5 -'6 



NATURE 



[September 24, 1908 



creaied fur man's use, and they emphatically enunciated 

 the doctrine that man himself has been evolved under the 

 same laws as every other animal. Vet the anthropologists 

 tliL-mselves have not always carried out in practice their 

 own principles to their logical conclusions. To-day I shall 

 attempt to show that the chief errors which impede the 

 scientific study of man, which lead to the maladministra- 

 tion of alien races, and which beget blunders of the 

 gravest issue in our own social legislation, are due in 

 the main to man's pride in shutting his eyes to the fact 

 that he is controlled by the same laws as the rest of the 

 animal kingdom. 



I. Let us first consider some of the chief problems which 

 ^t present are being debated by the physical anthropo- 

 logists. Foremost in importance of these is the stratifica- 

 tion of populations in Europe. It has generallv been held 

 as an article of faith that Europe was first peopled by a 

 non-Aryan race. Of course it is impossible for us to say 

 what were the physical characteristics of Palajolithic man, 

 but when we come to Neolithic man the problem becomes 

 Jess hopeless. It has been generally held that the first 

 Neolithic men in Europe, whether they were descended 

 or not from their Palaeolithic predecessors, had long skulls, 

 I)ut were not Aryan ; that later on a migration of short- 

 ■skulled people from Asia passed along Central Europe and 

 into France, becoming what is commonly termed the 

 Alpine, by some the Ligurian, by others the Celtic race ; 

 that later these two primitive non-.Aryan races were over- 

 run by the Aryans, who, when these theories were first 

 started, wt^vf: universally considered to have come from 

 the Hindu Kush, but are now generally believed, as held 

 b>' Latham, to have originated in Upper Central Europe. 

 Yet, although the view respecting the cradle of the Arvans 

 has changed, anthropologists have not seen the important 

 bearing that it has upon the problem of Neolithic man. 

 The Aryans are generally held to have had a blonde com- 

 plexion. 



.As our discussion must from its nature concern itself 

 with questions of race, let us first examine the criteria 

 hy which anthropologists distinguish one rare from another. 

 If you ask an anthropologist how he distinguishes an 

 Aryan from a non-.'\ryan race, he will tell vou that he 

 relies on three main tests : (a) the colour of the skin, hair, 

 and eyes: (i) the shape of the skull and certain other 

 •ostoological characteristics ; and (c) the system of descent 

 through males. Formerly language was' included in the 

 tests of race, but when it was pointed out that the Negroes 

 of Jamaica speak English, those of Louisiana French, 

 henceforward it. was assumed that one race can embrace 

 the language of another with the greatest ease. Yet it 

 may turn out, after all, that language was too hastily 

 expelled from the criteria of race. On the other hand', 

 we may find that too implicit faith has been placed on 

 the three criteria of cranial characteristics, pigmentation, 

 and law of succession. 



(a) As it is assumed that all Arvans were blonde and 

 traced descent through males, so' it is held that all 

 Europeans, who are dark-complexioned, and whose fore- 

 fathers traced descent through women, are non-.Aryan in 

 race, and that, although they now in almost every case 

 speak an .Aryan tongue, this is not their primitive speech, 

 but simply that learned from their .Arvan conquerors. 

 According to this orthodox view, the dark-skinned in- 

 habitants of Italy, Spain, and Greece are all non-.Aryan, 

 and all have borrowed the language of their masters, 

 ■whilst of course the same is held respecting the melano- 

 ■chrous population of France and of the British Isles. 

 Ever since Prof. Sergi comprehended under what he terms 

 the " Eurafrican species " all the dark-complexioned 

 peoples of Southern and Western Europe, as well as the 

 ■Semitic and Hamitic peoples of Western Asia and Northern 

 Africa, the doctrine that the dark-skinned peoples of 

 Europe once spoke a non-.Arvan tongue or tongues is sup- 

 posed to have been finally ' established. But under his 

 Eurafrican species Sergi includes the blonde race of 

 ■Northern Europe who speak Aryan languages along with 

 the dark races who speak non-Aryan tongues. It is 

 argued that as all the dark-skinned peoples on the north 

 side of the Mediterranean belong bv their ohvsical tvpe to 

 the sarne original stock as the Semites and Hamites. they 

 tnust likewise have spoken non-.Aryan languages. Yet it 



KG. 2030, VOL. 78] 



might as well be maintained that the Finns, who speak 

 a non-Aryan tongue, and tne Scandinavians, who speak an 

 Aryan, were originally all of one stock, because both races 

 are blonde. 



