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Title: Man and His Migrations
Author: Latham, R. G. (Robert Gordon), 1812-1888
Language: English
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Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Text enclosed by equal signs is in small capital letters
(=Small capitals=).
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(example: _Coincidences may have an +organic+ connexion._).
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MAN AND HIS MIGRATIONS.
by
R. G. LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S.,
Corresponding Member to the Ethnological Society, New York, etc. etc.
[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
London:
John Van Voorst, Paternoster Row.
MDCCCLI.
Printed by Richard Taylor,
Red Lion Court, Fleet Street.
PREFACE.
The following pages represent a Course of Six Lectures delivered at
the Mechanics’ Institution, Liverpool, in the month of March of the
present year; the matter being now laid before the public in a somewhat
fuller and more systematic form than was compatible with the original
delivery.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Page
The Natural or Physical history of Man--the Civil--their
difference--divisions of the Natural or Physical
history--Anthropology--Ethnology--how far pursued by the
ancients--Herodotus--how far by the moderns--Buffon--
Linnæus--Daubenton--Camper--Blumenbach--the term
_Caucasian_--Cuvier--Philology as an instrument of
ethnological investigation--Pigafetta--Hervas--Leibnitz--
Reland--Adelung--Klaproth--the union of Philology and of
Anatomy--Prichard--its Palæontological character--
influence of Lyell’s Geology--of Whewell’s History of the
Inductive Sciences 1–36
CHAPTER II.
Ethnology--its objects--the chief problems connected with
it--prospective questions--transfer of populations--
Extract from Knox--correlation of certain parts of the
body to certain external influences--parts less subject to
such influences--retrospective questions--the unity or
non-unity of our species--opinions--plurality of species--
multiplicity of protoplasts--doctrine of development--
Dokkos--Extract--antiquity of our species--its geographical
origin--the term _race_ 37–66
CHAPTER III.
Methods--the science one of observation and deduction rather
than experiment--classification--on mineralogical, on
zoological principles--the first for Anthropology, the
second for Ethnology--value of Language as a test--
instances of its loss--of its retention--when it proves
original relation, when intercourse--the grammatical and
glossarial tests--classifications must be _real_--the
distribution of Man--size of area--ethnological contrasts
in close geographical contact--discontinuity and isolation
of areas--oceanic migrations 67–100
CHAPTER IV.
Details of distribution--their conventional character--
convergence from the circumference to the centre--
Fuegians; Patagonian, Pampa, and Chaco Indians--
Peruvians--D’Orbigny’s characters--other South American
Indians--of the Missions--of Guiana--of Venezuela--
Guarani--Caribs--Central America--Mexican civilization
no isolated phænomenon--North American Indians--Eskimo--
apparent objections to their connection with the Americans
and Asiatics--Tasmanians--Australians--Papuás--
Polynesians--Micronesians--Malagasi--Hottentots--Kaffres--
Negroes--Berbers--Abyssinians--Copts--the Semitic family--
Primary and secondary migrations 101–157
CHAPTER V.
The Ugrians of Lapland, Finland, Permia, the Ural Mountains
and the Volga--area of the light-haired families--
Turanians--the Kelts of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Gaul--the
Goths--the Sarmatians--the Greeks and Latins--difficulties
of European ethnology--displacement--intermixture--
identification of ancient families--extinction of ancient
families--the Etruscans--the Pelasgi--isolation--the
Basks--the Albanians--classifications and hypotheses--the
term Indo-European--the Finnic hypothesis 158–183
CHAPTER VI.
The Monosyllabic Area--the Tʻhay--the Môn and Khô--Tables--
the Bʻhot--the Chinese--Burmese--Persia--India--Tamulian
family--the Brahúi--the Dioscurians--the Georgians--Irôn--
Mizjeji--Lesgians--Armenians--Asia Minor--Lycians--
Carians--Paropamisans--Conclusion 184–250
MAN AND HIS MIGRATIONS.
CHAPTER I.
The Natural or Physical history of Man--the Civil--their difference--
divisions of the Natural or Physical history--Anthropology--
Ethnology--how far pursued by the ancients--Herodotus--how far
by the moderns--Buffon--Linnæus--Daubenton--Camper--Blumenbach--the
term _Caucasian_--Cuvier--Philology as an instrument of ethnological
investigation--Pigafetta--Hervas--Leibnitz--Reland--Adelung--
Klaproth--the union of Philology and of Anatomy--Prichard--its
Palæontological character--influence of Lyell’s Geology--of
Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences.
Let us contrast the _Civil_ with the _Natural_ History of Man.
The influence of individual heroes, the effect of material events, the
operations of ideas, the action and reaction of the different elements
of society upon each other, come within the domain of the former. An
empire is consolidated, a contest concluded, a principle asserted,
and the civil historian records them. He does more. If he be true
to his calling, he investigates the springs of action in individual
actors, measures the calibre of their moral and intellectual power,
and pronounces a verdict of praise or blame upon the motives which
determine their manifestation. This makes him a great moral teacher,
and gives a value to his department of knowledge, which places it on a
high and peculiar level.
Dealing with actions and motives, he deals nearly exclusively with
those of individuals; so much so, that even where he records the
movements of mighty masses of men, he generally finds that there is one
presiding will which regulates and directs them; and even when this is
not the case, when the movement of combined multitudes is spontaneous,
the spring of action is generally of a moral nature--a dogma if
religious, a theory if political.
Such a history as this could not be written of the brute animals,
neither could it be written _for_ them. No animal but Man supplies
either its elements or its objects; nor yet the record which transmits
the memory of past actions, even when they are of the most material
kind. The civil historian, therefore, of our species, or, to speak with
a conciseness which common parlance allows, the _historian_, living
and breathing in the peculiar atmosphere of humanity, and exhibiting
man in the wide circle of moral and intellectual action,--a circle in
which none but he moves,--takes up his study where that of the lower
animals ends. Whatever is common to them and man, belongs to the
naturalist. Let each take his view of the Arab or the Jew. The one
investigates the influence of the Bible and the Koran; whilst the other
may ask how far the Moorish blood has mixed with that of the Spaniard,
or remark the permanence of the Israelite features under climates so
different as Poland, Morocco, or Hindostan. The one will think of
instincts, the other of ideas.
In what part of the world did this originate? How was it diffused over
the surface of the earth? At what period in the world’s history was it
evolved? Where does it thrive best? Where does it cease to thrive at
all? What forms does it take if it degenerate? What conditions of soil
or climate determine such degenerations? What favour its improvement?
Can it exist in Nova Zembla? In Africa? In either region or both?
Do the long nights of the Pole blanch, does the bright glare of the
Equator deepen its colour? &c. Instead of multiplying questions of
this kind, I will ask to what they apply. They apply to every being
that multiplies its kind upon earth; to every animal of the land
or sea; to every vegetable as well; to every organized being. They
apply to the ape, the horse, the dog, the fowl, the fish, the insect,
the fruit, the flower. They apply to these--and they apply to man as
well. They--and the like of them--Legion by name--common alike to the
lords and the lower orders of the creation, constitute the _natural_
history of genus _Homo_; and I use the language of the Zoologist for
the sake of exhibiting in a prominent and palpable manner, the truly
zoological character of this department of science. _Man as an animal_
is the motto here; whilst _Man as a moral being_ is the motto with the
Historian.
It is not very important whether we call this _Natural_ or _Physical_
History. There are good authorities on both sides. It is only important
to see how it differs from the _History of the Historian_.
Man’s Civil history has its divisions. Man’s Natural history has them
also.
The first of these takes its name from the Greek words for _man_
(_anthrôpos_) and _doctrine_ (_logos_), and is known as _Anthropology_.
When the first pair of human beings stood alone on the face of the
earth, there were then the materials for Anthropology; and so there
would be if our species were reduced to the last man. There would be an
Anthropology if the world had no inhabitants but Englishmen, or none
but Chinese; none but red men of America, or none but blacks of Africa.
Were the uniformity of feature, the identity of colour, the equality
of stature, the rivalry of mental capacity ever so great, there would
still be an Anthropology. This is because Anthropology deals _with Man
as compared with the lower animals_.
We consider the structure of the human extremities, and enlarge upon
the flatness of the foot, and the flexibility of the hand. The one
is subservient to the erect posture, the other to the innumerable
manipulations which human industry demands. We compare them with
the fins of fishes, the wings of birds; in doing which, we take the
most extreme contrasts we can find. But we may also take nearer
approximations, _e.g._ the hands of the higher apes. Here we find
likeness as well as difference; difference as well as likeness. We
investigate both; and record the result either in detail or by some
general expression. Perhaps we pronounce that the one side gives the
conditions of an arboreal life, the other those of a social state; the
ape being the denizen of the woods, the man of towns and cities; the
one a climber, the other a walker.
Or we compare the skull of the man and the chimpanzee; noticing that
the ridges and prominences of the external surface, which in the
former are merely rudimentary, become strongly-marked crests in the
latter. We then remember that the one is the framework for the muscles
of the face; the other is the case for the brain.
All that is done in this way is Anthropology.
Every class of organized beings has, _mutatis mutandis_, its
anthropological aspect; so that the dog may be contemplated in respect
to the fox which equals, the ape which excels, or the kangaroo
which falls short of it in its approach to a certain standard of
organization; in other words, as _species_ and _genera_ have their
relative places in the ladder of creation, the investigation of such
relations is co-extensive with the existence of the classes and groups
on which it rests.
Anthropology deals too much with such matters as these to be popular.
Unless the subject be handled with excessive delicacy, there is
something revolting to fastidious minds in the cool contemplation of
the _differentiæ_ of the Zoologist
“Who shows a Newton as he shows an ape.”
Yet, provided there be no morbid gloating over the more dishonourable
points of similarity, no pleasurable excitement derived from the
lowering view of our nature, the study is _not_ ignoble. At any
rate, it is part of human knowledge, and a step in the direction of
self-knowledge.
Besides this, the relationship is merely one of degree. We may not
be either improperly or unpleasantly like the orang-utan or the
chimpanzee. We may even be angelomorphic. Nevertheless, we are more
like orang-utans and chimpanzees than aught else upon earth.
The other branch of Man’s Natural History is called Ethnology--from the
Greek word signifying _nation_ (_ethnos_).
It by no means follows, that because there is an _anthropology_ there
is an _ethnology_ also. There is no ethnology where there is but a
single pair to the species. There would be no ethnology if all the
world were negroes; none if every man was a Chinese; none if there were
naught but Englishmen. The absolute catholicity of a religion without
sects, the centralized uniformity of a universal empire, are types and
parallels to an anthropology without an ethnology. This is because
Ethnology deals with _Man in respect to his Varieties_.
There would be an anthropology if but one single variety of mankind
existed.
But if one variety of mankind--and no more--existed, there would be no
ethnology. It would be as impossible a science as a polity on Robinson
Crusoe’s island.
But let there be but a single sample of different though similar bodily
conformation. Let there be a white as well as a black, or a black as
well as a white man. In that case ethnology begins; even as a polity
began on Crusoe’s island when his servant Friday became a denizen of it.
The other classes of organized beings, although, _mutatis mutandis_,
they have, of necessity, their equivalent to an anthropology, may
or may not have an ethnology. The dog has one; the chimpanzee has
either none or an insignificant one; differences equivalent to those
which separate the cur from the greyhound, or the shepherd’s-dog
from the pointer, being wanting. Again, a treatise which showed how
the chimpanzee differed from the orang-utan on one side, and man on
the other, would be longer than a dissertation upon the extent to
which chimpanzees differed from each other; yet a dissertation on the
_varieties of dogs_ would be bulkier than one on their relations to
the fox. This shows how the proportions of the two studies may vary
with the species under consideration. In the _Natural History of Man_,
the ethnological aspect is the most varied. It is also the one which
has been most studied. With the horse, or the sheep, with many of the
domestic fowls, with the more widely-cultivated plants, the study of
the _variety_ outweighs that of the _species_. With the dog it does
so in an unparalleled degree. But what if the dog-tribe had the use
of language? what if the language differed with each variety? In
such a case the study of canine ethnology would be doubly and trebly
complex, though at the same time the _data_ for conducting it would be
both increased and improved. A distant--a _very_ distant approach--to
this exists. The wild dog _howls_; the companion of man alone _barks_.
This is a difference of language as far as it goes. This is written to
foreshadow the importance of the study of language as an instrument of
ethnological investigation.
Again--what if the dog-tribe were possessed of the practice of certain
human arts, and if these varied with the variety? If they buried
their dead? and their tombs varied with the variety? if those of one
generation lasted for years, decenniums, or centuries? The ethnology
would again increase in complexity, and the _data_ would again be
increased. The graves of an earlier generation would serve as unwritten
records of the habits of sepulture with an earlier one. This is
written to foreshadow the importance of the study of antiquities as an
instrument of the same kind with philology.
With dogs there are impossibilities. True; but they serve as
illustrations. With man they are realities--realities which make
philology and archæology important adjuncts to his natural history.
We have now ascertained the character of the study in question; and
seen how far it differs from _history_ properly so-called--at least
we have done so sufficiently for the purpose of definition. A little
reflection will show its relations to certain branches of science,
_e.g._ to physiology, and mental science--a relation upon which there
is no time to enlarge. It is enough to understand the existence of such
a separate substantive branch of knowledge and inquiry.
What is the amount of this knowledge? This is proportionate to that of
the inquiry. What has this been? Less than we are prepared to expect.
“The proper study of mankind is Man.”
This is a stock quotation on the subject.
“Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.”
This is another. Like many apophthegms of the same kind, they have
more currency than influence, and are better known than acted on. We
know the zoology of nine species out of ten amongst the lower animals
better than that of our own genus. So little have the importance and
the investigation of a really interesting subject been commensurate.
It is a _new_ science--so new as scarcely to have reached the period of
adolescence. Let us ask what the ancients cared about it.
We do not look for systematic science in the Scriptures; and the
ethnology which we derive from them consists wholly of incidental
notices. These, though numerous, are brief. They apply, too, to but
a small portion of the earth’s surface. That, however, is one of
pre-eminent interest--the cradle of civilization, and the point where
the Asiatic, African, and European families come in contact.
Greece helps us more: yet Greece but little. The genius of Thucydides
gave so definite a character to history, brought it so exclusively in
contact with moral and political, in opposition to physical, phænomena,
and so thoroughly made it the study of the statesman rather than of the
zoologist, that what may be called the _naturalist_ element, excluded
at the present time, was excluded more than 2000 years ago. How widely
different this from the slightly earlier Herodotean record--the form
and spirit of which lived and died with the great father of historic
narrative! The history of the Peloponnesian war set this kind of
writing aside for ever, and the loss of what the earlier prototype
might have been developed into, is a great item in the price which
posterity has to pay for the κτῆμα εἰς ἀεὶ of the Athenian. As it
is, however, the nine books of Herodotus form the most ethnological
work not written by a professed and conscious ethnologist. Herodotus
was an unconscious and instinctive one; and his ethnology was of a
sufficiently comprehensive character. Manners he noted, and physical
appearance he noted, and language he noted; his Scythian, Median,
Ægyptian, and other glosses having the same value in the eyes of the
closet philologist of the present century, as the rarer fossils of
some old formation have with the geologist, or venerable coins with
the numismatic archæologist. Let his name be always mentioned with
reverence; for the disrespectful manner in which his testimony has been
treated by some recent writers impugns nothing but the scholarship of
the cavillers.
I do not say that there are no ethnological facts--it may be that
we occasionally find ethnological theories--in the Greek writers
subsequent; I only state that they by no means answer the expectations
raised by the names of the authors, and the opportunities afforded by
the nature of their subjects. Something is found in Hippocrates in
the way of theory as to the effect of external condition, something
in Aristotle, something in Plato--nothing, however, by which we find
the study of Man as an animal recognized as a separate substantive
branch of study. More than this--in works where the description of
new populations was especially called for, and where the evidence of
the writer would have been of the most unexceptionable kind, we find
infinitely less than there ought to be. How little we learn of Persia
from the Cyropædia, or of Armenia from the Anabasis--yet how easily
might Xenophon have told us much!
Amongst the successors of Aristotle, we find none who writes a
treatise περὶ βαρβάρων--yet how natural the subject, and how great the
opportunities!--great, because of the commerce of the Euxine, and the
institution of domestic slavery: the one conducting the merchant to
the extreme Tanais, the other filling Athens with Thracians, and Asia
Minor with Africans. The advantages which the Greeks of the age of
Pericles neglected, are the advantages which the Brazilian Portuguese
neglect at present, and which, until lately, both the English and the
States-men of America neglected also. And the loss has been great. Like
time and tide, ethnology waits for no man; and, even as the Indian of
America disappears before the European, so did certain populations of
antiquity. The process of extinction and amalgamation is as old as
history; and whole families have materially altered in character since
the beginning of the historical period. The present population of
Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Moldavia is of recent introduction. What was
the ancient? “Thracians and Getæ” is the answer. But what were they?
“Germans,” says one writer; “Slavonians,” another; “an extinct race,”
another. So that there is doubt and difference of opinion. Yet we know
some little about them in other respects. We know their political
relations; a little of their creed, and manners; the names of some of
their tribes. Their place in the classification of the varieties of our
species we do _not_ know; and this is because, though the Greeks wrote
the _civil_, they neglected the _physical_ history of Man.
Thrace, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus--these are the areas for which
the ancients might easily have left descriptions, and for which they
neglected to do so; the omission being irreparable.
The opportunities of the Roman were greater than those of the Greek;
and they were better used. Dissertations, distantly approaching the
character of physical history, occur in even the pure historical
writers of Greece, I allude more especially to the sketch of the
manners and migrations of the ancient Greeks in the first, and the
history of the Greek colonization of Sicily in the sixth book of
Thucydides. Parallels to these re-appear in the Roman writers; and, in
some cases, their proportion to the rest of the work is considerable.
Sallust’s sketch of Northern Africa, Tacitus’ of Jewish history are of
this sort--and, far superior to either, Cæsar’s account of Gaul and
Britain.
The _Germania_[1] of Tacitus is the nearest approach to proper
ethnology that antiquity has supplied. It is far, however, from either
giving us the facts which are of the most importance, or exhibiting
the _method_ of investigation by which ethnology is most especially
contrasted with history.
But the true measure of the carelessness of the Romans upon these
points is to be taken by the same rule which applied to that of the
Greeks; _i. e._ the contrast between their opportunities and their
inquiry. Northern Italy, the Tyrol, Dalmatia, Pannonia, have all stood
undescribed in respect to the ancient populations; yet they were all in
a favourable position for description.
If the Jewish, Greek, and Roman writers give but little, the
literatures derived from them give less; though, of course, there is a
numerous selection of important passages to be made from the authors
of the Middle Ages, as well as from the Byzantine historians. Besides
which, there is the additional advantage of Greece and Rome having
ceased to be the only countries thought worthy of being written about.
A Gothic, a Slavonic, a Moorish history now make their appearance.
Still they are but _civil_--not _natural_--histories. However, our
sphere of observation increases, the members of the human family
increase, and our records increase. Nevertheless, the facts for the
_naturalist_ occur but incidentally.
Of the Oriental literature I can only give my _impression_; and, as
far as that goes, it is in favour of the Chinese statements having the
most, and the Indian the least ethnological value; indeed, the former
nation appears to have connected the notice of the occupant population
with the notice of the area occupied, with laudable and sufficient
closeness. I believe, too, that several differences of language are
also carefully noted. Still, such ethnology as this supplies is an
educt from the works in question, rather than their subject.
We now come to times nearer our own. For a sketch like the present,
the _Science_ begins when the _classification_ of the Human Varieties
is first attempted. Meanwhile, we must remember that America has
been discovered, and that our opportunities now differ from those of
the ancients not merely in degree but in kind. The field has been
infinitely enlarged; and the world has become known in its extremities
as well as in its middle parts. The human naturalists anterior to the
times of Buffon and Linnæus are like the great men before Agamemnon.
A minute literary history would doubtless put forward some names
for this period; indeed for some departments of the study there are
a few great ones. Still it begins with the times of Linnæus and
Buffon--Buffon first in merit. That writer held that a _General History
of Man_, as well as _A Theory of the Earth_, was a necessary part of
his great work; and, as far as the former subject is concerned, he
thought rightly. It is this, too, in which he has succeeded best.
Thoroughly appreciating its importance, he saw its divisions clearly;
and after eight chapters on the Growth of Man, his Decay, and his
Senses, he devotes a ninth, as long as the others put together, to the
consideration of the _Varieties of the Human Species_. “Every thing,”
he now writes, “which we have hitherto advanced relates to Man as an
individual. The history of the species requires a separate detail,
of which the principal facts can only be derived from the varieties
that are found in the inhabitants of different regions. Of these
varieties, the first and most remarkable is the colour, the second the
form and size, and the third the disposition. Considered in its full
extent, each of these objects might afford materials for a volume[2].”
No man need draw a clearer line between anthropology and ethnology
than this. Of the systematic classification, which philology has so
especially promoted, no signs occur in his treatise; on the other hand,
his appreciation of the effects of difference in physical conditions
is well-founded in substance, and definitely expressed. To this he
attributes the contrast between the Negro, the American, and the
African, and, as a natural result, he commits himself unequivocally to
the doctrine of the unity of the species.
Linnæus took less cognizance of the species to which he belonged; the
notice in the first edition of the _Systema Naturæ_ being as follows:--
=Quadrupedalia.=
_Corpus hirsutum, pedes quatuor, feminæ viviparæ, lactiferæ._
=Anthropomorpha.=
_Dentes primores iv. utrinque vel nulli._
{ Europæus albescens.
{ Americanus rubescens.
=Homo= Nosce te ipsum H. { Asiaticus fuscus.
{ Africanus niger.
Anteriores. Posteriores.
=Simia= _Digiti_ 5. _Digiti_ 5. Simia, cauda carens.
Papio. Satyrus.
Posteriores anterioribus similes. } Cercopithecus.
} Cynocephalus.
=Bradypus= _Digiti_ 3. vel 2. _Digiti_ 3. Ai--_ignavus_.
Tardigradus.
Now both Buffon and Linnæus limit their consideration of the bodily
structure of man to the phænomena of colour, skin, and hair; in other
words, to the so-called _soft parts_.
From the Greek word _osteon_ = _bone_, we have the anatomical term
_osteology_ = _the study of the bony skeleton_.
This begins with the researches of the contemporary and helpmate of
Buffon. Daubenton first drew attention to the _base of the skull_, and,
amongst the parts thereof, to the _foramen ovale_ most especially.
Through the _foramen ovale_ the spinal chord is continued into the
brain, or--changing the expression--the brain prolonged into the
spinal chord; whilst by its attachments the skull is connected with
the vertebral column. The more this point of junction--the pivot on
which the head turns--is in the _centre_ of the base of the skull, the
more are the conditions of the erect posture of man fulfilled; the
contrary being the case if the _foramen_ lie backward, as is the case
with the ape as compared with the Negro, and, in some instances, with
the Negro as compared with the European. I say _in some instances_,
because the backward position of the _foramen ovale_ in the Negro is by
no means either definite or constant. Now the notice of the variations
of the position of the _foramen ovale_--one of the first specimens
of ethnological criticism applied to the _hard parts_ of the human
body--is connected with the name of Daubenton.
The study of the skull--for the skeleton is now dividing the attention
of investigators with the skin and hair--in _profile_ is connected
with that of Camper. This brings us to his well-known _facial angle_.
It means the extent to which the forehead _retreated_; sloping
backwards from the root of the nose in some cases, and in others rising
perpendicularly above the face.
Now the osteology of Daubenton and Camper was the osteology that
Blumenbach found when _he_ took up the subject. It was something; but
not much.
In 1790, Blumenbach published his anatomical description of ten
skulls--his first decade--drawn up with the special object of showing
how certain varieties of mankind differed from each other in the
conformation of so important an organ as the skull of a reasonable
being--a being thereby distinguished and characterized.
He continued his researches; publishing at intervals similar decades,
to the number of six. In 1820, he added to the last a pentad, so that
the whole list amounted to sixty-five.
It was in the third decade, published =A.D.= 1795, that an unfortunate
skull of a Georgian female made its appearance. The history of this
should be given. Its owner was taken by the Russians, and having been
removed to Moscow died suddenly. The body was examined by Professor
Hiltenbrandt, and the skull presented to De Asch of St. Petersburg.
Thence it reached the collection of Blumenbach, of which it seems to
have been the gem--“_universus hujus cranii habitus tam elegans et
venustus, ut et tantum non semper vel indoctorum, si qui collectionem
meam contemplentur, oculos eximia sua proportionis formositate
feriat_.” This encomium is followed by the description. Nor is this
all. A plaster cast of one of the most beautiful busts of the Townley
Museum was in possession of the anatomist. He compared the two;
“and so closely did they agree that you might take your oath of one
having belonged to the other”--“_adeo istud huic respondere vides,
ut illud hujus prototypo quondam inhæsisse pejerares_.” Lastly, he
closes with an extract from Chardin, enthusiastically laudatory of
the beauty of the women of Georgia, and adds that his skull verifies
the panegyric--“_Respondet ceteroquin formosum istud cranium, quod
sane pro canone ideali habere licet, iis quæ de summa Georgianæ gentis
pulcritudine vel in vulgus nota sunt._”
At the end of the decade in question he used the epithets Mongolian,
Æthiopian, and Caucasian (_Caucasia varietas_).
