VII 

 RACES AND PEOPLES 



IN the thousands of years that elapsed before the his- 

 torical period began, that continuing tendency to vary 

 which had already differentiated the animal kingdom 

 into genera and species, was operating to differentiate 

 mankind into varieties or races. 1 Associated in groups, 

 the early men of the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, 

 moving from one territory to another under the pressure 

 of environmental changes, met and conquered or else 

 intermarried with other primitive racial groups. From 

 this process of association, intermixture, and adaptation 

 to the necessities of climate and geographic environment, 

 certain characteristics emerged as stable physical pecul- 

 iarities of large populations. To-day we distinguish a 

 yellow-skinned straight-haired race, a black-skinned 

 woolly-haired race, and a fair-skinned curly-haired race. 



But before we can identify any population group as 

 a true race we must show that certain traits or stable 

 physical characters which it possesses are distributed 

 separately, are associated into types, and finally, we must 

 show the hereditary character of these types. 2 For ex- 

 ample, in the first place, we must show that such a trait 

 as blondness is diffused among large numbers of a popu- 

 lation ; in the second place, that blondness is more often 

 associated with tall stature than with short stature, thus 



1 Giddings, Principles, p. 230. 



2 Ripley, W. Z. The Races of Europe, pp. 104-105. 



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