Chapter VI: The Classification and Distribution of Man

[Sidenote: =Race Description and Classification.=]

After the age of race discrimination comes the age of race description and classification; and, as we should expect, this second stage is not reached until the close of the Dark Ages and the dawn of the Renaissance, when thought had been emancipated from the bondage of scholastic authority and stimulated by the new impulse which infected all forms of intellectual activity.

[Sidenote: =Bernier.=]

The first attempt at the classification of mankind was that of a French traveller, F. Bernier (1625-1688), whose scheme appeared in an anonymous article in the _Journal des Scavans_, 1684, entitled “A new division of the earth, according to the different species or races of men who inhabit it,” etc.[65]

Footnote 65:

See T. Bendyshe, _Mem. Anth. Soc._, I., 1865, p. 360.

He distinguished “four or five species or races”: (1) The inhabitants of Europe, North Africa (including the Egyptians), and a great part of Asia (including the Indians). He notes that the Egyptians and Indians are black or copper-coloured, but considered the complexion to be due to climate. (2) The Africans, with thick lips, flat noses, and black skins, due not to climate but nature, with scanty beard and woolly hair. (3) The Asiatics not included in the first group, white, with “broad shoulders, a flat face, a small squab nose, little pig’s-eyes long and deep-set, and three hairs of beard.” (4) The Lapps, “little stunted creatures, with thick legs, large shoulders, short neck, and a face elongated immensely; very ugly, and partaking much of the bear; they are wretched animals.” He hesitates whether to put the Americans or the inhabitants of South Africa, who are unlike the Negroes, into a fifth class. The latter are probably the Hottentots or Bushmen, in spite of his statement that “some of the Dutch say they speak _turkey_.”

[Sidenote: =Linnæus.=]

The next classification was that of Linnæus. His service to Anthropology by fixing the place of _Homo sapiens_ in the animal kingdom has already been noted (p. 19). In the first edition of the _Systema naturæ_ (1735),[66] Man is classed as a quadruped, and together with the Ape and Sloth constitutes the order _Anthropomorpha_. Four varieties of Homo are recorded: _H. Europæus albesc._, _Americanus rubesc._, _Asiaticus fuscus_, _Africanus nigr._ In the second edition (1740) _Homo_ is divided into the same four varieties, which are distinguished by the colour of their skin, located severally, one in each of the then known continents—_Europæus albus_, _Americanus rubescens_, _Asiaticus fuscus_, and _Africanus niger_.

Footnote 66:

These accounts have been taken from the original editions; but the
reader is referred to the verbatim copy given by Bendyshe in the _Mem.
Anth. Soc._, I., 1865, p. 421.

In the tenth edition (1758) more divisions are recognised: the genus Homo consists of two species—Sapiens, 1 H. diurnus. _Ferus_, including hairy men without speech who run about on all-fours, of which six records are given; _Americanus_ (α) and _Europæus_ (β), _Asiaticus_ (γ), _Afer_ (δ), _Monstrosus_ (ε), which include (_a_) _Alpini_ (small), _Patagonici_ (large); (_b_) _Monorchides_—Hottentotti, _Junceæ_—Europæ; (_c_) _Macrocephali_—Chinenses, _Plagiocephali_—Canadenses. A second species being Troglodytes 2. H. nocturnus (Homo sylvestris Orang-Outang). This classification was retained in the twelfth edition (1772). In these two latter editions the genera Simia, Lemur, and Vespertilio were classed with Homo in the order Primates.

In _Fauna Suecica_, published in 1746, Linnæus made a more detailed classification of the population of Sweden, recognising three main types, distinguished by their stature, hair, and eye colour. These were the Goths, tall, hair white and straight, iris of the eyes ashen blue; Finns, with muscular body, hair long and yellow, and dark iris; and Lapps, with small, thin body, straight black hair, and iris blackish.

[Sidenote: =Blumenbach.=]

Blumenbach (1775) based his classification not only on skin colour, but also on skull form. To the four groups of Linnæus he added a fifth, dividing the one species into five varieties—the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Ethiopian, the American, and the Malayan. The last group included the then little known Australian, Papuan, and pure Malay types.

