xix THE AKKAS 313 



of an inch more for the thickness of the skin of the head and 

 soles of the feet would complete the height when alive. The 

 other (male) skeleton was, judging by the length of the femur, 

 about a quarter of an inch shorter. 



The full-grown woman of whom Emin gives detailed 

 dimensions is stated to be only T164 metres, or barely 3 

 feet 10 inches. 1 These heights are all unquestionably less 

 than anything that has been yet obtained based upon such 

 indisputable data. One very interesting and almost unexpected 

 result of a careful examination of these skeletons is that they 

 conform in the relative proportions of the head, trunk, and 

 limb, not to dwarfs, but to full-sized people of other races, 

 and they are therefore strikingly unlike the stumpy, long- 

 bodied, short -limbed, large -headed pygmies so graphically 

 represented fighting with their lances against the cranes on 

 ancient Greek vases. 



The other characters of these skeletons are Negroid to an 

 intense degree, and quite accord with what has been stated of 

 their external appearance. The form of the skull, too, has 

 that sub-brachycephaly which has been shown by Hamy to 

 characterise all the small Negro populations of Central Africa. 

 It is quite unlike that of the Andamanese, quite unlike that 

 of the Bushmen. They are obviously Negroes of a special 

 type, to which Hamy has given the appropriate term of 

 Negrillo. They seem to have much the same relation to the 

 larger long-headed African Negroes that the small round- 

 headed Negritos of the Indian Ocean have to their larger 

 long-headed Melanesian neighbours. 



At all events, the fact now seems clearly demonstrated 

 that at various spots across the great African continent, 

 within a few degrees north and south of the equator, extend- 

 ing from the Atlantic coast to near the shores of the Albert 

 Nyanza (30 E. long.), and perhaps, from some indications which 

 time will not allow me to enter into now (but which will be 

 found in the writings of Hamy and Quatrefages), even farther 



1 In his letters Emin speaks of an Akka man as "3 feet 6 inches" high, 

 though this does not profess to be an observation of scientific accuracy as does 

 the above. He says of this man that his whole body was covered by thick, stiff 

 hair, almost like felt, as was the case with all the Akkas he had yet examined. 



