye color are practically immune against direct change by environment. They unquestionably are excellent hereditary criteria, although they offer much the same resistance to measurement as does complexion. The utility of these two traits is however limited by another factor: their narrow distribution. Blue eyes and blond hair are racially characteristic of only a single subrace, that of northern Europe. In central Europe they are already much toned down: the prevailing type here is brunet. In southern Europe, blue eyes and blondness scarcely occur at all except where admixture with northern peoples can be traced. Outside of the Caucasian stock, black hair and black eyes are the universal rule for the human family.

Obviously it would be easiest to arrive at a clear-cut classification by grouping all the peoples of the earth according to a single trait, such as the shape of the nose, or color. But any such classification must be artificial and largely unsound, just because it disregards the majority of traits. The only classification that can claim to rest upon a true or natural basis is one which takes into consideration as many traits as possible, and weights the important more heavily than the unimportant features. If the outcome of such a grouping is to leave some peoples intermediate or of doubtful place in the classification, this result is unfortunate but must be accepted.

Racial Classification of Mankind

Hair and eyes are “black” unless otherwise stated in Remarks.

23. The Grand Divisions or Primary Stocks

If now we follow this plan and review the peoples of the earth, each with reference to all its physical traits, we obtain an arrangement something like that which is given in the table on the previous page. It will be seen that there are three grand divisions, of which the European, the Negro, and the Chinaman may be taken as representative. These three primary classes are generally called Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid. The color terms, White, Black, and Yellow, are also often used, but it is necessary to remember that they are employed merely as brief convenient labels, and that they have no descriptive value. There are millions of Caucasians who are darker in complexion than millions of Mongoloids.

These three main groups account for more than nine-tenths of all the nations and tribes of the world. As to the number of individuals, they comprise probably 99 per cent of all human beings. The aberrant forms are best kept separate. Some of them, like the before-mentioned Ainu and Australians, appear to affiliate preponderantly with one of the three great classes, but still differ sufficiently in one or more particulars to prevent their being included with them outright. Other groups, such as the Polynesians, seem to be, at least in part, the result of a mixture of races. Their constituent elements are so blended, and perhaps so far modified after the blending, as to be difficult to disentangle.

Each of the three great primary stocks falls into several natural subdivisions.

24. Caucasian Races

Three of the four Caucasian races live, in whole or part, in Europe; the fourth consists of the Hindus.[6] The three European races are the Nordic, the Alpine, and the Mediterranean. Some authorities recognize a greater number, but all admit at least these three. They occupy horizontal belts on the map. Beginning with the Nordic and ending with the Mediterranean they may be described as successively darker skinned, darker eyed, darker haired, and shorter in stature. The Alpine race, which lies between the two others, is however more than a mere transition; for it is broad headed, whereas the Nordic and Mediterranean are both narrow or long headed. The Nordic type is essentially distributed around the Baltic and North seas. The Mediterranean race occupies the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, in Asia and Africa as well as in Europe. In ancient times it seems to have prevailed everywhere along these coasts. At present the Balkan peninsula and Asia Minor are mostly occupied by broad headed peoples of more or less close affinity to the Alpines. This Alpine race is perhaps less homogeneous than the two others. A central Frenchman, a Serb, a Russian, and an Armenian are clearly far from identical (§ 30). They have enough in common, however, to warrant their being put in the one larger group.

It must be clearly understood that these races have nothing to do with the modern political nationalities of Europe. Northern Germany is prevailingly Nordic, southern Germany, Alpine. Northern Italy is Alpine, the rest of the peninsula Mediterranean. All three races are definitely represented in France. The average north Frenchman stands racially nearer to the north German than to his countryman from central France, whereas the latter links up in physical type with the south German. Nationality is determined by speech, customs, religion, and political affiliations. Its boundary lines and those of race cut right across one another.

The British Isles did not escape the process of race blending that has gone on in Europe for thousands of years. The bulk of the blood of their inhabitants during the past thousand years has been Nordic, but there is an Alpine strain, and most authorities recognize a definite “Iberian,” that is, Mediterranean element. The first settlers in America carried this mixture across the Atlantic, and through the years immigration has increased its compositeness. Scandinavians and north Germans have added to the Nordic component in the population of the United States; south Germans, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, and Jews to the Alpine; the Italians have injected a definite Mediterranean element. The Negro alone has not been admitted into the make-up of our white society; but the reverse holds: a considerable and growing percentage of the “colored” people in the United States are from one-sixteenth to fifteen-sixteenths Caucasian.