Blumenbach was the originator of the unfortunate title “Caucasian”[67] to represent the typical European and the inhabitants of Eastern Asia and Northern Africa. He chose the name partly because the Caucasus produces the most beautiful race of men, and also on account of the fine Georgian skull in his collection.[68] It was unfortunate, since, as Ripley points out (1900, p. 436), nowhere else in Europe is found such a heterogeneity of physical types—the only one conspicuously missing being the fair-haired, blue-eyed European—and such a diversity of language, sixty-eight dialects being here jumbled together, and only one possessed of (possibly) Aryan origin. The name “Caucasian” has, therefore, not led to clarification of ideas in the complex problem of European ethnology. Keane (1899), however, supports its use, saying: “Those who object to Caucasic are apt to forget the vast field that has to be embraced by this single collective term.” “Caucasic, when properly understood ... cannot be dispensed with until a more suitable general term be discovered” (p. 447).

Footnote 67:

_Anthrop. Treatises of Blumenbach_, translated by T. Bendyshe, 1865,
pp. 265, 269.

Footnote 68:

Waitz, 1863, p. 233, _f.n._, who adds: “without any intention on his
part to express thereby an opinion as to the cradle of these peoples.”
Keane, 1896, p. 226.

[Sidenote: =Other Classifications.=]

The next important classification was that of Cuvier, who derived mankind from the three sons of Noah, Japhet being regarded as the parent of the Caucasic, Shem of the Mongolian, and Ham of the African races. The divergence of type between the three brothers is not explained, except that the blackness of the descendants of Ham was attributed to the curse imposed by Noah on Canaan, the son of Ham (Gen. ix. 25).

Other classifications followed, the divisions varying from two species, white and black, Virey (1801), to the fifteen or sixteen of the Polygenists, Desmoulins (1825-6), and Bory de Saint-Vincent (1827), and the thirty-four of Haeckel (1873).

In America L. Agassiz, an uncompromising opponent of evolution, asserted, in 1845,[69] the unity of mankind as a species; but in 1850[70] we find him distribute eleven or twelve, in 1853 (in Nott and Gliddon) eight, human species in as many geological and botanical provinces. But this theory had been previously promulgated by Desmoulins (1826) and by Swainson (in 1835).[71] As Waitz rightly says: “They are completely in error who, adopting the views of Agassiz, assume as many original types of mankind as there are typically different peoples on the globe” (1864, p. 203).

Footnote 69:

Smith, 1850, _Unity of the Human Races_, p. 349.

Footnote 70:

_Christian Examiner_, Boston, July, 1850.

Footnote 71:

_Treatise on the Geography and Classification of Animals._

It was not until the nineteenth century that a really scientific method of classification was adopted. In the majority of these schemes the character of the hair was chosen as the primary race-characteristic.

[Sidenote: =Pruner Bey.=]

The hair had already been studied by Heusinger (1822), by Blower, of Philadelphia, and by Kölliker, the histologist, before the publication of Pruner Bey’s classic memoir, read before the Paris Anthropological Society in 1863, and published in the same year. Dr. Pruner Bey claimed that the quality of the hair constituted one of the best means of race-identification, and even that “a single hair presenting the average form characteristic of the race might serve to define it.”

[Sidenote: =Bory de St. Vincent.=]

Long before this, in 1827, Bory de Saint-Vincent had chosen the hair as the chief test in race-classification, and divided mankind into the _Leiotrichi_, or straight-haired, and the _Ulotrichi_, or woolly-haired—a nomenclature afterwards adopted by Professor Huxley (1870).[72] But Bory de Saint-Vincent’s classification was robbed of permanent scientific value by his inclusion as distinct races of such vague abstractions as “Scythians,” “Neptunians,” and “Columbians.”

Footnote 72:

_Journ. Eth. Soc._ (N.S.), II.

[Sidenote: =Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.=]

Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1858) distributed his eleven principal races primarily according to the character of the hair, sub-divided according to the flatness or projection of the nose, skin-colour, the shape of the skull, and the character of the face.[73]

Footnote 73:

_Cf._ Topinard, 1885, p. 264.