This doctrine of a 'Mediterranean race depends upon the 

 tacit assumption made by the physical anthropologists that 

 identity or similarity of type means identity of race. Yet 

 this assumption does not bear the test of scientific ex- 

 amination, for it assumes that only those who are sprung 

 from a common stock can be similar in physical structure 

 aifd coloration, and it leaves altogether out of sight the 

 effects of environment in changing racial types, and that, 

 too, in no long time. The change in the tvpe of the 

 .American of New England from that of h'is English 

 ancestor and his approximation to the hatchet face and 

 thin, scraggy beard of the Red Indian have long been 

 remarked, whilst the Boers of South Africa, in less than 

 150 years, have quite lost the old Dutch build, and become 

 a tall, weedy race. The effects of climatic conditions arc 

 very patent amongst the native peoples of the New World. 

 The Iroquois of the temperate parts (lat. 4o°-45°) of 

 North America were a tall, rather light-complexioned race, ' 

 but as we keep moving south and approach the equator, 

 their kindred tribes grow somewhat darker in complexion 

 and more feeble in physique, except where thev live at a 

 considerable altitude, for of course altitude acts in the 

 same way as latitude. When once we pass below the 

 equator the physique keeps steadily improving until we 

 come to the Pampas Indians, a vigorous race who defied 

 all the efforts of the Spaniards to subdue them ; and 

 finally we meet the Patagonians (lat. 40°-53°), a fine, tall, 

 light-complexioned race, who form in the south the 

 counterpart of the Iroquois and their closely allied tribes 

 in the north. 



The same law, as is well known, can be seen at work 

 in Europe. Starting from the Mediterranean, we meet in 

 the lower parts a melanochrous race ; but gradually, as 

 we advance upwards, the population as a whole is grow- 

 ing less dark, until finally, along the shores of the Baltic, 

 we meet the tallest and most light-complexioned race in 

 the world. Of course it has been explained that the change 

 in pigmentation, as we advance from south to north, is 

 due to the varying proportions in the admixture of the 

 blonde race of the north with the melanochrous of the 

 south. But it is difficult to believe that, the movements 

 up or down of the people from the southern side of the 

 Alps, or of those from the shores of the Baltic, have been 

 so nicely proportioned as to give the general steady change 

 from north to south in coloration w'ithout the aid of some 

 other force. The case of .America, which I have just cited, 

 is in itself enough to raise a suspicion that climatic in- 

 fluences are at work all the time, and that environment is 

 in reality the chief factor in the variation of both stature 

 and pigmentation from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. 

 The white race of the north is of the same proximate 

 ancestry as the dark-complexioned peoples of the northern 

 shores of the Mediterranean. I have alreadv argued else- 

 where that, as the ice-sheet receded, mankind kept press- 

 ing further north, and gradually under changed climatic 

 conditions the type changed from area to area, and thev 

 all still continued to speak the same Indo-European tongue, 

 but -svith dialectic variations, these also being no doubt 

 due to the physical changes in the vocal organs produced 

 by environment. 



If we turn from man to the other animals we find a 

 complete demonstration of this doctrine. For instance, the 

 conditions which have produced a blonde race on the 

 Baltic have probably produced the -s^'hite hare, white bears, 

 and the tendency in the stoat and the ptarmigan to turn 

 white in winter, whilst in the same regions of Europe 

 and .Asia the indigenous horses were of a dun colour, who 

 not only turned white in winter, but had a great tendency 

 to turn -white altogether. It mav be objected that the 

 Lapps and Eskimo are not tall and blonde, but on the 

 contrary short and dark ; but they live ■HMthin the .Arctic 

 circle in regions where the sun does not shine at all for 

 a great part of the year, and consequentiv they are quite 

 outside the conditions of environment under which the 

 tall, blonde rare of North Germany has long dwelt. Of 

 course, in dealing with man we are always confronted 

 with the difficulties arising from his migrations ; but if 



