44 



NA TURE 



[May 10, 1888 



THE PYGMY RACES. OF MEN} 



I. 



TT is well known that there existed among the nations of 

 antiquity a wide-spread belief in the existence of a race or 

 .-races of human beings of exceedingly diminutive stature, who 

 dwelt in some of the remote and unexplored regions of the earth. 

 These were called Pygmies, a word said to be derived from 

 ■Kvyixi], which means a fist, and also a measure of length, the 

 distance from the elbow to the knuckles of an ordinary-sized 

 --.man, or rather more than 13 inches. 



In the opening of the third book of the Iliad, the Trojan hosts 

 are described as coming on with noise and shouting, " like the 

 cranes which flee from the coming of winter and sudden rain, and 

 fly with clamour towards the streams of ocean, bearing slaughter 

 and fate to the Pygmy men, and in early morn offer cruel battle," 

 or, as Pope has it — 



" So when inclement winters vex the plain, 

 With piercing frosts, or thick descending rain, 

 To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly, 

 With noise and order through the midway sky, 

 To Pygmy nations wounds and death they bring, 

 And all the war descends upon the wing." 



The combats between the pygmies and the cranes are often 

 alluded to by late classical writers, and are not unfrequently 

 depicted upon Greek vases. In one of these in the Hope collec- 

 tion at Deepdene, in which the figures are represented with 

 great spirit, the pygmies are dwarfish-looking men with large 

 heads, negro features, and close woolly or frizzly hair. They are 

 armed with lances. Notices of a less poetical and apparently more 

 scientific character of the occurrence of very small races of human 

 beings are met with in Aristotle, Herodotus, Ctesias, Pliny, 

 Pomponius Melo, and others. Aristotle places his pygmies in 

 Africa, near the sources of the Nile, while Ctesias describes a 

 race of dwarfs in the interior of India. The account in 

 Herodotus is so circumstantial, and has such an air of truthful- 

 ness about it, especially in connection with recent discoveries, 

 that it is worth quoting in full. 2 



" I did hear, indeed, what I will now relate, from certain 

 natives of Cyrene. Once upon a time, they said, they were on 

 a visit to the oracular shrine of Ammon, when it chanced that, 

 in the course of conversation with Etearchus, the Ammonian 

 king, the talk fell upon the Nile, how that its sources were un- 

 known to all men. Etearchus up~>n this mentioned that some 

 Nasamonians had once come to his Court, and when asked if 

 they could give any information concerning the uninhabited parts 

 of Libya, had told the following tale. The Nasamonians are a 

 Libyan race who occupy the Syrtes, and a tract of no great 

 size towards the east. They said there had grown up among 

 them some wild young men, the sons of certain chiefs, who, 

 when they came to man's estate, indulged in all manner of ex- 

 travagancies, and among other things drew lots for five of their 

 number to go and explore the desert parts of Libya, and try if 

 they could not penetrate further than any had done previously. 

 The young men therefore dispatched on this errand by their com- 

 rades with a plentiful supply of water and provisions, travelled at 

 first through the inhabited region, passing which they came to the 

 wild beast tract, whence they finally entered upon the desert, which 

 they proceeded to cross in a direction from east to west. After 

 journeying for many days over a wide extent of sand, they came 

 at last to a plain where they observed trees growing : approach- 

 ing them, and seeing fruit on them, they proceeded to gather it. 

 While they were thus engaged, there came upon them some 

 dwarfish men, under the middle height, who seized them and 

 carried thern off". The Nasamonians could not understand a 

 word of their language, nor had they any acquaintance with the 

 language of the Nasamonians. They were led across extensive 

 marshes, and finally came to a town, where all the men were of 

 the height of their conductors, and black-complexioned. A 

 great river flowed by the town, running from west to east, and 

 containing crocodiles." 



It is satisfactory to know that the narrative concludes by say- 

 ing that these pioneers of African exploration, forerunners of 

 Bruce and Park, of Barth, Livingstone, Speke, Grant, Schwein- 

 furth, Stanley, and the rest, "got safe back to their country." 



Extension of knowledge of the natural products of the earth, 



1 A Lecture delivered at the Royal Institution on Friday evening, April 14 



1 1888, by Prof. Flower, C.B., LL.D., F.R.S., Director of the Natural History 

 Departments of the British Museum. 



