Part 13

The facts that are available indicate that the first members of our species evolved in an equatorial continent which is now submerged, and which occupied a position between the present continents of Asia and Africa. From this center hordes of primitive men migrated to distant centers where they differentiated into three primary and distinct groups. The first of these was gradually resolved into the darker-skinned peoples most of whom now live in the continent of Africa, although many dwell also in the islands of the western Pacific Ocean. The second branch divided almost immediately to produce, on the one hand, the Indians of the new world and, on the other, the yellow-skinned inhabitants of Asia and other places. The third branch developed as such in the neighborhood of the Mediterranean Sea, and produced the series of so-called Caucasian peoples, which are by far the most familiar to us and to which most of us belong. But so early did the second branch divide that there are virtually four main divisions of the human species that are to be examined in serial order.

It is best to begin with our own division, because its greater familiarity makes it easier to become acquainted with the methods and results of anthropology, on the basis of facts that we already know. Three subordinate types exist, located primarily in northern, central, and southern Europe respectively, but many other races dwell elsewhere that are assignable to one or another of these subdivisions. In northeastern Europe we find people such as the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, and north Germans, that average five feet eight inches in height. They have the long, wavy, and soft hair which is a general characteristic of the whole Caucasian group, although its light flaxen color is distinctive. The blue eye and florid complexion accompany the light color of the hair. The skull is of the longer type, the jaws and forehead are straight and square, the nose is large and long without a distinct arch, and the teeth are relatively small. It is not so well known that the Scandinavian type is so closely copied by many people of Asia, such as the western Persians, Afghans, and certain of the Hindus, living in a continent that we are inclined to assign to the Mongol only. In the possession of these characters the Northern Europeans and other races specified display evidences of their common ancestry and evolution quite as conclusively as in the case of the cats discussed in an earlier chapter where the meaning of essential likeness was first demonstrated.

A broad zone may be drawn from Wales, across Europe and Asia, and even to the eastern islands of the South Seas, in which we find peoples that are obviously of Caucasian descent, but they differ from the members of the first group in some details of structure. On the average they are about five feet five or six inches in height, the hair is dark and wavy, but it is not the pencil-like structure of the Mongol. The complexion is pale, the skull is rounder, and the eyes are usually brown in color. These peoples agree also in their volatile temperament and vivacious manner and are thus markedly different from the more stolid northerners. To this minor branch of the Caucasian stock belong the Welsh, most of the French, South Germans and Swiss, Russians and Poles, Armenians, eastern Persians, and finally some of the inhabitants of Polynesia. The last, it is true, form a well-marked group of darker-skinned and taller races, but in spite of the admixture of these and other unusual features, we can still discern the bodily characters that supplement their traditions, telling of an Asian origin, in demonstrating their common ancestry with round-headed Persians and middle Europeans. Below the zone of middle Europe and Asia is another broad region inhabited by the "Mediterranean" type of Caucasian. The Spaniard, Italian, Greek, and Arab are sufficiently familiar to illustrate the distinctive qualities of this subdivision. These people have the smaller stature, dark hair, dark eyes, and paler skin of the middle Europeans, but the skull is of the long instead of the rounded type. A well-marked subordinate group is formed by the so-called Semitic peoples, such as the Arabs and their Hebrew relatives. The Berbers and other North African races possess a darker skin probably because of the admixture of Ethiopian stock, and they, too, are so well characterized that they form a clearly marked outlying group as the so-called Hamites. Passing over into Asia we find relatives of the Mediterranean man in the Dravidas and Todas of India, possibly in the degenerate Veddahs of Ceylon, and finally in the Ainus or "hairy men" of some of the Japanese islands. The last-named people certainly possess some Mongolian features, but these seem to have been added to a more fundamental form of body that is distinctly Caucasian.

