CLIMATE AND RACE — COON 287 



a century earlier. Trace elements are important, and so are feeding 

 habits. In a Moroccan village studied by Scliorger (Ph. D. thesis) 

 the boys were given almost no meat until they reached the age of 14, 

 at which time they were expected to work. From then on they ate 

 with the men, whose diet included animal proteins. At that point 

 their growth was relatively rapid. A main diet of polished rice goes 

 with small people; we do not know how big they would have been 

 if they had eaten other foods in a hot climate. 



Most striking of all the size differences in man are those between 

 the Pygmy peoples of Africa, the Indian Ocean countries, Indonesia 

 and Melanesia, and normal human beings. However, the Pygmies 

 are not much smaller than some of the people of the Amazon Valley. 

 In all these selvas the leaching of the soil through excessive rainfall 

 is held responsible, through the agency of washing out of trace ele- 

 ments. But man is not the only pygmy in the forest. In Africa the 

 elephant, hippopotamus, buffalo, and chimpanzee all have pygmy 

 counterparts. What affects man there cannot be cultural; it is of 

 universal mammalian application, since the animals mentioned eat the 

 whole range of available foodstuffs and are exposed to the same range 

 of temperature, humidity, and solar radiation. 



Along with size comes the question of basal metabolism. Although 

 ({uestions have arisen about coordinating techniques, still the geo- 

 graphical distribution of the results follows a Bergmannian pattern 

 (Wilson, 1945). The norm is set for Europe and the northeastern 

 United States; rates more than 10 percent above normal are found 

 among the Eskimo, who reach 30 percent of excess, the Ojibwa Indians 

 of the Great Lakes region, and the Araucanians of southern Chile. 

 Rates 10 percent and more below the norm are found among Australian 

 aborigines and inhabitants of the hotter parts of India, Australia, and 

 Brazil. Americans in New Orleans are also below par. This needs 

 a lot of checking and controlling, but despite two exceptions * the 

 trend is clear. Furthermore, like alterations of pigment and gross 

 size, changes in basal metabolism can in some cases be acquired. 



That basal metabolism should change with climate makes sense, as 

 does the whole mechanism of heat control in man. Here we enter a 

 field where many physiologists have brutalized themselves and their 

 friends for the sake of science; one investigator writes that he and his 

 i earn even took the rectal temperatures of porcupines in the Talkeetna 

 Mountains of Alaska at - 22° F. (Irving, 1951, p. 543) . Others thrust 

 thermocouples into their own flesh, piercing their palms and wrists 

 to the depth of the bone. Still others consented to be locked in sealed 

 chambers from which heat and oxygen, alternately, were withdrawn, 

 while a few pedaled themselves nearly to death on bicycles. As a 



* Italians and Somalls In ItaUan Somaliland ; see Wilson, op. cit. 