2 Herodotus, Book II. 32, Rawlinson's translation, p. 47. 



and a more critical spirit on the part of authors, led to attempts 

 of explanation of this belief, and the discovery of races of mon- 

 keys — of the doings of which, it must be said, more or less fabu- 

 lous stories were often reported by travellers — generally sufficed 

 the commentators and naturalists of the last century to explain 

 the origin of the stories of the pygmies. To this view the great 

 authority of Buffon was extended. 



Still more recently-acquired information as to the actual con- 

 dition of the human population of the globe has, however, led 

 to a revision of the ideas upon the subject, and to more careful 

 and critical researches into the ancient documents. M. de 

 Quatrefages, the eminent and veteran Professor of Anthropology 

 at the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle of Paris, has especially 

 carefully examined and collated all the evidence bearing upon 

 the question, and devoted much ingenuity of argument to prove 

 that the two localities in which the ancient authors appear to 

 place their pygmies, the interior of Africa near the sources of 

 the Nile, and the southernmost parts of Asia, and the characters 

 they assign to them, indicate an actual knowledge of the exist- 

 ence of the two groups of small people which still inhabit these 

 regions, the history of which will form the subject of this lecture. 

 The evidence which has convinced M. de Quatrefages, and 

 which, I have no doubt, will suffice for those who take pleasure 

 in discovering an underlying truth in all such legends and myths, 

 or in the more grateful task of rehabilitating the veracity of the 

 fathers of literature and history, will be found collected in a very 

 readable form in a little book published last year in the " Biblio- 

 theque scientifique contemporaine," called " Les Pygmees." to 

 which I refer my readers for fuller information upon the subject 

 of this discourse, and especially for numerous references to the 

 literature of the subject, which, as the book is accessible to all 

 who wish to pursue it further, I need not give here. 



It is still, however, to my mind, an open question whether 

 these old stories may not be classed with innumerable others, 

 the offspring of the fertile invention of the human brain, the 

 potency of which as an origin of myths has, I think, sometimes 

 been too much underrated. I shall therefore now take leave of 

 them, and confine myself to giving you, as far as the brief space of 

 time at my disposal admits, an account of our actual knowledge of 

 the smallest races of men either existing or, as far as we know, 

 ever having existed on earth, and which may therefore, taking 

 the word in its current though not literal sense, be called the 

 "pygmies" of the species. 



Among the various characters by which the different races of 

 men are distinguished from one another, size is undoubtedly one 

 of considerable importance. Not but what in each race there is 

 much individual variation, some persons being taller, and some 

 shorter ; yet these variations are, especially in the purer or less 

 mixed races, restricted within certain limits, and there is a 

 general average, both for men and women, which can be ascer- 

 tained when a sufficient number of accurate measurements have 

 been recorded. That the prevailing size of a race is a really 

 deeply-seated, inherited characteristic, and depends but little on 

 outward conditions, as abundance of food, climate, &c, is 

 proved by well-known facts. The tallest and the shortest races in 

 Europe are respectively the Norwegians and the Lapps, living in 

 almost the same region. In Africa, also, the diminutive Bushmen 

 and the tallest race of the country, the Kaffirs, are close neighbours. 

 The natives of the Andaman Islands and those of many islands 

 of the equatorial region of the Pacific, in which the conditions 

 are similar, or if anything more favourable to the former, are at 

 opposite ends of the scale of height. Those not accustomed to 

 the difficulties both of making and recording such measurements 

 will scarcely be prepared, however, to learn how meagre, un- 

 satisfactory and unreliable our knowledge of the stature of most 

 of the races of mankind is at present, although unquestionably it 

 has been considerably increased within recent years. We must, 

 however, make use of such material as we possess, and trust to 

 the future correction of errors when better opportunities occur. 



It is convenient to divide men, according to their height, into 

 three groups — tall, medium, and short ; in Topinard's system, 

 the first being those the average height (of the men) of which 

 is above 1700 metres (5 feet 7 inches), the latter those below 

 1 '500 metres (4 feet 1 1 inches), and the middle division those 

 between the two. In the last division are included certain of 

 the Mongolian or yellow races of Asia, as the Samoyedes, the 

 Ostiaks, the Japanese, the Siamese, and the Annamites ; also 

 the Veddahs of Ceylon and certain of the wild hill- tribes of 

 Southern India. These all range between 1 '525 and 1 600 metres 

 — say between 5 feet and 5 feet 3 inches. 