[Sidenote: =Haeckel.=]

Professor Ernst Haeckel adopted the following classification from Friedrich Müller:—I. Ulotriches (woolly-haired). _A._ Lophokomoi (tufted): Papuans, Hottentots; _B._ Eriokomoi (fleecy): Kafirs, Negroes. II. Lissotriches (lank-haired). _A._ Euthykomoi (straight): Malay, Mongol, American, Arctic, Australian; _B._ Euplokomoi (curly): Dravidas, Nubians, Mediterranean.

[Sidenote: =Broca, Topinard.=]

Broca and Topinard (1885) have three main classes—Straight, Wavy or Curly, and Woolly—sub-divided first by head-form, then by skin colour.

Many of the earlier classifications were based on insufficient or erroneous evidence, and the general tendency has been to increase the divisions as the physical characters of the populations of the earth became gradually better known. Thus the twelve races of Haeckel in 1873 had advanced to thirty-four in 1879; the sixteen of Topinard in 1878 had grown to nineteen in 1885; and the thirteen races and thirty sub-divisions of Deniker in 1889 were increased in 1900 to seventeen groups, containing twenty-nine races.

[Sidenote: =Flower.=]

Sir William Flower (1831-1899), a distinguished zoologist and physical anthropologist, in 1885[74] adopted the old three-fold classification:—I. Ethiopian, Negroid, or Melanian. _A._ African or typical Negroes; _B._ Hottentots and Bushmen; _C._ Oceanic Negroes or Melanesians; _D._ Negritos. II. Mongolian or Xanthous. _A._ Eskimo; _B._ Typical Mongolian (including the Mongolo-Altaic and the Southern Mongolian groups); _C._ Malay; _D._ Brown Polynesians or Malayo-Polynesians; _E._ American Indians (excluding the Eskimo). III. Caucasian or “White.” _A._ Xanthochroi; _B._ Melanochroi. As Flower himself says, this scheme of classification, “in its broad outlines, scarcely differs from that proposed by Cuvier nearly sixty years ago.... Still it can only be looked upon as an approximation.” Although he places skin-colour first, he tacitly admits its insufficiency as a main diagnostic character, and his three groups coincide with a classification based on the nature of the hair.

Footnote 74:

_Journ. Anth. Inst._, xiv., pp. 378-393.

[Sidenote: =Deniker.=]

Among the later classifications a new tendency may be noted. The earlier schemes aimed at producing a series of water-tight compartments into which the races of the globe could be isolated. Further research, however, encouraged the growing conviction that a pure race is practically non-existent, and a different method had to be followed. This is described by Deniker (p. 284): “Taking into account all the new data of anthropological science, I endeavoured, as do the botanists, to form natural groups by combining the different characters (colour of the skin, nature of the hair, stature, form of the head, of the nose, etc.).” This results in the formation of seventeen ethnic groups, containing twenty-nine races, and these are ingeniously arranged (p. 289) in a two-dimensional grouping, to show their affinities, which is a modification of his suggestive earlier scheme.[75]

Footnote 75:

_Bull. Soc. d’Anth._, 1889.

The “pigeon-hole” system of classification had, however, been discredited in the fourth edition of Prichard’s _Natural History of Man_, edited and enlarged by Edwin Norris (1855), since on p. 644 it is stated:—

The different races of men are not distinguished from each other
by strongly-marked, uniform, and permanent distinctions, as are
the several species belonging to any given tribe of animals. All
the diversities which exist are variable, and pass into each
other by insensible gradations; and there is, moreover, scarcely
an instance in which the actual transition cannot be proved to
have taken place.

This is practically the same result at which Waitz arrived in 1863.

[Sidenote: =Keane.=]

Professor Keane (1895, p. 228), though returning to the four-fold grouping proposed by Linnæus, uses these divisions to represent, not actual varieties or races, but “ideal types,” differentiated by somatic characters, and also by language, religion, and temperament. “Although man had but one origin, one pliocene precursor [Pithecanthropus], men had several separate places of origin, several pleistocene precursors. In our family tree four such precursors are assumed.” From each “ideal type” he traces the development of the present varieties arranged in the scheme of the family tree.