All of the races we have mentioned, together with their relatives, may be compared to the leaves borne upon three branches that take their origin from a single limb of the widespread human part of the tree. They cannot be classified in any mode on the basis of their primary and secondary resemblances without employing the treelike plan of arrangement, which to the man of science is a sure indication of their evolutionary relationships.

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The people of the second or Mongolian group agree in certain well-marked characteristics in such a way as to be well separated from the other divisions of mankind; these characteristics we may speak of as constituting a second "theme," of which the various peoples of the group are so many variations. To visualize them we need only to recall the appearance of the Chinaman, perhaps the most familiar example of the entire series. Here the hair is coarse and black, and straight because of its round transverse section; the mustache and beard of the Caucasians are seldom found except in later life; the skin is a fleshy yellow in color; the skull is round, indeed, it is one of the roundest that we know; the jaws are not so straight as in the Caucasian, for the angle at the point of the chin is about sixty-eight degrees. The cheek bones project laterally, with greater or less prominence; the nose is very small, tilted up slightly at the end, and is usually hollowed instead of arched. The eyes are small and black in color, set somewhat obliquely, and the upper lid is drawn down over the eye at its inner corner so as to make the obliquity still more marked. The teeth are larger than those of the Caucasian. Finally, the Mongol is below the average of all men as regards height, being usually about five feet four inches tall.

The original Mongolians probably developed the characteristic features we have just noted in a Central Asiatic region, and then almost immediately they divided into two great groups. Each of these evolved along certain lines of its own, one sweeping northward to develop into what are now called the Northern Mongols, the other working its way eastward and southward to produce the peoples of China proper, Indo-China, and many parts of Malaysia. Considering first the peoples of the Northern Mongolian division, we find in the typical Manchurian what is perhaps the nearest among modern people to the original race. Spreading northward and westward from the middle Asiatic plains, this great wave has produced the nomadic tribes of Siberia, like the Chukchi, the Buryats, and the Yukaghir. The present inhabitants of Turkestan connect those forms which have remained near the original home with the races of Mongolian origin that live farther to the westward, like the Turks of Asia. But the Mongolian tide originally swept much farther to the west, although it was driven back later by conquering Caucasian peoples; and it has left behind such remnants as the Finlander and the Laplander, the Bulgar, and the Magyar. It is evident that these western branches of the Mongol stock are not at all pure in their racial characteristics, for they clearly show the effects of a mixture with alien European peoples. To assign them to the Northern Mongol division means only that their dominant characteristics are mainly those of Mongolian nature. We have referred the Russians to the middle Caucasian division even though the Slav or Tartar infusion is very great, but it does not dominate over the Caucasian peculiarities as it does in the case of the peoples we have mentioned. As regards the remaining types we must add to this brief list the Koreans and the Japanese, the former being far purer in Mongolian nature than the latter people, which has apparently been affected by a Malay influence from the south.

Turning now to the southern Mongol, we find that from their cradle in the Tibetan plateau they too have spread widely, and their descendants have also come to differ in certain respects as they have established themselves in other lands. Most of the present people of Tibet belong to this section; the Gurkhas of Hindustan, the people of Burma proper, of Annam, and Cochin China are close relatives of one another and of the more characteristic Mongolians of China proper who make up the vast bulk of the population. From this stock we may also derive the Malays of Sumatra and Java, of Borneo and Celebes, and the Tagals and Bisayans of the Philippine Islands. Even the Hovars and other tribes of Madagascar may be referred to this division, for although in them the skin has become somewhat darker, we may still discern the characteristics which indicate their common ancestry with the Oceanic Mongols.

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The American Indians taken collectively constitute a group that is well set off from the rest of mankind by such characters as taller stature, small, straight, and black eyes, a large nose that is usually bridged or aquiline, a skull of medium roundness, and the yellow copper color of the skin. The common origin with the Mongols is demonstrated by the straight and long, coarse, black hair and by the absence of a beard; the mustache also is almost always absent.

