

ANTHROPOLOGY OF ASIA 7 



they are, that is to say, more or less mixed up, and to bear 

 in. mind that the taxonomic classification satisfies the 

 majority in each series examined. When one deals with 

 some ethnic groups that are little known, or for whom 

 the taxonomic classification of the majority appears to be 

 very little clear or impossible owing to pronounced ad- 

 mixture, one has to desist from such classification : thus, 

 for such groups we have the designation of " unclassified 

 groups." Of course, it is not to be supposed that all the 

 individuals of such groups are unclassifiable ; on the 

 contrary every individual could very well be classified by 

 physical anthropologists. It is, instead, the ethnologist 

 who cannot pronounce with regard to the classification of 

 the ethnic group, since it is one thing to take into consi- 

 deration, for example, every Japanese, and another thing 

 to consider the "Japanese" people as we necessarily 

 have to do in our tables. An arbitrary procedure does 

 not advance science, while in many cases we have to 

 leave to the future the task of drawing these people out 

 from the limbo of the unclassified. They meanwhile 

 represent problems for students to work at. As Pittard 

 has rightly observed : " There will certainly come a day 

 when anthropology will disentangle the skein of the 

 Asiatic people. That will be when we have entirely got 

 rid of all the linguistic and political etiquettes which 

 encumber the road without any profit to science." 1 



1 PITTARD (E.), Anthropologie de la Roumanie. Les peuple* sporadiques dc la 

 Dobrudja : III Contribution a 1'etude anthropologique des Kurdea. " Bnll. Soe. Roum 

 des sciences" xx, n. 1, p. 65. Bucharest, 1911. 



