304 THE PYGMY RACES OF MEN xix 



Andamanese natives to the student of the ethnological history 

 of the Eastern world. Their long isolation has made them 

 a remarkably homogeneous race, stamping them all with a 

 common resemblance not seen in the mixed races generally 

 met with in 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 confined to natives of the islands. They are 

 the least modified representatives of the people who were, so 

 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 necessary 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 remains. Unfortunately we have as yet no such 

 evidence to tell us of the former condition of man in Southern 

 Asia. We may, however, look upon the Andamanese, the 

 Ae'tas, 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, which does, 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 these with the Negroes. But besides the true 

 Negro there has long been known to exist in the southern 

 part of the continent a curiously modified type, consisting of 