All of us have seen Indians belonging to the tribes of the plains, which serve as excellent examples of this grand division. Many have also visited the homes of the Pueblo Indians, and have learned how uniform is the physical appearance of the tribes living in various parts of the United States. Indeed throughout all of North America the basic characteristics of Indians prove to be strikingly conservative, although in the Eskimo there are some departures which seem to indicate a closer connection of these peoples with the Mongols, probably as the result of some more recent influx from the neighboring and not very distant region of northeastern Siberia. Extending our survey southward through Central America, the Aztecs and Mayas are found to possess many of the same characters, though in some respects they are transitional to the Caribs of the northern edge of South America and to the Indians of South America. Traveling still farther southward, we meet the very tall Patagonian, still an Indian in essential respects, and finally, the Yahgan and Alacaluf of the Fuegian region, the most degenerate members of the race. The last-mentioned people are dull and brutish and most degraded in all respects, and stand at the lowest end of the red Indian series as regards intellectual ability and cultural attainment.

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We now come to the last of the four great divisions of the human species which includes the races usually spoken of as Africans or Ethiopians. But these races are by no means restricted to the continent of Africa, for quite as typical black types are found in far-distant lands such as Australia and many islands of the Pacific Ocean. The races assigned to this division group themselves about two subordinate types,--the tall negro proper and the shorter or dwarf negrito,--and each of these has representatives both in Africa and in the oceanic territory.

The black slaves of America were all descended from typical negros brought from the western part of Africa, and they provide us with adequate illustrations of Ethiopians as a group. In them the stature is above the average of men in general, specifically about five feet ten inches. The short jet-black hair is strikingly different from the head covering of the other great groups of human races; each individual hair is so flat in cross-section that it curls into a very tight close spiral, and this brings about a frizzly appearance of the whole head covering. There is little or no beard, the skin is soft and velvety and of various shades approaching black in color. The skull is long, the cheek bones are small, but the most distinctive characteristics of the head are found in the apelike ridges over the eyes and in the very broad flat nose which projects only slightly and turns up so that the nostrils open forward to a marked degree, while in the jaws there is an astonishing divergence from the Caucasian condition in the great protrusion which causes the angle at the chin to be about sixty degrees.

The warlike Zulus and other peoples of Southern and Central Africa are perhaps the most characteristic races in this division. Their relatives are found to the northward as far as the Sahara desert, along the southern borders of which they have spread out to the eastward and westward. Fusion with other races has taken place along this border so that many of these northern tribes are much lighter than the Zulus in the color of the skin. But many relatives of the taller African negro are found in other parts of the world, namely in Australia, and in New Hebrides and New Caledonia--islands to the north and east of this continent. The Papuan of New Guinea is a typical negro in all true respects, with strongly marked Ethiopian characteristics, though there are some differences which are transitional to the more aberrant natives of Melanesia, which includes many archipelagos like the Fiji, Bismarck, Marshall, and Solomon islands. Undoubtedly the most degenerate member of the tall negro division is the Australian native, the so-called "blackfellow." The bulbous nose and the well-grown beard mark him off from the typical stock, but his obvious relationship to this is indicated by the low brain capacity, the prominent ridges over the eyes, and the heavy projecting jaws.

Taking up the other division of the so-called Ethiopian race, constituting the Negrito section, we may begin with its Oceanic members. The natives of the Andaman Islands, the Kalangs and the Sakais of Java and neighboring regions, and the Aetas of the Philippine Islands agree in a dwarfed stature of four feet or a little over, in their yellowish brown skin color, a round head, and woolly reddish-brown hair. They, too, possess large ridges over the eyes and extremely prominent jaws, and in these latter characteristics particularly we see evidences of their relationship to the negro. But perhaps the most characteristic pygmies are found in Africa. The little Bushmen and Hottentots are low types of the Negrito stock, and they lead us to the lowest men of all, the Akkas of the West Congo region. It is difficult for us to realize how utterly degenerate and apelike these pygmies are. The jaws are disproportionately large as compared with the cranium or brain-case, and project to a degree which brings the skull very close to that of the higher apes; while in mental respects, in the absence of dwellings, and in many other ways they prove to be the lowest of all mankind,--veritable brutes in form and mode of life.

