Brinton.] • '^ [April 19, 



1. An Alleged Primitive Black Race (Dravidian or Negritic). 



The theory was advanced by Lenormant that lower Mesopo- 

 tamia and southern Persia were once peopled by an ancient 

 branch of the black-skinned Dravidians of India. This opinion 

 has of late years been defended by De Quatrefages, Oppert, Le- 

 fevre, Schurtz, Schiaparelli, Conder and others.* 



The only evidence which seems at all to support such a view 

 is the presence in the Khanate of Celat of the Brahu tribe, who 

 have been bj*^ some classed with the Dravidas or Mundas of 

 India. They are certainly negroid, with swarthy complexions, 

 flat noses, scanty beard, hair black and curly, cheek bones high 

 and face broad. Their lang-uage has undoubted Dravidian ele- 

 ments, the words for " one " and " two," for example, and man}' 

 others. But its grammar seems to me to be much more Aryan 

 than Dravidian. The verbal subject is a separable pronominal 

 prefix, the nouns have declensions, and the suffixes are no longer 

 root-words. It is probable they are merely a hybridized outpost 

 of the Dravidian stock. f It is well to remember that they 

 dwell on the affluents of the Indus, twelve hundred miles dis- 

 tant from the Euphrates, and there is no reason to suppose that 

 they were ever nearer it. 



The undersized negritic population which is found in the 

 Andaman and other islands south of the Asiatic continent has 

 been supposed, principally on the strength of some discoveries 

 of negroid heads and portraitures at Susa by M. Dieulafoy, to 

 have extended into Babjdonia. But these sculptures belong to 

 a comparatively late period, and if negritic — and their strong 

 beards render such a supposition improbable — they are much 

 more likely to have been of slaves or captives than of an old 

 resident population.;}; This would also explain the somewhat 

 negroid traits of the modern Susians. 



*See De Quatrefages, The Pi/i;mies, pp. 55, 56 (Eng. trans., N. York, 1S95) ; Lef6vre, 

 Race and Language, p. 118; Schurtz Catechismus der Voikerkunde, p. 155; L. Schiaparelli, 

 " Sull 'Etnogralia della Persia antica anteriore alle luvasione ariane,*' iu AttideUn R. 

 Accad. delle ScU-nze di Torino, 1888. The last-meutioued distinctly identifies the Bmhu 

 as the remnant of the primitive speech. 



t" Synoptical Grammar and Vocabulary of the Brahoe Language," iuBellew, Travels 

 from the Tiiduti to the Eitphrates. There are only three numerals in the laugaage : 1, asit ; 



2, irat ; 3. Vixsit. The others are borrowed from the Persian. The first may bo compared 

 to theSumerian ash, one Mr R. N. Oust, in his Languages of the Eitst Lidics, is doubtful 

 alMut the Dravidian relationship. 



I The theory that the beard and hair are artificial of course destroys ethnic value of any 

 kind for these figures. 