[Sidenote: =Man’s Place in Nature.=]

Since the time of Linnæus it has been recognised that a place for man must be found in classification of animals; and he was naturally put at the top of the tree. The main question, however, was his exact relationship to the higher apes. Linnæus (p. 90) included man and apes in the Primates, one of his seven orders of Mammalia. Cuvier divided the Mammifères into nine groups, man being included in the Bimanes, and apes and monkeys in the Quadrumanes. The most noteworthy attempt to put man in his place was made when Huxley published his _Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature_ (1863), based on lectures given in 1860, in which he proved that man was more nearly allied to the higher apes than the latter were to the lower monkeys. Concerning this book, he wrote to Mr. E. Clodd, thirty years later, “that a very shrewd friend of mine [Sir William Lawrence[76]] implored me not to publish, as it would certainly ruin all my prospects.”[77] Doubtless one reason why Huxley wrote the book was to impress on the public that the evolution of man as an animal is perfectly comparable with that of other mammals, since Darwin only hinted in his _Origin of Species_ (1859) that “Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history” (p. 488). His silence, he confesses in the Introduction to the _Descent of Man_ (1871), was due to desire “not to add to the prejudices against his views.” Professor Haeckel fully discussed his views concerning the genealogy of man in 1868,[78] and several times subsequently.

Footnote 76:

In the Preface to the 1894 edition Huxley writes: “It was not so very
long since my kind friend Sir William Lawrence, one of the ablest men
whom I have known, had been well-nigh ostracised for his book _On
Man_, which now might be read in a Sunday-school without surprising
anybody.”

Footnote 77:

_Folk-Lore_, VI., 1895, p. 67, _f.n._

Footnote 78:

_Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte._

[Sidenote: =Vogt.=]

Carl Vogt (1864), who, like so many other zoologists then and since, was led to study anthropology, pointed out that “the ape-type does not culminate in one, but in three, anthropoid apes.” On examining the species of mankind and their history, he arrived at similar results (see also p. 66).

In the second volume of his _Generelle Morphologie_ (1866) Haeckel applied the theory of evolution to the whole organic kingdom, including man, and drew up the first “genealogical trees.” This attempt was improved and treated in a more popular form in his _Natural History of Creation_ (1868), and again in the _Evolution of Man_ (1879), an enlarged edition of which was published in 1905.

There is now a practical agreement among zoologists and anthropologists that man is included in one of several families that constitute the sub-order Anthropoidea of the order Primates.

As has previously been mentioned, the discovery of _Pithecanthropus_ raised great discussions, some of which were concerning the exact position of man with regard to the various higher apes. It is now generally admitted that _Pithecanthropus_ may be regarded as a member of a separate family of the Anthropoidea, the Pithecanthropidæ, between the Simiidæ and the Hominidæ. The re-examination of the previously known skulls of palæolithic age, and the discovery of fresh specimens in recent years, have re-opened the question whether the genus Homo contains more than the one species, _H. Sapiens_. Duckworth[79] (1904) has given a careful summary of the morphological characters of the Neanderthal, Spy, and Krapina remains, and states as his opinion that “the individuals thus characterised are associated in a group specifically distinct from the modern Hominidæ, to which the name Homo primigenius or Homo neanderthalensis has been applied.”[80]

Footnote 79:

_L.c._ pp. 520-542; _cf._ also _Man_, 1902, p. 186.

Footnote 80:

See also W. J. Sollas, _Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc._, B. 199, 1907, p. 281.

Those authors who describe and classify the various races and peoples of mankind at the same time indicate their geographical distribution, and in some instances notify some of the shiftings and migrations that have taken place. Many maps have been prepared to illustrate the human distribution in whole or in part, and these are to be found in various memoirs and books. An atlas such as Dr. G. Gerland’s _Atlas der Völkerkunde_ (1892) summarises a vast amount of information.

Our knowledge is very imperfect concerning the movements of mankind. Historical records give some information on the subject. A certain amount has been gleaned from traditional sources, but doubtless much more remains to be garnered. The spoils of the archæologist afford important data, but there are immense tracts of country which are yet totally unexplored, or very imperfectly investigated. All shiftings of peoples are mainly controlled by climatic and geographical conditions; but these are continually varying, and it is the business of the geographer and geologist to indicate what these have probably been at various periods since the appearance of man on this earth. It is not too much to say that, when maps have been prepared which indicate these various changes, great light will be thrown upon the early history of mankind.

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