May 17, 1888] 



NA TURE 



67 



their heads touch, the marriage is legally accomplished. A great 

 ith much dancing, concludes the ceremony. 



It was afterwards found that the same race existed in other 

 parts of the archipelago, Panay, Mindanao, &c, and that they 

 entirely peopled some little islands — among others, Bougas 

 Island, or " Isla de los Negros." 



As the islands of these ea tern seas have become better 

 known, further discoveries of the existence of a small Negroid 

 population have been made in Formosa, in the interior of 

 Borneo, the Sandal Islands (Sumba), Xulla, Bourou, Ceram, 

 Flores. Solor, Pantar, Lomblem, Ombay, the eastern peninsula 

 of Celebes, &c. In fact, Sumatra and Java are the only large 

 islands of this great area which contain no traces of them 

 except some doubtful cross-breeds, and some remains of an 

 industry which appears not to have passed beyond the Age of 

 Stone. 



The Sunda Islands form the southern limit of the Negrito 

 area ; Formosa, the last to the north, where the race has pre- 

 served all its characters. But beyond this, as in Lew-Chew, 

 and even the south-east portion of Japan, it reveals its former 

 existence by the traces it has left in the present population. 

 That it has contributed considerably to form the population of 

 New Guinea is unquestionable. In many parts of that great 

 island, small round-headed tribes live more or less distinct from 

 the larger and longer-headed people who make up the bulk of 

 the population. 



But it is not only in the islands that the Negrito race dwelt. 

 Traces of them are found also on the mainland of Asia, but 

 everywhere under the same conditions : in scattered tribes, 

 occupying the more inaccessible mountainous regions of countries 

 otherwise mainly inhabited by other races, and generally in a 

 condition more or less of degradation and barbarism, resulting 

 from the oppression with which they have been treated by their 

 invading conquerers ; often, moreover, so much mixed that 

 their original characters are scarcely recognizable. The 

 Semangs of the interior of Malacca in the Malay peninsula, 

 the Sakays from Perak, the Moys of Annam, all show traces of 

 Negrito blood. In India proper, especially armng the lowect 

 and least civilized tribes, not only of the central and southern 

 districts, but even almost to the foot of the Himalayas, in the 

 Punjab, and even to the west side of the Indus, according to 

 Quatrefages, frizzly hair, Negro features, and small stature, 

 are so common that a strong argument can be based on them for 

 the belief in a Negrito race forming the basis of the whole pre- 

 Aryan, or Dravidian as it is generally called, population of the 

 peninsula. The crossing that has taken place with other races 

 has doubtless greatly altered the physical characters of this 

 people, and the evidences of this alteration manifest themselves 

 in many ways ; sometimes the curliness of the hair is lost by 

 the admixture with smooth straight-haired races, while the black 

 complexion and small stature remain ; sometimes the stature is 

 increased, but the colour which seems to be one of the most 

 persistent of characteristics, remains. 



The localities in which thes^ people are found in their greatest 



I purity, either in almost inaccessible islands, as on the Andamans, 



II or elsewhere in the mountainous ranges of the interior only ; their 

 social positions and traditions, wherever they exist — all point to 

 the fact that they were the earliest inhabitants ; and that the 

 Mongolian and Malay races on the east, and the Aryans on the 

 west, which are now so 1 apidly exterminating and replacing them, 



I are later comers into the land, exactly as, in the greater part of 

 the Pacific Ocean, territory formerly occupied by the aboriginal 

 dark, frizzly-haired Negroid Melanesianshas been gradually and 

 I slowly invaded by the brown Polynesians, who in their turn, but 

 I by a much more rapid process, are being replaced by Europeans. 

 We now see what constitutes the great interest of the Anda- 

 I manese natives to the student of the ethnological history of the 

 I Eastern world. Their long isolation has made them a remark- 

 ably homogeneous race, stamping them all with a common 

 mblance not seen in the mixed races generally met with in 

 j continental areas. For although, as with most savages, marriages 

 within the family (using the term in a very wide sense) are most 

 strictly forbidden, all such alliances have necessarily been con- 

 fined to natives of the islands. They are the least modified 

 representatives of the people who were, as far as we know, the 

 primitive inhabitants of a large portion of the earth's surface, 

 but who are now verging on extinction. It is, however, not 

 nece-sary to suppose that the Andaman Islanders give us the 

 exact characters and features of all the other branches of the 

 race. Differences in detail doubtless existed — differences which 



are almost always sure to arise whenever races become isolated 

 from each other for long periods of time. 



