572 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. LII. No. 1355 



pologists have further sinned against the Aus- 

 tralians by classing- them as but little higher 

 than the anthropoid apes. Because some of 

 them present various primitive features, such 

 as marked supraorbital ridges or pronounced 

 prognathism, they have been placed on the low- 

 est rung of the human scale. This is not yet 

 fully justified. The Australian demands a lot 

 of new careful, unbiased investigation, and he 

 demands it urgently for he also is disappear- 

 ing — not by amalgamation, although that also 

 exists in some parts — ^but through habits and 

 diseases introduced by the white man. 



From Australia there is but a step to Mela- 

 nesia, which too, presents its problems; the 

 main one being perhaps the advent into these 

 regions of the African ISTegro. Most if not all 

 the groups show individuals who are regular 

 types of the African Negro in physiognomy, 

 character of the hair, stature and all other re- 

 spects. This is a big negro, not the small 

 Negrito who was evidently always small and 

 whose diminished stature with slender limbs 

 has made him conspicuous even in admixtures. 

 The type represented here, aside perhaps of 

 some Negrito, is the real African. But how 

 did Africans come into these far away islands f 

 They never were navigators of any note. 

 "Were they brought there by others, perhaps the 

 Egyptians or the Arabs? "We do not know as 

 yet. It is another problem of the Pacific. 

 And there are others in Melanesia. 



Then there are the many problems of the 

 people of the Indies. As yet we do not know 

 exactly what the Indian populations represent, 

 or just how and when they came. There was a 

 stream of "Aryans," but who were they? 

 And just who anthropologically are the Dravi- 

 dians, the Ceylon Vedahs and the other groups 

 of importance? We see on one hand a large 

 Mediterranean strain. There are many people 

 in India who, if placed in a more northern 

 climate for a few years, would so closely re- 

 semble the southern Italian that they could not 

 be told apart. There are other Hindu who re- 

 semble the people of Afghanistan, or those of 

 Persia, southeastern Eussia, and perhaps even 

 the Nordics of Europe. Again there are un- 

 doubted and numerous Semitic elements, and 



then of course there are the mixtures of the 

 Malays and other yellow-browns, and those of 

 the Negrito. Here are many problems that 

 await and deserve a careful further anthropo- 

 logical investigation. 



So much in a very superficial way about the 

 more particular problems of the Ear East and 

 the Pacific. There are plenty of them and they 

 claim our special attention because as Ameri- 

 cans we are directly interested in the eastern 

 Asia which gave us our Indian. But these 

 parts of the world present some greater, more 

 comprehensive problems of the most stimulat- 

 ing and absorbing interest, which can not be 

 solved fully before many of the particular 

 questions shall have been answered, but which 

 must be kept before our mind. 



The first of these more comprehensive prob- 

 lems is that of the origin, derivation and time 

 of coming of the yellow-brown stem of hu- 

 manity. Here is a multitude of people, enough 

 to fill three times over and more the whole 

 American continent as it is now populated, 

 who, though they extend from the farthest 

 north down to the equator, present neverthe- 

 less many characteristics in common. They 

 are not of the same color, but are all yellow- 

 ish-brown, ranging from yellowish-white down 

 to brown-black. They have all the so-called 

 Mongolic eye, especially in the child; they are 

 all characterized by a scarcity of beard, by 

 black or brownish-black and wherever un- 

 mixed, straight hair, which shows also certain 

 microscopic features that differentiate it from 

 the hair of the rest of the human family; and 

 there are still other characteristics that unite 

 these people. They must all have proceeded 

 from the same stem. But where did they origi- 

 nate? How, why and when did they people 

 Asia ? How did they become so subdivided and 

 acquire their secondary differences ? Notwith- 

 standing the fact that they show so many 

 characteristics apart from the white man, yet 

 they show much more resemblance to him than 

 to the blacks. There is no line of demarcation 

 between the whites and the yellow-browns, as 

 there is between the browns and the blacks. 

 What is the meaning of all these facts ? Here 



