March 24, 1H93.] 



SCIENCE. 



159 



CURRENT NOTES ON ANTHROPOLOGY.— XXV. 



[Edited by D. G. Brinton, M.D., LL.D.} 



Points in Chinese Ethnology. 



Dr. Gdstave Schlegel, who is Professor of Chirif se Literature 

 in the University of Leyden, has undertaken to resolve a series 

 of problems relating to the identification of various mysterious 

 peoples mentioned by the early Chinese historians. They have 

 more than special interest, because they bear on the question of 

 the peopling of America from Asiatic sources. 



As early as 500 A.D., there is a description of a tattooed people, 

 Wen-chin, living 7000 U northeast of Japan. Dr. Schlegel identi- 

 fies them with the inhabitants of Ouroup, one of the Kurile is- 

 lands ; but adds that, in historic times, every tribe from the 

 island of Yezo to Greenland had the habit of tattooing, except 

 the Ghiliaksand Itulmens of Kamschatka. He vpould also place 

 the " Land of Women," Niii-kouo, said to be 1,000 li east of Fu- 

 sang, somewhere in the southern portion of the Kurile Archi- 

 pelago. In an article on "The Land of Little Men," he main- 

 tains the important thesis that the Tungusic stock at one time 

 occupied the whole of the Japanese archipelago. Professor 

 Schlegel's essays may be had of E. J. Brill, publisher, Leyden. 



An interesting study of Chinese gilds recently appeared in the 

 Yale Review, from the pen of the accomplished sinologue, Mr. 

 Frederick Wells Williams. Within a few pages he exemplities 

 the great extent and completeness of the gild system among the 

 Chinese, and illustrates the singular similarity of their laws to 

 those of mediseval and modern trades unions in Europe and 

 America. 



Progress in American Archseology. 



The science of American archaeology and ethnology owes a 

 large and increasing debt to Professor F. W. Putnam, who rep- 

 resents those branches in the faculty of Harvard University, and 

 who is also Curator of the Peabody Jluseum, and Chief of the 

 Department of Ethnology and Archseology of the World's Col- 

 umbian Exposition. All these posts he fills admirably, as any 

 one will see who will read his Report of the Peabody Museum 

 for 1893, just issued. One fact will be sufiScient: that within 

 the last two years he has engaged, trained, and sent into the 

 field — and the field means the whole American continent, from 

 Greenland to Tierra del Fuego — about one hundred assistants 

 and students, actively interested in collecting archaeological and 

 ethnological material. He sajs with pardonable pride and en- 

 tire justice: " Never before has such an extensive field of an- 

 thropological research been covered in two years' time." A brief 

 reference to the results obtained is included in the report, Natu- 

 rally, the exploration of the wonderful ruins of Copan, Honduras, 

 is most prominently alluded to. In connection therewith Pro- 

 fessor Putnam cannot refrain from a mild indulgence in his 

 favorite manie, hinting at the discovery of " several facts point- 

 ing to Asiatic arts and customs as the origin of those of the early 

 peoples of Central America." (Shade of Brasseur de Bourbourg!) 



With like enthusiasm, though on a less scale, the Department 

 of Archasology of the University of Pennsylvania sent several 

 explorers to the field in 1893, and has added largely to its collec- 

 tions by their efforts; while the National Museum, the Bureau of 

 Ethnology, and the Smithsonian Institution will show in time by 

 their reports that the year was also singularly fruitful for them. 



The Study of Hair. 



A note which I inserted in Science, Nov. 4, on this subject led 

 Mr. Mott, F.R.G.S., to send me a reprint of an article which he 

 read some time ago before the Leicester Literary and Philosophi- 

 cal Society. The position he maintains has at any rate the merit 

 of novelty. Arguing (not quite correctly) that the highest races 

 of man are the hairiest, he maintains that this is the result of 

 natural selection ; that, therefore, these hairiest types will in- 

 crease, while the more naked forms will be eliminated; " until 

 in a few centuries men and women %vill be clothed with natural 

 garments of fine soft fur " ; and the occupation will be gone of 

 both Parisian milliners and the " old clo' man !" 



