3^4 



NA TURE 



[Red. 19, 1885 



THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE VARIETIES 

 OF THE HUMAN SPECIES} 



THE most ordinary observation is sufficient to demon- 

 strate the fact that certain groups of men are strongly 

 marked from others by definite characters common to all 

 members of the group, and transmitted regularly to their 

 descendants by the laws of inheritance. The Chinaman 

 and the Negro, the native of Patagonia and the Andaman 

 Islander, are as distinct from each other structurally as are 

 many of the so-called species of any natural group of ani- 

 mals. Indeed it maybe said with truth that their differences 

 are greater than those which mark the groups called genera 

 by many naturalists of the present day. Nevertheless, 

 the difficulty of parcelling out all the individuals com- 

 posing the human species into certain definite groups, 

 and of saying of each man that he belongs to one or other 

 of such groups is insuperable. No such classification has 

 ever, or indeed, can ever, be obtained. There is not one 

 of the most characteristic, most extreme forms, like those 

 I have just named, from which transitions cannot be 

 traced by almost imperceptible gradations to any of the 

 other equally characteristic, equally extreme, forms. In- 

 deed, a large proportion of mankind is made up, not of 

 extreme or typical, but of more or less generalised or 

 intermediate, forms, the relative numbers of which are 

 continually increasing, as the long-existing isolation of 

 nations and races breaks down under the ever-extending 

 intercommunication characteristic of the period in which 

 we dwell. 



The difficulties of framing a natural classification of 

 man, or one which really represents the relationship of the 

 various minor groups to each other, are well exemplified 

 by a study of the numerous attempts which have been made 

 from the time of Linnaeus and Blumenbach onwards. 

 Even in the first step of establishing certain primary 

 groups of equivalent rank there has been no accord. The 

 number of such groups has been most variously estimated 

 by different writers from two up to sixty, or more, although 

 it is important to note that there has always been a 

 tendency to revert to the four primitive types sketched 

 out by Linnaeus, the European, Asiatic, African, and 

 American, expanded into five by Blumenbach by the 

 addition of the Malay, and reduced by Cuvier to three by 

 the suppression of the two last. After a perfectly inde- 

 pendent study of the subject, extending over many years, 

 I cannot resist the conclusion, so often arrived at by 

 various anthropologists, and so often abandoned for some 

 more complex system, that the primitive man, whatever 

 he may have been, has in the course of ages divaricated 

 into three extreme types, represented by the Caucasian of 

 Europe, the Mongolian of Asia, and the Ethiopian of 

 Africa, and that all existing individuals of the species can 

 be ranged around these types, or somewhere or other 

 between them. Large numbers are doubtless the descend- 

 ants of direct crosses in varying proportions between well- 

 established extreme forms ; for, notwithstanding opposite 

 views formerly held by some authors on this subject, there 

 is now abundant evidence of the wholesale production of 

 new races in this way. Others may be the descendants 

 of the primitive stock, before the strongly marked existing 

 distinctions had taken place, and therefore present, though 

 from a different cause from the last, equally generalised 

 characters. In these cases it can only be by most care- 

 fully examining and balancing all characters however 

 minute, and finding out in what direction the preponder- 

 ance lies, that a place can be assigned to them. It can- 

 not be too often insisted on, that the various groups of 

 Mankind, owing to their probable unity of origin, the 

 great variability of individuals, and the possibility of all 

 degrees of intermixture of races at remote or recent 

 periods of the history of the species, have so much in 

 common that it is extremely difficult to find distinctive 



1 From the President's Anniversary Address to the Anthropologic!! 

 Institute oft'.reat Britain and Ireland, Jan. 27, 1885. 



characters capable of strict definition, by which they 

 may be differentiated. It is more by the preponderance 

 of certain characters in a large number of members of a 

 group, than by the exclusive or even constant possession 

 of these characters in each of its members, that the group 

 as a whole must be characterised. 



Bearing these principles in mind, we may endeavour to 

 formulate, as far as they have as yet been worked out, 

 the distinctive features of the typical members of each of 

 the three great divisions, and then show into what sub- 

 ordinate groups each of them seems to be divided. 



To begin with the Ethiopian, Negroid or Melanian, or 

 " black " type. It is characterised by a dark, often nearly 

 black, complexion ; black hair, of the kind called " frizzly " 

 or, incorrectly, " woolly," i.e. each hair being closely rolled 

 up upon itself, a condition always associated with a more 

 or less flattened or elliptical transverse section ; a moderate 

 or scanty development of beard ; an almost invariably 

 dolichocephalic skull ; small and moderately retreating 

 malar bones (mesopic face ') ; a very broad and flat 

 nose, platyrhine in the skeleton ; moderate or low orbits ; 

 prominent eyes ; thick, everted lips ; prognathous jaws ; 

 large teeth (macrodont) ; a narrow pelvis (index in the 

 maie 90 to 100) ; a long fore arm (humero-radial index 80), 

 and certain other proportions of the body and limbs 

 which are being gradually worked out and reduced to 

 numerical expression as material for so doing accumulates. 

 The most characteristic examples of the second great 

 type, the Mongolian or Xanthous or " yellow," have a yellow 

 or brownish complexion ; coarse, straight hair, without any 

 tendency to curl, and nearly round in section, on all other 

 parts of the surface except the scalp, scanty and late in 

 appearing ; a skull of variable form, mostly mesocephalic 

 (though extremes both of dolichocephaly and brachyce- 

 phaly are found in certain groups of this type) : a broad and 

 flat face, with prominent, anteriorly-projecting malar 

 bones (platyopic face) ; nose small, mesorhine or lepto- 

 rhine ; orbits high and round, with very little development 

 of glabella or supraciliary ridges ; eyes sunken, and 

 with the aperture between the lids narrow ; in the most 

 typical members of the group with a vertical fold of skin 

 over the inner canthus, and with the outer angle slightly 

 elevated ; jaws mesognathous ; teeth of moderate size 

 I (mesodont) ; the proportions of the limbs and form of 

 the pelvis have yet to be worked out, the results at present 

 obtained showing great diversity among different indi- 

 viduals of what appear to be well-marked races of the 

 group, but this is perhaps due to the insufficient number 

 of individuals as yet examined with accuracy. 



The last type, which, for want of a better name, I still 

 call by that which has the priority, Caucasian, or " white," 

 has usually a light-complexioned skin (although in some, 

 in so far aberrant cases, it is as dark as in the Negroes) ; 

 hair fair or black, soft, straight, or wavy, in section inter- 

 mediate between the flattened and cylindrical form ; 

 beard fully developed ; form of cranium various, mostly 

 mesocephalic ; malar bones retreating ; face narrow and 

 projecting in the middle line (pro-opic) ; orbits moderate ; 

 nose narrow and prominent (leptorhine) ; jaws orthogna- 

 thous ; teeth small (microdont) ; pelvis broad (pelvic 

 index of male 80) ; forearm short, relatively to humerus) 

 (humero-radial index 74). 



In endeavouring further to divide up into minor groups 

 the numerous and variously-modified individuals which 

 cluster around one or other of these great types, a process 

 quite necessary for many practical or descriptive purposes, 

 the distinctions afforded by the study of physical charac- 

 ters are often so slight that it becomes necessary to take 

 other considerations into account, among which geogra- 

 phical distribution and language hold an important place. 

 I. The Ethiopian or Negroid races may be primarily 

 divided as follows : — 

 A. African or typical Negroes— inhabitants of all the 



■ Oldfield Thomas, in a paper read before the Anthropological Institute, 

 Jan. ,3, 1885. 



