May 10, 1888] 



NATURE 



45 



It is of none of these people of whom I am going to speak 

 to-day. My pygmies are all 011 a still smaller scale, the average 

 height of the men being in all cases below 5 feet, in some cases, 

 as we shall see, considerably below. 



!cs their diminutive size, I may note at the outset that 

 they all have in a strongly-marked degree the character of the 

 hair distinguished as frizzly — i.e. growing in very fine, close 

 curls, and flattened or elliptical in section, and therefore, what- 

 ever other structural differences they present, they all belong to 

 the same primary branch of the human species as the African 

 Negro and the Melanesian of the Western Pacific. 



I will first direct your attention to a group of islands in the 

 Indian Ocean — the Andamans — where we shall find a race in 

 many respects of the greatest possible interest to the anthropo- 

 logist. 



These islands are situated in the Bay of Bengal, between the 

 10th and 14th parallels of north latitude, and near the meridian 

 93 east of Greenwich, and consist of the Great and Little 

 Andamans. The former is about 140 miles long, and has a 

 breadth nowhere exceeding 20 miles. It is divided by narrow 

 channels into three, called respectively North, Middle, and 

 South Andaman, and there are also various smaller islands be- 

 longing to the group. Little Andaman is a detached island lying 

 about 28 miles to the south of the main group, about 27 miles in 

 length and 10 to 18 in breadth. 



Although these islands have been inhabited for a very great 

 length of time by people whose state of culture and customs have 

 undergone little or no change, as proved by the examination of 

 the contents of the old kitchen-middens, or refuse heaps, found in 

 many places in them, and although they lie so near the track of 

 civilization and commerce, the islands and their inhabitants were 

 practically unknown to the world until so recently as the year 

 1858. It is true that their existence is mentioned by Arabic 

 writers of the ninth century, and again by Marco Polo, and 

 that in 1788 an attempt was made to establish a penal colony 

 upon them by the East India Company, which was abandoned 

 a few years after ; but the bad reputation the inhabitants had 

 acquired for ferocious and inhospitable treatment of strangers 

 brought by accident to their shores caused them to be carefully 

 avoided, and no permanent settlement or relations of anything 

 like a friendly character, or likely to afford any useful infor- 

 mation as to the character of the islands or the inhabitants, were 

 established. It is fair to mention that this hostility to foreigners, 

 which for long was one of the chief characteristics by which the 

 Andamanese were known to the outer world, found much justifi- 

 cation in the cruel experiences they suffered from the malpractices, 

 especially kidnapping for slavery, of the Chinese and Malay 

 traders who visited the islands in search of bhhe de mer and 

 edible birds'-nests. It is also to this characteristic that the in- 

 habitants owe so much of their inte'rest to us from a scientific 

 point of view, for we have here the rare case of a population, 

 confined to a very limited space, and isolated for hundreds, 

 perhaps thousands, of years from all contact with external in- 

 fluence, their physical characters unmixed by crossing, and their 

 culture, the>r beliefs, their language entirely their own. 



In 1857, when the Sepoy mutiny called the attention of the 

 Indian Government to the necessity of a habitation for their 

 numerous convict prisoners, the Andaman Islands were again 

 thought of for the purpose. A Commission, consisting of Dr. F.J. 

 Mouat, Dr. G. Playfair, and Lieut. J. A. Heathcote was sent to 

 the islands to report upon their capabilities for such a purpose ; 

 and, acting upon its recommendations, early in the following 

 year the islands were taken possession of in the name of the 

 East India Company by Captain (now General) H. Man, and 

 the British flag hoisted at Port Blair, near the southern end of 

 Great Andaman, which thenceforth became the nucleus of the 

 settlement of invaders, now numbering about 15,000 persons, of 

 whom more than three-fourths are convict prisoners, the rest 

 soldiers, police, and the usual accompaniments of a military 

 Nation. 



1 he effect of this inroad upon the unsophisticated native 

 population, who, though spread over the whole area of the 

 slands, were far less numerous, may easily be imagined. It is 

 simply deterioration of character, moral and physical decay, and 

 finally extinction. The newly-introduced habits of life, vices, 

 and diseases, are spreading at a fearful rate, and with deadly 

 •fleet. In this sad history there are, however, two redeeming 

 features which distinguish our occupation of the Andamans from 

 that of 'I asmanin, where a similar tragedy was played out during 



the present century. In the first place, the British Governors 

 and residents appear from the first to have used every effort to 

 obtain for the natives the most careful and considerate treat- 

 ment, and to alleviate as much as possible the evils which they 

 have unintentionally been the means of inflicting on them. 

