The Position of the Negro and Pygmy Amongst Human Races 1

Abstract

A FULL analysis of the structural features of the negro shows that in many points he is more highly specialised than the less pigmented races of mankind, while in other characters he has remained more primitive. Although on the Continent there is a decided tendency amongst anthropologists to trace the descent of the human race through a non-anthropoid stock, yet those most familiar with the anatomy of the Primates still agree with Huxley's doctrine that the community of structure shared by man and anthropoids pointed to a direct community of origin. The deeply pigmented skin was a primitive feature; the gorilla was the negro amongst anthropoids; the three species of chimpanzee varied as the period of life at which pigmentation appeared. All available evidence points to a pigmentation of the early human stock, but speculations are handicapped by an ignorance of the functional value of pigment. It appears to protect the deeper tissues from certain injurious rays which are intermediate to heat and light. The skulls of Palæolithic Europeans show so many resemblances to those of Australian aborigines that a legitimate suspicion may be raised as to whether or not they did not also share some degree of the aboriginal pigmentation. The Palæolithic Gibraltar woman, whose skull is preserved in the Museum of the College of Surgeons, shows no community with the negro in the characters of her nose. The nose of that skull is altogether unlike that of any human race now known; it shares some features with the gorilla, while in others it appears to foreshadow the prominent nose of the modern European.