In the next (=A.D.= 1808), he speaks of the excessive beauty--the
ideal--the normal character of his Georgian skull; and speaks of his
osteological researches having established a quinary division of the
Human Species; naming them--1. The _Caucasian_; 2. The Mongolian;
3. The Æthiopic; 4. The American; and 5. The Malay.
Such is the origin of the term _Caucasian_; a term which has done much
harm in Ethnology; a term to which Blumenbach himself gave an undue
value, and his followers a wholly false import. This will be seen
within a few pages. Blumenbach’s Caucasian class contained--
1. Most of the Europeans.
2. The Georgians, Circassians, and other families of Caucasus.
3. The Jews, Arabs, and Syrians.
In the same year with the fourth decade of Blumenbach, John Hunter gave
testimony of the value of the study of Man to Man, by a dissertation
with a quotation from Akenside on the title-page--
“---------- the spacious West
And all the teeming regions of the South,
Hold not a quarry, to the curious flight
Of Knowledge half so tempting or so fair,
As Man to Man.”
His tract was an Inaugural Dissertation, and I merely mention it
because it was written by Hunter, and dedicated to Robertson.
Cuvier, in his _Règne Animal_, gives at considerable length the
anthropological characteristics of Man, and places him as the only
species of the genus _Homo_, the only genus of the order _Bimana_ =
_two-handed_; the apes being _Quadrumana_ = _four-handed_. This was the
great practical recognition of Man in his zoological relations.
In respect to the Ethnology, the classification of Blumenbach was
modified--and that by increasing its generality. The absolute primary
divisions were reduced to three--the Malay and the American being--not
without hesitation--subordinated to the Mongolian. Meanwhile, an
additional prominence was given to the group which contained the
Australians of Australia, and the Papuans of New Guinea. Instead,
however, of being definitely placed, it was left for further
investigation.
The abuse of the term Caucasian was encouraged. Blumenbach had merely
meant that his favourite specimen had exhibited the best points in the
greatest degree. Cuvier speaks of traditions that ascribe the origin
of mankind to the mountain-range so-called--traditions of no general
diffusion, and of less ethnological value.
The time is now convenient for taking a retrospective view of the
subject in certain other of its branches. Colour, hair, skin, bone,
stature--all these are points of _physical_ conformation or structure;
material and anatomical; points which the callipers or the scalpel
investigates. But colour, hair, skin, bone, and stature, are not the
only characteristics of man; nor yet the only points wherein the
members of his species differ from each other. There is the _function_
as well as the organ; and the parts of our body must be considered
in regard to what they _do_ as well as with reference to what they
_are_. This brings in the questions of the phænomena of growth and
decay,--the average duration of life,--reproduction, and other allied
functions. This, the physiological rather than the purely anatomical
part of the subject, requires a short notice of its own. _A priori_, we
are inclined to say that it would be closely united, in the practice
of investigation, with what it is so closely allied as a branch of
science. Yet such has not been exactly the case. The anatomists were
physiologists as well; and when Blumenbach described a skull, he,
certainly, thought about the power, or the want of power, of the brain
which it contained. But the speculators in physiology were not also
anatomists. Such speculators, however, there were. An historian aspires
to philosophy. There are some facts which he would account for; others
on which he would build a system. Hot climates favour precocity of the
sexual functions. They also precipitate the decay of the attractions
of youth. Hence, a woman who is a mother at twelve has outgrown her
beauty at twenty. From this it follows that mental power and personal
attractions become, necessarily, disunited. Hence the tendency on the
part of the males to take wives in succession; whereby polygamy is
shown to have originated in a law of nature.
I do not ask whether this is true or false. I merely remind the reader
that the moment such remarks occur, the _natural_ history of Man has
become recognized as an ingredient in the _civil_.
The chief early writers who expanded the real and supposed facts of the
_natural history of Man_, without being professed ethnologists, were
Montesquieu and Herder. By advertising the subject, they promoted it.
It is doubtful whether they did more.
We are still within the pale of _physical_ phænomena; and the purely
intellectual, mental, or moral characteristics of Man have yet to be
considered. What divisions were founded upon the difference between the
arts of the Negro and the arts of the Parisian? What upon the contrast
between the despotisms of Asia and the constitutions of Europe?
What between the cannibalism of New Zealand and the comparatively
graminivorous diet of the Hindu? There were not wanting naturalists
who even in _natural history_ insisted upon the high value of such
characters, immaterial and supra-sensual as they were. The dog and
fox, the hare and rabbit were alike in form; different in habits and
temper--yet the latter fact had to be recognized. Nay, more, it helped
to verify the specific distinctions which the mere differences of form
might leave doubtful.
All that can be said upon this matter is, that no branch of the subject
was earlier studied than that which dealt with the manners and customs
of strange nations; whilst no branch of it both was and is half so
defective as that which teaches us their value as characteristics. With
ten writers familiar with the same facts there shall be ten different
ways of appreciating them:--
“Manserunt hodieque manent vestigia ruris.”
In the year 1851, this is the weakest part of the science.
With one exception, however--indefinite and inappreciable as may be the
ethnological value of such differences as those which exist between the
superstitions, moral feelings, natural affections, or industrial habits
of different families, there is one great intellectual phænomenon which
in definitude yields to no characteristic whatever--I mean Language.
Whatever may be said against certain over-statements as to constancy,
it is an undoubted fact that identity of language is _primâ facie_
evidence of identity of origin.
No reasonable man has denied this. It is not _conclusive_, but _primâ
facie_ it undoubtedly is. More cannot be said of colour, skin, hair,
and skeleton. Possibly, not so much.
Again, language without being identical may be similar; just as
individuals without being brothers or sisters may be first or second
cousins. Similarity, then, is _primâ facie_ evidence of relationship.
Lastly, this similarity may be weighed, measured, and expressed
numerically; an important _item_ in its value. Out of 100 words in two
allied languages, a per-centage of any amount between 1 and 99 may
coincide. Language then is a _definite_ test, if it be nothing else. It
has another recommendation; or perhaps I should say convenience. It can
be studied in the closet: so that for one traveller who describes what
he sees in some far-distant country, there may be twenty scholars at
work in the libraries of Europe. This is only partially the case with
the osteologist.
Philological ethnology began betimes; long before ethnology, or even
anthropology--which arose earlier--had either a conscious separate
existence or a name. It began even before the physical researches of
Buffon.
“There is more in language than in any of its productions”--Many who by
no means undervalue the great productions of literature join in this:
indeed it is only saying that the Greek language is a more wonderful
fact than the Homeric poems, or the Æschylean drama. This, however, is
only an expression of admiration at the construction of so marvellous
an instrument as human speech.
“When history is silent, language is evidence”--This is an explicit
avowal of its value as an instrument of investigation.
I cannot affiliate either of these sayings; though I hold strongly with
both. They must prepare us for a new term--_the philological school
of ethnology_, _the philological principle of classification_, _the
philological test_. The worst that can be said of this is that it was
isolated. The philologists began work independently of the anatomists,
and the anatomists independently of the philologists. And so, with one
great exception, they have kept on.
Pigafetta, one of the circumnavigators with Magalhaens, was the first
who collected specimens of the unlettered dialects of the countries
that afforded opportunities.
The Abbé Hervas in the 17th century, published his Catalogue of
Tongues, and Arithmetic of Nations, parts of a large and remarkable
work, the _Saggio del Universo_. His _data_ he collected by means of
an almost unlimited correspondence with the Jesuit missionaries of the
Propaganda.
The all-embracing mind of Leibnitz had not only applied itself to
philology, but had clearly seen its bearing upon history. A paper on
the Basque language is a sample of the ethnology of the inventor of
Fluxions.
Reland wrote on the wide distribution of the Malay tongue; criticised
certain vocabularies from the South-Sea Islands of Hoorn, Egmont,
Ticopia (then called Cocos Island), and Solomon’s Archipelago, and gave
publicity to a fact which even now is mysterious--the existence of
Malay words in the language of Madagascar.
In 1801 Adelung’s _Mithridates_ appeared, containing specimens of
all the known languages of the world; a work as classical to the
comparative philologist as Blackstone’s Commentaries are to the
English lawyer. Vater’s Supplement (1821) is a supplement to Adelung;
Jülg’s (1845) to Vater’s.
Klaproth’s is the other great classic in this department. His _Asia
Polyglotta_ and _Sprachatlas_ give us the classification of all the
families of Asia, according to the _vocabularies_ representing their
languages. Whether a comparison between their different _grammars_
would do the same is doubtful; since it by no means follows that the
evidence of the two coincides.
Klaproth and Adelung have the same prominence in _philological_ that
Buffon and Blumenbach have in _zoological_ ethnology.
Blumenbach _appreciated_ the philological method: but the first
who _combined_ the two was Dr. Prichard. His profession gave him
the necessary physiology; and that he was a philologist amongst
philologists is shown not only by numerous details scattered
throughout his writings, but by his ‘Eastern Origin of the Celtic
Nations’--the most definite and desiderated addition that has been
made to ethnographical philology. I say nothing about the details of
Dr. Prichard’s great work. Let those who doubt its value try to do
without it.
But there is still something wanting. The relation of the sciences to
the other branches of knowledge requires fixing. With anthropology the
case is pretty clear. It comes into partial contact with the naturalist
sciences (or those based on the principle of classification) and the
biological (or those based on the idea of organization and life).
Ethnology, however, is more undecided in respect to position. If it
be but a form of history, its place amongst the inductive sciences is
equivocal; since neither the laws which it developes nor the method of
pursuing it give it a place here. These put it in the same category
with a series of records taken from the testimony of witnesses, or with
a book of travels--literary but not scientific. And so it really is to
a certain extent. Two remarkable productions, however, have determined
its relations to be otherwise.
In Sir C. Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology’ we have an elaborate
specimen of reasoning from the known to the unknown, and of the
_inference of causes from effects_. It would have been discreditable
to our philosophy if such a sample of logic put in practice had been
disregarded.
Soon after, came forth the pre-eminently suggestive works, _par
nobile_, of the present Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Here we
are taught that in the sciences of geology, ethnology, and archæology,
the _method_ determines the character of the study; and that in all
these we argue backwards. Present _effects_ we know; we also know
their _causes_ as far as the historical period goes back. When we get
beyond this, we can still reason--reason from the experience that the
historical period has supplied. Climate, for instance, and certain
other conditions have _some_ effect; within the limits of generation
a small, within that of a millenium a larger one. Hence, before we
dismiss a difference as inexplicable, we must investigate the changes
that may have produced it, the conditions which may have determined
those changes, and the time required from the exhibition of their
influence.
In Dr. Prichard’s ‘Anniversary Address,’ delivered before the
Ethnological Society of London in 1847--a work published after the
death of its illustrious author--this relationship to Geology is
emphatically recognized:--“Geology, as every one knows, is not an
account of what nature produces in the present day, but of what it has
long ago produced. It is an investigation of the changes which the
surface of our planet has undergone in ages long since past. The facts
on which the inferences of geology are founded, are collected from
various parts of Natural History. The student of geology inquires into
the processes of nature which are at present going on, but this is for
the purpose of applying the knowledge so acquired to an investigation
of what happened in past times, and of tracing, in the different
layers of the earth’s crust--displaying, as they do, relics of various
forms of organic life--the series of the repeated creations which have
taken place. This investigation evidently belongs to _History_ or
_Archæology_, rather than to what is termed _Natural History_. By a
learned writer, whose name will ever be connected with the annals of
the British Association, the term Palæontology has been aptly applied
to sciences of this department, for which Physical Archæology may be
used as a synonym. Palæontology includes both Geology and Ethnology.
Geology is the archæology of the globe--ethnology that of its human
inhabitants.”
When ethnology loses its palæontological character, it loses half its
scientific elements; and the practical and decided recognition of this
should be the characteristic of the English school of ethnologists.
This chapter will conclude with the notice of the bearings of the
palæontological method upon one of the most difficult parts of
ethnology, viz. the identification of ancient populations, or the
distribution of the nations mentioned by the classical, scriptural
and older oriental writers amongst the existing or extinct stocks and
families of mankind.
There are the Etruscans--who were they? The Pelasgians--who were they?
The Huns that overrun Europe in the fifth century; the Cimmerii that
devastated Asia, 900 years earlier? Archæology answers some of these
questions; and the testimony of ancient writers helps us in others. Yet
both mislead--perhaps, almost as often as they direct us rightly. If
it were not so, there would be less discrepancy of opinion.
Nevertheless, up to the present time the primary fact concerning
any such populations has always been the testimony of some ancient
historian or geographer, and the first question that has been put
is, _What say Tacitus--Strabo--Herodotus--Ptolemy_, &c. &c.? In
critical hands the inquiries go further; and statements are compared,
testimonies weighed in a balance against each other, the opportunities
of knowing, and the honesty in recording of the respective authors
investigated. In this way a sketch of ancient Greece by Thucydides
has a value which the authority of a lesser writer would fail to give
it--and so on with others. Nevertheless, what Thucydides wrote he
wrote from report, and inferences--report, most probably, carefully
weighed, and inferences legitimately drawn. Yet sources of error,
for which he is not to be held responsible, are innumerable. He went
upon hearsay evidence--he sifted it, perhaps; but still he went upon
hearsay evidence only. How do we value such evidence? By the natural
probabilities of the account it constitutes. By what means do we
ascertain these?
I submit there is but one measure here--the existing state of things
as either known to ourselves, or known to contemporaries capable of
learning them at the period nearest the time under consideration. This
we examine as the effect of some antecedent cause--or series of causes.
Ποῦ στῶ; says the scholar. On the dictum of such or such an author. Ποῦ
στῶ; says the Archimedean ethnologist. On the last testified fact.
Of the unsatisfactory character of anything short of contemporary
testimony in the identification of ancient nations, the pages and pages
that nine-tenths of the historians bestow upon the mysterious _Pelasgi_
is a specimen. Add Niebuhr to Müller, and Thirlwall to Niebuhr--Pelion
to Ossa, and Olympus to Pelion--and what _facts_ do we arrive at--facts
that we may rely on as such, facts supported by contemporary evidence,
and recorded under opportunities of being ascertained? Just the
three recognized by Mr. Grote; viz. that their language was spoken
at Khreston--that it was spoken at Plakeæ--that it differed, in some
unascertained degree, from the Greek.
This is all that the ethnologist recognizes; and from this he argues as
he best can. Every fact, less properly supported by either first-hand
or traceable evidence, he treats with indifference. It may be good in
history; but it is not good for _him_. He has too much use to put it
to, too much to build upon it, too much argument to work out of it, to
allow it to be other than unimpeachable.
Again--Tacitus carries his _Germania_ as far as the Niemen, so as to
include the present countries of Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg,
West and East Prussia, and Courland. Is this improbable in itself? No.
The area is by no means immoderately large. Is it improbable when we
take the present state of those countries in question? No. They are
German at present. Is it improbable in any case? and if so, in what?
Yes. It becomes improbable when we remember that the present Germans
have been as unequivocally and undoubtedly recent immigrants for the
parts in question, as are the English of the Valley of the Mississippi,
and that at the beginning of the historical period the whole of
them were Slavonic, with nothing but the phraseology of Tacitus to
prevent us from believing that they always had been so. But it is also
improbable that so respectable a writer as Tacitus should be mistaken.
Granted. And here begins the conflict of difficulties. Nevertheless,
the primary ethnological fact is the state of things as it existed when
the countries under consideration were first accurately known, taken
along with the probability or improbability of its having so existed
for a certain period previous, as compared with the probability or
improbability of the migrations and other assumptions necessary for its
recent introduction.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The value of Tacitus as an authority is minutely investigated in an
ethnological edition of the _Germania_ by the present writer, now in
course of publication. The object of the present chapter is merely to
show the extent to which the science in question is of recent, rather
than ancient, origin.
[2] Barr’s Translation, vol. iv. p. 191.
CHAPTER II.
Ethnology--its objects--the chief problems connected with it--
prospective questions--transfer of populations--Extract from
Knox--correlation of certain parts of the body to certain external
influences--parts less subject to such influences--retrospective
questions--the unity or non-unity of our species--opinions--
plurality of species--multiplicity of protoplasts--doctrine of
development--Dokkos--Extract--antiquity of our species--its
geographical origin--the term _race_.
In Cuvier--as far as he goes--we find the anthropological view of the
subject predominant; and this is what we expect from the nature of
the work in which it occurs: the degree in which one genus or species
differs from the species or genus next to it being the peculiar
consideration of the systematic naturalist. To exhibit our varieties
would have required a special monograph.
In Prichard on the contrary ethnology preponderates; of anthropology,
in the strict sense of the word, there being but little; and the
ethnology is of a broad and comprehensive kind. Description there
is, and classification there is; but, besides this, there is a great
portion of the work devoted to what may be called _Ethnological
Dynamics_, i. e. the appreciation of the effect of the external
conditions of climate, latitude, relative sea-level and the like upon
the human body.
Prichard is the great repertory of facts; and read with Whewell’s
commentary it gives us the Science in a form sufficiently full for
the purposes of detail, and sufficiently systematic for the basis of
further generalization. Still it must be read with the commentary
already mentioned. If not, it fails in its most intellectual element;
and becomes a system of simple records, rather than a series of subtle
and peculiar inferences. So read, however, it gives us our facts and
classifications in a _working form_. In other words, the Science has
now taken its true place and character.
If more than this be needed--and for the anthropology, it may be
thought by some that Cuvier is too brief, and Prichard too exclusively
ethnological--the work of Lawrence forms the complement. These, along
with Adelung and Klaproth, form the _Thesaurus Ethnologicus_. But the
facts which they supply are like the sword of the Mahometan warrior.
Its value depended on the arm that wielded it; and such is the case
here. No book has yet been written which can implicitly be taken
for much more than its _facts_. Its inferences and classification
must be _criticised_. Be this, however, as it may, in =A.D.= 1846
Mr. Mill writes, that “concerning the physical nature of man, as an
organized being, there has been much controversy, which can only be
terminated by the general acknowledgement and employment of stricter
rules of induction than are commonly recognized; there is, however,
a considerable body of truth which all who have attended to the
subject consider to be fully established, nor is there now any radical
imperfection in the method observed in this department of science by
its most distinguished modern teachers.”
This could not have been written thirty years ago. The _department of
science_ would, then, have been indefinite; and the _teachers_ would
not have been _distinguished_.
It may now be as well to say what Ethnology and Anthropology are
_not_. Their relations to history have been considered. _Archæology_
illustrates each; yet the moment that it is confounded with either,
mischief follows. _Psychology_, or the Science of the laws of Mind, has
the same relation to them as _Physiology_--_mutatis mutandis_; _i.e._
putting Mind in the place of Body.
But nearer than either are its two subordinate studies of Ethology[3],
or the Science of Character, by which we determine the kind of
character produced in conformity with the laws of Mind, by _any_ set of
circumstances, _physical_ as well as moral; and the Science of Society
which investigates the action and reaction of associated masses[4] on
each other.
Such then is our Science; which the principle of Division of Labour
requires to be marked off clearly in order to be worked advantageously.
And now we ask the nature of its _objects_. It has not much to do
with the establishment of any _laws_ of remarkable generality; a
circumstance which, in the eyes of some, may subtract from its value
as a science; the nearest approach to anything of this kind being
the general statement implied in the classifications themselves. Its
real object is the solution of certain _problems_--problems which it
investigates by its own peculiar method--and problems of sufficient
height and depth and length and breadth to satisfy the most ambitious.
All these are referable to two heads, and connect themselves with
either the _past_ or the _future_ history of our species; its _origin_
or _destination_.
We see between the Negro and the American a certain amount of
difference. Has this always existed? If not, how was it brought about?
By what influences? In what time? Quickly or slowly? These questions
point backwards, and force upon us the consideration of what _has
been_.
But the next takes us forwards. Great experiments in the transfer of
populations from one climate to another have gone on ever since the
discovery of America, and are going on now; sometimes westwards as to
the New World; sometimes eastwards as to Australia and New Zealand;
now from Celtic populations like Ireland; now from Gothic countries
like England and Germany; now from Spain and Portugal;--to say nothing
of the equally great phænomenon of Negro slavery being the real or
supposed condition of American prosperity. Will this succeed? Ask
this at Philadelphia, or Lima, Sydney, or Auckland, and the answer is
pretty sure to be in the affirmative. Ask it of one of our English
anatomists. His answer is as follows:--“Let us attend now to the
greatest of all experiments ever made in respect of the transfer of a
population indigenous to one continent, and attempting by emigration
to take possession of another; to cultivate it with their own hands;
to colonize it; to persuade the world, in time, that they are _the
natives_ of the newly occupied land. Northern America and Australia
furnished the fields of this, the greatest of experiments. Already
has the horse, the sheep, the ox, become as it were indigenous to
these lands. Nature did not place them there at first, yet they
seem to thrive and flourish, and multiply exceedingly. Yet, even as
regards these domestic animals, we cannot be quite certain. Will
they eventually be self-supporting? Will they supplant the llama, the
kangaroo, the buffalo, the deer? or in order to effect this, will
they require to be constantly renovated from Europe? If this be the
contingency, then the acclimatation is not perfect. How is it with man
himself? The man planted there by nature, the Red-Indian, differs from
all others on the face of the earth; he gives way before the European
races, the Saxon and the Celtic; the Celt, Iberian, and the Lusitanian
in the south; the Celt and the Saxon in the north.
“Of the tropical regions of the New World, I need not speak; every
one knows that none but those whom nature placed there can live
there; that no Europeans can colonize a tropical country. But may
there not be some doubts of their self-support in milder regions?
Take the Northern States themselves. There the Saxon and the Celt
seem to thrive beyond all that is recorded in history. But are we
quite sure that this is fated to be permanent? Annually from Europe
is poured a hundred thousand men and women of the best blood of the
Scandinavian, and twice the number of the pure Celt; and so long as
this continues, he is sure to thrive. But check it, arrest it suddenly,
as in the case of Mexico and Peru; throw the _onus_ of reproduction
upon the population, no longer European, but a struggle between the
European alien and his adopted father-land. The climate; the forests;
the remains of the aborigines not yet extinct; last, not least, that
unknown and mysterious degradation of life and energy, which in ancient
times seems to have decided the fate of all the Phœnician, Grecian,
and Coptic colonies. Cut off from their original stock, they gradually
withered and faded, and finally died away. The Phœnician never became
acclimatized in Africa, nor in Cornwall, nor in Wales; vestiges of his
race, it is true, still remain, but they are mere vestiges. Peru and
Mexico are fast retrograding to their primitive condition; may not the
Northern States, under similar circumstances, do the same?
“Already the United States man differs in appearance from the European:
the ladies early lose their teeth; in both sexes the adipose cellular
cushion interposed between the skin and the aponeuroses and muscles
disappears, or, at least, loses its adipose portion; the muscles become
stringy, and show themselves; the tendons appear on the surface;
symptoms of premature decay manifest themselves. Now what do these
signs, added to the uncertainty of infant life in the Southern States,
and the smallness of their families in the Northern, indicate? Not the
conversion of the Anglo-Saxon into the Red-Indian, but warnings that
the climate has not been made for him, nor he for the climate.
“See what even a small amount of insulation has done for the French
Celt in Lower Canada. Look at the race there! Small men, small horses,
small cattle, still smaller carts, ideas smallest of all; he is not
even the Celt of modern France! He is the French Celt of the Regency,
the thing of Louis XIII. Stationary--absolutely stationary--his
numbers, I believe, depend on the occasional admixture of fresh blood
from Europe. He has increased to a million since his first settlement
in Canada; but much of this has come from Britain, and not from France.
Give us the statistics of the original families who keep themselves
apart from the fresh blood imported into the province. Let us have the
real and solid increase of the original _habitans_, as they are pleased
to call themselves, and then we may calculate on the result.
“Had the colony been left to itself, cut off from Europe, for a century
or two, it is my belief that the forest and the buffalo, and the
Red-Indian, would have pushed him into the St. Lawrence[5].”
I give no opinion as to the truth of the extract; remarking that,
whether right or wrong, it is forcibly and confidently expressed.
All that the passage has to do is to illustrate the character of the
question. It directs our consideration to what _will be_.
To work out questions in either of these classes, there must, of
course, be some reference to the general operations of climate,
food, and other influences;--operations which imply a correlative
susceptibility of modification on the part of the human organism.
In a well-constructed machine, the different parts have a definite
relation to each. The greater the resistance, the thicker the ropes and
chains; and the thicker the ropes and chains, the stronger the pulleys;
the stronger the pulleys, the greater the force; and so on throughout.
Delicate pulleys with heavy ropes, or light lines with bulky pulleys,
would be so much power wasted. The same applies to the skeleton. If
the muscle be massive, the bone to which it is attached must be firm;
otherwise there is a disproportion of parts. In this respect the
organized and animated body agrees with a common machine, the work
of human hands. It agrees with, but it also surpasses it. It has an
internal power of self-adjustment. No amount of work would convert a
thin line into a strong rope, or a light framework into a strong one.
If bulk be wanted, it must be given in the first instance. But what
is it with the skeleton, the framework to the muscles? It _has_ the
power of adapting itself to the stress laid upon it. The food that we
live upon is of different degrees of hardness and toughness; and the
harder and tougher it is, the more work is there for the muscles of
the lower jaw. But, as these work, they grow; for--other things being
equal--size is power; and as they grow, other parts must grow also.