The Hindu is in the main a narrow headed, dark skinned Caucasian, not very different from the Mediterranean. When he entered India he probably found there an aboriginal population which may have been Negroid but more likely was related to the Australians or perhaps constituted a dark proto-Caucasian or Indo-Australian race. A fairly thorough intermixture has taken place in India during the last three thousand years, with the result that the originally pure Caucasian type of the Hindu has been somewhat modified, while most of the less numerous or less vigorous aboriginal population has become submerged. The definite Caucasian type is best preserved in the north; the traces of the dark skinned aboriginal race are strongest in southern India.

25. Mongoloid Races

The Mongoloid stock divides into the Mongolian proper of eastern Asia, the Malaysian of the East Indies, and the American Indian. The differences between these three types are not very great. The Mongolian proper is the most extreme or pronounced form. It was probably the latest to develop its present characteristics. For instance, the oblique or “Mongolian” eye is a peculiarity restricted to the people of eastern Asia. The original Mongoloid stock must be looked upon as having been more like present-day Malaysians or American Indians, or intermediate between them. From this generalized type peoples like the Chinese gradually diverged, adding the epicanthic fold of the oblique eye and other peculiarities, while the less civilized peoples of America and Oceania kept more nearly to the ancient type.

Within the East Indies, a more and a less specifically Mongoloid strain can at times be distinguished. The latter has often been called Indonesian. In certain respects, such as relatively short stature and broad nose, it approaches the Indo-Australian type described below. Among the American Mongoloids, the Eskimo appears to be the most particularized subvariety.

26. Negroid Races

The Negroid stock falls into two large divisions, the African Negro proper, and the Oceanic Melanesian; besides a third division, the Dwarf Blacks or Negritos, who are very few in numbers but possess a wide and irregular distribution. The Negroes and the Melanesians, in spite of their being separated by the breadth of the Indian Ocean, are clearly close relatives. A trained observer can distinguish them at sight, but a novice would take a Papuan from New Guinea or a Melanesian from the Solomon or Fiji Islands to be an African. Perhaps the most conspicuous difference is that the broad nose of the African Negro is flat, the broad nose of the Melanesian often aquiline. How these two so similar Negroid branches came to be located on the opposite sides of a great ocean is a fact that remains unexplained.

The Negrito or Dwarf Negroid race has representatives in New Guinea, in the Philippines, in the Malay Peninsula, in the Andaman Islands, and in equatorial Africa. These peoples are the true pygmies of the human species. Wherever they are racially pure the adult males are less than 5 feet in stature. They also differ from other Negroids in being relatively broad headed. Their skin color, hair texture, nose form, and most other traits are, however, the same as those of the other Negroids. Their scattered distribution is difficult to account for. It is possible that they are an ancient and primitive type which once inhabited much wider stretches of territory than now in Africa, Asia, and Oceania. On account of their inoffensiveness and backwardness, the Negritos, according to this theory, were gradually crowded to the wall by the larger, more energetic populations with which they came in contact, until only a few scattered fragments of them now remain.

The Bushmen and in some degree the Hottentots of South Africa may also be provisionally included with the Negritos, although distinctive in a number of respects. They are yellowish-brown in complexion, long headed, short and flat eared, short legged, hollow backed, and steatopygous. On the whole Negroid characteristics prevail among them. They are, for instance, frizzy-haired. Their extremely short stature may justify their tentative inclusion among the Negritos.

