June 3, 1880] 



NATURE 



99 



population, and as there is evidence from Egyptian monu- 

 ments of fair people (the Tamahou) inhabiting North 

 Africa, to the west of Egypt, at least 1500 years B.C., this 

 race has been associated with the builders of the mega- 

 lithic monuments found scattered over the west of Europe 

 and the north-west of Africa, who are supposed to have 

 invaded Africa by way of Spain and Tangiers. The 

 invasion of the country by Semitic races from the East, 

 the PhcEnicians and Carthaginians, and more recently 

 the Arabs, who overspread North Africa by way of the 

 Isthmus of Suez in the seventh and tenth centuries, and 

 impressed the Mohammedan religion upon all these 

 regions, 'rests upon surer historical evidence. The basis 

 Of the population of Marocco, Algiers, and Tunis are 

 the Berbers, descendants of the Libyans or Lebou of the 

 ancient Egyptians. An important section of them are the 

 Kabyles of the French. They are mostly a settled and 

 pastoral people. The Moors are mixed descendants of 

 Arabs and Berbers, residing in towns. The Bedouins are 

 the Arabs who still lead a nomadic life in the desert. 

 There is much in common in the physical characters of 

 all these people, and indeed with those of the South of 

 Europe and South-West of Asia. They belong mainly to 

 the group called Melanochroi by Prof Huxley. 



The Berber type, which perhaps forms the basis of the 

 population of North Africa, is thus described by Topinard, 

 by whom it has been carefully studied. The height is slightly 

 above the mean, i ■68m. i.e., 5 feet 6'i inches. The skin, 

 white in infancy, quickly becomes brown by contact with 

 the air ; hair black, straight, and abundant ; eyes dark 

 brown ; skull dolichocephalic (index 74'4), lepto^'hine 

 (44'3), and moderately orthognathous. The face is 

 less elongated and of a less regular oval contour than in 

 the Arab. The straight forehead presents at the base a 

 transverse depression ; the superciliary crests are well 

 developed ; the nose is sunken at the base, often arched 

 without being aquiline. The moral and social qualities 

 of the Berbers are contrasted with those of the Arabs, 

 considerably to the disadvantage of the latter. 



The enterprising and commercial spirit of the Arabs 

 has led to their extension over a very considerable part of 

 Africa, along the north as far as Marocco, and down the 

 east coast beyond Zanzibar, and once, in association with 

 Berbers, and under the name of Moors, they effected a 

 lodgment for a considerable period in Spain and the south 

 of France. Physically they are a fine race. Their skull, 

 seen from above, forms a perfectly regular oval. Their 

 face, long and thin, forms another oval, with a not less 

 regular contour, pointed below. Their colour is perfectly 

 white until subjected to the action of the air, when it 

 bronzes with facility. The hair and beard are smooth, 

 and black as jet, the limits of their implantation are 

 clearly marked : eyes black, the palpebral openings elon- 

 gated, almond-shaped, and bordered with long black eye- 

 lashes ; forehead not much elevated. The curve of the 

 nose and retreating chin give to the profile a form rather 

 rounded than straight. The superciliary arches and 

 glabella little developed ; the root of the nose is little 

 hollowed, so that the forehead and the dorsum of the 

 nose are almost in a straight line. The nose is aquiline, 

 and its point detaches itself from the alas and descends 

 downwards, recurved like the beak of an eagle. The 

 cheek-bones do not project ; the mouth is small, the teeth 

 white and vertical, the ears well made and rather small, 

 and close to the head. The skull is subdolichocephalic 

 (index 74'o), and the no5C leptorhine, 45 '5. 



A branch of the North African people which has 

 received much attention from anthropologists is that 

 called Guanchc, which formerly inhabited the Canary 

 Islands, and which previous to the discovery and concjuest 

 of the islands by the Spaniards in the fourteenth century 

 had long been isolated from all other people, and had 

 attained to a peculiar civilisation of its own, pre- 

 serving somewhat of the purity of type generally found 



under such circumstances. The custom of embalming 

 their dead in a mummified condition in rock sepulchres 

 has permitted us to become acquainted with their physi- 

 cal characters. They were of small stature, and rather 

 resembled the Berbers of the adjoining coast than any of 

 the negro races. Their skull was of the mesaticephalic 

 form, having an average cephalic index of 76'5, and was 

 considerably lower than it was broad. The face was not 

 prognathous, the nose was leptorhine, and at least those 

 inhabiting the island of Teneriffe, who are best known to 

 us, are remarkable for the low and elongated orbits, 

 having, according to Broca, the lowest orbital index 

 (77) of any race. In this respect and some others they 

 resemble the ancient skulls of the reindeer period found 

 in the cave of Cro-Magnon in the South of France, and it 

 has been thought that they may be related to that race. 

 It should be mentioned, however, that the Guanche 

 skulls from Teneriffe in the collection of Dr. Barnard 

 Davis do not altogether bear out this view, as they have 

 a considerably higher orbital index than those measured 

 at Paris. 



Of all the people of North Africa' the Egyptians are 

 undoubtedly the most interesting. "When history 

 begins to dawn, the first object the light strikes upon, and 

 which for a long time alone rears its form above the 

 general gloom, is the civilisation of ancient Egypt. On 

 inquiry we find this thoroughly organised civilisation, 

 fully supplied with all the necessaries and many of the 

 embellishments of life, and which is alone visible in the 

 dawning light, must have existed through ages long prior 

 to the dawn. It recedes into the unfathomable depth of 

 time far beyond the monuments and traditions." The 

 valley of the Nile has been for thousands of years the 

 scene of many events which have affected the ethnological 

 characters of its population. Invasions and conquests 

 more or less complete from the east, the north, the west, 

 and the south ; importation to its interior from all the 

 regions around of prisoners and slaves in enormous 

 numbers, many of whom have become permanent settlers 

 and integral pirts of the population : yet through all the 

 lapse of years since the period from which 'the first evi- 

 dence of the condition of man in that region has come 

 down to us to the present day the mass of the population, 

 through all the political vicissitudes which they have 

 undergone, h.ave presented the same general physical 

 type. Notwithstanding the mixture of Semitic or Syro- 

 Arabian nations, as in the Hyksos, who ruled in the Delta 

 for nearly 500 vears, and the Arabs of later times, the less 

 important Phoenician, Jewish, and Greek immigration in 

 the north, that of the Persians from the east, and Lybians 

 from the west, and the Ethiopians from the south, the Copts 

 and Fellahs of modern Egypt are the little changed lineal 

 descendants of the subjects of the Pharaohs of the early 

 empire. The physical characters of these are preserved 

 to us fortunately by artistic representations, graphic and 

 sculptural, and the still more trustworthy evidence of 

 mummified bodies. Although there are considerable signs, 

 as might be expected, of admixture with other races here 

 and there, the general uniformity is striking, especially as 

 it extends through so long a period of time. If variations 

 appear at particular epochs the original type constantly 

 reasserts itself, almost, if not quite, in its primitive 

 purity. 



In size the ancient Egyptians were not large, and rather 

 delicately built ; their hair was long, soft, straight, or 

 wavy, and black ; their cranium oval in form, and the 

 average cephalic index is on the borders between mesati- 

 cephaly and dolichocephaly, and tolerably uniform in 

 different series, collected and measured by different 

 obser\crs. Thus Morton gives the average of 43 speci- 

 mens in American museums as nearly 75 ; Broca that of 

 81 crania at Paris as 75'5S ; while the average of 33 in the 

 College museum is 75'4. Of the latter but one is as high 

 as 807, and one as low as 69'6. Of the others, 20 are 