There are the bones. _How_ they grow is a complex question. Sometimes
a smooth surface becomes rough, a fine bone coarse; sometimes a short
process becomes lengthened, or a narrow one broadens; sometimes the
increase is simple or absolute, and the bone in question changes its
character without affecting that of the parts in contact with it. But
frequently there is a complication of changes, and the development of
one bone takes place at the expense of another; the _relations_ of the
different portions of parts of a skeleton being thus altered.
A skeleton, then, may be modified by the action of its own muscles; in
other words, wherever there are muscles that are liable to an increase
of mass, there are bones similarly susceptible--bones upon which
asperities, ridges, or processes may be developed--bones from which
asperities, ridges, or processes may disappear, and bones of which the
relative proportions may be varied. In order, however, that this must
take place, there must be the muscular action which determines it.
Now this applies to the _hard parts_, or the skeleton; and as it is
generally admitted, that if the bony framework of the body can be thus
modified by the action of its own muscles, the extreme conditions of
heat, light, aliment, moisture, &c., will, _à fortiori_, affect the
soft parts, such as the skin and adipose tissue. Neither have any great
difficulties been raised in respect to the varieties of colour in the
iris, and of colour and texture, both, in the hair.
But what if we have in certain _hard_ parts a difference without its
corresponding tangible modifying cause? What if parts which no muscle
acts upon vary? In such a case we have a new class of facts, and a
new import given to it. We no longer draw our illustrations from the
ropes and pulleys of machines. Adaptation there may be, but it is no
longer an adaptation of the simple straightforward kind that we have
exhibited. It is an adaptation on the principle which determines the
figure-head of a vessel, not one on the principle which decides the
rigging. Still there is a principle on both sides; on one, however,
there is an evident connection of cause and effect; on the other, the
notion of choice, or spontaneity of an _idea_, is suggested.
In this way, the consideration of a tooth differs from that of the jaw
in which it is implanted. No muscles act directly upon it; and all that
pressure at its base can do is to affect the direction of its growth.
The form of its crown it leaves untouched. How--I am using almost
the words of Prof. Owen--can we conceive the development of the great
canine of the chimpanzee to be a result of external stimuli, or to
have been influenced by muscular actions, when it is calcified before
it cuts the gum, or displaces its deciduous predecessor--a structure
preordained, a weapon prepared prior to the development of the forces
by which it is to be wielded[6]?
This illustrates the difference between the parts manifestly obnoxious
to the influence of external conditions and the parts which either do
not vary at all, or vary according to unascertained laws.
With the former we look to the conditions of sun, air, habits, or
latitude; the latter we interpret, as we best can, by references to
other species or to the same in its earlier stages of development.
Thus, the so-called supra-orbital ridge, or the prominence of the
lower portion of forehead over the nose and eyes, is more marked in
some individuals than in others; and more marked in the African and
Australian varieties than our own. This is an ethnological fact.
Again--and this is an anthropological fact--it is but moderately
developed in man at all: whilst in the orang-utan it is moderate; and
in the chimpanzee enormously and characteristically developed.
Hence it is one of the nine points whereby the _Pithecus Wurmbii_
approaches man more closely than the _Troglodytes Gorilla_[7], in
opposition to the twenty-four whereby the _Troglodytes Gorilla_ comes
nearer to us than the _Pithecus Wurmbii_.
Had this ridge given attachment to muscles, we should have asked what
work those muscles did, and how far it varied in different regions,
instead of thinking much about either the _Pithecus Wurmbii_ or the
_Troglodytes Gorilla_.
However, it is certain problems which constitute the higher branches of
ethnology; and it is to the investigation of these that the department
of ethnological dynamics is subservient. Looking _backwards_ we find,
first amongst the foremost, the grand questions as to--
1. The unity or non-unity of the species.
2. Its antiquity.
3. Its geographical origin.
The unity or non-unity of the human species has been contemplated under
a great multiplicity of aspects; some involving the fact itself, some
the meaning of the term _species_.
1. Certain points of structure are _constant_. This is one reason for
making man the only species of genus, and the only genus of his order.
2. All mixed breeds are prolific. This is another.
3. The evidence of language indicates a common origin; and the simplest
form of this is a single pair. This is a third.
4. We can predicate a certain number of general propositions concerning
the class of beings called Human. This merely separates them from all
other classes. It does not determine the nature of the class itself in
respect to its members. It may fall in divisions and subdivisions.
5. The species may be one; but the number of _first pairs_ may be
numerous. This is the doctrine of the _multiplicity of protoplasts_[8].
6. The species may have had no protoplast at all; but may have been
developed out of some species anterior to it, and lower in the scale of
Nature, this previous species itself having been so evolved. In this
case, the protoplast is thrown indefinitely backwards; in other words,
the protoplast of one species is the protoplast of many.
7. The genus _Homo_ may fall into several species; so that what some
call the _varieties of a single species_ are really different species
of a single genus.
8. The varieties of mankind may be too great to be included in even a
_genus_. There may be two or even more genera to an _order_.
9. Many of the present varieties may represent the intermixtures of
species no longer extant in a pure state.
10. All _known_ varieties may be referable to a single species; but
there may be new species undescribed.
11. All _existing_ varieties may be referable to a single species; but
certain _species_ may have ceased to exist.
Such are the chief views which are current amongst learned men on
this point; though they have not been exhibited in a strictly logical
form, inasmuch as differences of opinion as to the meaning of the term
_species_ have been given in the same list with differences of opinion
as to the fact of our unity or non-unity.
These differences of opinion are not limited to mere matters of
inference. The _facts_ on which such inferences rest are by no means
unanimously admitted. Some deny the constancy of certain points of
structure, and more deny the _permanent_ fecundity of mixed breeds.
Again, the evidence of language applies only to known tongues; whilst
the fourth view is based upon a _logical_ rather than a _zoological_
view of _species_.
The doctrine of a _multiplicity of protoplasts_ is common. Many
zoologists hold it, and they have of course zoological reasons
for doing so. Others hold it upon grounds of a very different
description--grounds which rest upon the assumption of a final
cause. Man is a _social_ animal. Let the import of this be ever so
little exaggerated. The term is a _correlative_ one. The wife is not
enough to the husband; the _pair_ requires its _pair_ for society’s
sake. Hence, if man be not formed to live alone now, he was not
formed alone at first. To be born a member of society, there must be
associates. This is the teleological[9]--perhaps it may be called the
theological--reason for the multiplicity of protoplasts.
Its _non_-inductive character subtracts something from its value.
The difficulty of drawing a line as to the magnitude of the original
society subtracts more. If we admit a second pair, why not grant a
village, a town, a city and its corporation? &c.
Again, this is either a primitive civilization or something very like
it. Where are its traces? Nevertheless, if we grant certain assumptions
in respect to the history of human civilization, the teleological
doctrine of the multiplicity of protoplasts is difficult to refute.
And so is the zoological; provided that we make concessions in the way
of language. Let certain pairs have been created with the capacity but
not the gift of speech, so that they shall have learned their language
of others. Or let _all_, at first, have been in this predicament, and
some have evolved speech earlier than others--a speech eventually
extended to all. It is not easy to answer such an argument as this.
The multiplicity of protoplasts is common ground to the zoologist and
the human naturalist, although the phænomena of speech and society
give the latter the larger share. The same applies to the _doctrine of
development_. The fundamental affinity which connects all the forms
of human speech is valid against the transcendentalist only when he
assumes that each original of a species of Man appeared, as such, with
his own proper language. Let him allow this to have been originally
dumb, and with only the capacity of learning speech from others,
and all arguments in favour of the unity of species drawn from the
similarity of language fall to the ground.
The eighth doctrine is little more than an exaggeration of the seventh.
The seventh will not be noticed now, simply because the facts which it
asserts and denies pervade the whole study of ethnology, and appear and
re-appear at every point of our investigations.
_All +known+ varieties may be referable to a single species; but there
may be other species undescribed._--What are the reasons for believing
this? Premising that Dilbo was a slave from whom Dr. Beke collected
certain information respecting the countries to the south-west of
Abyssinia, I subjoin the following extract:--
“The countries on the west and south-west of Kaffa are, according to
Dilbo, Damboro, Bonga, Koolloo, Kootcha, Soofa, Tooffte, and Doko; on
the east and south-east are the plains of Woratto, Walamo, and Talda.
“The country of Doko is a month’s journey distant from Kaffa; and it
seems that only those merchants who are dealers in slaves go farther
than Kaffa. The most common route passes Kaffa in a south-westerly
direction, leading to Damboro, afterwards to Kootcha, Koolloo, and then
passing the river Erow to Tooffte, where they begin to hunt the slaves
in Doko, of which chase I shall give a description as it has been
stated to me, and the reader may use his own judgement respecting it.
“Dilbo begins with stating that the people of Doko, both men and
women, are said to be no taller than boys nine or ten years old. They
never exceed that height, even in the most advanced age. They go quite
naked; their principal food are ants, snakes, mice, and other things
which commonly are not used as food. They are said to be so skilful
in finding out the ants and snakes, that Dilbo could not refrain
from praising them greatly on that account. They are so fond of this
food, that even when they have become acquainted with better aliment
in Enarea and Kaffa, they are nevertheless frequently punished for
following their inclination of digging in search of ants and snakes, as
soon as they are out of sight of their masters. The skins of snakes are
worn by them about their necks as ornaments. They also climb trees with
great skill to fetch down the fruits; and in doing this they stretch
their hands downwards and their legs upwards. They live in extensive
forests of bamboo and other woods, which are so thick that the
slave-hunter finds it very difficult to follow them in these retreats.
These hunters sometimes discover a great number of the Dokos sitting
on the trees, and then they use the artifice of showing them shining
things, by which they are enticed to descend, when they are captured
without difficulty. As soon as a Doko begins to cry he is killed, from
the apprehension that this, as a sign of danger, will cause the others
to take to their heels. Even the women climb on the trees, where in
a few minutes a great number of them may be captured and sold into
slavery.
“The Dokos live mixed together; men and women unite and separate as
they please; and this Dilbo considers as the reason why the tribe has
not been exterminated, though frequently a single slave-dealer returns
home with a thousand of them reduced to slavery. The mother suckles the
child only as long as she is unable to find ants and snakes for its
food: she abandons it as soon as it can get its food by itself. No rank
or order exists among the Dokos. Nobody orders, nobody obeys, nobody
defends the country, nobody cares for the welfare of the nation. They
make no attempts to secure themselves but by running away. They are as
quick as monkeys; and they are very sensible of the misery prepared for
them by the slave-hunters, who so frequently encircle their forests
and drive them from thence into the open plains like beasts. They put
their heads on the ground, and stretch their legs upwards, and cry, in
a pitiful manner, ‘Yer! yer!’ Thus they call on the Supreme Being, of
whom they have some notion, and are said to exclaim, ‘If you do exist,
why do you suffer us to die, who do not ask for food or clothes, and
who live on snakes, ants, and mice?’ Dilbo stated that it was no rare
thing to find five or six Dokos in such a position and state of mind.
Sometimes these people quarrel among themselves, when they eat the
fruit of the trees; then the stronger one throws the weaker to the
ground, and the latter is thus frequently killed in a miserable way.
“In their country it rains incessantly; at least from May to January,
and even later the rain does not cease entirely. The climate is not
cold, but very wet. The traveller, in going from Kaffa to Doko, must
pass over a high country, and cross several rivers, which fall into the
Gochob.
“The language of the Dokos is a kind of murmuring, which is understood
by no one but themselves and their hunters. The Dokos evince much
sense and skill in managing the affairs of their masters, to whom
they are soon much attached; and they render themselves valuable to
such a degree, that no native of Kaffa ever sells one of them to be
sent out of the country. As Captain Clapperton says of the slaves of
Nyffie:--‘The very slaves of this people are in great request, and when
once obtained are never again sold out of the country.’ The inhabitants
of Enarea and Kaffa sell only those slaves which they have taken in
their border-wars with the tribes living near them, but never a Doko.
The Doko is also averse to being sold; he prefers death to separating
from his master, to whom he has attached himself.
“The access to the country of Doko is very difficult, as the
inhabitants of Damboro, Koolloo, and Tooffte are enemies to the
traders from Kaffa, though these tribes are dependent on Kaffa, and pay
tribute to its sovereigns; for these tribes are intent on preserving
for themselves alone the exclusive privilege of hunting the Dokos, and
of trading with the slaves thus obtained.
“Dilbo did not know whether the tribes residing south and west of the
Dokos persecute this unhappy nation in the same cruel way.
“This is Dilbo’s account of the Dokos, a nation of pigmies, who are
found in so degraded a condition of human nature that it is difficult
to give implicit credit to his account. The notion of a nation of
pigmies in the interior of Africa is very ancient, as Herodotus speaks
of them in II. 32.”
Now those who believe in the Dokos at all, may fairly believe them to
constitute a new species.
Other imperfectly known populations may be put forward in a similar
point of view.
_All +existing+ varieties may be referable to a single species; but
certain species may have ceased to exist._--There is a considerable
amount of belief in this respect. We see, in certain countries, which
are at present barbarous vestiges of a prior civilization, works, like
those of Mexico and Peru for instance, which the existing inhabitants
confess to be beyond their powers. Be it so. Is the assumption of
a different species with architectural propensities more highly
developed, legitimate? The reader will answer this question in his own
way. I can only say that such assumptions have been made.
Again--ancient tombs exhibit skeletons which differ from the living
individuals of the country. Is a similar assumption here justifiable?
It has been made.
The most remarkable phænomena of the kind in question are to be found
in the history of the Peruvians.
The parts about the Lake Titicaca form the present country of the
Aymaras, whose heads are much like those of the other Americans, whose
taste for architecture is but slight, and whose knowledge of having
descended from a people more architectural than themselves is none.
Nevertheless, there are vast ruins in their district; whilst the
heads of those whose remains are therein preserved have skulls with
the sutures obliterated, and with remarkable frontal, lateral, and
occipital depressions.
Does this denote an extinct species? Individually, I think it does
not; because, individually, with many others, I know that certain
habits decline, and I also believe that the flattenings of the head
are _artificial_. Nevertheless, if I, ever so little, exaggerated the
permanency of habits, or if I identified a habit with an instinct,
or if I considered the skulls _natural_, the chances are that I
should recognise the remains of ancient _stock_--possibly an ancient
_species_--without congeners and without descendants.
_The antiquity of the human species._--Our views on this point depend
upon our views as to its unity or non-unity; so much so, that unless
we assume either one or the other, the question of antiquity is
impracticable. And it must also be added that, unless the inquiry is to
be excessively complicated, the unity-doctrine must take the form of
descent from a single pair.
Assuming this, we take the most extreme specimens of difference,
whether it be in the way of physical conformation or mental
phænomena--of these last, language being the most convenient. After
this, we ask the time necessary for bringing about the changes
effected; the answer to this resting upon the induction supplied within
the historical period; an answer requiring the application of what has
already been called _Ethnological Dynamics_.
On the other hand, we may assume a certain amount of original
difference, and investigate the time requisite for effecting the
existing amount of similarity.
The first of these methods requires a long, the second a short period;
indeed, descent from a single pair implies a _geological_ rather than
a _historical_ date.
Furthermore--that uniformity in the average rate of change which the
geologist requires, ethnology requires also.
_The geographical origin of Man._--Supposing all the varieties of
Man to have originated from a single protoplast pair, in what part
of the world was that single protoplast pair placed? Or, supposing
such protoplast pairs to have been numerous, what were the respective
original locations of each? I ask these questions without either
giving any answer to them, or exhibiting any method for discovering
one. Of the three great problems it is the one which has received
the least consideration, and the one concerning which there is the
smallest amount of decided opinion. The conventional, provisional,
or hypothetical cradle of the human species is, of course, the most
central point of the inhabited world; inasmuch as this gives us the
greatest amount of distribution with the least amount of migration;
but, of course, such a centre is wholly unhistorical.
_Race_--What is the meaning of this word?
Does it mean _variety_? If so, why not say _variety_ at once?
Does it mean _species_? If it do, one of the two phrases is
superfluous.
In simple truth it means either or neither, as the case may be; and
is convenient or superfluous according to the views of the writer who
uses it.
If he believe that groups and classes like the Negro, the Hottentot,
the American, the Australian, or the Mongolian, differ from each other
as the dog differs from the fox, he talks of _species_. He has made up
his mind.
But, perhaps, he does no such thing. His mind is made up the other way.
Members of such classes may be to Europeans, and to each other, just
what the cur is to the pug, the pointer to the beagle, &c. They may be
_varieties_.
He uses, then, the terms accordingly; but, in order to do so, he must
have made up his mind; and certain classes must represent either one or
the other.
But what if he have not done this? If, instead of teaching undoubted
facts, he is merely investigating doubtful ones? In this case the term
_race_ is convenient. It is convenient for him during his pursuit of an
opinion, and during the consequent suspension of his opinion.
_Race_, then, is the term denoting a _species or variety_, as the
case may be--_pendente lite_. It is a term which, if it conceals our
ignorance, proclaims our openness to conviction.
Of the _prospective_ views of humanity, one has been considered. But
there are others of at least equal importance. Two, out of many, may
serve as samples.
1. The first is suggested by the following Table; taken from a fuller
one in Mr. D. Wilson’s valuable Archæology and Prehistoric Annals of
Scotland. It shows the relative proportions of a series of skulls of
_very great_, with those of a series of _moderate_ antiquity.
The study of this--and it requires to be studied carefully--gives
grounds for believing that the capacity of a skull may increase
as the social condition improves; from which it follows that the
physical organization of the less-favoured stocks may develope itself
progressively,--and, _pari passu_, the mental power that coincides with
it. This illustrates the nature of a certain ethnological question. But
what if the two classes of skulls belong to different stocks; so that
the owners of the one were _not_ the progenitors of the proprietors of
the other? Such a view (and it is not unreasonable) illustrates the
extent to which it is complicated.
[Transcriber’s Note: The measurements in the tables are in inches and
twelfths.]
KEY:
A: Longitudinal diameter.
B: Parietal diameter.
C: Frontal diameter.
D: Vertical diameter.
E: Intermastoid arch.
F: Intermastoid arch from upper root of zygomatic process.
----+------+-------+------+------+--------+------
| A | B | C | D | E | F
----+------+-------+------+------+--------+------
Very old.
1. | 7·0 | 5·4½? | 4·9? | 4·10 | 13·11 | 11·5
2. | 7·0 | 4·8 | 4·4 | 5·3 | 13·2 | 11·0
3. | 6·11 | 5·3 | 3·11 | 5·0 | ... | 12·0
4. | 7·0 | 4·11 | 4·4 | 5·3 | 13·8 | 11·4½
5. | 6·6 | 4·1? | 4·11 | 4·2? | 13·2 | 11·3
6. | 7·3 | 5·4 | 4·6 | 5·2 | 14·3 | 11·9
7. | 7·5 | 5·2 | 4·5 | 5·2 | 14·3 | 12·0
8. | 7·9 | 5·6 | 4·9 | ... | ... | 12·3
9. | 7·3 | 5·8 | 4·3½ | 4·9 | 14·0 | 11·9
Moderately old.
17. | 7·9 | 5·0 | 4·10 | 5·6 | 14·9 | 11·11
18. | 7·6 | 5·1 | 4·6 | 5·1 | 14·8 | 11·3
19. | 7·3 | 5·3 | 4·5 | 5·4½ | 14·5 | 12·4
20. | 7·5 | 5·6½ | 5·0½ | 5·6 | 14·11½ | 12·3
21. | 7·3 | 5·6½ | 4·4 | 5·6 | 14·8 | 12·0
22. | 7·2 | 5·7 | 4·5 | 5·6 | 14·9 | 11·10
23. | 7·3½ | 5·7 | 4·6 | 5·2 | 15·0? | 12·4?
24. | 7·2 | 5·5 | 4·6 | ... | ... | ...
25. | 7·8 | 5·6 | 4·3½ | 5·3 | 14·4 | 11·8
26. | 7·9 | 5·7 | 5·3 | 5·6 | 15·7 | 13·3
27. | 7·11 | 5·5 | 4·9 | ... | ... | 12·0
----+------+-------+------+------+--------+------
KEY:
G: Intermastoid lines.
H: Ditto from upper root of zygomatic process.
I: Occipitofrontal arch.
J: Ditto from occipital protuberance to root of nose.
K: Horizontal periphery.
L: Relative capacity.
----+-------+-------+-------+-------+--------+-------
| G | H | I | J | K | L
----+-------+-------+-------+-------+--------+-------
Very old.
1. | 3·6½ | 4·8½ | 13·9 | 12·0 | 20·4 | 32·2
2. | 4·1 | 4·10 | 14·0 | 11·11 | 19·6 | 31·9
3. | ... | 4·8½ | 14·4 | 11·4 | 19·0 | 30·11
4. | 4·1 | 4·10 | 13·10 | 11·3 | 16·7½ | 28·10½
5. | ... | 4·8? | 13·11 | 12·0 | 19·0 | 29·6
6. | 4·4 | 5·0½ | 14·8 | 12·3 | 20·8½ | 33·1½
7. | 3·7 | 4·10½ | 14·3 | 12·3 | 20·7½ | 33·2½
8. | ... | 5·6 | 15·6 | ... | 21·3 | ...
9. | 3·8½ | 5·0 | 14·2 | 11·9 | 20·7 | 32·7
Moderately old.
17. | 4·0 | 5·4 | 15·5 | 13·6 | 21·3 | 34·6
18. | 3·11 | 5·3 | 14·6 | 12·11 | 20·4 | 32·11½
19. | 3·11½ | 4·9 | 14·9 | 12·9 | 20·10 | 33·5½
20. | 4·0 | ... | 14·9 | 12·6 | 20·10 | 33·9
21. | 4·1 | 5·3 | 14·5 | 12·10 | 20·2 | 32·11
22. | 4·3 | 5·6 | 14·4 | 12·6 | 20·0 | 32·8
23. | ... | ... | 14·8 | 12·6½ | 19·10½ | 32·4
24. | ... | ... | ... | 12·10 | 20·7 | ...
25. | 4·7 | 5·6 | 14·6 | 12·7 | 20·11 | 33·10
26. | 4·0½ | 5·4 | 16·4 | 14·4 | 21·11 | 35·2
27. | ... | 5·1 | 15·5 | 13·9 | 21·6 | ...
----+-------+-------+-------+-------+--------+-------
2. The second, like the first, shall be explained by extracts:--
* * * * *
_a._ Mrs. ----, a neighbour of Mr. M’Combie, was twice married, and
had issue by both husbands. The children of the first marriage were
five in number; by the second, three. One of these three, a daughter,
bears an unmistakeable resemblance to her mother’s first husband.
What makes the likeness the more discernible is, that there was the
most marked difference, in their features and general appearance,
between the two husbands.
* * * * *
_b._ A young woman, residing in Edinburgh, and born of white
(Scottish) parents, but whose mother some time previous to her
marriage had a natural (Mulatto) child, by a negro-servant, in
Edinburgh, exhibits distinct traces of the negro. Dr. Simpson,
whose patient the young woman at one time was, has had no recent
opportunities of satisfying himself as to the precise extent to which
the negro character prevails in her features; but he recollects being
struck with the resemblance, and noticed particularly that the hair
had the qualities characteristic of the negro.
* * * * *
_c._ Mrs. ----, apparently perfectly free from scrofula, married a
man who died of phthisis; she had one child by him, which also died
of phthisis. She next married a person who was to all appearance
equally healthy as herself, and had two children by him, one of which
died of phthisis, the other of tubercular mesenteric disease--having,
at the same time, scrofulous ulceration of the under extremity.
There are the elements of a theory here; especially if they be
taken along with certain phænomena, well-known to the breeders of
race-horses--the theory being, that the mixture of the _distinctive
characters_ of different divisions of mankind may be greater than
the intermixture itself. I give no opinion on the _data_. I merely
illustrate an ethnological question--one out of many.
FOOTNOTES
[3] From the Greek word (ἦθος) _ethos_ = _character_.
[4] Called by Comte _Sociology_, a name half Latin and half Greek, and
consequently too barbarous to be used, if its use can be avoided.
[5] Knox, Races of Men, pp. 73, 74.
[6] On the Osteology of the Great Chimpanzee. By Professor Owen, in the
Philosophical Transactions.
[7] Owen, Philosophical Transactions, Feb. 22, 1848.
[8] From _protos_ = _first_, and _plastos_ = _formed_.
[9] From the Greek _telos_ = _an end_.
CHAPTER III.
Methods--the science one of observation and deduction rather than
experiment--classification--on mineralogical, on zoological
principles--the first for Anthropology, the second for Ethnology--
value of Language as a test--instances of its loss--of its
retention--when it proves original relation, when intercourse--the
grammatical and glossarial tests--classifications must be
_real_--the distribution of Man--size of area--ethnological
contrasts in close geographical contact--discontinuity and
isolation of areas--oceanic migrations.
In the Natural History of Man we must keep almost exclusively to
the methods of deduction and observation; and in observation we are
limited to one sort only, _i. e._ that simple and spontaneous kind
where the object can be found if sought for, but cannot be artificially
produced. In other words, there is no great room for _experiment_.
