12 BUBEAU OF AMEEICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 40 



been observed; but the knowledge of historical developments almost 

 compels us to assume its existence at a very early period in the devel- 

 opment of mankind. If this is true, the question would arise, 

 whether an isolated group, at an early period, was necessarily char- 

 acterized by a single type, a single language, and a single culture, or 

 whether in such a group different types, different languages, and 

 different cultures may have been represented. 



The historical development of mankind would afford a simpler and 

 clearer picture, if we were justified in assuming that in primitive 

 communities the three phenomena had been intimately associated. 

 No proof, however, of such an assumption can be given. On the 

 contrary, the present distribution of languages, as compared with the 

 distribution of types, makes it plausible that even at the earliest 

 times the biological units may have been wider than the linguistic 

 units, and presumably also wider than the cultural units. I believe 

 that it may be safely said that all over the world the biological unit 

 is much larger than the linguistic unit: in other words, that groups 

 of men who are so closely related in bodily appearance that we must 

 consider them as representatives of the same variety of mankind, 

 embrace a much larger number of individuals than the number of 

 men speaking languages which we know to be genetically related. 

 Examples of this kind may be given from many parts of the world. 

 Thus, the European race — including under this term roughly all 

 those individuals who are without hesitation classed by us as mem- 

 bers of the white race — would include peoples speaking Indo-Euro- 

 pean, Basque, and Ural-Altaic languages. West African negroes 

 would represent individuals of a certain negro type, but speaking the 

 most diverse languages; and the same would be true, among Asiatic 

 types, of Siberians; among American types, of part of the Calif ornian 

 Indians. 



So far as our historical evidence goes, there is no reason to believe 

 that the number of distinct languages has at any time been less than 

 it is now. On the contrary, all our evidence goes to show that the 

 number of apparently unrelated languages has been much greater in 

 earlier times than at present. On the other hand, the number of 

 types that have presumably become extinct seems to be rather 

 small, so that there is no reason to suppose that at an early period 

 there should have been a nearer correspondence between the number 

 of distinct linguistic and anatomical types; and we are thus led to 



