164 HUMAN BIOLOGY 



American whites, but also among the American Indians, 

 and probably even in the American negroes. 



All the changes of racial characters observable in man 

 appear to be essentially of the nature of adaptations and 

 responses to the environment, to altered habits, to abundance 

 of nutrition and to favorable or unfavorable hygienic 

 conditions. The changes as a rule are gradual. There is no 

 record in man of any important sudden mutation. 



The changeability of race in accord with conditions, is a 

 fact of much practical importance. It shows that man is still 

 quite plastic, and that he therefore is capable of further 

 favorable evolution; and that it depends largely on the 

 conditions to which he is subjected as to whether he is to 

 advance, and what direction this advance is to take. All 

 of which is of basic value to the social sciences and eugenics, 

 as well as to anthropology. 



CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN RACES 



Attempts at a classification of the human races by their 

 physical peculiarities date doutbless to times when men 

 began to be more precisely acquainted with types of human- 

 kind different from themselves. The old Egyptians, as shown 

 by Petrie and others, recognized and depicted on their 

 monuments the pygmy and the regular Negro, the Semites, 

 Aryans, and some Mongoloids. The Jews and the Phoeni- 

 cians, the Greeks of Herodotus and especially Alexan- 

 der, and surely the Romans of Caesar, Tacitus, Diodore, 

 and Pliny, as well as the Chinese, were acquainted with 

 various races of man and left more or less intelligible accounts 

 of them; while the Negroes, Tartars (''Huns") and Mongols, 

 besides various secondary strains, have been well known, 

 since Roman times, to Europe in general. 



The Christian era was not favorable to studies of man; 

 but a fresh impetus to these was given by the reports of 

 various travelers in distant lands, such as Marco Polo, 

 and above all by the discovery of America, particularly 

 when this became known to be a separate continent, occupied 

 by separate people. Yet even then there was nothing like a 

 serious attempt at a scientific classification of the human 



