366 



NA TURK 



\_Fcb. 19, 1885 



I know nothing to exclude the possibility of the Aus- 

 tralians being mainly the direct descendants of a very 

 primitive human type, from which the frizzly-haired 

 Negroes may be an offset. This character of hair must 

 be a specialisation, for it seems very unlikely that it 

 was the attribute of the common ancestors of the human 

 race. 



D. The fourth branch of the Negroid race consists of 

 the diminutive round-headed people called Negritos, still 

 found in a pure or unmixed state in the Andaman Islands, 

 and forming a substratum of the population, though now 

 greatly mixed with invading races, especially Malays, in 

 the Philippines, and many of the islands of the Indo- 

 Malayan Archipelago, and perhaps of some parts of the 

 southern portion of the mainland of Asia. They also 

 probably contribute to the varied population of the great 

 island of Papua or New Guinea, where they appear to 

 merge into the taller, longer-headed and longer-nosed 

 Melanesians proper. They show, in a very marked 

 manner, some of the most striking anatomical peculiari- 

 ties of the Negro race, the frizzly hair, the proportions 

 of the limbs, especially the humero-radial index, and the 

 form of the pelvis ; but they differ in many cranial and 

 facial characters, both from the African Negroes on the 

 one hand, and the typical Oceanic Negros, or Melanesians, 

 on the other, and form a very distinct and well-charac- 

 terised group. 



II. — The principal groups that can be arranged around 

 the Mongolian type are — 



A. The Eskimo, who appear to be a branch of the 

 typical North Asiatic Mongols, who in their wanderings 

 northwards and eastwards across the American continent, 

 isolated almost as perfectly as an island population would 

 be, hemmed in on one side by the eternal Polar ice and 

 on the other by hostile tribes of American Indians, with 

 which they rarely, if ever, mingled, have gradually de- 

 veloped characters most of which are strongly- expressed 

 modifications of those seen in their allies who stiffremain 

 on the western side of Behring's Straits. Every special 

 characteristic which distinguishes a Japanese from the 

 average of mankind is seen in the Eskimo in an ex- 

 aggerated degree, so that there can be no doubt about 

 their being derived from the same stock. It has also 

 been shown that these special characteristics gradually 

 increase from west to east, and are seen in their greatest 

 perfection in the inhabitants of Greenland ; at all events, in 

 those where no crossing with the Danes has taken place. 

 Such scanty remains as have yet been discovered of the 

 early inhabitants of Europe present no structural affinities 

 to the Eskimo, although it is not unlikely that similar 

 external conditions may have led them to adopt similar 

 modes of life. In fact, the Eskimo are such an intensely 

 specialized race, perhaps the most specialized of any in 

 existence, that it is probable that they are of compara- 

 tively late origin, and were not as a race contemporaries 

 with the men whose rude flint tools found in our drifts 

 excite so much interest and speculation as to the makers, 

 who have been sometimes, though with little evidence to 

 justify such an assumption, reputed to be the ances- 

 tors of the present inhabitants of the northernmost parts 

 of America. 



B. The typical Mongolian races constitute the present 

 population of Northern and Central A^ia. They are not 

 very distinctly, but still conveniently for descriptive pur- 

 poses, divided into two groups, the Northern and the 

 Southern. 



a. The former, or Mongolo-Altaic group, are united 

 by the affinities of their language. These people, from 

 the cradle of their race in the great central plateau of 

 Asia, have at various times poured out their hordes upon 

 the lands lying to the west, and have penetrated almost 

 to the heart of Europe. The Finns, the Magyars, and the 

 Turks, are each the descendants of one of these waves of 

 incursion, but they have for so many generations inter- 



mingled with the peoples through whom they have passed 

 in their migrations, or have found in the countries in 

 which they have ultimately settled, that their original 

 physical characters have been completely modified. Even 

 the Lapps, that diminutive tribe of nomads inhabiting the 

 most northern parts of Europe, supposed to be of Mon- 

 golian descent, show so little of the special attributes of 

 that branch, that it is difficult to assign them a place in 

 it in a classification based upon physical characters. The 

 Japanese are said by their language to be allied rather to 

 the Northern than to the following branch of the Mongolian 

 stock. 



b. The Southern Mongolian group, divided from the 

 former chiefly by language and habits of life, includes the 

 greater part of the population of China, Thibet, Burmah, 

 and Siam. 



C. The next great division of Mongoloid people is 

 the Malay, subtypical, it is true, but to which an easy 

 transition can be traced from the most characteristic 

 members of the type. 



D. The brown Polynesians, Malayo-Polynesians, Ma- 

 horis, Sawaioris, or Kanakas, as they have been variously 

 called, seen in their greatest purity in the Samoan, 

 Tongan, and Eastern Polynesian Islands, are still more 

 modified, and possess less of the characteristic Mon- 

 golian features ; but still it is difficult to place them 

 anywhere else in the system. The large infusion of 

 the Melanesian element throughout the Pacific, must 

 never be forgotten in accounting for the characters 

 of the people now inhabiting the islands, an element 

 in many respects so diametrically opposite to the Mon- 

 golian, that it would materially alter the characters, 

 especially of the hair and beard, which has been with 

 many authors a stumbling-block to the affiliation of 

 the Polynesian with the Mongol stock. The mixture is 

 physically a fine one, and in some proportions produces a 

 combination, as seen, for instance, in the Maories of New 

 Zealand, which in all definable characters approaches 

 quite as near, or nearer, to the Caucasian type, than to 

 either of the stocks from which it may be presumably 

 derived. This resemblance has led some writers to infer 

 a real extension of the Caucasian element at some very 

 early period with the Pacific Islands, and to look 

 upon their inhabitants as the product of a mingling 

 of all three great types of men. Though this is a very 

 plausible theory, it rests on little actual proof, as the com- 

 bination of Mongolo-Malayan and Melanesian characters 

 in different degrees to the local variations certain to 

 arise in communities so isolated from each other and 

 exposed to such varied conditions as the inhabitants of 

 the Pacific Islands, would probably account for all the 

 modifications observed among them. 



E. The native population (before the changes wrought 

 by the European conquest) of the great continent of 

 America, excluding the Eskimo, present, considering the 

 vast extent of the country they inhabit and the great 

 differences of climate and other surrounding conditions, 

 a remarkable similarity of essential characters, with much 

 diversity of detail. 



The construction of the numerous American languages, 

 of which as many as twelve hundred have been distin- 

 guished, is said to point to unity of origin, as, though 

 widely different in many respects, they are all, or nearly 

 all, constructed on the same general grammatical prin- 

 ciple—that called polysynthesis— which differs from that 

 of the languages of any of the Old World nations. The 

 mental characteristics of all the American tribes have 

 much that is in common ; and the very different stages of 

 culture to which they had attained at the time of the 

 conquest, as that of the Incas and Aztecs, and the hunt- 

 ing or fishing tribes of the north and south, which have 

 been quoted as evidence of diversities of race, were not 

 greater than those between different nations of Europe, 

 as Gauls and Germans on the one hand, and Greeks and 