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Without a full series of photographs before us the foregoing sketch of the various races of men cannot make us fully acquainted with all the strange varieties of the human body, but it will suffice to establish two fundamental results. While all men agree in the possession of certain features which set them apart from other members of the primate order, they differ among themselves in such a way as to fall into four well-marked subdivisions branching out from a common starting-point. Furthermore, in each of these primary groups the subordinate types arrange themselves also in the manner of branches arising from a common limb. This is the relation that we have earlier found to be a universal one throughout the animal kingdom, and science believes that it indicates everywhere an evolutionary history--an actual development along different lines of descent of forms which have a common starting-point and ancestry.

The second principle is perhaps even more significant: when we review the many races from the Caucasian to the dwarf Negrito, we traverse a downward path which will bring us inevitably to the higher apes. In our survey of human races, we have passed from the Caucasian, with the largest brain and cranium and with straight jaws well underneath the brain-case, to the pygmy with a relatively small brain, with huge projecting jaws and with prominent ridges over the eyes; one step more along that path would bring us to the gorilla or the chimpanzee. The array of lower primates, from the lemur to the gorilla, gives a series of forms exhibiting a progressive advance in respect to the size of the brain and cranium, and a gradual retreat of the jaws to a position underneath the cranium; and one step further brings us to man. In a word, these two lines join--in fact, they are directly continuous. There is a far smaller difference between the lowest man and the highest ape than we have been accustomed to suppose.

Thus in general terms, it can justly be said that process of evolution which developed the first man from its ape-man progenitor seems to have continued during subsequent ages. Spreading out in diverging lines of evolutionary descent no less clearly than they have in geographical respects, certain races have far surpassed their fellows of a lower order, which, like the brute pygmy, remain nearer the common structural form from which all men have sprung.

THE MENTAL EVOLUTION OF MAN

The problems dealing with the make-up of the human mind and with the evidences of mental evolution bring the student to matters of more vivid human interest. Mental phenomena are so complex and intricate that it is well-nigh impossible to analyze their history without a knowledge of the principles derived from the broad study of evolution as a general doctrine, where human prejudice is not so large a factor and where his perspective is less affected by the proximity of the observer to his facts. For these and other reasons the foregoing treatment of human evolution has been confined to the purely structural characteristics of man as a species and of human races as so many varieties of this type. When the broad comparative methods of biological science are employed for the elucidation of human anatomical facts, the result in this special case, like that established through the study of the characteristics of living things in general, is the proof that evolution gives the most rational and natural explanation of the observed data. This being true, the naturalist who turns from purely structural matters to human intellect and its history, finds well-tried methods of inquiry already available, and he approaches his further studies with a conviction that evolution, having proved to be universal so far, in all probability will be found equally true in the case of psychological phenomena. This expectation is indeed realized, and the scope of the doctrine is extended over a new field, when the facts of human psychology are treated as materials for impersonal comparative study; and this result is not only useful and valuable in and by itself, but it also provides in the principles of mental evolution the transition to the field of social relations and ethical ideas and ideals which are apparently the unique possessions of men as individuals and as associated groups.

The field of comparative psychology might seem at first sight to be a foreign territory to the average well-informed layman in science, but the contrary is really the case. Every one has thought at one time or another about his own mental make-up, and about the minds of others. No one can watch a child at play with his toys or at work with his schoolbooks without being struck by many evidences of marked differences between the immature and the experienced types of mind. Every one knows also that the mental "scheme of things" is by no means the same for all nations or races of mankind existing to-day, while furthermore the fact is entirely familiar that the intellectual heritage of a present race has changed in the course of previous ages. Therefore in this field as before we need only to amplify our knowledge of such representative psychological facts as these by drawing upon the full stores of the special investigator, in order to learn that human thought, like the human frame, has undergone a natural history of transformation to become what it is and what it was not.

