Dec. 30 1880J 



NA TURE 



I'lQ 



THE L\DO-CHINESE AND OCEANIC FACES— 



TYPES AND AFFINITIES 



I. 



^^HE ethnological area here under consideration com- 

 prises the south-eastern corner of the Asiatic main- 

 land, and nearly the whole of the Indian and Pacific 

 Oceans. Of the three great divisions of the human 

 family— the black, yellow, and fair— the two former alone 

 are usually supposed to be represented in this region, the 

 black by the Australians, extinct Tasmanians, Melanesians 

 or Papuans, and Negritos, the jellow by the Indo-Chinese 

 (Annamese, Siamese, Burmese, &c.), of the mainland, 

 and the so-called " Malayo- Polynesians" of Oceanica. 

 But it will be one of the main objects of these papers to 

 show that room must here be henceforth made for the 

 third also, and that most of the difficulties associated 

 with the mutual classification of the other tivo are due to 

 the omission or neglect of this third factor in the problem. 

 It has long been an accepted doctrine of ethnologists that 

 this fair or Caucasian type, u=ing the term '' Caucasian" 

 in Blumenbach's sense, is limited by some mysterious 

 law of nature or providential arrangement to the western 

 portion of Asia, to the northern section of its African, and 

 to nearly the whole of its European peninsula. But 

 anthropology is a very young science, a:id as facts 

 accumulate and knowledge expands, many of its con- 

 clusions too hastily arrived at will have to be modi- 

 fied or abandoned. The time seems to have already 

 arrived for very materially modif)ing the views hitherto 

 entertained regarding the geographical limits of the 

 Caucasian species, which, instead of being confined to a 

 western corner of the Old World, will be found to have 

 been diffused in prehistoric times eastwards to within 

 2,500 miles of the American cont nent. 



Bat the acceptance or rejiction of this new doctrine will 

 of course depend largely on the various senses in which 

 the terms type, species, race, are understood by the 

 different monogenist and polygeni=t schools. For the 

 orthodox monogenist these words can obviously have 

 •but a relative meaning, for if all are necessarily sprung 

 of one created pair, all have alco necessarily become 

 dil^'erentiated into the now existing types, these types thus 

 sinking to the category of mere varieties. But to poly- 

 genists of all shades such expressions may naturally 

 convey an absolute sense, the fundamental species now 

 existing having presumably been evolved in so many 

 independent centres, and for these the only question will 

 be in hoTjj many centres ? Yet even they cannot con- 

 sistently base their theory on the eternal fixity of species, 

 for they are all of them otherwise, and necessarily believers 

 in evolution. They must therefore admit the abstract 

 possibihty of such comparatively slight transformism as 

 the development of the dark from the yellow, the fair 

 from either, lank from woollj- hair, dolichocephaly from 

 brachycephaly, the tall stature of the Tehuelch Patagonian 

 from the pygmy Akka, or the reverse of all these pro- 

 cesses. They may say that, assuming independent deve- 

 lopment from various anthropoids, such transformism is 

 unnecessary to account for the present state of things ; but 

 they can never deny its inherent possibility, for it still 

 remains a very trivial modification compared with the 

 evolution of any given human from any given anthropoid 

 type. Nor will they deny that in general differentiations 

 of this sort are far more easy and explicable than independ- 

 ent growths, which involve so much more fundamentally 

 radical changes. Consequently unorthodox monogenism, 

 that i's monogenism not starting from a created pair, but 

 from one evolutionary centre, seems more rational and 

 philosophic than any conceivable form of pulj'geniom. 

