372 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1947 



F. Miiller and Latham classified by language and Waitz and Ratzel 

 by progress in culture. These, of course, are not classifications of races 

 at all. 



In his classic work on "The Races of Europe" Ripley laid down a 

 trinal grouping for that area which has affected all later studies. 

 These three are the tall, fair, dolichocephalic Nordics centering about 

 the Baltic Sea, the brachycephalic Alpines in the central part of the 

 grand division, and the dark, dolichocephalic Mediterraneans about 

 the sea of that name. 



In more recent years Dixon attempted a sweeping change in bio- 

 logical classification by dividing all peoples in accordance with three 

 indices, the length-breadth index, usually called simply the cephalic 

 index, the height of the skull, and the nasal index. Different com- 

 binations of these yielded him eight races which he called Caspian, 

 Mediterranean, Proto-Negroid, Proto-Australoid, Alpine, Ural, Palae- 

 Alpine, Mongoloid. His system has had few followers or imitators, 

 the tendency being to return to simpler categorizations more nearly 

 like those of Blumenbach and Cuvier. Thus Kroeber gives us the 

 following: Caucasian or White, Mongoloid or Yellow, Negroid or 

 Black, of doubtful classification Australian ; Vedda, Irula, Kolarians, 

 Moi, Samoi, Toala, etc. ; Polynesian ; Ainu. In other words, we have 

 three great races and a wastebasketf ul of odds and ends. Some would 

 probably add the Australoid to the three majors, and some would fit 

 all the odds and ends into the three-race pattern, in effect a return to 

 Cuvier. Boas is inclined to make two major divisions of mankind, 

 a Northern Fair and a Southern Dark, and to consider the Whites and 

 Yellows first major subdivisions of the former. 



The troubles of would-be classifiers show at least the difficulties 

 attending the attempt, and indicate at once that races do not fall 

 spontaneously and readily into a set of clearly indicated patterns, yet 

 the fact that from two to four somewhat vaguely defined grand divi- 

 sions can be made out and have been specified by several students shows 

 that there is "something there." It is only when we attempt to draw 

 boundary lines rigidly about them that we get into difficulties. 



Now when we come to compare our culture centers with these racial 

 divisions we find that four of the former, Egypt, Sumeria, Crete, and 

 the Indus Valley, fall within the boundaries generally assigned to the 

 White race and one within the boundaries of the Yellow, while the 

 American cultures, once assigned to the Red race, must be added to the 

 Yellow in the more general categorizations. It is noteworthy, how- 

 ever, that all these primary culture areas were tenanted by dark peo- 

 ples, not by ultrablacks or ultrawhites. Gobineau's preposterous at- 

 tempt to attribute Central American and Peruvian civilizations to 

 colonization by prehistoric Whites of course has no basis in fact. 

 There was probably a Nordic strain in Greece, but since we know that 