27. Peoples of Doubtful Position

One thing is common to the peoples who are here reckoned as of doubtful position in the classification: they all present certain Caucasian affinities without being similar enough to the recognized Caucasians to be included with them. This is true of the black, wavy-haired, prognathous, beetling-browed Australians, whose first appearance suggests that they are Negroids, as it is of the brown Polynesians, who appear to have Mongoloid connections through the Malaysians. In India, Indo-China, and the East Indies live a scattered series of uncivilized peoples more or less alike in being dark, short, slender, wavy haired, longish headed, broad nosed. The brows are knit, the eyes deep set, the mouth large, beard development medium. Resemblances are on the one hand toward the Caucasian type, on the other toward the Australian, just as the geographical position is intermediate. The name Indo-Australian is thus appropriate for this group. Typical representatives are the Vedda of Ceylon; the Irula and some of the Kolarian tribes of India; many of the Moi of several parts of Indo-China; the Senoi or Sakai of the Malay Peninsula; the Toala of Celebes. These are almost invariably hill or jungle people, who evidently represent an old stratum of population, pushed back by Caucasians or Mongoloids, or almost absorbed by them. The dark strain in India seems more probably due to these people than to any true Negroid infusion. Possibly the Indo-Australians branched off from the Caucasian stem at a very early time before the Caucasian stock was as “white” as it is now. In the lapse of ages the greater number of the Caucasians in and near Europe took on, more and more, their present characteristics, whereas this backward branch in the region of the Indian Ocean kept its primitive and undifferentiated traits. This is a tempting theory to pursue, but it extends so far into the realm of the hypothetical that its just appraisal must be left to the specialist.

Figure 8 attempts to represent graphically the degree of resemblance and difference between the principal physical types as they have been summarized in the table and preceding discussion; the genealogical tree in figure 9 is an endeavor to suggest how these types may have diverged from one another in their development.

28. Continents and Oceans

One fact about the classification stands out clearly, namely, that the three grand races are not limited to particular continents. It is true that the center of gravity of the Caucasians is in or near Europe, that the biggest block of Negroids is situated in Africa, and the largest mass of Mongoloids in Asia. It is even possible that these three types evolved on these three continents. But each of them is inter-continental in its present distribution. Western Asia and northern Africa as well as Europe are Caucasian. There are Negroids in Oceania as well as in Africa, and the Mongoloids are found over Oceania, Asia, and both Americas.

In fact the distribution of the three primary races can better be described as oceanically marginal than as continental. The Caucasian parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa surround the Mediterranean Sea. The African and the Oceanic branches of the Negroid race are situated on the left and right sides of the Indian Ocean. The Mongoloid habitat in Oceania, in eastern Asia, and in North and South America almost encloses the Pacific Ocean. (Figs. 10 and 11.)

29. The History of Race Classifications

Most of the early classifications of mankind tried to identify races and continents too closely. The first attempt was that of Linnæus in the middle of the eighteenth century. He distinguished and described four varieties of mankind, which he called Europæus albus, Asiaticus luridus, Americanus rufus, and Afer niger; that is, European White, Asiatic Yellow, American Red, African Black.

The next classification, that of Blumenbach in 1775, is essentially the same except for adding a fifth or Oceanic variety. Blumenbach’s five human races, the Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malayan, still survive in many of the geographies of our elementary schools, usually under the designations of White, Yellow, Black, Red, and Brown; but they no longer receive scientific recognition.

As time went on, the continental principle of race classification came to be recognized as inadequate, and there was a tendency among anthropologists to accept the distinctness of certain specialized groups like the Australians, Bushmen, Eskimo, and Ainu, which were often elevated into races substantially equal in rank with the great races like the Mongoloid. Thus Peschel distinguished: (1) Mediterranean or Caucasian; (2) Mongoloid (including the East Indians and Americans); (3) Negro; (4) Australian; but then separated off (5) Dravida of southern India; (6) Papuans, and (7) Hottentot-Bushmen, as if these smaller groups were coördinate with the grand ones. Nott and Gliddon also recognized seven races, although somewhat different ones: European, Asiatic, Negro, American, Malay, Australian, and Arctic. This is the fivefold scheme of Blumenbach with Australian and Arctic added.

30. Emergence of the Threefold Classification

On the other hand the feeling gained ground, especially as the result of the labors of French anthropologists, that mankind could be satisfactorily accounted for by a division into Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Those who adopted this principle tried to fit divergent types like the Australians and Polynesians into one or the other of these three great groups. Some little doctoring had to be done in this process, and some salient facts estimated rather lightly. It is for this reason that it has seemed best here not to make our tripartite classification too exhaustive. This threefold classification clearly absorbs the great mass of mankind without straining, but it is soundest to recognize that this same basic classification requires a certain margin of extensions along the lines indicated in our table.

The classification made by the French anthropologist Deniker is one of the most elaborate yet devised. It recognizes 6 grand divisions, 17 minor divisions, and 29 separate races. The primary criterion of classification is hair texture.

