56 



TROPICAL RACES 



cephalic Caucasic peoples made their way in Pleistocene tim^s along 

 land bridges connecting Britain with the Orkneys, the Shetlands, 

 the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador. These 

 peoples, making their way across the continent, met with later and 

 more numerous arrivals, the brachycephalic peoples of Mongol- 

 Amerind stock, arriving from Asia by the land connections about 

 the Behring Straits and the Aleutian Islands. These two races 

 fused and formed the Amerind division of man. These Palaeo- 

 lithic races were apparently uninterrupted by any Caucasic, 

 Mongolic, or Ethiopic migrations until the discovery of America by 

 Columbus, after which all three divisions made their migrations 

 thereunto. Therefore all the culture of the Mayas, Aztecs, and 

 Incas, etc., was an inbred culture, not dependable for its origin on 

 outside sources. Hence the absence- of the ordinary animals and 

 plants of Asia, Africa, and Europe, and the presence of peculiar 

 animals and plants. Hence, also, the presence of only stone and 

 copper ages until the introduction of iron by the Caucasians, and 

 also the possible source of certain peculiar diseases, such as yellow 

 fever, and perhaps Framboesia tropica, and, according to some 

 authors, syphilis, which, when introduced into Europe, Asia, and 

 Africa, produced such ravages. 



Characters. — The characters of Amerind man are: — Height, above the 

 average; colour, coppery or yellowish; hair, long, coarse, and black, on 

 section round; shull, mesaticephalic ; eyes, small, round, black, sunken, and 

 straight; nose, large, bridged, or aquiline mesorrhine; cheek-hones, moderately 

 prominent; jaws, mesognathous; teeth, medium; heard, absent; speech, 

 divided into a very large number of linguistic families, said to number more 

 than those of the rest of the world, but peculiar to America by being poly- 

 synthetic or holophrastic — i.e., sentences made from single long words. The 

 most important of these linguistic families from a tropical point of view are 

 the Ut-Aztecan, the Mayan, Carib, Arawak, Quichuan, and Guaranian. The 

 Ut-Aztecan speech is used by the Shoshoneans, or Snakes, who include the 

 Utahs and the Nahuas, who also include the Aztecs, while the Quichuan com- 

 prises the Incas. Religion, Shamanism in the north. Nature- worship, and 

 polytheism; medicine, very primitive, especially when associated with 

 Shamanism, but was somewhat more advanced among the Aztecs and Incas. 

 Cinchona bark was a native Ecuador remedy. 



Population. — There are believed to be some 10,000,000 Amerinds and 

 13,000,000 to 40,000,000 half-breeds, but the numbers are by no means easy 

 to estimate even approximately. It is clear, however, that the Amerinds are 

 rapidl}^ dying out in Canada and the United States. 



Migrations. — The brachycephalic peoples whom we have already noticed 

 proved superior to the dolichocephalic people from Europe, and drove them 

 northwards, where they became Eskimo, and southwards, where they became 

 the Tehuelche or Patagonians and the Fuegians. The brachycephalic peoples 

 then evolved the North American Indians, of whom we are only concerned 

 with the members of the Ut-Aztecan linguistic family, because the Aztecs 

 are members of this family in common with the Shoshoneans, and it is prob- 

 able that the Nahuan family to which the Aztecs belong migrated south- 

 wards from the district of British Columbia. 



Coming to Mexico proper, it is found that the archaic peoples — -the Popol- 

 cans, Mixe, Chinantecs, Zoque, Mazatec, Cuicatecs, Chocho, and Magahua — 

 have all been pressed by the migrations presently to be mentioned into 

 secluded valleys, where alone traces of them can be found at the present time. 

 The Mexicans proper are the Otomi, who are related to the Magahua, and are 

 still to be found in the valley of the Upper Moctezuma and in Guanjuato. 