More practical are the observations, in the last number of the 

 Zeitsohrifb ftir Ethnologie, on the prevalence of moustaches in 



women, by Dr. S. Weissenberg. He was struck with their fre- 

 quency in Constantinople, and on several occasions counted the 

 number of visibly hirsute upper lips on the women between 

 eighteen and fifty years of age whom he met in the streets. He 

 found it to be about ten per cent of the total number, which he 

 justly claims is a high rate. On reading his article, I made 

 similar observations in the streets and stores of Philadelphia, and 

 found the moustached women between the ages mentioned to be 

 less than three per cent; but I attribute little value to this state- 

 ment; for I happen to know that the depilatory " Rusma " has 

 an active sale in the drug stores, and that more than one physi- 

 cian makes a profitable little specialty of destroying unsightly 

 hairs by electro-puncture. These considerations interfere with 

 ethnographic observations. I have noticed more moustached 

 women in Madrid than in any other city. Dr. Weissenberg be- 

 lieves the Armenian women present this peculiarity most fre- 

 quently. The Madridlenas will surely push them close. In ne- 

 gresses and mulattoes it seems quite absent. 



Recent Craniological Studies. 

 Professor Sergi, of the University of Rome, has lately pub- 

 lished two applications of his "tasinomic" method in crani- 

 ology ; the one to a collection of 400 skulls from Melanesia, the 

 second to a smaller assortment from Sardinia. In the former, he 

 begins by speaking of the "chaos" in the descriptions of the 

 " Crania Ethnica" of De Quatrefages and Hamy, averring that 

 nothing less than the thread of Ariadne could guide one in such a 

 labyrinth. He then describes his own "method," and very pru- 

 dently gives a vocabulary of the astonishing Greek descriptive 

 terms which he has coined, a few of which were mentioned in 

 Science, Feb. 24, 1893. The result of his study he claims to be 

 the annihilation of the Papuas as a race, and he demands that 

 the name be stricken from the ethnographic lexicon, as the al- 

 leged Papuas are a compound of many varieties, not confined to 

 Melanesia, as the term is generally understood, but extending 

 over Australia, many islands of Polynesia and Micronesia, and 

 even to the Andaman Islands. A few only of these varieties are 

 localized, as, for instance, the hypsistenoclitobrachymetopus 

 stenocrotaphicus neocaledonensis 1 ! 



Applying his method to skulls from Sicily and Sardinia, from 

 a moderate number Professor Sergi defines thirteen varieties in 

 the former isle, and eight in the latter, and intimates that this 

 does not at all exhaust the types. He believes that by noting 

 such types, " we can follow the migrations and diffusion of the 

 varieties which have peopled Italy, and resolve many problems 

 in anthropology and ethnology hitherto obscure." He regards 

 the long narrow cranium as that most ancient in the two islands, 

 and it is a form still common among the inhabitants. 



However much we may admire Professor Sergi's enthusiasm 

 and the nicety of his observations, it must appear evident to the 

 unbiased observer that his results are open to serious question- 

 ings. I find that in any collection of skulls, whether from 

 Melanesia, Sicily, or Sardinia, he discovers by his "method" a 

 new type in at least every twenty; he adduces no evidence to 

 show that these "types" correspond to any ethnic distinction, 

 whether physical or psychical ; he makes no effort to show nega- 

 tively that these various types are not from children of the same 

 parents and same lineage; nor that the same types may not be 

 found in perfection among races the most distant and of no eth- 

 nic relationship. I am sure that some of the types he describes 

 are as truly American as they are Sicilian or Melanesian. The 

 conclusions arrived at by such reasoning are, I submit, like 

 those of other authorities which he himself stigmatizes as " not 

 merely incorrect but misleading." 



An interesting point in the anatomy of the skull is discussed 

 in a late number (July, 1892) of the Proceedings of the Berlin 

 Anthropological Society. It is in reference to the frequency of 

 that enlargement of the palate known as the "torus palatinus.'* 

 It is present in three-fourths of the Slavic Poles, in about one- 

 half of the Sibiric tribes, in about one-fourth of the American 

 Indians and Europeans of Aryan race; while it is quite absent 

 among Jews and Gypsies. What its ethnic significance is, if it 

 has any, remains for future investigators to determine. 