Deniker’s Classification

• A. Hair woolly, with broad nose.
• I. 1. Bushman.
• II. Negroid.
• 2. Negrito.
• 3. Negro.
• 4. Melanesian (including Papuan of New Guinea).
• B. Hair curly to wavy.
• III. 5. Ethiopian (Sudan, etc.).
• IV. 6. Australian.
• V. 7. Dravidian (southern India).
• VI. 8. Assyroid (Kurds, Armenians, Jews).
• C. Hair Wavy.
• VII. 9. Indo-Afghan.
• VIII. North African.
• 10. Arab or Semite.
• 11. Berber (N. Africa).
• IX. Melanochroid.
• 12. Littoral (W. Mediterranean).
• 13. Ibero-insular (Spain, S. Italy).
• 14. Western European.
• 15. Adriatic (N. Italy, Balkans).
• D. Hair wavy to straight, with light eyes.
• X. Xanthochroid.
• 16. North European.
• 17. East European.
• E. Hair wavy to straight, with dark eyes.
• XI. 18. Ainu.
• XII. Oceanian.
• 19. Polynesian.
• 20. Indonesian (East Indies).
• F. Hair straight.
• XIII. American.
• 21. South American.
• 22. North American.
• 23. Central American.
• 24. Patagonian.
• XIV. 25. Eskimo.
• XV. 26. Lapp.
• XVI. Eurasian.
• 27. Ugrian (E. Russia).
• 28. Turco-Tartar (S.W. Siberia).
• XVII. 29. Mongol (E. Asia).

In spite of its apparent complexity, this classification coincides quite closely with the classification which is followed in this book. Inspection reveals that Deniker’s grand division A is Negroid, C and D Caucasian, F Mongoloid. Of his two remaining grand divisions, B is intermediate between A and C, that is, between Negroid and Caucasian, and consists of peoples which are either, like the East Africans, the probable result of a historical mixture of Negroids and Caucasians, or which, like the Australians, share the traits of both, and are therefore admitted to have a doubtful status. The other grand division, E, is transitional between Caucasian D and Mongoloid F, and the peoples of which it consists are those whom we too have recognized as difficult to assign positively to either stock. In short, Deniker’s classification is much the more refined, ours the simpler; but essentially they corroborate one another.

31. Other Classifications

Another classification that puts hair texture into the forefront is that of F. Müller. This runs as follows:

• A. Ulotrichi or Woolly-haired.
• 1. Lophocomi or Tuft-haired: Papua, Hottentot-Bushmen.
• 2. Eriocomi or Fleecy-haired: African Negroes.
• B. Lissotrichi or Straight-haired.
• 3. Euthycomi or Stiff-haired: Australian, Malay, Mongolian, Arctic, American.
• 4. Euplocomi or Wavy-haired: Dravidian (S. India), Nubian, (Sudan), “Mediterranean” (Europe, N. Africa, etc.).

The distinction here made between the Tuft and Fleecy-haired groups is unsound. It rests on a false observation: that a few races, like the Bushmen, had their head-hair growing out of the scalp only in spots or tufts. With the elimination of this group, its members would fall into the Fleecy or Woolly-haired one, which would thus comprise all admitted Negroids; whereas the two remaining groups, the Stiff and Wavy-haired, obviously correspond to the Mongoloid and Caucasian. The only remaining peculiarity of the classification—and in this point also it is unquestionably wrong—is the inclusion of the Australians in the Stiff or Straight-haired group. But even this error reflects an element of truth: it emphasizes the fact that in spite of their black skins, broad noses, and protruding jaws, the Australians are not straight-out Negroids.

The underlying feature of this classification, after allowing for its errors, is that mankind consists of two rather than three main branches: the Ulotrichi or Negroids, as opposed to the Lissotrichi or combined Mongoloids and Caucasians. This basic idea has been advocated by others. Boas, for instance, reckons Mongoloids and Caucasians as at bottom only subtypes of a single stock with which the Negroids and Australians are to be contrasted.