The _corpus_ is not _vile_ enough for the purpose. Besides which,
“even if we suppose unlimited power of varying the experiment (which
is abstractedly possible), though no one but an oriental despot either
has the power, or if he had would be disposed to exercise it, a still
more essential condition is wanting--the power of performing any of the
experiments with scientific accuracy[10].” Experiment is nearly as much
out of place in Ethnology and Anthropology as it is in Astronomy.
Psammetichus, to be sure, according to Herodotus, did as follows. He
took children of a poor man, put them in the charge of a shepherd who
was forbidden to speak in their presence, suckled them in a lone hut
through a she-goat, waited for the age at which boys begin to talk,
and then took down the first word they uttered. This was _bekos_,
which when it was shown to mean in the Phrygian language _bread_, the
Egyptians yielded the palm of antiquity to that rival.
Now this was an ethnological experiment; but then Psammetichus _was_
an oriental despot; and the instance itself is, probably, the only one
of its class--the only one, or nearly so--the only one which is a true
experiment; since in order to be such there must be a definite and
specific end or object in view.
We know the tradition about Newton and the apple. This, if true, was
no experiment, but an observation. To have been the former, the tree
should have been shaken for the purpose of seeing the fruit descend.
There would then have been an end and aim--malice prepense, so to say.
Hence the phænomena of the African slave-trade, of English emigration,
and of other similar elements for observation are no experiments;
since it has not been Science that either the slaver or the settler
ever thought about. Sugar or cotton, land or money, was what ran in
their heads.
The revolting operation by which the jealous Oriental labours to secure
the integrity of his harem is in its end a scientific fact. It tells
how much the whole system sympathises with the mutilation of one of its
parts. But it is nothing for Science to either applaud or imitate. It
is repeated by the sensual Italian for the sake of ensuring fine voices
in the music-market; and Science is disgusted at its repetition. Even
if done in her own name, and for her own objects, it would still be but
an inhuman and intolerable form of zootomy.
Still the trade in Africans, and the emigration of Englishmen are said
to partake of the nature of a scientific experiment, even without being
one. They are said to serve as such. So they do; yet not in the way
in which they are often interpreted. A European regiment is decimated
by being placed on the Gambia, or in Sierra Leone. The American
Anglo-Saxon is said to have lost the freshness of the European--to have
become brown in colour, and wiry in muscle. Perhaps he has. Yet what
does this prove? Merely the effect of _sudden_ changes; the results
of _distant_ transplantation; the imperfect character of those forms
of acclimatization which are not _gradual_. It was not in this way
that the world was originally peopled. New climates were approached
by degrees, step by step, by enlargement and extension of the
circumference of a previously acclimated family. Hence the experience
of the kind in question, valuable as it is in the way of Medical
Police, is comparatively worthless in a theory as to the Migrations
of Mankind. Take a man from Caucasus to the Gold Coast, and he either
dies or takes a fever. But would he do so if his previous sojourn had
been on the Gambia, his grandfather’s on the Senegal, his ancestor’s
in the tenth degree on the Nile, and that ancestor’s ancestor’s on the
Jordan--thus going back till we reached the first remote patriarch of
the migration on the Phasis? This is an experiment which no single
generation can either make or observe; yet less than this is no
experiment at all, no imitation of that particular operation of Nature
which we are so curious to investigate.
What follows applies to Ethnology. The first result we get from our
observations is a _classification_, _i. e._ groups of individuals,
families, tribes, nations, sub-varieties, varieties, and (according
to some) of species connected by some common link, and united on some
common principle. There is no want of groups of this kind; and many
of them are so natural as to be unsusceptible of improvement. Yet
the nomenclature for their different divisions is undetermined, the
values of many of them uncertain, and, above all, the principle upon
which they are formed is by no means uniform. Whilst some investigators
classify mankind on _Zoological_, others do so on what may be called
_Mineralogical_, principles. This difference will be somewhat fully
illustrated.
In Africa, as is well known, a great portion of the population is
black-skinned; and with this black skin other physical characteristics
are generally found in conjunction. Thus the hair is either crisp
or woolly, the nose depressed, and the lips thick. As we approach
Asia these criteria decrease; the Arab being fairer, better-featured
and straighter-haired than the Nubian, and the Persian more so than
the Arab. In Hindostan, however, the colour deepens; and by looking
amongst the most moist and alluvial parts of the southern peninsula
we find skins as dark as those of Africa, and hair crisp rather than
straight. Besides this, the fine oval contour and regular features of
the high-cast Hindus of the North become scarce, whilst the lips get
thick, the skin harsh, and the features coarse.
Further on--we come to the great Peninsula which contains the Kingdoms
of Ava and Siam--the Indo-Chinese or Transgangetic Peninsula. In many
parts of this the population blackens again; and in the long narrow
peninsula of Malacca, a _large_ proportion of the older population
has been described as _blacks_. In the islands we find them again; so
much so that the Spanish authorities call them _Negritos_ or _Little
Negroes_. In New Guinea all is black; and in Australia and Van Diemen’s
Land it is blacker still. In Australia the hair is generally straight;
but in the first and last-named countries it is frizzy, crisped, or
curling. This connects them with the Negroes of Africa; and their
colour does so still more. At any rate we talk of the Australian
_Blacks_, just as the Spaniards do of the Philippine _Negritos_. Moral
characteristics connect the Australian and the Negro, much in the same
manner as the physical ones. Both, as compared with the European,
are either really deficient in intellectual capacity, or (at least)
have played an unimportant part in the history of the world. Thus,
several populations have come under the class of _Blacks_. Is this
classification natural?
It shall be illustrated further. On the extremities of each of the
quarters of the world, we find populations that in many respects
resemble each other. In Northern Asia and Europe, the Eskimo, Samoeid,
and Laplander, tolerant of the cold of the Arctic Circle, are all
characterized by a flatness of face, a lowness of stature, and a
breadth of head. In some cases the contrast between them and their
nearest neighbours to the south, in these respects, is remarkable. The
Norwegian who comes in contact with the Lap is strong and well-made; so
are many of the Red Indians who front the Eskimo.
At the Cape of Good Hope something of the same sort appears. The
Hottentot of the southern extremity of Africa is undersized,
small-limbed, and broad-faced; so much so, that most writers, in
describing him, have said that, in his conformation, the Mongolian
type--to which the Eskimo belongs--Asiatic itself--re-appears in
Africa. And then his neighbour the Kaffre differs from him as the
Finlander does from the Lap.
_Mutatis mutandis_, all this re-appears at Cape Horn; where the
Patagonian changes suddenly to the Fuegian.
But we in Europe are favoured; our limbs are well-formed and our skin
fair. Be it so: yet there are writers who, seeing the extent to which
the islanders of the Pacific are favoured also, and noting the degree
to which European points of colour, size, and capacity for improvement,
real or supposed, re-appear at the Antipodes, have thrown the
Polynesian and the Englishman in one and the same class.
And so, perhaps, he is, if we are to judge by certain characteristics:
if agreement in certain matters, wherein the intermediate populations
differ, form the grounds upon which we make our groups, the Fuegians,
Eskimo, and Hottentots form one class, and the Negroes and Australians
another. But are these classes natural? That depends upon the questions
to which the classification is subservient. If we wish to know how far
moisture and coolness freshen the complexion; how far moisture and heat
darken it; how far mountain altitudes affect the human frame; in other
words, how far common external conditions develope common habits and
common points of structure, nothing can be better than the groups in
question.
But alter the problem: let us wish to know how certain areas were
peopled, what population gave origin to some other, how the Americans
reached America, whence the Britons came into England, or any
question connected with the migrations, affiliations, and origin of
the varieties of our species, and groups of this kind are valueless.
They tell us something--but not what we want to know: inasmuch as
our question now concerns blood, descent, pedigree, relationship. To
tell an inquirer who wishes to deduce one population from another
that certain distant tribes agree with the one under discussion in
certain points of resemblance, is as irrelevant as to tell a lawyer
in search of the next of kin to a client deceased, that though you
know of no relations, you can find a man who is the very picture
of him in person--a fact good enough in itself, but not to the
purpose; except (of course) so far as the likeness itself suggests a
relationship--which it may or may not do.
Classes formed irrespective of descent are classes on the
_Mineralogical_, whilst classes formed with a view to the same are
classes on the _Zoological_, principle. Which is wanted in the
Natural History of Man? The first for _Anthropology_; the second for
_Ethnology_.
But why the antagonism? Perhaps the two methods may coincide. The
possibility of this has been foreshadowed. The family likeness may,
perhaps, prove a family connexion. True: at the same time each case
must be tested on its own grounds. Hence, whether the African is to
be grouped with the Australian, or whether the two classes are to be
as far asunder in Ethnology as in Geography, depends upon the results
of the special investigation of that particular connexion--real or
supposed. It is sufficient to say that none of the instances quoted
exhibit any such relationship; though many a theory--as erroneous as
bold--has been started to account for it.
It is for Ethnology, then, that classification is most wanted--more
than for Anthropology; even as it is for Zoology that we require orders
and genera rather than for Physiology. This is based upon certain
distinctive characters; some of which are of a physical, others of a
moral sort. Each falls into divisions. There are moral and intellectual
phænomena which prove nothing in the way of relationship, simply
because they are the effects of a common grade of civilizational
development. What would be easier than to group all the hunting, all
the piscatory, or all the pastoral tribes together, and to exclude from
these all who built cities, milked cows, sowed corn, or ploughed land?
Common conditions determine common habits.
Again, much that seems at first glance definite, specific, and
characteristic, loses its value as a test of ethnological affinity,
when we examine the families in which it occurs. In distant countries,
and in tribes far separated, superstition takes a common form, and
creeds that arise independently of each other look as if they were
deduced from a common origin. All this makes the facts in what may be
called the Natural History of the Arts or of Religion easy to collect,
but difficult to appreciate; in many cases, indeed, we are taken up
into the rare and elevated atmosphere of metaphysics. What if different
modes of architecture, or sculpture, or varieties in the practice
of such useful arts as weaving and ship-building, be attributed to
the same principle that makes a sparrow’s nest different from a
hawk’s, or a honey-bee’s from a hornet’s? What if there be different
_instincts_ in human art, as there is in the nidification of birds?
Whatever may be the fact, it is clear that such a doctrine must modify
the interpretation of it. The clue to these complications--and they
form a Gordian knot which must be unravelled, and not cut--lies in
the cautious induction from what we know to what we do not; from the
undoubted differences admitted to exist within undoubtedly related
populations, to the greater ones which distinguish more distantly
connected groups.
This has been sufficient to indicate the existence of certain moral
characters which are really no characters at all--at least in the way
of proving descent or affiliation; and that physical ones of the same
kind are equally numerous may be inferred from what has already been
written.
It is these elements of uncertainty so profusely mixed up with almost
all the other classes of ethnological facts, that give such a high
value, as an instrument of investigation, to _Language_; inasmuch as,
although two different families of mankind may agree in having skins of
the same colour, or hair of the same texture, without, thereby, being
connected in the way of relationship, it is hard to conceive how they
could agree in calling the same objects by the same name, without a
community of origin, or else either direct or indirect intercourse.
Affiliation or intercourse--one of the two--this community of language
exhibits. One to the exclusion of the other it does _not_ exhibit. If
it did so, it would be of greater value than it is. Still it indicates
one of the two; and either fact is worth looking for.
The value of language has been overrated; chiefly, of course, by
the philologists. And it has been undervalued. The anatomists and
archæologists, and, above all, the zoologists, have done this. The
historian, too, has not known exactly how to appreciate it, when its
phænomena come in collision with the direct testimony of authorities;
the chief instrument in his own line of criticism.
It is overrated when we make the affinities of speech between
two populations _absolute_ evidence of connection in the way of
relationship. It is overrated when we talk of _tongues being
immutable_, and of _languages never dying_. On the other hand, it
is unduly disparaged when an inch or two of difference in stature,
a difference in the taste in the fine arts, a modification in the
religious belief, or a disproportion in the influence upon the affairs
of the world, is set up as a mark of distinction between two tribes
speaking one and the same tongue, and alike in other matters. Now,
errors of each kind are common.
The permanence of language as a sign of origin must be determined,
like every thing else of the same kind, by induction; and this tells
us that both the loss and retention of a native tongue are illustrated
by remarkable examples. It tells both ways. In St. Domingo we have
negroes speaking French; and this is a notable instance of the adoption
of a foreign tongue. But the circumstances were peculiar. _One_ tongue
was not changed for another; since no Negro language predominated.
The real fact was that of a _mixture of languages_--and this is next
to no language at all. Hence, when French became the language of the
Haytians, the usual obstacle of a previously existing common native
tongue, pertinaciously and patriotically retained, was wanting. It
superseded an indefinite and conflicting mass of Negro dialects, rather
than any particular Negro language.
In the southern parts of Central America the ethnology is obscure,
especially for the Republics of San Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa
Rica. Yet if we turn to Colonel Galindo’s account of them, we find
the specific statement that aborigines still exist, and that their
language is the _Spanish_; not any native Indian dialect. As similar
assertions respecting the extinction and replacement of original
languages have frequently proved incorrect, let us assume this to be an
over-statement--though I have no definite grounds for considering it
one. Over-statement though it may be, it still shows the direction in
which things are going; and that is towards the supremacy of a European
tongue.
On the confines of Asia and Europe there is the nation, tribe or family
of the Bashkirs. Their present tongue is the Turkish. It is believed,
however, that originally it was the mother-tongue of the Majiars of
Hungary.
Again, the present Bulgarian is akin to the Russian. Originally, it was
a Turk dialect.
Lastly--for I am illustrating, not exhausting, the subject--there
died, in the year 1770, at Karczag in Hungary, an old man named Varro;
the last man, in Europe, that knew even a few words of the language
of his nation. Yet this nation was and is a great one; no less a one
than that of the ancient Komanian Turks, some of whom invaded Europe
in the eleventh century, penetrated as far as Hungary, settled there
as conquerors, and retained their language till the death of this
same Varro. The rest of the nation remained in Asia; and the present
occupants of the parts between the Caspian and the Aral are their
descendants. Languages then may be lost; and one may be superseded by
another.
The ancient Etruscans as a separate substantive nation are extinct:
so is their language, which we know to have been peculiar. Yet the
Etruscan blood still runs in the veins of the Florentine and other
Italians.
On the other hand, the pertinacity with which language resists the
attempts to supersede it is of no common kind. Without going to
Siberia, or America, the great _habitats_ of the broken and fragmentary
families, we may find instances much nearer home! In the Isle of Man
the native Manks still remains; though dominant Norsemen and dominant
Anglo-Saxons have brought their great absorbent languages in collision
with it. In Malta, the labourers speak Arabic--with Italian, with
English, and with a Lingua Franca around them.
In the western extremities of the Pyrenees, a language neither French
nor Spanish is spoken; and has been spoken for centuries--possibly
milleniums. It was once the speech of the southern half of France, and
of all Spain. This is the Basque of Biscay.
In contact with the Turk on one side, and the Greek and the Slavonic on
the other, the Albanian of Albania still speaks his native Skipetar.
A reasonable philologist makes similarity of language strong--very
strong--_primâ facie_ evidence in favour of community of descent.
When does it imply this, and when does it merely denote commercial
or social intercourse? We can measure the phænomena of languages and
exhibit the results numerically. Thus the _percentage_ of words common
to two languages may be 1, 2, 3, 4–98, 99, or any intermediate number.
But, now comes the application of a maxim. _Ponderanda non numeranda._
We ask what _sort_ of words coincide, as well as _how many?_ When
the names of such objects as _fire_, _water_, _sun_, _moon_, _star_,
_hand_, _tooth_, _tongue_, _foot_, &c. agree, we draw an inference
very different from the one which arises out of the presence of such
words as _ennui_, _fashion_, _quadrille_, _violin_, &c. Common sense
distinguishes the words which are likely to be borrowed from one
language into another, from those which were originally common to the
two.
There are a certain amount of French words in English, _i. e._ of words
borrowed from the French. I do not know the percentage, nor yet the
time required for their introduction; and, as I am illustrating the
subject, rather than seeking specific results, this is unimportant.
Prolong the time, and multiply the words; remembering that the former
can be done indefinitely. Or, instead of doing this, increase the
points of contact between the languages. What follows? We soon begin
to think of a familiar set of illustrations; some classical and some
vulgar--of the Delphic ship so often mended as to retain but an
equivocal identity; of the Highlander’s knife, with its two new blades
and three new handles; of Sir John Cutler’s silk-stockings degenerated
into worsted by darnings. We are brought to the edge of a new question.
We must tread slowly accordingly.
In the English words call-_est_, call-_eth_ (call-_s_), and call-_ed_,
we have two parts; the first being the root itself, the second a sign
of _person_, or _tense_. The same is the case with the word father-_s_,
son-_s_, &c.; except that the _-s_ denotes _case_; and that it is
attached to a substantive, instead of a verb. Again, in wis-_er_ we
have the sign of a comparative; in wis-_est_ that of a superlative
degree. All these are _inflexions_. If we choose, we may call them
_inflexional_ elements; and it is convenient to do so; since we can
then analyse words and contrast the different parts of them: _e. g._
in _call-s_ the _call-_ is radical, the _-s_ inflexional.
Having become familiarized with this distinction, we may now take
a word of French or German origin--say _fashion_ or _waltz_. Each,
of course, is foreign. Nevertheless, when introduced into English,
it takes an English inflexion. Hence we say, _if I dress absurdly
it is fashion’s fault_; also, _I am waltz_-ing, _I waltz_-ed, _he
waltz_-es--and so on. In these particular words, then, the inflexional
part has been English; even when the radical was foreign. This is
no isolated fact. On the contrary, it is sufficiently common to be
generalized so that the _grammatical_ part of language has been
accredited with a permanence which has been denied to the _glossarial_
or _vocabular_. The one changes, the other is constant; the one is
immortal, the other fleeting; the one form, the other matter.
Now it is imaginable that the glossarial and grammatical tests may
be at variance. They would be so if all our English verbs came to be
French, yet still retained their English inflexions in _-ed_, _-s_,
_-ing_, &c. They would be so if all the verbs were like _fashion_,
and all the substantives like _quadrille_. This is an extreme case.
Still, it illustrates the question. Certain Hindu languages are said
to have nine-tenths of the vocables common with a language called the
Sanskrit--but _none_ of their inflexions; the latter being chiefly
Tamul. What, then, is the language itself? This is a question which
divides philologists. It illustrates, however, the difference between
the two tests--the _grammatical_ and the _glossarial_. Of these, it is
safe to say that the former is the more constant.
Yet the philological method of investigation requires caution. Over
and above the terms which one language borrows from another, and which
denote intercourse rather than affinity, there are two other classes of
little or no ethnological value.
1. _Coincidences may be merely accidental._ The likelihood of their
being so is a part of the Doctrine of Chances. The mathematician may
investigate this: the philologist merely finds the _data_. Neither has
been done satisfactorily, though it was attempted by Dr. T. Young.
2. _Coincidences may have an +organic+ connexion._ No one would say
that because two nations called the same bird by the name _cuckoo_, the
term had been borrowed by either one from the other, or by both from a
common source. The true reason would be plain enough. Two populations
gave a name on imitative principles, and imitated the same object.
_Son_ and _brother_, _sister_ and _daughter_--if these terms agree,
the chances are that a philological affinity is at the bottom of the
agreement. But does the same apply to _papa_ and _mama_, identical in
English, Carib, and perhaps twenty other tongues? No. They merely show
that the infants of different countries begin with the same sounds.
Such--and each class is capable of great expansion--are the cases where
philology requires caution. Another matter now suggests itself.
To be valid a classification must be _real_; not _nominal_ or
_verbal_--not a mere book-maker’s arrangement. Families must be in
definite degrees of relationship. This, too, will bear illustration. A
man wants a relation to leave his money to: he is an Englishman, and
by relation means nothing more distant than a _third_ cousin. It is
nothing to him if, in Scotland, a _fifth_ cousinship is recognised.
He has not found the relation he wants; he has merely found a greater
amount of latitude given to the term. Few oversights have done more
harm than the neglect of this distinction. Twenty years ago the
Sanskrit, Sclavonic, Greek-and-Latin, and Gothic languages formed a
class. This class was called Indo-Germanic. Its western limits were
in Germany; its eastern in Hindostan. The Celtic of Wales, Cornwall,
Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man was not included in
it. Neither was it included in any other group. It was anywhere or
nowhere--in any degree of isolation. Dr. Prichard undertook to fix it.
He did so--well and successfully. He showed that, so far from being
isolated, it was connected with the Greek, German, and Sclavonic by
a connexion with the Sanskrit, or (changing the expression) with the
Sanskrit through the Sclavonic, German, and Greek--any or all. The
mother-tongue from which all these broke was supposed to be in Asia.
Dr. Prichard’s work was entitled the ‘Eastern Origin of the Celtic
Nations.’ Did this make the Celtic Indo-Germanic? It was supposed to do
so. Nay, more--it altered the name of the class; which was now called,
as it has been since, Indo-European. Inconveniently. _A_ relationship
was mistaken for _the_ relationship. The previous tongues were (say)
second cousins. The Celtic was a fourth or fifth. What was the result?
Not that a new second cousin was found, but that the family circle was
enlarged.
What follows? Dr. Prichard’s fixation of the Celtic as a member of even
the same _clan_ with the German, &c. was an addition to ethnographical
philology that many inferior investigators strove to rival; and it
came to be current belief--acted on if not avowed--that tongues as
like the Celtic as the Celtic was to the German were Indo-European
also. This bid fair to inundate the class--to make it prove too
much--to render it no class at all. The Albanian, Basque, Etruscan,
Lap, and others followed. The outlier of the group once created
served as a nucleus for fresh accumulations. A strange language of
Caucasus--the Irôn or Ossetic--was placed by Klaproth as Indo-Germanic;
and that upon reasonable grounds, considering the unsettled state
of criticism. Meanwhile, the Georgian, another tongue of those same
mysterious mountains, wants placing. It has undoubted Ossetic--or
Irôn--affinities. But the Ossetic--or Irôn--is Indo-European. So
therefore is the Georgian. This is a great feat; since the Caucasian
tongues and the Caucasian skulls now agree, both having their
affinities with Europe--as they ought to have. But what if both the
Irôn and Georgian are half Chinese, or Tibetan, _i. e._ are all but
monosyllabic languages both in grammar and vocables? If such be the
case, the term ‘Indo-European’ wants revising; and not only that--the
principles on which terms are fixed and classes created want revising
also. At the same time, the ‘Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations’
contains the most definite addition to philology that the present
century has produced; and the proper compliment to it is Mr. Garnett’s
review of it in the ‘Quarterly;’ the first of a series of masterly
and unsurpassed specimens of inductive philology applied to the
investigation of the true nature of the inflexions of the Verb. But
this is episodical.
The next instrument of ethnological criticism is to be found in the
phænomena themselves of the dispersion and distribution of our species.
First as to its universality. In this respect we must look minutely
before we shall find places where Man is _not_. These, if we find
them at all, will come under one of two conditions; the climate will
be extreme, or the isolation excessive. For instances of the first we
take the Poles; and, as far as the Antarctic Circle is concerned, we
find no inhabitants in the ice-bound regions--few and far between--of
its neighbourhood; none south of 55° S. lat., or the extremity of
the Tierra del Fuego. This, however, _is_ peopled. We must remember,
however, that in the Southern Ocean such regions as New South Shetland
and Victoria Land are isolated as well as cold and frozen.
The _North_ Pole, however, must be approached within 25° before we lose
sight of Man, or find him excluded from even a permanent habitation.
Spitzbergen is beyond the limits of human occupancy. Nova Zembla,
when first discovered, was also uninhabited. So was Iceland. Here,
however, it was the isolation of the _island_ that made it so. A hardy
stock of men, nearly related to ourselves, have occupied it since the
ninth century; and _continental_ Greenland is peopled as far as the
75th degree--though, perhaps, only as a summer residence.
Far to the east of Nova Zembla and opposite to the country of the
Yukahiri--a hardy people on the rivers Kolyma and Indijirka, and
within the Arctic Circle--lies the island of New Siberia. I find from
Wrangell’s Travels in Siberia that certain expatriated Yukahiri are
believed to have fled thither. Have they lived or died? Have they
reached the island? In case they have done so, and kept body and
soul together, New Siberia is probably the most northern spot of the
inhabited world.
How _cold_ a country must be in order to remain empty of men, we have
seen. Such localities are but few. None are too _hot_--unless, indeed,
we believe the centre of Equatorial Africa to be a solitude.
In South America there is a great blank in the Maps. For many degrees
on each side of the Upper Amazons lies a vast tract--said to be a
jungle--and marked _Sirionos_, the name of a frontier population. Yet
the _Sirionos_ are not, for one moment, supposed to fill up the vast
hiatus. At the same time, there are few, or none, besides. Is this
tract a drear unhumanized waste? It is said to be so--to be wet, woody,
and oppressively malarious. Yet, this merely means that there is a
forest and a swamp of a certain magnitude, and of a certain degree of
impenetrability.
Other such areas are unexplored--yet we presume them to be occupied;
though ever so thinly: _e. g._ the interiors of New Guinea and
Australia.
That Greenland was known to the early Icelanders is well known. And
that it was occupied when so first known is also certain. One of the
geographical localities mentioned in an old Saga has an Eskimo word
for one of its elements--_Utibuks-firth_ = _the firth of the isthmus_;
_Utibuk_ in Eskimo meaning _isthmus_.