In many cases the characters of the ancient inhabitants of a land 

 have been revealed to us by the preservation of their actual re- 

 mains. Unfortunately we have as yet no such evidence to tell us 

 of the former condition of man in Southern Asia. We may, how- 

 ever, look upon the Andamanese, the Aetas, and the Semangs, 

 as living fossils ; and by their aid conjecture the condition of 

 the whole population of the land in ancient times. It is possible, 

 also, to follow Quatrefages, and to see in them the origin of the 

 stories of the Oriental pygmies related by Ctesias and by Pliny. 



We now pass to the continent of Africa, in the interior of 

 which the pygmies of Homer, Herodotus, and Aristotle have 

 generally been placed. Africa, as is well known, is the home 

 of another great branch of the black, frizzly-haired, or Ethiopian 

 division of the human species, who do, or did till lately, occupy 

 the southern two-thirds of this great continent, the northern 

 third being inhabited by Hamite and Semite branches of the 

 great white or Caucasian primary division of the human species, 

 or by races resulting from the mixture of them and the Negroes. 

 Besides the true Negro, there has long been known to exist in the 

 southern part of the continent a curiously modified type, consist- 

 ing of the Hottentots, and the Bushmen — Bosjesmen (men of 

 the woods) of the Dutch colonists — the latter of whom, on 

 account of their small size, come within the scope of the present 

 subject. They lead the lives of the most degraded of savages, 

 dwelling among the rocky and more inaccessible mountains of 

 the interior, making habitations of the natural caves, subsist- 

 ing entirely by the chase, being most expert in the use of the 

 bow and arrow, and treated as enemies and outcasts by the 

 surrounding and more civilized tribes, whose flocks and herds 

 they show little respect for when other game is not within reach. 

 The physical characters of these people are well known, as 

 many specimens have been brought to Europe alive for the pur- 

 pose of exhibition. Their hair shows the extreme of the frizzly 

 type, being shorter and less abundant than that of the ordinary 

 Negro ; it has the appearance of growing in separate tufts, which 

 coil up together into round balls compared to "peppercorns." 

 The yellow complexion differs from that of the Negro, and, com- 

 bined with the wide cheek-bones and form of the eyes, so much 

 recalls that of certain of the pure yellow races that some anthropo- 

 logists are inclined to trace true Mongolian affinities and 

 admixture, although the extreme crispness of the hair makes such 

 a supposition almost impossible. The width of the cheek-bones 

 and the narrowness of the forehead and the chin give a lozenge 

 shape to the front view of the face. The forehead is prominent 

 and straight ; the nose extremely flat and broad, more so than in 

 any other race, and the lips prominent and thick, although the 

 jaws are less prognathous than in the true Negro races. The 

 cranium has many special characters by which it can be easily 

 distinguished from that of any other. It has generally a very 

 feminine, almost infantile, appearance, though the capacity of 

 the cranial cavity is not the smallest, exceeding that of the 

 Andamanese. In general form the cranium is rather oblong than 

 oval, having straight sides, a flat top, and especially a vertical 

 forehead, which rises straight from the root of the nose. It is 

 moderately dolichocephalic or rather mesaticephalic, the average 

 of the index often specimens being 75*4. The height is in all 

 considerably less than the breadth, the average index being 71-1. 

 The glabella and infra-orbital ridges are little developed except 

 in the oldest males. The malar bones project much forwards, 

 and the space between the orbits is very wide and flat. The 

 nasal bones are extremely small and depressed, and the aperture 

 wide ; the average nasal index being 6o - 8, so they are the most 

 platyrhine of races. 



With regard to the stature, we have not yet sufficient 

 materials for giving a reliable average. Quatrefages, following 

 Barrow, gives 4 feet 6 inches for the men, and 4 feet for the 

 women, and speaks of one individual of the latter sex, who was 

 the mother of several children, measuring only 3 feet 9 inches 

 in height ; but later observations (still, however, insufficient in 

 number) give a rather larger stature : thus Topinard places the 

 average at 1 -404 metre, or 4 feet l\ inches ; and Fritsch, who 

 measured six male Bushmen in South Africa, found their mean 

 height to be I "444 metre, or nearly 4 feet 9 inches. _ It is 

 probable that, taking them all together, they differ but little in this 

 respect from the Andamanese, although in colour, in form of 

 head, in features, and in the proportions of the body, they are 

 widely removed from them. 