 Secondly, most careful records have been preserved of the 

 physical characters, the social customs, the arts, manufactures, 

 traditions, and language of the people while still in their primi- 

 tive condition. For this most important work, a work which, 

 if not done, would have left a blank in the history of the world' 

 which could never have been replaced, we are indebted almost 

 entirely to the scientific enthusiasm of one individual, Mr. 

 Edward Horace Man, who most fortunately happened to be in 

 a position (as Assistant Superintendent of the Islands, and spe- 

 cially in charge of the natives) which enabled him to obtain the 

 required information with facilities which probably no one else 

 could have had, and whose observations " On the Aboriginal 

 Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands," published by the An- 

 thropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, are most 

 valuable, not only for the information they contain, but as 

 correcting the numerous erroneous and misleading statements 

 circulated regarding these people by previous and less well 

 informed or less critical authors. 



The Arab writer of the ninth century previously alluded to 

 states that "their complexion is frightful, their hair frizzled, 

 their countenance and eyes frightful, their feet very large, and 

 almost a cubit in length, and they go quite naked," while Marco 

 Polo (about 1285) says that " the people are no better than wild 

 beasts, and I assure you all the men of this island of Angamanain 

 have heads like dogs, and teeth and eyes likewise ; in fact, in the 

 face they are just like big mastiff dogs." These specimens of 

 mediaeval anthropology are almost rivalled by the descriptions 

 of the customs and moral character of the same people pub- 

 lished as recently as 1862, based chiefly on information obtained 

 from one of the runaway sepoy convicts, and which represent 

 them as among the lowest and most degraded of human beings. 



The natives of the Andamans are divided into nine distinct 

 tribes, each inhabiting its own district. Eight of these live upon 

 the Great Andaman Islands, and one upon the hitherto almost 

 unexplored Little Andaman. Although each of these tribes 

 possesses a distinct dialect, these are all traceable to the same 

 source, and are all in the same stage of development. The obser- 

 vations that have been made hitherto relate mostly to the tribe 

 inhabiting the south island, but it does not appear that there is 

 any great variation either in physical characters or manners, 

 customs, and culture among them. 



With regard to the important character of size, we have more 

 abundant and more accurate information than of most other 

 races. Mr. Man gives the measurements of forty-eight men 

 and forty-one women, making the average of the former 



4 feet \o\ inches, that of the latter 4 feet 7} inches, a difference 

 therefore of 3J inches between the sexes. The tallest man was 



5 feet 4I inches ; the shortest 4 feet 6 inches. The tallest 

 woman 4 feet 1 1 \ inches ; the shortest 4 feet 4 inches. Measure- 

 ments made upon the living subject are always liable to errors, 

 but it is possible that in so large a series these will compensate each 

 other, and that therefore the averages may be relied upon. My 

 own observations, based upon the measurements of the bones alone 

 of as many as twenty-nine skeletons, give smaller averages, viz. 

 4 feet %\ inches for the men, and 4 feet d\ inches for the women ; 

 but these, it must be recollected, are calculated from the length 

 of the femur, upon a ratio which, though usually correct for 

 Europeans, may not hold good in the case of other races. 1 The 

 hair is fine, and very closely curled ; woolly, as it is gener- 

 ally called, or, rather, frizzly, and elliptical in section, as 

 in the Negroes. The colour of the skin is very dark, although 

 not absolutely black. The head is of roundish (brachycephalic) 

 form, the cephalic index of the skull being about 82. The 

 other cranial characters arc fully described in the papers just 

 referred to. The teeth are large, but the jaws are only slightly 

 prognathous. The features possess little of the Negro type ; at 

 all events, little of the most marked and coarser peculiarities of 

 that type. The projecting jaws, the prominent thick lips, the 

 broad and flattened nose of the genuine Negro are so softened 

 down in the Andamanese as scarcely to be recognized, and yet in 



1 See "On the Osteology and Affinities of the Natives of the Andaman 

 Islands" (Journal Anthropological Institute, vol. ix._ p. 10S, 1879); and 

 "Additional Observations on the Osteology of the Natives of the Andaman 

 Islands" (ibid., vol. x!v. p. 115, 1884). 