Of the islands originally uninhabited those which are, at one and the
same time, large and near continents are Madeira and Iceland--the
former being a lonely wood. The Canaries, though smaller and more
isolated, have been occupied by the remarkable family of the Guanches.
Add to these, Ascension, St. Helena, the Galapagos, Kerguelen’s Island,
and a few others.
Easter Island, a speck in the vast Pacific, and more than half way
between Asia and America, exhibited both inhabitants and ruins to its
first discoverers.
Such is the _horizontal_ distribution of Man; _i.e._ his distribution
according to the degrees of latitude. What other animal has such a
range? What species? What genus or order? Contrast with this the
localized habitats of the Orang-utan, and the Chimpanzee as species; of
the Apes as genera; of the Marsupialia as orders.
The _vertical_ distribution is as wide. By _vertical_ I mean elevation
above the level of the sea. On the high table-land of Pamer we have
the Kerghiz; summer visitants at least, where the _Yak_ alone, among
domesticated animals, lives and breathes in the rarefied atmosphere.
The town of Quito is more than 10,000 feet above the sea; Walcheren is,
perhaps, below the level of it.
Who expects uniformity of physiognomy or frame with such a distribution?
_The size of ethnological areas._--Comparatively speaking, Europe is
pretty equally divided amongst the European families. The Slavonic
populations of Bohemia, Silesia, Poland, Servia, and Russia may,
perhaps, have more than their due--still the French, Italians,
Spaniards, Portuguese, and Wallachians, all speaking languages of
classical origin, have their share; and so has our own Germanic
or Gothic family of English, Dutch, Frisians, Bavarians, and
Scandinavians. Nevertheless, there are a few families as limited in
geographical area as subordinate in political importance. There are
the Escaldunac, or Basques,--originally the occupants of all Spain and
half France, now pent up in a corner of the Pyrenees--the Welsh of the
Iberic Peninsula. There are, also, the Skipetar, or Albanians; wedged
in between Greece, Turkey, and Dalmatia. Nevertheless, the respective
areas of the European families are pretty equally distributed; and
the land of Europe is like a lottery wherein all the prizes are of an
appreciable value.
The comparison with Asia verifies this. In immediate contact with the
vast Turkish population centred in Independent Tartary, but spread
over an area reaching, more or less continuously, from Africa to the
Icy Sea (an area larger than the whole of Europe), come the tribes
of Caucasus--Georgians, Circassians, Lesgians, Mizjeji, and Irôn;
five well-defined groups, each falling into subordinate divisions,
and some of them into subdivisions. The language of Constantinople
is understood at the Lena. In the mountain range between the Caspian
and the Black Sea, the mutually unintelligible languages are at least
fifteen--perhaps more, certainly not fewer. Now, the extent of land
covered by the Turk family shows the size to which an ethnological
area may attain; whilst the multiplicity of mutually unintelligible
tongues of Caucasus shows how closely families may be packed. Their
geographical juxtaposition gives prominence to the contrast.
At the first view, this contrast seems remarkable. So far from being
so, it is of continual occurrence. In China the language is one and
indivisible: on its south-western frontier the tongues are counted
by the dozen--just as if in Yorkshire there were but one provincial
dialect throughout; two in Lincolnshire; and twenty in Rutland.
The same contrast re-appears in North America. In Canada and the
Northern States the Algonkin area is measured by the degrees of
latitude and longitude; in Louisiana and Alabama by the mile.
The same in South America. One tongue--the Guarani--covers half the
continent. Elsewhere, a tenth part of it contains a score.
The same in Southern Africa. From the Line to the neighbourhood of the
Cape all is Kaffre. Between the Gambia and the Gaboon there are more
than twenty different divisions.
The same in the North. The Berbers reach from the Valley of the Nile to
the Canaries, and from the Mediterranean to the parts about Borneo. In
Borneo there are said to be thirty different languages.
Such are areas in size, and in relation to each other; like the
bishoprics and curacies of our church, large and small, with a
difficulty in ascertaining the average. However, the simple epithets
_great_ and _small_ are suggestive; since the former implies an
_encroaching_, the latter a _receding_ population.
A distribution over continents is one thing; a distribution over
islands another. The first is easiest made when the world is young and
when the previous occupants create no obstacles. The second implies
maritime skill and enterprise, and maritime skill improves with the
experience of mankind. One of the greatest facts of ethnological
distribution and dispersion belongs to this class. All the islands of
the Pacific are peopled by the members of one stock, or family--the
Polynesian. These we find as far north as the Sandwich Islands, as
far south as New Zealand, and in Easter Island half-way between Asia
and America. So much for the _dispersion_. But this is not all: the
_distribution_ is as remarkable. Madagascar is an African rather than
an Asiatic island; within easy sail of Africa; the exact island for
an African population. Yet, ethnologically, it is Asiatic--the same
family which we find in Sumatra, Borneo, the Moluccas, the Mariannes,
the Carolines, and Polynesia being Malagasi also.
_Contrast between contiguous populations._--Ethnological resemblance
by no means coincides with geographical contiguity. The general
character of the circumpolar families of the Arctic Circle is that
of the Laplander, the Samoeid, and the Eskimo. Yet the zone of
population that encircles the inhospitable shores of the Polar Sea is
not exclusively either Lap or Samoeid--nor yet Eskimo. In Europe, the
Laplander finds a contrast on each side. There is the Norwegian on the
west; the Finlander on the east. We can explain this. The former is
but a recent occupant; not a natural, but an intruder. This we infer
from the southern distribution of the other members of his family--who
are Danish, German, Dutch, English, and American. For the same reason
the Icelander differs from the Greenlander. The Finlander, though more
closely allied to the Lap than the Norwegian--belonging to the same
great Ugrian family of mankind--is still a southern member of his
family; a family whose continuation extends to the Lower Volga, and
prolongations of which are found in Hungary. East of the Finlander,
the Russian displaces the typically circumpolar Samoeid; whilst at the
mouth of the Lena we have the Yakuts--Turk in blood, and tongue, and,
to a certain extent, in form also.
In America the circumpolar population is generally Eskimo. Yet at
one point, we find even the verge of the Arctic shore occupied by a
population of tall, fine-looking athletes, six feet high, well-made,
and handsome in countenance. These are the Digothi Indians, called also
Loucheux. Their locality is the mouth of the M{c}Kenzie River; but
their language shows that their origin is further south--_i. e._ that
they are Koluches within the Eskimo area.
In Southern Africa we have the Hottentot in geographical proximity
to the Kaffre, yet the contrast between the two is considerable.
Similar examples are numerous. What do they denote? Generally, but
not always, they denote encroachment and displacement; encroachment
which tells us which of the two families has been the stronger, and
displacement which has the following effect. It obliterates those
intermediate and transitional forms which connect varieties, and so
brings the more extreme cases of difference in geographical contact,
and in ethnological contrast; hence _encroachment_, _displacement_, and
the _obliteration of transitional forms_ are terms required for the
full application of the phænomena of distribution as an instrument of
ethnological criticism.
_Continuity and isolation._--In Siberia there are two isolated
populations--the Yakuts on the Lower Lena, and the Soiot on the Upper
Yenesey. The former, as aforesaid, are Turk; but they are surrounded by
nations other than Turk. They are cut off from the rest of the stock.
The Soiot in like manner are surrounded by strange populations. Their
true relations are the Samoeids of the Icy Sea; but between these two
branches of the stock there is a heterogeneous population of Turks and
Yeneseians--so-called.
The great Iroquois family of America is separated into two parts--one
northern and one southern. Between these lie certain members of the
Algonkin class. Like the Soiot, and the Northern Samoeids, the two
branches of the Iroquois are separated.
The Majiars of Hungary are wholly enclosed by non-Hungarian
populations; and their nearest kinsmen are the Voguls of the Uralian
Mountains, far to the north-east of Moscow.
This shows that ethnological areas may be either uninterrupted or
interrupted; continuous or discontinuous; unbroken or with isolated
fragments; and a little consideration will show, that _wherever there
is isolation there has been displacement_. Whether the land has risen
or the sea encroached is another question. We know why the Majiars
stand separate from the other Ugrian nations. They intruded themselves
into Europe within the historical period, cutting their way with the
sword; and the parts between them and their next of kin were never more
Majiar than they are at the present moment.
But we know no such thing concerning the Iroquois; and we infer
something quite the contrary. We believe that they once held all the
country that now separates their two branches, and a great deal more
beside. But the Algonkins encroached; partially dispossessing, and
partially leaving them in occupation.
In either case, however, there has been _displacement_; and the
displacement is the inference from the _discontinuity_.
But we must remember that true discontinuity can exist in _continents_
only. The populations of two _islands_ may agree, whilst that of
a whole archipelago lying between them may differ. Yet this is no
discontinuity; since the sea is an unbroken chain, and the intervening
obstacle can be sailed round instead of crossed. The nearest way from
the continent of Asia to the Tahitian archipelago--the nearest part of
Polynesia--is _viâ_ New Guinea, New Ireland, and the New Hebrides. All
these islands, however, are inhabited by a different division of the
Oceanic population. Does this indicate displacement? No! It merely
suggests the Philippines, the Pelews, the Carolines, the Ralik and
Radak groups, and the Navigators’ Isles, as the route; and such it
almost certainly was.
FOOTNOTE
[10] Mill (vol. ii.), speaking of the allied subject of the Moral
History of Man.
CHAPTER IV.
Details of distribution--their conventional character--convergence
from the circumference to the centre--Fuegians; Patagonian, Pampa,
and Chaco Indians--Peruvians--D’Orbigny’s characters--other South
American Indians--of the Missions--of Guiana--of Venezuela--
Guarani--Caribs--Central America--Mexican civilization no isolated
phænomenon--North American Indians--Eskimo--apparent objections to
their connection with the Americans and Asiatics--Tasmanians--
Australians--Papuás--Polynesians--Micronesians--Malagasi--
Hottentots--Kaffres--Negroes--Berbers--Abyssinians--Copts--the
Semitic family--Primary and secondary migrations.
If the inhabited world were one large circular island; if its
population were admitted to have been diffused over its surface from
some single point; and if that single point were at one and the same
time unascertained and requiring investigation, what would be the
method of our inquiries? I suppose that both history and tradition are
silent, and that the absence of other _data_ of the same kind force us
upon the general probabilities of the case, and a large amount of _à
priori_ argument.
We should ask what point would give us the existing phænomena with the
least amount of migration; and we should ask this upon the simple
principle of not multiplying causes unnecessarily. The answer would
be--_the centre_. From the centre we can people the parts about the
circumference without making any line of migration longer than half a
diameter; and without supposing any one out of such numerous lines to
be longer than the other. This last is the chief point--the point which
more especially fixes us to the centre as a hypothetical birth-place;
since, the moment we say that any part of the circumference was
reached by a shorter or longer line than any other, we make a specific
assertion, requiring specific arguments to support it. These may or may
not exist. Until, however, they have been brought forward, we apply
the rule _de non apparentibus_, &c., and keep to our conventional
and provisional point in the centre--remembering, of course, its
provisional and conventional character, and recognising its existence
only as long as the search for something more real and definite
continues.
In the earth as it is, we can do something of the same kind; taking six
extreme points as our starting-places, and investigating the extent to
which they _converge_. These six points are the following:--
1. Tierra del Fuego.
2. Tasmania (Van Diemen’s Land).
3. Easter Island--the furthest extremity of Polynesia.
4. The Cape of Good Hope, or the country of the Saabs (Hottentots).
5. Lapland.
6. Ireland.
From these we work through America, Australia, Polynesia, Africa,
and Europe, to Asia--some part of which gives us our _conventional,
provisional, and hypothetical centre_.
I. _From Tierra del Fuego to the north-eastern parts of Asia._--The
Fuegians of the island have so rarely been separated from the
Patagonians of the continent that there are no recognised elements
of uncertainty in this quarter, distant as it is. Maritime habits
connect them with their northern neighbours on the west; and that long
labyrinth of archipelagoes which runs up to the southern border of
Chili is equally Fuegian and Patagonian. Here we are reminded of the
habits of some of the Malay tribes, under a very different sky, and
amongst the islets about Sincapore--of the Bajows, or sea-gipsies,
boatmen whose home is on the water, and as unfixed as that element;
wanderers from one group to another; fishermen rather than traders; not
strong-handed enough to be pirates, and not industrious enough to be
cultivators. Such skill as the Fuegian shows at all, he shows in his
canoe, his paddles, his spears, his bow, his slings, and his domestic
architecture. All are rude--the bow-strings are made exclusively of
the sinews of animals, his arrows headed with stone. Of wood there is
little, and of metal less; and, low as is the latitude, the dress, or
undress, is said to make a nearer approach to absolute nakedness than
is to be found in many of the inter-tropical countries.
In size they fall short of the continental Patagonians; in colour
and physical conformation they approach them very closely. The same
broad and flattened face occurs in both, reminding some writers of the
Eskimo, others of the Chinuk. Their language is certainly referable to
the Patagonian class, though, probably, unintelligible to a Patagonian.
Within the island itself there are differences; degrees of discomfort;
and degrees in its effects upon the bodily frame. At the eastern
extremity[11] the population wore the skins of land-animals, and looked
like hunters rather than fishers and sealers. Otherwise, as a general
rule, the Fuegians are _boatmen_.
Not so their nearest kinsmen. They are all horsemen; and in their more
northern localities the most formidable ones in the world--Patagonians
of considerable but exaggerated stature, Pampa Indians between Buenos
Ayres and the southern Andes, and, higher up, the Chaco Indians of
the water-system of the river Plata. To these must be added two other
families--one on the Pacific and one on the Atlantic--the Araucanians
of Chili, and the Charruas of the lower La Plata.
Except in the impracticable heights of the Andes of Chili, and, as
suggested above, in the island of Tierra del Fuego, the same equestrian
habits characterize all these populations; and, one and all, the
same indomitable and savage independence. Of the Chaco Indians, the
Tonocote are partially settled, and imperfectly Christianized; but
the Abiponians--very Centaurs in their passionate equestrianism--the
Mbocobis, the Mataguayos, and others, are the dread of the Spaniards
at the present moment. The resistance of the Araucanians of Chili has
given an epic[12] to the country of their conquerors.
Of the Charruas every man was a warrior; self-relying, strong, and
cruel; with his hand against the Spaniard, and with his hand against
the other aborigines. Many of these they exterminated, and, too proud
to enter into confederations, always fought single-handed. In 1831, the
President of Uraguay ordered their total destruction, and they were
cut down, root and branch; a few survivors only remaining.
_Minus_ the Fuegians, this division is pre-eminently natural; yet
the Fuegians cannot be disconnected from it. As a proof of the
physical differences being small, I will add the description of a
naturalist--D’Orbigny--who separates them. They evidently lie within a
small compass.
_a._ _Araucanian branch of the Ando-Peruvians._--Colour light olive;
form massive; trunk somewhat disproportionately long; face nearly
circular; nose short and flat; lips thin; physiognomy sombre, cold.
_b._ _Pampa branch of the Pampa Indians._--Colour deep olive-brown, or
_maroon_; form Herculean; forehead vaulted; face large, flat, oblong;
nose short; nostrils large; mouth wide; lips large; eyes horizontal;
physiognomy cold, often savage.
D’Orbigny is a writer by no means inclined to undervalue differences.
Nevertheless he places the _Peruvians_ and the Araucanians in the same
primary division. This shows that, if other characters connect them,
there is nothing very conclusive in the way of physiognomy against
their relationship. I think that certain other characters _do_ connect
them--language most especially. At the same time, there is no denying
important contrasts. The civilization of Peru has no analogue beyond
the Tropics; and if we are to consider this as a phænomenon _per se_,
as the result of an instinct as different from those of the Charrua
as the architectural impulses of the bee and the hornet, broad and
trenchant must be our lines of demarcation. Yet no such lines can be
drawn. Undoubted members of the Quichua stock of the Inca Peruvians
(architects and conquerors, as that particular branch was) are but
ordinary Indians--like the Aymaras. Nay, the modern Peruvians when
contrasted with their ancestors are in the same category. The present
occupants of the parts about Titicaca and Tiaguanaco wonder at the
ruins around them, and confess their inability to rival them just as a
modern Greek thinks of the Phidian Jupiter and despairs. Again, the gap
is accounted for--since most of those intervening populations which may
have exhibited transitional characters have become either extinct, or
denationalized. Between the Peruvians and Araucanians, the Atacamas and
Changos are the only remaining populations--under 10,000 in number, and
but little known.
Nevertheless, an unequivocally allied population of the Peruvian stock
takes us from 28° S. lat. to the Equator. Its unity within itself is
undoubted; and its contrast with the next nearest families is no
greater than the displacements which have taken place around, and our
own ignorance in respect to parts in contact with it.
Of all the populations of the world, the Peruvian is the most
_vertical_ in its direction. Its line is due north and south; its
breadth but narrow. The Pacific is at one side, and the Andes at the
other. One is well-nigh as definite a limit as the other. When we cross
the Cordilleras the Peruvian type has changed.
The Peruvians lie between the Tropics. They cross the Equator. One of
their Republics--Ecuador--even takes its name from its meridian. But
they are also mountaineers; and, though their sun is that of Africa,
their soil is that of the Himalaya. Hence, their locality presents a
conflict, balance, or antagonism of climatologic influences; and the
degrees of altitude are opposed to those of latitude.
Again, _their line of migration is at a right angle with their
Equatorial parallel_--that is, if we assume them to have come from
North America. The bearing of this is as follows:--The town of Quito
is about as far from Mexico due north, as it is from French Guiana due
west. Now if we suppose the line of migration to have reached Peru
from the latter country, the great-great-ancestors of the Peruvians
would be people as inter-tropical as themselves, and the influences
of climate would coincide with the influences of descent; whereas if
it were North America from which they originated, their ancestors of
a corresponding generation would represent the effect of a climate
twenty-five degrees further north--these, in their turn, being
descended from the occupants of the temperate, and they from those
of the frigid zone. The full import of the relation of the lines of
migration--real or hypothetical--to the degrees of latitude has yet to
be duly appreciated. To say that the latter go for nothing because the
inter-tropical Indian of South America is not as black as the negro, is
to compare things that resemble each other in one particular only.
It is Peru where the ancient sepulchral remains have complicated
ethnology. The skulls from ancient burial-places are preternaturally
flattened. Consider this natural; and you have a fair reason for
the recognition of a fresh species of the genus _Homo_. But is it
legitimate to do so? I think not. That the practice of flattening the
head of infants was a custom once as rife and common in Peru as it is
in many other parts of both North and South America at the present day,
is well known. Then why not account for the ancient flattening thus?
I hold that the writers who hesitate to do this should undertake the
difficult task of proving a negative: otherwise they multiply causes
unnecessarily.
Two stocks of vast magnitude take up so large a proportion of South
America, that though they are not in immediate geographical contact
with the Peruvians, they require to be mentioned next in order here.
They are mentioned now in order to enable us to treat of _other_ and
_smaller_ families. These two great stocks are the Guarani and the
Carib; whilst the classes immediately under notice are--
_The remaining South Americans who are neither Carib nor
Guarani._--This division is artificial; being based upon a negative
character; and it is geographical rather than ethnological. The first
branch of it is that which D’Orbigny calls _Antisian_, and which he
connects at once with the Peruvians Proper; both being members of that
primary division to which he referred the Araucanians--the Araucanians
being the third branch of the _Ando_-Peruvians; the two others
being the--
_a._ _Peruvian branch._--Colour deep olive-brown; form massive; trunk
long in proportion to the limbs; forehead retreating; nose aquiline;
mouth large; physiognomy sombre:--Aymara and Quichua Peruvians.
_b._ _Antisian branch._--Colour varying from a deep olive to nearly
white; form not massive; forehead not retreating; physiognomy lively,
mild:--Yuracarés, Mocéténès, Tacanas, Maropas, and Apolistas.
The Yuracarés, Mocéténès, Tacanas, Maropas, and Apolistas, are
_Antisien_; and their locality is the eastern slopes of the Andes[13],
between 15° and 18° S. lat. Here they dwell in a thickly wooded
country, full of mountain streams, and their corresponding valleys. One
portion of them at least is so much lighter-skinned than the Peruvians,
as to have taken its name from its colour--_Yurak-kare_ = _white man_.
To the west of the Antisians lie the Indians of the _Missions_ of
Chiquito and Moxos, so called because they have been settled and
Christianized. The physical characters of these also are D’Orbigny’s.
The division, however, he places in the same group with the Patagonians.
_a._ _Chiquito branch._--Colour light olive; form moderately
robust; mouth moderate; lips thin; features delicate; physiognomy
lively:--Indians of the Mission of Chiquitos.
_b._ _Moxos branch._--Form robust; lips thickish; eyes not _bridés_;
physiognomy mild:--Indians of the Mission of Moxos.
And now we are on the great water-system of the Amazons; with the
united effects of heat and moisture. They are not the same as in
Africa. There are no negroes here. The skin is in some cases yellow
rather than brown; in some it has a red tinge. The stature, too, is
low; not like that of the negro, tall and bulky. It is evident that
heat is not everything; and that it may have an inter-tropical amount
of intensity without necessarily affecting the colour beyond a certain
degree. As to differences between the physical conditions of Brazil and
Guiana on one side, and those of the countries we have been considering
on the other, they are important. The condition of both the soil and
climate determines to agriculture. This gives us a contrast to the
Pampa Indians; whilst, in respect to the Peruvians, there is no longer
the Andes with its concomitants; no longer the variety of climate
within the same latitude, the abundance of building materials, and the
absence of rivers. Boatmen, cultivators, and foresters--_i. e._ hunters
of the wood rather than of the open prairie--such are the families in
question. Into groups of _small_ classificational value they divide and
subdivide indefinitely more than the few investigators have suggested;
indeed, D’Orbigny throws them all into one class.
The tribes of the Orinoco form the last section of Indians, which are
neither Guarani nor Caribs; and this brief notice of their existence
clears the ground for the somewhat fuller account of the next two
families.
_The Guarani_ alone cover more land than all the other tribes between
the Amazons, the Andes, and the La Plata put together: but it is
not certain that their area is continuous. In the Bolivian province
of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and in contact with the Indians of the
Missions and the Chaco, we find the Chiriguanos and Guarayos--and these
are Guarani. Then as far north as the equator, and as far as the river
Napo on the Peruvian frontier, we find the flat-head Omaguas, the
fluviatile mariners (so to say) of the Amazons; and these are Guarani
as well.
The bulk, however, of the stock is Brazilian; indeed, _Brazilian_ and
_Guarani_ have been sometimes used as synonyms. There are, however,
other Guarani in Buenos Ayres; there are Guarani on the boundaries of
Guiana; and there are Guarani at the foot of the Andes. But amidst the
great sea of the Guarani populations, fragments of other families stand
out like islands; and this makes it likely that the family in question
has been aggressive and intrusive, has effected displacements, and has
superseded a number of transitional varieties.
_The Caribs_ approach, without equalling, the Guarani, in the magnitude
of their area. This lies mostly in Guiana and Venezuela. The chief
population of Trinidad _is_, that of the Antilles _was_, Carib. The
Caribs, the Inca Peruvians, the Pampa horsemen, and the Fuegian boatmen
represent the four extremes of the South American populations.
In some of the Brazilian tribes, the oblique eye of the Chinese and
Mongolians occurs.
In order to show the extent to which a multiplicity of small
families may not only exist, but exist in the neighbourhood of great
ethnological areas, I will enumerate those tribes of the Missions,
Brazil, Guiana, and Venezuela, for which vocabularies have been
examined, and whereof the languages are believed, either from the
comparison of specimens, or on the strength of direct evidence, to be
mutually unintelligible; premising that differences are more likely
to be exaggerated than undervalued, and that the number of tribes not
known in respect to their languages is probably as great again as that
of the known ones.
A. Between the Andes, the Missions, and the 15′ and 17′ S. L. come the
Yurakares; whose language is said to differ from that of the Mocéténès,
Tacana, and Apolistas, as much as these differ amongst themselves.
B. In the Missions come--1. The Moxos. 2. The Movima. 3. The Cayuvava.
4. The Sapiboconi--these belonging to Moxos. In Chiquitos are--1. The
Covareca. 2. The Curuminaca. 3. The Curavi. 4. The Curucaneca. 5. The
Corabeca. 6. The Samucu.
C. In Brazil, the tribes, other than Guarani, of which I have seen
vocabularies representing mutually unintelligible tongues, are--
1. The Botocudo, fiercest of cannibals.
2. The Goitaca, known to the Portuguese as _Coroados_ or _Tonsured_.
3. The Camacan with several dialects.
4. The Kiriri and Sabuja.
5. The Timbira.
6. The Pareci, the predominant population of the Mata Grosso.
7. The Mundrucu, on the southern bank of the Amazons between the rivers
Mauhé and Tabajos.
8. The Muru.
9, 10, 11. The Yameo, Maina, and Chimano between the Madera and the
Ucayale.
12. The Coretu, the only one out of forty tribes known to us by a
vocabulary, for the parts between the left bank of the Amazons and the
right of the Rio Negro.