 This view seems in other respects to harmonise best with 

 the actual conditions, and an effort has accordingly been 

 made to give it expression in the subjoined definition 

 o"^ species, which differs in some important respects from 



those hitherto proposed : Species is an aj^gregate of units 

 resembling each otiier in alt salient points, proilucing off- 

 spring of the same type in the same surroundings, or of 

 continuously modified type in continuously modified siir- 

 roundin^^s, and themselves evolved of previous species 

 similarly modified indefinitely. Thus any given specie-- 

 or race (terms practically identical when used with 

 scientific precision) exists only for the time being, is not 

 and cannot be permanent, for it has become what it is by 

 slow modification under slowly modified outward condi- 

 tions, has had a beginning, may have an end. The best 

 vindication of this truth is the geological record, which 

 can only be explained either with Cuvier by the unwar 

 ranted assumption of successive fresh creations, or with 

 common sense by regarding type or species as relative, 

 not absolute concepts. Between the two views there seem., 

 to be no logical middle term. 



It is therefore in this relative sense only that race or 

 species are here to be understood, and in this sense it wi I 

 be seen that all the three mo=t fundamental types of man- 

 kind have existed from the remotest times in the wide 

 area above defined. With their diverse modifications ami 

 intercrossings these three types form altogether seven 

 main groups, which it wili be convenient to take seriatim 

 in the order adopted in the subjoined 



General Scheme of Indo-Chinese and Oceanic Races 



A.-DARK TYPES 

 I. Negritos: Aetas ; Andamanese ; Samangs ; Kalang^ ; 

 Karons, 

 f Central branch— Papuans Proper. 

 I Western branch — Sub Papuans West (so- 

 il. r.\ !• C AN s : "I called " Alf uros " ) . 



I Eastern branch— Sub-Papuans East (Melanc- 

 l. siaiis). 



III. Austral: Au.,traUans ; Tasmaiiians (?) 



B.— CAUCASIAN TYPE (Fair aud Brown) 



IV. Continental Branch : Khmer or Cambojan Group. 



\' . OctANic Branch: Indonesian and Sawaiori or Eastern 

 Polynesian Groups. 



C— MONGOLIAN TYPE (Yellow and Olive Brown) 

 ^T. Continental Branch : Indo-Chineie Group. 

 VII. Oceanic Branch : Malayan Groups. 



A— DARK TYPES 

 I. The Negritos: Aetas; Andamanese ; Samangs; 

 Kalangs; Karons 

 Of the three divisions of this type shown in our scheme 

 the Negrito is probably the most primitive. It seems ti 

 have formed the aboriginal element in South-East Asia 

 and Malaysia at a time when the Archipelago was still con 

 nected with the mainland ; but it is now represented only 

 in a fragmentary way by the wild tribes in the Philip- 

 pines collectively known as Aetas, Aiias, or ItdS, the 

 so-called "Mincopies" of the Andaman Islands, th ■ 

 little-known Samangs of Malacca, probably the Karu- 

 or Karons ' of the .-\rfak Hills behind GeelvinkBay, New- 

 Guinea, and a few surviving members of the Kalangs o' 

 East Java. From a number of specimens recently brought 

 to Europe, the osteology of the Aetas and Andamanese 

 has been carefully studied, the former by Virchow in 

 Germany, the latter by Prof. Flower in England, with 

 parallel and in many respects identical results. Virchow - 

 describes the Aetas as " a brachjcephalous race difi'ering 

 altogether from the Papuans and Australian Negroes, 

 and no less so from the African Negroes." He adds 

 that they are " strongly prognathous," the profile of some 



' Debcrlbed by M. l;affr.>y (" Tour du Mi.nde," April 26, 1879) as essen- 

 liallv dL-inct from ihe Pipa<.ns. •■ C<= ne >oi.t pas des Papous mais bic. 

 des 'Ncgr.ios. plus semhlables aux SAUvauts ab..rifcenes dcs Philipi-ines 

 cm'aux t'apous Melane-.ensqu. lesentourcnl.;" „,_,.,, , - .. 



= in ■•Correspondenz-Blaltd.rrdcut.-^chtnL.ebcILchalfurAnl.iiopoloKie, 



S:c , 1S72, p. 58- 



