508 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



into other peoples, but this is not altogether due to intermarriage, as is 

 commonly held, for it is more probably to be explained as due in a 

 large part to climatic conditions. The Bantus, who are said to have 

 originated in the Galla country and to have spread thence, are now 

 regarded by the chief authorities as the result of an intermixture of 

 Hamites and Negroes. But, on the grounds I have already stated, it 

 is more rational to regard them as having been evolved in the area 

 lying between the Hamitic peoples on the north and the Negroes on the 

 south, just as we have corresponding types of the horse family in 

 Nubia and Abyssinia and in the equatorial regions. The same hy- 

 pothesis also explains the existence of those cattle-keeping tribes which 

 lie west of the Nile, stretching across northern Nigeria, who border on 

 the Berbers, but yet differ from them, and border also on the Negroes, 

 but differ from them likewise. South of these tribes come the Negroes, 

 the true children of the equator. The Bantu is able to live in elevated 

 equatorial areas, and he has burst his way down to the subtropical and 

 temperate parts of South Africa, where he especially flourishes in the 

 highlands, thus showing that his race was originally evolved under 

 similar conditions. The Bantu found in the south the Hottentots, 

 who are especially distinguished by steatopygy, a feature which has led 

 some to identify them with the primitive steatopygous race supposed to 

 have once lived in southern Europe, Malta and North Africa, and to 

 have left evidence of their characteristic in their representations of 

 themselves. But, granting that such a race once lived in North Africa 

 and southern Europe, there is really no more reason for supposing that 

 they and the Hottentots formed one and the same race than there is 

 for assuming that Daniel's quagga, which was practically a bay horse, 

 was proximately akin to the bay horse of North Africa. The occurrence 

 of steatopygy in two areas so wide apart is not due to an ethnical 

 migration, but rather to similar climatic conditions producing similar 

 characteristics. 



As some anthropologists so commonly explain the origin of races 

 such as the Bantus by intermarriage, it may be well to see whether inter- 

 marriage between two races, one of which is an invader, is likely to 

 produce a permanent effect upon the general physique of a whole com- 

 munity. I have shown elsewhere that the many invasions of fair- 

 haired races into the three southern peninsulas of Europe and into the 

 iEgean islands have left no permanent trace on the population. It is 

 a matter of common knowledge that the offspring of British and native 

 parents in India have a constant tendency to die out. The same un- 

 doubtedly holds true for the offspring of British soldiers serving in 

 Egypt, the Soudan and West Africa. The native race always reasserts 

 itself. In America the Spanish blood has died out, or is dying out, 

 everywhere except in the temperate regions of Chile, Quito and Argen- 