D. Of French, Spanish, and Dutch Guiana I know but little. Upon
_British_ Guiana a bright light has been thrown by the researches of
Sir R. Schomburgk. Here, besides numerous well-marked divisions of the
Carib group, we have--
1. The Warows, arboreal boatmen--boatmen because they occupy the Delta
of the Orinoco, and the low coast of Northern Guiana--and arboreal
because the floods drive them up into the trees for a lodging. In
physical form the Warows are like their neighbours; but their language
has been reduced to no class, and their peculiar habits place them in
strong contrast with most other South Americans. They are the Marshmen
of a country which is at once a delta and a forest.
2. The Taruma.
3. The Wapisiana, with the Atúrai, Daúri, and Amaripas as extinct, or
nearly extinct, sections of them--themselves only a population of four
hundred.
E. Venezuela means the water-system of Orinoco, and here we have the
mutually unintelligible tongues of--
1. _The Salivi_, of which the Aturi are a division--the Aturi known
from Humboldt’s description of their great sepulchral cavern on the
cataracts of the Orinoco; where more than six hundred bodies were
preserved in woven bags or baskets--some mummies, some skeletons, some
varnished with odoriferous resins, some painted with arnotto, some
bleached white, some naked. This custom re-appears in parts of Guiana.
The Salivi have undergone great displacement; since there is good
reason for believing that their language was once spoken in Trinidad.
2. _The Maypures._
3. _The Achagua._
4. _The Yarura_, to which the _Betoi_ is allied; and possibly--
_The Ottomaka._--These are the _dirt-eaters_. They fill their stomach
with an unctuous clay, found in their country; and that, whether food
of a better sort be abundant or deficient.
There is plenty of difference here; still where there is difference in
some points there is so often agreement in others that no very decided
difficulties are currently recognized as lying against the doctrine
of the South Americans being specifically connected. When such occur,
they are generally inferences from either the superior civilization
of the ancient Peruvians or from the peculiarity of their skulls. The
latter has been considered. The former seems to be nothing different
in kind from that of several other American families--the Muysca of
New Grenada, the Mexican, and the Maya further northwards. But this
may prove too much; since it may merely be a reason for isolating the
Mexicans, &c. Be it so. The question can stand over for the present.
Something has now been seen of two classes of phænomena which will
appear and re-appear in the sequel--viz. the great difference in the
physical conditions of such areas as the Fuegian, the Pampa, the
Peruvian, and the Warows, and the contrast between the geographical
extension of such vast groups as the Guarani, and small families like
the Wapisiana, the Yurakares, and more than twenty others.
There is a great gap between South and Central America: nor is it safe
to say that the line of the Andes (or the Isthmus of Darien) gives
the only line of migration. The islands that connect Florida and the
Caraccas must be remembered also.
The natives of New Grenada are but imperfectly known. In Veragua a
few small tribes have been described. In Costa Rica there are still
Indians--but they speak, either wholly or generally, Spanish. The same
is, probably, the case in Nicaragua. The Moskito Indians are dashed
with both negro and white blood, and are Anglicized in respect to
their civilization--such as it is. Of the West Indian Islanders none
remain but the dark-coloured Caribs of St. Vincents. In Guatimala,
Peruvianism re-appears; and architectural remains testify an industrial
development--agriculture, and life in towns. The intertropical Andes
have an Art of their own; essentially the same in Mexico and Peru;
seen to the best advantage in those two countries, yet by no means
wanting in the intermediate districts; remarkable in many respects,
but not more remarkable than the existence of three climates under one
degree of latitude.
Mexico, like Peru, has been isolated--and that on the same principle.
Yet the Ægyptians of the New World cannot be shown to have exclusively
belonged to any one branch of its population. In Guatimala and
Yucatan--where the ruins are not inferior to those of the Astek[14]
country--the language is the Maya, and it is as unreasonable to suppose
that the Asteks built these, as to attribute the Astek ruins to Mayas.
It is an illegitimate assumption to argue that, because certain
buildings were contained within the empire of Montezuma, they were
therefore Astek in origin or design. More than twenty other nations
occupied that vast kingdom; and in most parts of it, _where stone is
abundant_, we find architectural remains.
Architecture, cities, and the consolidation of empire which they
determine, keep along the line of the Andes. They also stand in an
evident _ratio_ to the agricultural conditions of the soil and
climate. The Chaco and Pampa habits which stood so much in contrast
with the industrial civilization of Peru, and so coincided with the
open prairie character of the country, re-appear in Texas. They
increase in the great valley of the Mississippi. Nevertheless the
Indians of Florida, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and
the old _forests_ were partially agricultural. They were also capable
of political consolidation. Powhattan, in Virginia, ruled over kings
and sub-kings even as Montezuma did. Picture-writing--so-called--of
which much has been said as a Mexican characteristic, is being found
every day to be commoner and commoner amongst the Indians of the United
States and Canada.
In an alluvial soil the barrow replaces the pyramid. The vast
sepulchral mounds of the Valley of the Mississippi are the subjects of
one of the valuable works[15] of the present time.
The Natchez, known to the novelist from the romance of Chateaubriand,
are known to the ethnologist as pre-eminent amongst the Indians of
the Mississippi for their Mexican characteristics. They flattened the
head, worshiped the sun, kept up an undying fire, recognized a system
of caste, and sacrificed human victims. Yet to identify them with
the Asteks, to assume even any extraordinary intercourse, would be
unsafe. Their traditions, indeed, suggest the idea of a migration;
but their language contradicts their traditions. They are simply what
the other natives of Florida were. I see in the accounts of the early
Appalachians little but Mexicans and Peruvians _minus_ their metals,
and gems, and mountains.
The other generalities of North America are those of Brazil, Peru,
and Patagonia repeated. The Algonkins have an area like the Guarani,
their coast-line only extending from Labrador to Cape Hatteras. The
Iroquois of New York and the Carolinas--a broken and discontinuous
population--indicate encroachment and displacement; they once, however,
covered perhaps as much space as the Caribs. The Sioux represent the
Chaco and Pampa tribes. Their country is a hunting-ground, with its
relations to the northern Tropic and the Arctic Circle, precisely those
of the Chaco and Pampas to the Southern and Antarctic.
The western side of the Rocky Mountains is more Mexican than the
eastern; just as Chili is more Peruvian than Brazil.
I believe that if the Pacific coast of America had been the one
first discovered and fullest described, so that Russian America,
New Caledonia, Queen Charlotte’s Archipelago, and Nutka Sound, had
been as well known as we know Canada and New Brunswick, there would
never have been any doubts or difficulties as to the origin of the
so-called Red Indians of the New World; and no one would ever have
speculated about Africans finding their way to Brazil, or Polynesians
to California. The common-sense _primâ facie_ view would have been
admitted at once, instead of being partially refined on and partially
abandoned. North-eastern Asia would have passed for the fatherland
to North-western America, and instead of Chinese and Japanese
characteristics creating wonder when discovered in Mexico and Peru,
the only wonder would have been in the rarity of the occurrence.
But geographical discovery came from another quarter, and as it was
the Indians of the Atlantic whose history first served as food for
speculation, the most natural view of the origin of the American
population was the last to be adopted--perhaps it has still to be
recognized.
The reason for all this lies in the following fact. The Eskimo, who
form the only family common to the Old and the New World, stand in a
remarkable contrast to the unequivocal and admitted American aborigines
of Labrador, Newfoundland, Canada, the New England States, New York,
and the other well-known Indians in general. Size, manners, physical
conformation, and language, all help to separate the two stocks. But
this contrast extends only to the parts _east_ of the Rocky Mountains.
On the west of them there is no such abruptness, no such definitude,
no such trenchant lines of demarcation. The Athabascan dialects of New
Caledonia and Russian America are notably interspersed with Eskimo
words, and _vice versâ_. So is the Kolúch tongue of the parts about
New Archangel. As for a remarkable dialect called the Ugalents (or
Ugyalyackhmutsi) spoken by a few families about Mount St. Elias, it
is truly transitional in character. Besides this, what applies to the
languages applies to the other characteristics as well.
The lines of separation between the Eskimo and the non-Eskimo Americans
are as faint on the Pacific, as they are strong on the Atlantic side of
the continent.
What accounts for this? The phænomenon is by no means rare. The
Laplander, strongly contrasted with the Norwegian on the west,
graduates into the Finlander on the east. The relation of the Hottentot
to the Kaffre has been already noticed. So has the hypothesis
that explains it. One stock has encroached upon another, and the
transitional forms have been displaced. In the particular case before
us, the encroaching tribes of the Algonkin class have pressed upon the
Eskimo from the south; and just as the present Norwegians and Swedes
now occupy the country of a family which was originally akin to the
Laps of Lapland (but with more southern characters), the Micmacs and
other Red Men have superseded the southerly and transitional Eskimo.
Meanwhile, in North-_western_ America no such displacement has taken
place. The families still stand _in situ_; and the phænomena of
transition have escaped obliteration.
Just as the Eskimo graduate in the American Indian, so do they pass
into the populations of North-eastern Asia--language being the
instrument which the present writer has more especially employed in
their affiliation. From the Peninsula of Aliaska to the Aleutian chain
of islands, and from the Aleutian chain to Kamskatka is the probable
course of the migration from Asia to America--traced backwards, _i.e._
from the goal to the starting-point, from the circumference to the
centre.
Then come two conflicting lines. The Aleutians may have been either
Kamskadales or Curile Islanders. In either language there is a
sufficiency of vocables to justify either notion. But this is a mere
point of minute ethnology when compared with the broader one which has
just preceded it. The Japanese and Corean populations are so truly
of the same class with the Curile islanders, and the Koriaks to the
north of the sea of the Okhotsk are so truly Kamskadale, that we may
now consider ourselves as having approached our conventional centre
so closely as to be at liberty to leave the parts in question for the
consideration of another portion of the circumference--another extreme
point of divergence.
II. _From Van Diemen’s Land to the South-Eastern parts of Asia._--The
aborigines of Van Diemen’s Land, conveniently called Tasmanians, have a
fair claim, when considered by themselves, to be looked upon as members
of a separate species. The Australians are on a level low enough to
satisfy the most exaggerated painters of a _state of nature_; but the
Tasmanians are, apparently, lower still. Of this family but a few
families remain--occupants of Flinders’ Island, whither they have been
removed by the Van Diemen’s Land Government. And here they decrease;
but whether from want of room or from intermarriage is doubtful. The
effects of neither have been fairly investigated. From the Australians
they differ in the texture of their hair--the leading diagnostic
character. The Tasmanian is shock-headed, with curled, _frizzy_, matted
and greased locks. None of their dialects are intelligible to any
Australian, and the commercial intercourse between the two islands
seems to have been little or none. Short specimens of four mutually
unintelligible dialects are all that I have had the opportunity of
comparing. They belong to the same class with those of Australia, New
Guinea, and the Papua islands; and this is all that can safely be said
about them.
It is an open question whether the Tasmanians reached Van Diemen’s Land
from South Australia, from Timor, or from New Caledonia--the line of
migration having, in this latter case, wound _round_ Australia, instead
of stretching _across_ it. Certain points of resemblance between the
New Caledonian and Tasmanian dialects suggest this refinement upon the
_primâ facie_ doctrine of an Australian origin; and the texture of the
hair, as far as it proves anything, goes the same way.
Australia is radically and fundamentally the occupancy of a single
stock; the greatest sign of difference between its numerous tribes
being that of language. Now this is but a repetition of the
philological phænomena of America. The blacker and ruder population
of Timor represents the great-great ancestors of the Australians; and
it was from Timor that Australia was, apparently, peopled. I feel
but little doubt on the subject. Timor itself is connected with the
Malayan peninsula by a line of dark-coloured, rude, and fragmentary
populations, to be found in Ombay and Floris at the present moment,
and inferred to have existed in Java and Sumatra before the development
of the peculiar and encroaching civilization of the Mahometan Malays.
It is in the Malayan peninsula that another line of migration
terminates. From New Caledonia to New Guinea a long line of
islands--Tanna, Mallicollo, Solomon’s Isles, &c.--is occupied by a
dark-skinned population of rude Papuas, with Tasmanian rather than
Australian hair, _i.e._ with hair which is frizzy, crisp, curled, or
mop-headed, rather than straight, lank, or only wavy. This comes from
New Guinea; New Guinea itself comes from the Eastern Moluccas; _i.e._
from their darker populations. These are of the same origin with those
of Timor; though the lines of migration are remarkably distinct. One is
from the Moluccas to New Caledonia _viâ_ New Guinea; the other is _viâ_
Timor to Australia.
Both these migrations were early; earlier than the occupancy of
Polynesia. The previous occupancy of Australia and New Guinea proves
this; and the greater differences between the different sections of the
two populations do the same.
III. _From Easter Island to the South-Eastern parts of Asia._--The
northern, southern, and eastern extremities of Polynesia are the
Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, and Easter Island respectively. These
took their occupants from different islands of the great group to which
they belong; of which the Navigators’ Islands were, probably, the first
to be peopled. The Radack, Ralik, Caroline, and Pelew groups connect
this group with either the Philippines or the Moluccas; and when we
reach these, we arrive at the point where the Papuan and Polynesian
lines diverge. Just as the Papuan line overlapped or wound round
Australia, so do the Micronesians and Polynesians form a circuit round
the whole Papuan area.
As the languages, both of Polynesia and Micronesia, differ from each
other far less than those of New Guinea, the Papuan Islands, and
Australia, the separation from the parent stock is later. It is, most
probably, through the Philippines that this third line converges
towards the original and continental source of all three. This is the
south-eastern portion of the Asiatic Continent, or the Indo-Chinese
Peninsula.
The Malay of the Malayan Peninsula is an _inflected_ tongue as opposed
to the Siamese of Siam, which belongs to the same class as the Chinese,
and is monosyllabic. This gives us a convenient point to stop at.
In like manner the Corean and Japanese tongues, with which we broke off
the American line of migration, were polysyllabic; though the Chinese,
with which they came in geographical contact, was monosyllabic.
The most remarkable fact connected with the Oceanic stock is the
presence of a certain number of Malay and Polynesian words in the
language of an island so distant as Madagascar; an island not only
_distant from_ the Malayan Peninsula, but _near to_ the Mozambique
coast of Africa--an ethnological area widely different from the Malay.
Whatever may be the inference from this fact--and it is one upon
which many very conflicting opinions have been founded--its reality
is undoubted. It is admitted by Mr. Crawfurd, the writer above all
others who is indisposed to admit the Oceanic origin of the Malagasi,
and it is accounted for as follows:--“A navigation of 3000 miles of
open sea lies between them[16], and a strong trade-wind prevails in
the greater part of it. A voyage from the Indian Islands to Madagascar
is possible, even in the rude state of Malayan navigation; but return
would be wholly impossible. Commerce, conquests, or colonization, are,
consequently, utterly out of the question, as means of conveying any
portion of the Malayan language to Madagascar. There remains, then, but
one way in which this could have taken place--the fortuitous arrival
on the shores of Madagascar of tempest-driven Malayan _praus_. The
south-east monsoon, which is but a continuation of the south-east
trade-wind, prevails from the tenth degree of south latitude to the
equator, its greatest force being felt in the Java Sea, and its
influence embracing the western half of the island of Sumatra. This
wind blows from April to October, and an easterly gale during this
period might drive a vessel off the shores of Sumatra or Java, so as
to make it impossible to regain them. In such a situation she would
have no resource but putting before the wind, and making for the first
land that chance might direct her to; and that first land would be
Madagascar. With a fair wind and a stiff breeze, which she would be
sure of, she might reach that island, without difficulty, in a month.
* * * The occasional arrival in Madagascar of a shipwrecked _prau_
might not, indeed, be sufficient to account for even the small portion
of Malayan found in the Malagasi; but it is offering no violence to
the manners or history of the Malay people, to imagine the probability
of a piratical fleet, or a fleet carrying one of those migrations of
which there are examples on record, being tempest-driven, like a single
_prau_. Such a fleet, well equipped, well stocked, and well manned,
would not only be fitted for the long and perilous voyage, but reach
Madagascar in a better condition than a fishing or trading boat. It may
seem, then, not an improbable supposition, that it was through one or
more fortuitous adventures of this description, that the language of
Madagascar received its influx of Malayan.”
As a supplement to the remarks of Mr. Crawfurd, I add the following
account from Mr. M. Martin:--“Many instances have occurred of the
slaves in Mauritius seizing on a canoe, or boat, at night-time, and
with a calabash of water and a few manioc, or Cassada roots, pushing
out to sea and endeavouring to reach across to Madagascar or Africa,
through the pathless and stormy ocean. Of course they generally perish,
but some succeed. We picked up a frail canoe within about a hundred
miles of the coast of Africa; it contained five runaway slaves, one
dying in the bottom of the canoe, and the others nearly exhausted.
They had fled from a harsh French master at the Seychelles, committed
themselves to the deep without compass or guide, with a small quantity
of water and rice, and trusting to their fishing-lines for support.
Steering by the stars, they had nearly reached the coast from which
they had been kidnapped, when nature sank exhausted, and we were just
in time to save four of their lives. So long as the wanderers in search
of home were able to do so, the days were numbered by notches on the
side of the canoe, and twenty-one were thus marked when met with by our
vessel.”
These extracts have been given for the sake of throwing light upon the
most remarkable Oceanic migration known--for migration there must have
been, even if it were so partial as Mr. Crawfurd makes it; migration
which may make the present Malagasi Oceanic or not, according to the
state in which they found the island at their arrival. If it were
already peopled, the passage across the great Indian Ocean is just
as remarkable as if it were, till then, untrodden by a human foot.
The only additional wonder in this latter case would be the contrast
between the Africans who missed an island so near, and the Malays who
discovered one so distant.
Individually, I differ from Mr. Crawfurd in respect to the actual
differences between the Malay and the Malagasi, with the hesitation and
respect due to his known acquirements in the former of these languages;
but I differ more and more unhesitatingly from him in the valuation of
them as signs of ethnological separation; believing, not only that the
two languages are essentially of the same family, but that the descent,
blood, or pedigree of the Malagasi is as Oceanic as their language.
IV. _From the Cape of Good Hope to the South-western parts of
Asia._--The Hottentots of the Cape have a better claim than any other
members of the human kind to be considered as a separate species.
Characteristics apparently differential occur on all sides. Morally,
the Hottentots are rude; physically, they are undersized and weak. In
all the points wherein the Eskimo differs from the Algonkin, or the Lap
from the Fin, the Hottentot recedes from the Kaffre. Yet the Kaffre is
his nearest neighbour. To the ordinary distinctions, steatomata on the
nates and peculiarities in the reproductive organs have been superadded.
Nevertheless, a very scanty collation gives the following philological
similarities; the Hottentot dialects[17] being taken on the one side
and the other African languages[18] on the other. I leave it to the
reader to pronounce upon the import of the table; adding only the
decided expression of my own belief that the coincidences in question
are too numerous to be accidental, too little onomatopœic to be
organic, and too widely as well as too irregularly distributed to be
explained by the assumption of intercourse or intermixture.
_English_ sun.
Saab _t’koara._
Hottentot _sorre._
Corana _sorob._
Agow _quorah._
Somauli _ghurrah._
Kru _guiro._
Kanga _jiro._
Wawn _jirri._
_English_ tongue.
Corana _tamma._
Bushman _t’inn._
Fertit _timi._
_English_ neck.
Bushman _t’kau._
Darfur _kiu._
_English_ hand.
Corana _t’koam._
Shilluck _kiam._
_English_ tree.
Corana _peikoa._
Bushman _t’hauki._
Shilluck _yuke._
_English_ mountain.
Corana _teub._
Falasha _duba._
_English_ ear.
Corana _t’naum._
Bullom _naimu._
_English_ star.
Corana _kambrokoa._
Kossa _rumbereki._
_English_ bird.
Bushman _t’kanni._
Mandingo _kuno._
_English_ sleep.
Corana _t’kchom._
Bushman _t’koing._
Susu _kima._
Howssa _kuana._
_English_ fire.
Corana _taib._
Congo _tubia._
Somauli _dub._
Bushman _t’jih._
Fot _diu._
Ashantee _ojia._
_English_ neck.
Bushman _t’kau._
Makua _tchico._
_English_ die.
Corana _t’koo._
Bushman _tkuki._
Makua _ocoa = dead._
_English_ good.
Corana _t’kain._
Bushman _teteini._
Makua _oni-touny._
_English_ foot.
Corana _t’nah._
Hottentot _t’noah._
Makua _nyahai._
_English_ drink.
Corana _t’kchaa._
Howssa _sha._
_English_ star.
Bushman _tkoaati._
Bagnon _hoquooud._
Fulah _kode._
_English_ child.
Corana _t’kob._
Bushman _t’katkoang._
Bagnon _colden._
Timmani _kalent._
Bullom _tshant._
_English_ tree.
Bushman _t’huh._
Seracolé, &c. _ite._
_English_ foot.
Corana _t’keib._
Bushman _t’koah._
Sereres _akiaf._
Waag Agau _tsab._
Unless we suppose Southern Africa to have been the cradle of the human
species, the population of the Cape must have been an extension of
that of the Southern Tropic, and the Tropical family itself have been
originally Equatorial. What does this imply? Even this--that those
streams of population upon which the soil, climate, and other physical
influences of South Africa acted, had themselves been acted on by the
intertropical and equatorial influences of the Negro countries. Hence
the human stock upon which the physical conditions had to act, was
as peculiar as those conditions themselves. It was not in the same
predicament with the intertropical South Americans. Between these
and the hypothetical centre in Asia there was the Arctic Circle and
the Polar latitudes--influences that in some portion of the line of
migration must have acted on their ancestors’ ancestors.
It was nearer the condition of the Australians. Yet the equatorial
portion of the line of migration of these latter had been very
different from that of the Kaffres and the Hottentots. It was narrow
in extent, and lay in fertile islands, cooled by the breezes and
evaporation of the ocean, rather than across the arid table-land of
Central Africa--the parts between the Gulf of Guinea and the mouth of
the river Juba.
Between the Hottentots and their next neighbours to the north there
are many points of difference. Admitting these to a certain extent, I
explain them by the assumption of encroachment, displacement, and the
abolition of those intermediate and transitional tribes which connected
the northern Hottentots with the southern Kaffres.
And here I must remark, that the displacement itself is no assumption
at all, but an historical fact; since within the last few centuries
the Amakosa Kaffres alone have extended themselves at the expense of
different Hottentot tribes, from the parts about Port Natal to the
head-waters of the Orange River.
It is only the transitional character of the annihilated populations
that is an assumption. I believe it--of course--to be a legitimate one;
otherwise it would not have been made.
On the other hand I consider it illegitimate to assume, without
inquiry, so broad and fundamental a distinction between the two stocks
as to attribute all points of similarity to intercourse only--none to
original affinity. Yet this is done largely. The Hottentot language
contains a sound which I believe to be an _in_-aspirated _h_, _i. e._
a sound of _h_ formed by _drawing in_ the breath, rather than by
_forcing it out_--as is done by the rest of the world. This is called
the _click_. It is a truly inarticulate sound; and as the common _h_
is found in the language as well, the Hottentot speech presents the
remarkable phenomenon of _two_ inarticulate sounds, or two sounds
common to man and the lower animals. As a point of anthropology this
may be of value: in ethnology it has probably been misinterpreted.
It is found in _one_ Kaffre dialect. What are the inferences? That it
has been adopted from the Hottentot by the Kaffre; just as a Kaffre gun
has been adopted from the Europeans. This is one of them.
The other is that the sound in question is less unique, less
characteristic, and less exclusively Hottentot than was previously
believed.
Now this is certainly not one whit less legitimate than the former; yet
the former is the commoner notion. Perhaps it is because it flatters
us with a fresh fact, instead of chastening us by the correction of an
over-hasty generalization.
Again--the root _t-k_ (as in _tixo_, _tixme_, _utiko_) is at once
Hottentot and Kaffre. It means either a Deity or an epithet appropriate
to a Deity. Surely the doctrine that the Kaffres have simply borrowed
part of their theological vocabulary from the Hottentots is neither the
only nor the most logical inference here.
The Kaffre area is so large that it extends on both sides of Africa to
the equator; and the contrast which it supplies when compared with the
small one of the Hottentots is a repetition of the contrasts already
noticed in America.
The peculiarities of the Kaffre stock are fully sufficient to justify
care and consideration before we place them in the same class either
with the true Negros, or with the Gallas, Nubians, Agows, and other
Africans of the water-system of the Nile. Yet they are by no means
of that broad and trenchant kind which many have fancied them. The
undoubted Kaffre character of the languages of Angola, Loango, the
Gaboon, the Mozambique and Zanzibar coasts is a fact which must run
through all our criticism. If so, it condemns all those extreme
inferences which are drawn from the equally undoubted peculiarities
of the Kaffres of the Cape. And why? Because these last are extreme
forms; extreme, rather than either typical, or--what is more
important--transitional.
Let us, however, look to them. What find we then? Until the
philological evidence in favour of the community of origin of the
intertropical Africans of Congo on the west, and of Inhambame, Sofala,
the Mozambique, &c. on the east, was known, no one spoke of the natives
in any of those countries as being anything else but Negro, or thought
of enlarging upon such differences as are now found between them and
the typical Black.