Many who would be ready to accept the evolution of physical characteristics find it impossible to treat the history of human mentality as a subject for dispassionate consideration, because above all else the intellectual powers of mankind seem to be truly distinctive. It is only after constant use of the methods of science that we can bring ourselves to see how closely we resemble lower forms in physical make-up; still greater reluctance must be overcome before we can view our mental processes as counterparts of those of inferior animals, so essential to our very humanity do they seem. But our duty to undertake the task is plain, and its discharge will be greatly facilitated by a clear realization that mental evolution is but a part of human transformation in times past, as the latter is only a small fraction of the universal process of organic evolution in general. While our own nature and inquisitiveness give us so intense an interest in the teachings of science that relate to the constitution and history of human faculty, wherefore these matters gain an undue prominence in perspective, it must never be forgotten that these teachings do not stand by themselves, for they are built upon the sure foundations already laid in physical evolution; and these foundations cannot be disturbed by our failure to use them as a basis when we construct our own conceptions of human intellect and its history.

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Before passing to the systematic review of the facts and principles of comparative psychology which demonstrate evolution, there are certain general aspects of the subject to be considered so as to clear the ground, as it were, for further progress. When the several organic systems of the human body were compared with those of the apes and of lower animals, their evolution was proved as far as the purely physical and material characteristics were concerned. But we know that there is no part of any one of these systems which has not its own particular function, even though this may be a relatively passive one; while furthermore, science does not know of any physiological activity without some organ or tissue or cell as its material basis. Therefore the evolution of an organic system in material respects involves its functional or dynamic evolution as an inseparable correlate; the two proceed in unity, and they cannot be regarded as entirely distinct without violating common-sense.

The fin of a fish is used as an organ of locomotion in water; from some such organ have evolved the walking limbs of amphibia and reptiles, constructed for progression upon land. Among the mammalia the fore limbs have become structurally adapted so as to be such diverse organs of locomotion as the stilt-like leg of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the whale's paddle, and the bat's wing, while among the birds the wing may change into a flipper like that of the penguin, or become reduced to a vestige as in Apteryx. We may focus our attention upon the material likenesses and differences in such a series of locomotory organs, but an inevitable accompaniment of their physical changes in the transformation of species has been an evolution in the functional matter of locomotion. The most complex and differentiated tracts of even the highest animals have evolved from a simple sac like that of a polyp or jellyfish, as we know from the independent testimony of comparative anatomy and embryology; in this case also the evolution of alimentary functions is no less inseparable from the transformations in structural respects. And again, we cannot understand the historical development of vision without taking into account the eyes of various types belonging to lower and higher animals.

So it is with the nervous systems of man and other animals, and with their functions. The nervous system of the human organism comprises identical organs with the same arrangements that are found in other primates and in lower vertebrates as well; the differences in structure are differences in the degree of the complexity of certain parts, notably of the cerebrum. Therefore the evolution of human mentality, which depends upon a human type of brain as a physical basis, is already demonstrated with the proof that the human brain and nervous system have evolved. It is true that an invariable and necessary connection between mind and matter is implied in the foregoing statement, and this is something which demands further consideration at a later point. But just how the human mind is produced by or depends upon the brain, is of far less importance for us at this time than the obvious fact that mental performance requires active nervous tissues. So far investigation has been unable to discover a valid reason for a belief in the existence of mental phenomena, as such, apart from some kind of material basis. And while we may prefer to restrict the use of the word mind to the series of nervous processes going on in the human organ of thought, in so far as these processes are carried on by the peculiar tissues of the nervous system they cannot be finally distinguished from the functional products or accompaniments of the same kind of active tissues and organs in lower creatures. Thus the subject of mental evolution becomes much clarified at the outset by understanding that nervous processes and nervous systems evolve together.