462 SYSTEMS OF CONSANGUINITY AND AFFINITY 



from another, of remaining constant in each after the identity of the vocables and 

 of the grammatical forms of these languages have ceased to be recognizable. The 

 materials in the table, however, as before stated, are perhaps too limited to show 

 the ran^e, and, inferentially, the permanence throughout the family of the Malayan 

 system of relationship. 



An attempt was made to reach the Negroid nations of Africa, but it proved 

 entirely unsuccessful. The people of pure negro stock are known to be limited 

 in numbers on the African continent. To such a degree is this now understood to 

 be the fact that Dr. Latham remarks that " the negro is an exceptional African." 1 

 A portion of the west coast, between the Senegal and the Congo, and some other 

 small and isolated portions of the interior are in possession of this family, leaving 

 the remainder of the continent in the occupation of nations of more or less imme- 

 diate Asiatic affiliations. Unimportant in numbers, feeble in intellect, and inferior 

 in rank to every other portion of the human family, they yet centre in themselves, in 

 their unknown past and mysterious present, one of the greatest problems in the 

 science of the families of mankind. They seen to challenge and to traverse all the 

 evidences of the unity of origin of the human family by their excessive deviation from 

 such a standard of the species as would probably be adopted on the assumption of 

 unity of origin. The primitive condition of the red and brown races, as revealed in 

 their domestic institutions of consanguinity and affinity, involves successive stages of 

 barbarism, each more profound and unrelieved than we have been accustomed to 

 conceive as possible ; but it would scarcely imply a condition of physical and 

 mental inferiority such as the remote ancestors of the present negro race must have 

 exhibited. In the light of our present knowledge the negro is the chief stumbling 

 block in the way of establishing the unity of origin of the human family, upon the 

 basis of scientific proofs. The monuments of Egypt determine the fact of the 

 existence of Negroes in nations in Africa at least fifteen hundred years before the 

 Christian era, according to the chronological dynasties of Lepsius ; 2 thus showing that 

 the whole amount of this divergence had then occurred. It is difficult to know 

 even the direction in which to look for a discovery of the causes which produced 

 such an excessive amount of divergence from a common typical standard of the 

 species. The element of time, if measured out upon a scale sufficiently ample, may 

 contribute to a solution ; but it would manifestly require such a series of ages upon 

 ages as would greatly overstep our present conceptions with respect to the antiquity 

 of man upon the earth. 



Inasmuch as the Tables of consanguinity and affinity contained in this work are 

 presented in a great measure as an experiment to test the uses of systems of rela- 

 tionship in ethnological investigations ; and since the inquiry, if found deserving 

 of further prosecution, must be carried far beyond its present limits before the 

 system of the Negroid family will become material, the absence of their system 

 from the tables is, in a great measure, unimportant. It will be found, however, 

 that they have a system, and that it will furnish evidence of their relations to each 

 other, and possibly to the other families of mankind. 



1 Descriptive Ethnology, II. 184. * See plate 117, Book III., Lepsius's Egypt and Ethiopia. 