Even in respect to the languages, there are transitional dialects in
abundance. In Mrs. Kilham’s tables of 31 African languages, the last
is a _Kongo_ vocabulary, all the rest being Negro. Now this Kongo
vocabulary, which is truly Kaffre, differs from the rest so little
more than the rest do from each other, that when I first saw the list,
being then strongly prepossessed by the opinion that the Kaffre stock
of tongues was, to a great extent, a stock _per se_, I could scarcely
believe that the true Kongo and Kaffre language was represented; so I
satisfied myself that it was so, by a collation with other undoubted
vocabularies, before I admitted the inference. And this is only one
fact out of many[19].
Again--the Negros themselves are referable to an extreme rather than
a normal type; and so far are they from being co-extensive with the
_Africans_, that it is almost exclusively along the valleys of rivers
that they are to be found. There are none in the extra-tropical parts
of Northern, none in the corresponding parts of Southern Africa; and
but few on the table-lands of even the two sides of the equator. Their
areas, indeed, are scanty and small; one lies on the Upper Nile, one
on the Lower Gambia and Senegal, one on the Lower Niger, and the last
along the western coast, where the smaller rivers that originate in the
Kong Mountains form hot and moist alluvial tracts.
From whatever other Africans the Negros are to be separated, they are
not to be disconnected from the Kaffres, the chief points of contact
and transition being the parts about the Gaboon.
Neither are the Kaffres to be too trenchantly cut off from the
remarkable families of the Sahara, the range of Atlas, and the coasts
of the Mediterranean--families which it is convenient to take next in
order; not because this is the sequence which most closely suits either
their geography or their ethnology, but because the criticism which
has lately been applied to them best helps us in the criticism of the
present affiliations.
On the confines of Egypt, in the oasis of Siwah, we find the most
eastern members of the great Berber, Amazirgh, or Kabyle family; and
we find them as far west as the Canary Isles, of which they were the
occupants as long as a native population occupied them at all. Members
of the same stock were the ancient subjects of Jugurtha, Syphax, and
Masinissa. Mr. Francis Newman, who has paid more attention to the
speech of the Berber tribes than any Englishman (perhaps than any
European), has shown that it deserves the new and convenient name of
_Sub_-Semitic--a term to be enlarged on.
Let us take a language in its first state of inflection, when passing
from the monosyllabic form of the Chinese and its allied tongues, it
just begins to incorporate with its hitherto unmodified nouns and
verbs, certain prepositions denoting _relation_, certain adverbs
denoting _time_, and certain pronouns of person or possession; by means
of all which it gets equivalents to the cases, tenses and persons of
the more advanced forms of speech.
This is the germ of Conjugation and Declension; of the Accidents
of Grammar. Let us, however, go farther. Over and above the simple
juxtaposition and incipient incorporation of these previously separable
and independent particles, let there be certain internal ones; those,
for instance, which convert the English Present Tenses _fall_ and
_speak_ into the Preterites _fell_ and _spoke_--or something of the
same sort.
Farther still. Let such changes of _accent_ as occur when we form
an adjective like _tyránnical_, from a substantive like _týrant_, be
superadded.
The union of such processes as these will undoubtedly stamp a
remarkable character upon the language in which they appear.
But what if they go farther? or what, if without actually going
farther, the tongues which they characterize find expositors who
delight in giving them prominence, and also exaggerate their import?
This is no hypothetical case.
A large proportion of roots almost necessarily contain three
consonants: e. g. _bread_, _stone_, &c., pronounced _bred_, _stôn_, &c.
This is one fact.
In many languages there is an inability to pronounce two consonants
belonging to the same syllable, in immediate succession; an inability
which is met by the insertion of an intervening vowel. The Finlander,
instead of _Krist_, must say either _Ekristo_ or _Keristo_. This
principle, in English, would convert _bred_ into _bered_ or _ebred_,
and _stôn_ into _estôn_ or _setôn_. This is another fact.
These two and the preceding ones should now be combined. A large
proportion of roots containing three consonants may induce a grammarian
to coin such a term as _triliteralism_, and to say that this
_triliteralism_ characterizes a certain language.
Then, as not only these consonants are separated from one another
by intervening vowels, but as the vowels themselves are subject to
change, (these changes acting upon the accentuation,) the triliteralism
becomes more important still. The consonants look like the framework
or skeleton of the words, the vowels being the modifying influences.
The one are the _constants_, the other the _variants_; and _triliteral
roots with internal modifications_ becomes a philological byword which
is supposed to represent a unique phenomenon in the way of speech,
rather than the simple result of two or three common processes united
in one and the same language.
But the force of system does not stop here. Suppose we wished to
establish the paradox that the English was a language of the sort
in question. A little ingenuity would put us up to some clever
legerdemain. The convenient aspirate _h_--like the bat in the fable
of the birds and beasts at war--might be a consonant when it was
wanted to make up the complement of three, and a vowel when it was _de
trop_. Words like _pity_ might be made triliteral (_triconsonantal_)
by doubling the _tt_; words like _pitted_, by ejecting it. Lastly, if
it were denied that two consonants must necessarily be separated by a
vowel, it would be an easy matter to say that between such sounds as
the _n_ and _r_ in _Henry_, the _b_ and _r_ in _bread_, the _r_ and _b_
in _curb_, there was really a very short vowel; and that _Henĕry_,
_bĕred_, _curŭb_, were the true sounds; or that, if they were not so in
the nineteenth century, they were two thousand years ago.
Now let all this be taught and believed, and who will not isolate the
language in which such remarkable phenomena occur?
All this _is_ taught and believed, and consequently there _is_ a
language, or rather a group of languages, thus isolated.
But the isolation does not stop with the philologist. The anatomist and
the historian support it as well. The nations who speak the language in
question are in the neighbourhood of Blacks, but without being Blacks
themselves; and they are in contact with rude Pagans; themselves being
eminently monotheistic. Their history also has been an influential one,
morally and materially as well; whilst the skulls are as symmetrical
as the skull of the famous Georgian female of our first chapter, their
complexions fair or ruddy, and their noses so little African as to
emulate the eagle’s beak in prominent convexity. All this exaggerates
the elements of isolation.
The class or family thus isolated, which--as stated above--has a real
existence, has been conveniently called _Semitic_; a term comprising
the twelve tribes of Israel and the modern Jews so far as they are
descended from them, the Syrians of ancient, and, partially, of
modern Syria, the Mesopotamians, the Phœnicians, the Assyrians,
the Babylonians, the Arabs, and certain populations of Æthiopia or
Abyssinia.
Further facts, real or supposed, have contributed to isolate this
remarkable and important family. The Africans who were nearest to them,
both in locality and civilization--the Ægyptians of the Pharaohnic
empire, builders of the pyramids, and writers in hieroglyphics--have
ceased to exist as a separate substantive nation. Their Asiatic
frontagers, on the other hand, were either Persians or Armenians.
Everything favoured isolation here. The Jew and Ægyptian were in strong
contrast from the beginning, and all our earliest impressions are in
favour of an over-valuation of their differences. As for the Persian,
he was so early placed in a different class--a class which, from the
fact of its being supposed to contain the Germans, Greeks, Latins,
Slavonians, and Hindus as well, has been called Indo-European--that he
had a proper and peculiar position of his own; and something almost as
stringent in the way of demarcation applied to the Armenian. Where,
then, were the approaches to the Semitic family to be found?
Attempts were made to connect them with the Indo-Europeans; I think
unsuccessfully. Of course there was a certain amount of relationship
of some kind; but it by no means followed that this established the
real affiliations. There was _a_ connexion; but not _the_ connexion.
The reasons for this view lay partly in certain undoubted affinities
with the Persians, and partly in the fact of the Jew, Syrian and Arab
skulls, and the Jew, Syrian and Arab civilizations coming under the
category of _Caucasian_.
Consciously or unconsciously, most writers have gone on this
hypothesis--naturally, but inconsiderately. Hence the rough current
opinion has been, that if the Semitic tribes were in any traceable
degree of relationship with the other families of the earth, that
relationship must be sought for amongst the Indo-Europeans.
The next step was to raise the Semitic class to the rank of a standard
or measure for the affinities of unplaced families; and writers who
investigated particular languages more readily inquired whether such
languages were Semitic, than what the Semitic tongues were themselves.
Unless I mistake the spirit in which many admirable investigations have
been conducted, this led to the term _Sub_-Semitic. Men asked about the
amount of _Semitism_ in certain families as if it were a substantive
and inherent property, rather than what _Semitism_ itself consisted in.
And now _Sub_-Semitic tongues multiplied; since Sub-Semitism was a
respectable thing to predicate of the object of one’s attention.
The ancient Ægyptian was stated to be _Sub_-Semitic--Benfey and others
having done good work in making it so.
Mr. Newman did the same with the Berber. Meanwhile the anatomists
acted much like the philologists, and brought the skulls of the old
Ægyptians in the same class with those of the Jews and Arabs, so as to
be Caucasian.
But the Caucasians had been put in a sort of antithesis to the Negros;
and hence came mischief. Whatever may be the views of those able
writers who have investigated the Sub-Semitic Africans, when pressed
for definitions, it is not too much to say that, in practice, they
have all acted as if the moment a class became Semitic, it ceased to
be African. They have all looked one way; that being the way in which
good Jews and Mahometans look--towards Mecca and Jerusalem. They have
forgotten the phænomena of correlation. If Cæsar is like Pompey, Pompey
must be like Cæsar. If African languages approach the Hebrew, the
Hebrew must approach them. The attraction is mutual; and it is by no
means a case of Mahomet and the mountain.
I believe that the Semitic elements of the Berber, the Coptic and the
Galla are clear and unequivocal; in other words, that these languages
are truly Sub-Semitic.
In the languages of Abyssinia, the Gheez and Tigré, admitted, as long
as they have been known at all, to be _Semitic_, graduate through the
Amharic, the Falasha, the Harargi, the Gafat, and other languages which
may be well studied in Dr. Beke’s valuable comparative tables[20], into
the Agow tongue, unequivocally indigenous to Abyssinia; and through
this into the true Negro classes.
But unequivocal as may be the Semitic elements of the Berber, Coptic
and Galla, their affinities with the tongues of Western and Southern
Africa are more so. I weigh my words when I say, not _equally_, but
_more_. Changing the expression for every foot in advance which can
be made towards the Semitic tongues in one direction, the African
philologist can go a yard towards the Negro ones in the other[21].
Of course, the proofs of all this in full detail would fill a large
volume; indeed, the exhaustion of the subject and the annihilation of
all possible and contingent objections would fill many. The position,
however, of the present writer is not so much that of the engineer who
has to force his water up to a higher uphill by means of pumps, as it
is that of the digger and delver who merely clears away artificial
embankments which have hitherto prevented it finding its own level
according to the common laws of nature. He has little fear from the
results of separate and independent investigation, when a certain
amount of preconceived notions have been unsettled.
To proceed with the subject--the convergence of the lines of migration
in Africa is broken or unbroken, clear or indistinct, continuous or
irregular, to much the same extent, and much in a similar manner,
with those of America. The moral contrasts which were afforded by
the Mexicans and Peruvians reappear in the case of the Ægyptians and
the Semitidæ. As to the Hottentots--they, _perhaps_, are more widely
separated from their next of kin than any Americans, the Eskimo not
being excepted; so much so, that if the phænomena of their language be
either denied or explained away, they may pass for a new species.
Now if the reader have attended to the differences between the
_Ethnological_ and the _Anthropological_ principles of classification,
he must have inferred the necessity of certain differences of
nomenclature, since it is hardly likely that the terms which suit the
one study will exactly fit the other. And such is really the case. If
the word _Negro_ mean the combination of woolly hair, with a jetty
skin, depressed nose, thick lips, narrow forehead, acute facial angle,
and prominent jaw, it applies to Africans as widely different from
each other as the Laplander is from the Samoeid and Eskimo, or the
Englishman from the Finlander. It applies to the inhabitants of certain
portions of different river-systems, _independent of relationship_--and
_vice versâ_. The Negros of Kordofan are nearer in descent to the Copts
and Arabs than are the lighter-coloured and more civilized Fulahs.
They are also nearer to the same than they are to the Blacks of the
Senegambia. If this be the case, the term has no place in Ethnology,
except so far as its extensive use makes it hard to abandon. Its
real application is to Anthropology, wherein it means the effect of
certain influences upon certain intertropical Africans, irrespective
of descent, but not irrespective of physical condition. As truly as a
short stature and light skin coincide with the occupancy of mountain
ranges, the Negro physiognomy coincides with that of the alluvia of
rivers. Few writers are less disposed to account for ethnological
differences by reference to a change of physical conditions rather
than original distinction of species than Dr. Daniell; nevertheless,
he expressly states that when you leave the low swamps of the Delta of
the Niger for the sandstone country of the interior, the skin becomes
fairer, and black becomes brown, and brown yellow.
Of the African populations most immediately in contact with the typical
Negro of the western coast, the fairest are the Nufi (conterminous with
the Ibos of the Lower Niger) and the Fulahs who are spread over the
highlands of Senegambia, as far in the interior as Sakatú, and as far
south as the Nufi frontier.
On the other hand, the darkest of the fairer families are the Tuaricks
of Wadreag, who belong to the Berber family, and the Sheyga Arabs of
Nubia.
The Nubians themselves, or the natives of the Middle Nile between Ægypt
and Sennaar, are truly transitional in features between the Ægyptians
and the Blacks of Kordofan. So they are in language and apparently in
civilizational development.
The best measure of capacity, in this respect, on the part of those
Africans who have been less favoured by external circumstances and
geographical position than the ancient Ægyptians, is to be found
amongst the Mandingos and Fulahs, each of which nations has adopted the
Mahometan religion and some portion of the Arabic literature along with
it. Of large towns there are more in _Negro_ Africa than there has ever
been in Mongolia and Tartary. Yet the Tartars are neither more nor less
than Turks like those of Constantinople, and the Mongolians are closely
connected with the industrial Chinese.
That the uniformity of languages throughout Africa is greater than it
is either in Asia or Europe, is a statement to which I have not the
least hesitation in committing myself.
And now, having brought the African migration--to which I allot the
Semitic populations of Arabia, Syria, and Babylonia--from its extremity
at the Cape to a point so near the hypothetical centre as the frontiers
of Persia and Armenia, I leave it for the present.
* * * * *
The English of England are not the earliest occupants of the island.
Before them were the ancient Britons. Were these the earliest
occupants? Who were the men by whose foot Britain, till then the home
of the lower animals alone, was first trodden? This is uncertain. Why
may not the Kelts have stood in the same relation to some rude Britons
still more primitive, that the Anglo-Saxons did to the Kelts? Perhaps
they really did so. Perhaps, even the rude and primitive tribes thus
assumed had aborigines who looked upon them as intruders, themselves
having in their turn been interlopers. The chief objection against thus
multiplying aboriginal aborigines is the rule _de non apparentibus_, &c.
But Britain is an _island_. Everything relating to the natural
history of the useful arts is so wholly uninvestigated, that no one
has proposed even to approximate the date of the first launch of the
first boat; in other words, of the first occupancy of a piece of land
surrounded by water. The whole of that particular continent in which
the first protoplasts saw light, may have remained full to overflowing
before a single frail raft had effected the first human migration.
Britain may have remained a solitude for centuries and milleniums after
Gaul had been full. I do not suppose this to have been the case; but,
unless we imagine the first canoe to have been built simultaneously
with the demand for water-transport, it is as easy to allow that a
long period intervened between that time and the first effort of
seamanship as a short one. Hence, the date of the original populations
of _islands_ is not in the same category with that of the dispersion of
men and women over _continents_.
On continents, we must assume the extension from one point to another
to have been continuous--and not only this, but we may assume something
like an equable rate of diffusion also. I have heard that the American
population moves bodily from east to west at the rate of about eleven
miles a year.
As I use the statement solely for the sake of illustrating my subject,
its accuracy is not very important. To simplify the calculation, let
us say _ten_. At this rate a circle of migration of which the centre
was (say) in the Altai range, would enlarge its diameter at the rate of
twenty miles a year--_i.e._ ten miles at one end of the radius and ten
at the other.
Hence a point a thousand miles from the birth-place of the patriarchs
of our species would receive its first occupants exactly one hundred
years after the original locality had been found too limited. At this
rate a very few centuries would people the Cape of Good Hope, and fewer
still Lapland, the parts about Cape Comorin, the Malayan Peninsula,
and Kamskatka--all parts more or less in the condition of extreme
points[22].
Now as long as any _continental_ extremities of the earth’s surface
remain unoccupied--the stream (or rather the enlarging circle of
migration) not having yet reached them--the _primary_ migration is
going on; and when all have got their complement, the _primary_
migration is over. During this primary migration, the relations of man,
thus placed in movement, and in the full, early and guiltless exercise
of his high function of subduing the earth, are in conflict with
physical obstacles, and with the resistance of the lower animals only.
Unless--like Lot’s wife--he turn back upon the peopled parts behind
him, he has no relations with his fellow-men--at least none arising out
of the claim of previous occupancy. In other words--during the primary
migration--the world that lay before our progenitors was either brute
or inanimate.
But before many generations have passed away, all becomes full to
overflowing; so that men must enlarge their boundaries at the expense
of their fellows. The migrations that now take place are _secondary_.
They differ from the primary in many respects. They are slower, because
the resistance is that of Humanity to Humanity; and they are violent,
because dispossession is the object. They are partial, abortive,
followed by the fusion of different populations; or followed by their
extermination--as the case may be. All, however, that we have now to
say about them is the fact of their difference from the _primary_ one.
Concerning the _secondary_ migrations we have a considerable amount of
knowledge. History tells us of some; ethnological induction suggests
others. The _primary_ one, however, is a great mystery. Yet it is one
which is continually talked about.
I mention it now, (having previously enlarged upon it,) for the sake
of suggesting a question of some importance in practical Ethnology. It
is the one suggested by the remarks upon the aborigines of Britain.
When are we sure that the population of any part of a continent is
_primary_--_i.e._ descended from, or representative of, the first
occupants? Never. There are plenty of cases where, from history, from
the phænomena of contrast, and from other ethnological arguments, we
are quite satisfied that it is _not_ so; but none where the evidence
is conclusive the other way. At the same time, the doctrine _de non
apparentibus_ cautions us against assuming displacements unnecessarily.
However, where we have, in addition to the absence of the signs of
previous occupancy, an extreme locality, (_i.e._ a locality at the
farthest distance, in a given direction, from the hypothetical centre,)
we have _primâ facie_ evidence in favour of the population representing
a _primary_ migration. Thus:--
1, 2. The Hottentots and Laplanders amongst the families of the
Continent are probably primary.
3. The Irish Gaels are the same amongst islanders.
4, 5. America and the Oceanic area appear to be _primary_ in respect to
the populations of the Continent of Asia; though within their own areas
the displacements have been considerable.
FOOTNOTES
[11] Pickering, Races of Men, p. 19.
[12] The Araucana of Ercilla.
[13] D’Orbigny, Homme Américain.
[14] Astek means the Mexicans of the valley of Mexico who spoke the
Astek language. _Mexican_, as applied to the kingdom conquered by
Cortez, is a political rather than an ethnological term.
[15] Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. i.
[16] The Indian Islands and Madagascar.
[17] Viz. the Korana, Saab, Hottentot, and Bushman.
[18] The Agow, Somauli, and the rest; some being spoken very far north,
as the Agow and Seracolé. This list has already been published by the
author in his Report on Ethnological Philology (Transactions of the
Association for the Advancement of Science, 1847).
[19] A table showing this is to be found in the Transactions of the
British Association for 1847, &c., pp. 224–228.
[20] Transactions of the Philological Society, No. 33.
[21] A short table of the Berber and Coptic, as compared with the
other African tongues, may be seen in the Classical Museum, and in
the Transactions of the British Association, &c. for 1846. In the
Transactions of the Philological Society is a grammatical sketch of the
Tumali language, by Dr. L. Tutshek of Munich. Now the Tumali is a truly
Negro language of Kordofan; whilst in respect to the extent to which
its inflections are formed by internal changes of vowels and accents,
it is fully equal to the Semitic tongues of Palestine and Arabia.
[22] Nothing is said about Cape Horn; as America in relation to Asia
is an island. It is also, perhaps, unnecessary to repeat that both the
rate and the centre are hypothetical--either or both may or may not
be correct. That which is _not_ hypothetical is the approximation to
an _equability of rate in the case of continents_. It is difficult to
conceive any such conditions, as those which deferred the occupancy
of islands like Madagascar and Iceland, by emigrants from Africa or
Greenland, for an indefinite period, keeping one part of Africa or
Greenland empty whilst another was full. Hence, the equability in
question is a mere result of the absence, _on continents_, of any
conditions capable of arresting it for an indefinite period. The extent
to which it may be interfered with by other causes is no part of the
present question.
CHAPTER V.
The Ugrians of Lapland, Finland, Permia, the Ural Mountains and
the Volga--area of the light-haired families--Turanians--the
Kelts of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Gaul--the Goths--the
Sarmatians--the Greeks and Latins--difficulties of European
ethnology--displacement--intermixture--identification of ancient
families--extinction of ancient families--the Etruscans--the
Pelasgi--isolation--the Basks--the Albanians--classifications and
hypotheses--the term Indo-European--the Finnic hypothesis.
V. _From Lapland to North-western Asia._--That the Norwegian of Norway
stands in remarkable contrast to the Lap of Finmark has already been
stated. There is nothing wonderful in this. The Norwegian is a German
from the south, and, consequently, a member of an intrusive population.
The extent to which a similar contrast exists between the Lap and
Finlander is more remarkable; since both belong to the same family. Of
this family the Laps are an extreme branch both in respect to physical
conformation and geographical position. The term most conveniently used
to designate the stock in question is _Ugrian_. In Asia the Voguls,
Ostiaks, Votiaks, Tsheremis, Morduins, and other tribes are _Ugrian_.
The Laps are generally speaking swarthy in complexion, black-haired
and black-eyed; and so are the Majiars of Hungary. The other
Ugrians, however, are remarkable for being, to a great extent, a
_blonde_ population. The Tshuvatsh have a light complexion with
black and somewhat curly hair, and grey eyes. The Morduins fall
into two divisions, the Ersad and Mokshad; of which the former are
more frequently _red_-haired than the latter. The Tsheremiss are
light-haired; the Voguls and Ostiaks often red-haired; the Votiaks the
most red-haired people in the world. Of course, with this we have blue
or grey eyes and fair skins.
Few writers seem ever to have considered the exceptional character of
this physiognomy: indeed, it is unfortunate that no term like _blanco_
(or _branco_), denoting men lighter-coloured than the Spaniards and
Portuguese, in the same way that _Negro_ denotes those who are darker,
has been evolved. It is, probably, too late for it being done now.
At any rate, complexions like those of the _fair_ portion of the
people of England are quite as exceptional as faces of the hue of the
Gulf-of-Guinea Blacks.
Like the Negro, the White-skin is chiefly found within certain limits;
and like _Negro_ the term _White_ is anthropological rather than
ethnological, _i. e._ the physiognomy in question is spread over
different divisions of our species, and by no means coincides with
ethnological relationship.
Nine-tenths of the fair-skinned populations of the world are to be
found between 30° and 65° N. lat., and west of the Oby. Nine-tenths of
them also are to be found amongst the following four families:--1. The
Ugrian. 2. The Sarmatian. 3. The Gothic. 4. The Keltic.
The physical conditions which most closely coincide with the
geographical area of the _blonde_ branches of the _blonde_ families
require more study than they have found. From the parts to north and
south it is distinguished by the palpably intelligible differences
of latitude. The parts to the east of it differ less evidently;
nevertheless, they are steppes and table-lands rather than tracts of
comparatively low forests. The _blonde_ area is certainly amongst the
moister parts of the world[23].
That the Ugrians graduate into the Turks of Tartary and
Siberia--themselves a division of a class containing the great
Mongolian and Tungusian branches--has been admitted by most writers;
Schott having done the best work with the philological part of the
question.
Gabelentz has, I am informed, lately shown that the _Samoeid_ tongues
come within the same class;--a statement which, without having seen
his reasons, I am fully prepared to admit.
Now what applies to the Samoeids[24] applies to two other classes as
well:--
1. The Yeniseians[24] on the Upper Yenisey; and
2. The Yukahiri[24] on the Kolyma and Indijirka.
This gives us one great stock, conveniently called _Turanian_, whereof--
1. The Mongolians--
2. The Tungusians--of which the Mantshús are the best known
representatives--
3. The Ugrians, falling into the Lap, Finlandic, Majiar and other
branches;--along with
4. The Hyperboreans, or Samoeids, Yeniseians, and Yukahiri--are
branches.
And this stock takes us from the North Cape to the Wall of China.
VI. _From Ireland to the Western parts of Asia._--The rule already
referred to, viz. that an island must always be considered to have been
peopled from the nearest part of the nearest land of a more continental
character than itself, unless reason can be shown to the contrary,
applies to the population of Ireland; subject to which view, the point
of emigration from Great Britain must have been the parts about the
Mull of Cantyre; and the point of immigration into Ireland must have
been the province of Ulster, and the parts that are nearest to Scotland.
Upon this doctrine I see no reason whatever to refine, since the
unequivocal fact of the Scotch and Irish Gaelic being the same language
confirms it. Here, however, as in so many other cases, the opinions and
facts by no means go together; and the notion of Scotland having been
peopled from Ireland, and Ireland from some other country, is a common
one. The introduction of the _Scots_ of _Scotland_ from the west, when
examined, will be found to rest almost wholly on the following extract
from Beda:--“procedente tempore, tertiam Scottorum nationem in parte
Pictorum recepit, qui duce Reudâ de Hiberniâ progressi, amicitiâ vel
ferro sibimet inter eos has sedes quas hactenus habent vindicârunt; à
quo videlicet duce, usque hodie Dalreudini vocantur: nam eorum linguâ
_Daal_ partem significat.”