Somewhat different in plan is Huxley’s scheme, which recognizes four main races, or five including a transitional one. These are (1) Australioids, including Dravidians and Egyptians; (2) Negroids, with the Bushmen and the Oceanic Papuans, Melanesians, Tasmanians, and Negritos as two subvarieties; (3) Mongoloids, as customarily accepted; (4) Xanthochroi, about equivalent to Nordics and Alpines; (5) Melanochroi, nearly the same as the Mediterraneans, but supposed by Huxley to be hybrid or intermediate between the Xanthochroi and Australioids. This classification in effect emphasizes the connection between Australoids and Caucasians, with the Negroids as a distinctive group on one side and the Mongoloids on the other.

Haeckel’s classification is basically similar, in that besides the usual three primary stocks—which he elevates into species—he recognizes a separate group comprising the Australians, Dravidians, and Vedda-like Indo-Australians.

32. Principles and Conclusions Common to All Classifications

It will be seen that in spite of the differences and uncertainties as yet prevalent in any scheme for classifying the human species, certain principles stand out both as regards method and results; and in regard to these principles there is substantial agreement.

First, any valid classification must rest on a combination of as many traits or features as possible.

Second, several features of the human body are of definite significance for the discrimination of races. Hair and hairiness are unquestionably of great importance; stature, except in extreme cases, much less so. Color differences in the skin, hair, or eyes are important but difficult to handle. Shape of nose and prognathism are useful for rough classification. The cephalic index possesses an exceptional utility in making the finer discriminations.

Third, it is clearly impossible to find a simple and consistent scheme within which all the varieties of man can be placed. We must not attempt more than nature allows.

On the other hand the vast bulk of mankind does fall naturally into three great divisions, each of which again subdivides into three or four principal branches, in regard to whose distinctness there is no serious difference of opinion. The scattering remainder of races are allied sometimes to one primary stock, sometimes to another, but always with some special peculiarities.

From such a classification as this, especially after the accumulation of large series of accurate measurements which will permit its being worked out to greater exactness, we may hope ultimately to reconstruct the full and true history of the races of men, or, in any event, some reasonable hypothesis as to their development. As yet, however, we are not in a position to account for the origin of the races except speculatively.

33. Race, Nationality, and Language

The term race has here been used in its biological sense, for a group united in blood or heredity. A race is a subdivision of a species and corresponds to a breed in domestic animals. Popularly, the word is used in a different sense, namely that of a population having any traits in common, be they hereditary or non-hereditary, biological or social (Chapter I). It is customary, but scientifically inaccurate, to speak of the French race, the Anglo-Saxon race, the Gypsy race, the Jewish race. The French are a nation and nationality, with a substantially common speech; biologically, they are three races considerably mixed, but still imperfectly blended (§ 24). Anglo-Saxon refers primarily to speech, incidentally to a set of customs, traditions, and points of view that are more or less associated with the language. The Gypsies are a self-constituted caste, with folkways, occupations, and a speech of their own. The Jews, who were once a nationality, at present, of course, form a religious body, which somewhat variably, in part from inner cohesion and in part from outer pressure, tends also to constitute a caste. They evince little hereditary racial type, measurements indicating that in each country they approximate the physical type of the gentile population.

It may seem of little moment whether the word race is restricted to its strict biological sense or used more loosely. In fact, however, untold loose reasoning has resulted from the loose terminology. When one has spoken a dozen times of “the French race,” one tends inevitably to think of the inhabitants of France as a biological unit, which they are not. The basis of the error is confusion of organic traits and processes with superorganic or cultural ones; of heredity with tradition or imitation. That civilizations, languages, and nationalities go on for generations is obviously a different thing from their being caused by generation. Slovenly thought, tending to deal with results rather than causes or processes, does not trouble to make this discrimination, and every-day speech, dating from a pre-scientific period, is ambiguous about it. We say not only “generation,” when there is no intent to imply the reproductive process, but “good breeding” (literally, good brooding or hatching or birth), when we mean good home training or education; just as we “inherit” a fortune or a name—social things—as well as ineradicable traits like brown eye-color. Biology has secured for its processes the exclusive use of the term “heredity”; and biologists employ the term “race” only with reference to a hereditary subdivision of a species. It is equally important that the word be used with the same exact denotation in anthropology, else all discussion of race degenerates irretrievably into illogical sliding in and out between organic and social factors. The inherently great difficulties which beset the understanding and solution of what are generally called race problems, as discussed in the next chapter, are considerably increased by a confusion between what is and what is not racial and organic and hereditary.