Now, as this was written about the middle of the eighth century, there
are only two statements in it that can be passed for contemporary
evidence, viz. the assertion that at the time of Beda a portion of
Scotland was called the country of the _Dalreudini_; and that in their
language _daal_ meant _part_. The Irish origin, then, is grounded upon
either an _inference_ or a _tradition_; an inference or a tradition
which, if true, would prove nothing as to the _original_ population
of either country; since, the reasoning which applies to the relation
between the peninsula of Malacca and the island of Sumatra applies
here. _There_, the population first passed from the peninsula to the
island, and then back again--reflected so to say--from the island to
the peninsula. _Mutatis mutandis_ this was the case with Scotland and
Ireland, provided that there was any migration at all.
Upon this point the evidence of Beda may or may not be sufficient for
the historian. It is certainly unsatisfactory to the ethnologist.
In saying this, I by no means make the disparaging insinuation that
the historian is unduly credulous, or that the ethnologist is a
model of caution. Neither assertion would be true. The ethnologist,
however, like a small capitalist, cannot afford so much credit as his
fellow-labourer in the field of Man. He is like a traveller, who,
leaving home at the twilight of the evening, must be doubly cautious
when he comes to a place where two roads meet. If he take the wrong
one, he has nothing but the long night before him; and his error grows
from bad to worse. But the historian starts with the twilight of the
dawn; so that the further he goes the clearer he finds his way, and the
easier he rectifies any previous false turnings. To argue from cause
to effect is to journey in the dim light of the early morn till we
reach the blazing noon. To argue from effect to cause is to change the
shades of evening for the gloom of night.
As Scotland is to Ireland, so is Gaul to England. From the Shannon to
the Loire and Rhine, the stock is one; one, but not indivisible--the
British branch (containing the Welsh) and the Gaelic (containing the
Scotch) forming its two primary sections.
Next to the Kelts come the Goths; the term _Gothic_ being a general
designation taken from a particular people. Germany is the native
land of these; just as Gaul was of the Kelts. Hence, they lie to the
north of that family, as well as to the west of it. Intrusive above
all the other populations of the earth, the branches of the Gothic
tribes have brought themselves in contact and collision with half the
families of the world. First, they encroached upon the Kelts, and, for
a time, the tide of conquest fluctuated. It was the Rhine which was
the disputed frontier--disputed as much in Cæsar’s time as our own.
Next, they revenged themselves on the aggressions of Rome; so that the
Ostro-_goths_ conquered Italy, and the Visi-_goths_ Spain. Then came
the Franks of France, and the Anglo-Saxons of England. In the ninth
and tenth centuries the edges of the German swords turned another way,
and Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Prussia, and part of Courland, Silesia,
Lusatia, and Saxony were wrested from the _Sarmatians_, lying to the
west and south-west.
It is not unusual to raise the two divisions of the great Sarmatian
stock to the rank of separate substantive groups--independent of each
other, though intimately allied. In this case Lithuania, Livonia,
and Courland contain the smaller division, which is conveniently and
generally called the _Lithuanic_; the population being agricultural,
scanty, limited to the country in opposition to the towns, and
unimportant in the way of history; a population, which in the tenth and
eleventh centuries was cruelly conquered under the plea of Christianity
by the German Knights of the Sword--rivals in rapacity and bloodshed to
their equivalents of the Temple and St. John--a population which, at
the present moment, lies like iron between the hammer and the anvil,
between Russia and Prussia; and which, for one brief period only,
under the Jagellons, exercised the equivocal rights of a dominant
and encroaching family--for one brief period only within the true
historical æra. How far it may have done more at an earlier epoch
remains to be considered.
The other branch is the _Slavonic_; comprising the Russians, the
Servians, the Illyrians, the Slovenians of Styria and Carinthia, the
Slovaks of Hungary, the Tsheks of Bohemia, and the Lekhs (or Poles) of
Poland, Mazovia, and Gallicia. A great deal is said about the future
prospects of this stock; the doctrine of certain able historians
being, that as they are the youngest of nations--a term somewhat
difficult to define--and have played but a small part in the world’s
history hitherto, they have a grand career before them; a prospect
more glorious than that of the Romano-Keltic French, or the Germanic
English of the Old and New World. I doubt the inference, and I doubt
the fact on which it rests. But of this more anon. The Sarmatian
Slavono-Lithuanians are the fourth great family of Europe. They
certainly lie in the line of migration which peopled Ireland from Asia.
South of these lie two branches of a fresh stock, divided from each
other, and presenting the difficult phænomenon of geographical
discontinuity conjoined with ethnological affinity. Separated from
the most southern Slavonians by the two intrusive populations of
the Wallachians and the Majiars, and by the primitive family of the
Albanians, come--
_a._ _The Greeks_--and separated from the Slavonians of Carinthia
and Bohemia by intrusive Germans at the present moment, and by the
mysterious Etruscans in ancient times, come--
_b._ _The Italians._--We may call these two families Latin or Hellenic
instead of Greek and Italian, if we choose; and as the distribution of
nations is best studied during the earliest periods of their history,
the former terms are the better.
Before we can consider the classification of these four
families--Ugrian, Kelt, Gothic, and Græco-Latin--some fresh
observations and certain new facts are requisite.
The ethnology of Europe is undoubtedly more difficult than that of any
of the three other quarters of the globe--perhaps more so than that of
all the world besides. It has not the character of being so--but so it
is. The more we know the more we may know. Illustrated as is Europe by
the historian and the antiquarian, it has its dark holes and corners
made all the more visible from the illumination.
In the first place, the very fact of its being the home of the great
historical nations has made it the scene of unparalleled displacements;
for conquest is the great staple of history, and _conquest_ and
_displacement_ are correlative terms. A greater portion of Europe can
be shown to be held by either mixed or conquering nations than is to be
found elsewhere--not that this absolutely proves the encroachments to
have been greater; but that gives prominence to the greater degree in
which they have been recorded. Hence, where in other parts of the world
we shut up our papers and say _de non apparentibus_, &c., in Europe we
are forced upon the obscurest investigations, and the subtlest trains
of reasoning.
How great is this displacement? The history of only a few out of many
of the conquering nations tells us a pregnant story in this respect. It
shows us what has taken place within the comparatively brief span of
the historical period. What lies beyond this it only suggests.
The Ugrians with one exception have ever suffered from the
encroachments of others rather than been encroachers themselves. But
the exception is a remarkable one.
It is that of the Majiars of Hungary, who, whatever claims they may
set up for an extraction more illustrious than the one which they
share with the Laplanders and Ostiaks, are unequivocally Ugrians--no
Circassians, as has been vainly fancied, and no descendants from the
Huns of Attila, as has been more reasonably supposed. This latter,
however, is a supposition invalidated by the high probability of the
warriors of the Scourge of God having been Turk.
Be this, however, as it may, their advent into Europe is no earlier
than the tenth century, the country which they left having been the
present domain of the Bashkirs.
The amount of displacement effected by the Kelts is difficult to
determine. We hear of them in so many places that the family seems
to be ubiquitous. Utterly disbelieving the Cimmerii of the Cimmerian
Bosphorus to have been Keltic, and doubtful about both the Scordisci
of the ancient Noricum, and the Celtiberians of ancient Spain, I am
inclined to limit the Keltic area at its _maximum_ extension, to Venice
westwards, and to the neighbourhood of Rome southwards. But this is not
enough. They may have been aboriginal in parts which they _seem_ to
have invaded as immigrants. This complicates the question and makes it
as hard to ascertain the extent of their encroachments on others, as
the extent to which others have encroached on them--a point for further
notice.
The Goths have ever extended their frontier--a frontier which I believe
to have once reached no farther than the Elbe[25]. From thence to the
Niemen they have encroached at the expense of the Sarmatians--Slavonic
or Lithuanic as the case may be.
In the time of Tacitus[25] it is highly probable that there were no
Goths north of the Eyder. Since then, however, Denmark, Sweden, and
Norway have been wrested from earlier occupants and become Scandinavian.
The Ugrian family originally extended as far south as the Valdai
Mountains. This part of their area is now Russian.
The conquests of Rome have given languages derived from the Latin to
Northern Italy, the Grisons, France, Spain and Portugal, Wallachia and
Moldavia.
This brings us to another question, that of--
_Intermixture._--It is certain that the language of England is of
Anglo-Saxon origin, and that the remains of the original Keltic are
unimportant. It is by no means so certain that the blood of Englishmen
is equally Germanic. A vast amount of Kelticism, not found in our
tongue, very probably exists in our pedigrees.
The ethnology of France is still more complicated. Many writers make
the Parisian a Roman on the strength of his language; whilst others
make him a Kelt on the strength of certain moral characteristics
combined with the previous Kelticism of the original Gauls.
Spanish and Portuguese, as languages, are derivatives from the Latin.
Spain and Portugal, as countries, are Iberic, Latin, Gothic, and Arab
in different proportions.
Italian is modern Latin all the world over: yet surely there must
be much Keltic blood in Lombardy, and much Etruscan intermixture in
Tuscany.
In the ninth century every man between the Elbe and the Niemen spoke
some Slavonic dialect. They now nearly all speak German. Surely the
blood is less exclusively Gothic than the speech.
I have not fallen in with any evidence which induces me to consider
the great Majiar invasion of Hungary as anything other than a simple
military conquest. If so--and the reasoning applies to nine conquests
out of ten--the female half of the ancestry of the present speakers of
the Majiar language must have been the women of the country. These were
Turk, Slavonic, Turko-Slavonic, Romano-Slavonic, and many other things
besides--anything, in short, but Majiar.
The Grisons language is of Roman origin.
So is the Wallachian of Wallachia and Moldavia.
Nevertheless, in each country, the original population must be, more or
less, represented in blood by the present.
This is enough to show what is meant by intermixture of blood, the
extent to which it demands a special investigation of its own, and the
number of such investigations required in the ethnology of Europe.
Indeed, it is the subject of a special department of the science,
conveniently called _minute ethnology_.
_Identification of ancient nations, tribes, and families._--If there
were no such thing as migration and displacement, the study of the
ancient writers would be an easy matter. As it is, it is a very
difficult one. Nine-tenths of the names of Herodotus, Strabo, Cæsar,
Pliny, Tacitus, and similar writers on ethnology and geography, are not
to be found in the modern maps; or, if found, occur in new localities.
Such is the case with the name of our own nation, the _Angli_, who
are now known as the people of _Engl-land_; whereas, in the eyes of
Tacitus they were Germans. Others have not only changed place, but have
become absolutely extinct. This is, of course, common enough. Again,
the _name_ itself may have changed, though the population to which it
applies may have remained the same, or name and place may have each
changed.
All this creates difficulties, though not such as should deter us
from their investigation. At the same time, the criticism that must
be applied is of a special and peculiar sort. _One_ of the more
complex questions with which it has to deal is the necessary but
neglected preliminary of _determining the language in which this or
that geographical or ethnological name occurs_; which is by no means
an off-hand process. When Tacitus talks of _Germans_, or Herodotus of
_Scythians_, the terms _Scythian_ and _German_ may or may not belong
to the language of the people thus designated; in other words, they may
or may not be _native_ names--names known to the tribes to which the
geographer applies them.
Generally such names are _not_ native--a statement which, at first,
seems hazardous; since the _primâ facie_ view is in favour of the name
by which a particular nation is known to its neighbours, being the name
by which it characterizes itself. Do not our neighbours call themselves
_Français_, whilst we say _French_, and are not the names identical?
In this particular case they are; but the case is an exceptional
one. Contrast with it that of the word _Welsh_. _Welsh_ and _Wales_
are the _English_ names of the _Cymry_--English, but by no means
native; English, but as little _Welsh_ (strictly speaking) as the word
_Indian_, when applied to the Red Men of America, is _American_.
_Welsh_ is the name by which the Englishman denotes his fellow-citizens
of the Principality. The German of Germany calls the _Italians_ by
the same designation; the same by which he knows the _Wallachians_
also--since _Wallachia_ and _Wales_ and _Welschland_ are all from
the same root. What an error would it be to consider all these three
countries as identical, simply because they were so in name! Yet if
that name were _native_, such would be the inference. As it is,
however, the chief link which connects them is their common relation
to Germany (or Germanic England); a link which would have been wholly
misinterpreted had we overlooked the German origin of the term, and
erroneously referred it to the languages of the countries whereto it
had its application.
An extract from Klaproth’s ‘Asia Polyglotta’ shall further illustrate
this important difference between the name by which a nation is known
to itself, and the name by which it is known to its geographer. A
certain population of Siberia calls itself _Nyenech_ or _Khasovo_. But
_none_ of its neighbours so call it. On the contrary, each gives it a
different appellation.
The Obi-Ostiaks call it _Jergan-Yakh_.
„ Tungúsians „ _Dyândal_.
„ Syranians „ _Yarang_.
„ Woguls „ _Yarran-Kum_.
„ Russians „ _Samöeid_.
What if some ancient tribe were thus polyonymous? What if five
different writers of antiquity had derived their information from the
five different nations of its neighbours? In such a case there would
have been five terms to one object; none of them belonging to the
language for which they were used.
The name, then, itself of each ancient population requires a
preliminary investigation. And these names are numerous--more so in
Europe than elsewhere.
The importance of the populations to which such names apply is greater
in Europe than elsewhere. It is safe to say this; because there is a
reason for it. From its excessive amount of displacement, Europe is
that part of the world where there are the best grounds for believing
in the previous existence of absolutely extinct families, or rather
in the absolute extinction of families previously existing. There are
no names in Asia that raise so many problems as those of the European
_Pelasgi_ and _Etrurians_.
The changes and complications involved in the foregoing observations
(and they are but few out of many) are the results of comparatively
recent movements; of conquests accomplished within the last twenty-five
centuries; of migrations within (or nearly within) the historical
period. Those truly ethnological phænomena which belong to the
_distribution itself_ of the existing families of Europe are, at least,
of equal importance.
The most marked instances of _philological isolation_ are European; the
two chief specimens being the _Basque_ and _Albanian_ languages.
The _Basque_ language of the Pyrenees has the same relation to the
ancient language of the Spanish Peninsula that the present Welsh
has to the old speech of Britain. It represents it in its fragments;
fragments, whereof the preservation is due to the existence of a
mountain stronghold for the aborigines to retire to. Now so isolated is
this same Basque that there is no language in the world which is placed
in the same class with it--no matter what the magnitude and import of
that class may be.
The _Albanian_ is just as isolated. As different from the Greek,
Turkish and Slavonic tongues of the countries in its neighbourhood,
as the Basque is from the French, Spanish and Breton, it is equally
destitute of relations at a distance. It is _unclassed_--at least its
position as Indo-European is doubtful.
What the Pelasgian and old Etruscan tongues were is uncertain. They
were probably sufficiently different from the languages of their
neighbourhood for the speakers of them to be mutually unintelligible.
Beyond this, however, they may have been anything or nothing in the
way of isolation. They _may_ have been as peculiar as the Basque and
Albanian. They _may_, on the other hand, have been just so unlike the
Greek and Latin as to have belonged to another class--the value of
that class being unascertained. Again, that class may or may not have
existing representatives amongst the tongues at present existing. I
give no opinion on this point. I only give prominence to the isolation
of the Basque and Albanian. We _know_ these last to be so different
from each other, and from all other tongues, as to come under none of
the recognized divisions in the way of ethnographical philology and its
classifications.
_Indo-Germanic._--This brings us to the term _Indo-Germanic_; and
the term _Indo-Germanic_ brings us to the retrospect of the European
populations--all of which, now in existence, have been enumerated, but
all of which have not been classified.
I. The Ugrians are a branch of the Turanians.
The Turanians form either a whole class or the part of one, according
to the light in which we view them; in other words, the group has
one value in philology, and another in anatomy. This is nothing
extraordinary. It merely means that their speech has more prominent
characters than their physical conformation.
I proceed, however, to our specification:--
_a._ The Turanians in respect to their _physical conformation_ are
a branch of the _Mongolians_; the Chinese, Eskimo and others, being
members of similar and equivalent divisions.
_b._ In respect to their _language_, they are the highest group
recognized, a group subordinate to none other.
To change the expression of this difference, the anatomical naturalist
of the Human Species has in the word _Mongolian_ a term of generality
to which the philologist has not arrived.
II. The Greeks and Latins--the Sarmatians--and the Germans are
referrible to a higher group; a group of much the same value as the
Turanian.
The characteristics of this group are philological.
_a._ The _numerals_ of the three great divisions are alike.
_b._ A large per-centage of the names of the commoner objects are alike.
_c._ The signs of _case_ in nouns, and of _person_ in verbs, are alike.
So wide has been the geographical extent of the populations speaking
languages thus connected (languages which separated from the common
mother-tongue subsequent to the evolution of both the cases of nouns
and the persons of verbs), that the literary language of India belongs
to the class in question. Hence, when this fact became known, and when
India passed for the _eastern_ and Germany for the _western_ extremity
of the great area of this great tongue, the term _Indo-Germanic_
became current.
But its currency was of no long duration. Dr. Prichard showed that
the Keltic tongues had Indo-Germanic numerals, a certain per-centage
of Indo-Germanic names for the commoner objects, and Indo-Germanic
personal terminations of verbs. Since then, the Keltic has been
considered as a fixed language, with a definite place in the
classification of the philologist; and the term _Indo-European_[26],
expressive of the class to which, along with the Sarmatian, the
Gothic, and the Classical tongues of Greece and Italy, it belongs, has
superseded the original compound _Indo-Germanic_.
We now know what is meant by _Indo-European_; a term of, at least,
equal generality with the term _Turanian_.
_a._ In _physical conformation_ the Indo-Europeans are a branch of the
higher division so improperly and inconveniently called _Caucasian_.
_b._ In _language_ they are the highest group hitherto recognized, a
group subordinate to none other.
And we have also improved our measure of the isolation of the--
III. _Basques._--Anatomically these are _Caucasian_ so-called.
Philologically, they are the only members of the group to which
they belong, and that group is the highest recognized. They are like
a species in natural history, which is the only one of its genus,
the genus being the only one of its order, and the order being so
indeterminate as to have no higher class to which it is subordinate.
IV. _The Albanians_ are in the same predicament.
This is the state of classification which pre-eminently inspires
us with the ambition of making higher groups; higher groups in
_philology_, since in _anatomy_ we have them ready-made--_i. e._
expressed by the terms Mongolian and Caucasian. The school which has
made the most notable efforts in this way is the Scandinavian. In
England it is, perhaps, better appreciated than in Germany, and in
Germany better than in France.
I think it had great truth in fragments. It will first be considered
on its philological side. Rask--the greatest genius for comparative
philology that the world has seen--exhibited the germs of it in his
work on the Zendavesta. Herein his hypothesis was as follows. The
geologist will follow him with ease. Just as the later formations,
isolated and unconnected of themselves, lie on an earlier, and
comparatively continuous, substratum of secondary, palæozoic or primary
antiquity, so do the populations speaking Celtic, Gothic, Slavonic,
and Classical languages. Conquerors and encroachers wherever they
came in contact with stocks alien to their own, they made, at an
early period of history, nine-tenths of Europe and part of Asia their
own. But before them lay an aboriginal population--_before them_ in
the way of _time_. This consisted of tribes, more or less related to
each other, which filled Europe from the North Cape to Cape Comorin
and Gibraltar--progenitors of the Laplanders on the north, and the
progenitors of the Basques of the Pyrenees on the south--_all at one
time continuous_. This time was the period anterior to the invasion of
the oldest of the above-mentioned families. More than this--Hindostan
was similarly peopled; and, by assumption, the parts between Northern
Hindostan and Europe.
Such the theory. Now let us look to the present distribution. Almost
all Europe is what is called Indo-European, _i.e._ Celtic, Gothic,
Slavonic, or Classical. But it is not wholly so. In Scandinavia we
have the Laps; in Northern Russia the Finns; on the junction of Spain
and France the Basques. These are fragments of the once continuous
Aborigines--separated from each other by Celts, Goths, and Slavonians.
Then, as to India. In the Dekhan we have a family of languages called
the Tamul--isolated also. Between each of these points the population
is homogeneous as compared with itself; heterogeneous as compared with
the tribes just enumerated. But there was once a continuity--even as
the older rocks in geology are connected, whilst the newer ones are
dissociated.
Such was the hypothesis of Rask; an hypothesis to which he applied
the epithet _Finnic_--since the Finn of Finland was the type and
sample of these early, aboriginal, hypothetically continuous, and
hypothetically connected tongues. The invasion, however, of the
stronger Indo-Europeans broke them up. Be it so. It was a grand guess;
even if wrong, a grand and a suggestive one. Still it was but a guess.
I will not say that no details were worked out. Some few were indicated.
Points which connected tongues so distant as the Tamul and the Finn
were noticed--but more than this was not done. Still, it was a doctrine
which, if it were proved false, was better than a large per-centage
of the true ones. It taught inquirers where to seek the affinities of
apparently isolated languages; and it bade them pass over those in the
neighbourhood and look to the quarters where other tongues equally
isolated presented themselves.
I have mentioned Rask as the apostle of it. Arndt, I am told, was the
originator. The countrymen, however, of Rask have been those who have
most acted on it.
But they took up the weapon at the other end. It is the _anatomists_
and _archæologists_ of Scandinavia who have worked it most. The Celts
have a skull of their own just as they have a language. So have the
Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Dutch, and Englishmen. Never
mind its characteristics. Suffice, that it was--or was supposed
to be--different from that of the Finns and Basques. So had the
Hindús--different from that of the Tamuls. Now the burial-places of the
present countries of the different Gothic populations contain skulls
of the Gothic character only up to a certain point. The _very oldest_
stand in contrast with the oldest forms but one. The _very oldest_ are
Lap, Basque, and Tamul. Surely this--if true--confirms the philological
theory. But is it true? I am not inclined to change the terms already
used. It is a grand and a suggestive _guess_.
More than this it is not necessary to say at present; since any further
speculation in respect to the migration (_or migrations_) which peopled
Europe from the hypothetical centre in Asia is premature. The ethnology
of Asia is necessary as a preliminary.
FOOTNOTES
[23] When ethnological medicine shall have become more extensively
studied than it is, it will probably be seen that the populations of
the area in question are those which are most afflicted by scrofula.
[24] A table showing this is printed in the author’s ‘Varieties of
Man,’ pp. 270–272.
[25] Both these points are worked out in detail in the Author’s _Taciti
Germania, with ethnological notes_.
[26] For a criticism on this term see pp. 86–89.
CHAPTER VI.
The Monosyllabic Area--the Tʻhay--the Môn and Khô--Tables--the Bʻhot--
the Chinese--Burmese--Persia--India--Tamulian family--the Brahúi--
the Dioscurians--the Georgians--Irôn--Mizjeji--Lesgians--Armenians--
Asia Minor--Lycians--Carians--Paropamisans--Conclusion.
Our plan is now to take up the different lines of migration at the
points where they were respectively broken off. This was at their
different points of contact with Asia. The first line was--
I. _The American._--In affiliating the American with the Asiatic, the
ethnologist is in the position of an irrigator, who supplies some wide
tract of thirsty land with water derived from a higher level, but kept
from the parts below by artificial embankments. These he removes;
his process being simple but effectual, and wholly independent of
the clever machinery of pumps, water-wheels, and similar branches of
hydraulics. The obstacle being taken away, gravitation does the rest.
The over-valuation of the Eskimo peculiarities is the great obstacle
in American ethnology. When these are cut down to their due level, the
connexion between America and Asia is neither more nor less than one
of the clearest we have. It is certainly clearer than the junction
of Africa and north-western Asia; not more obscure than that between
Oceanica and the Transgangetic Peninsula; and incalculably less
mysterious than that which joins Asia to Europe.
Indeed, there is no very great break, either philologically or
anatomically, until we reach the confines of China. Here, the physical
conformation keeps much the same: the language, however, becomes
_monosyllabic_.
Now many able writers lay so much stress upon this monosyllabic
character, as to believe that the separation between the tongues so
constituted and those wherein we have an increase of syllables with a
due amount of inflexion besides, is too broad to be got over. If speech
were a mineral, this might, perhaps, be true. But speech _grows_, and
if one philological fact be more capable of proof than another, it is
that of a monosyllabic and uninflected tongue being a polysyllabic
and inflected one in its first stage of development--or rather in its
_non_-development.
The Kamskadale, the Koriak, the Aino-Japanese, and the Korean are the
Asiatic languages most like those of America. Unhesitatingly as I
make this assertion--an assertion for which I have numerous tabulated
vocabularies as proof--I am by no means prepared to say that one-tenth
part of the necessary work has been done for the parts in question;
indeed, it is my impression that it is easier to connect America with
the Kurile Isles and Japan, &c., than it is to make Japan and the
Kurile Isles, &c., Asiatic. The group which they form belongs to an
area where the displacements have been very great. The Kamskadale
family is nearly extinct. The Koreans, who probably occupied a great
part of Mantshuria, have been encroached on by both the Chinese and the
Mantshús. The same has been the case with the Ainos of the lower Amúr.
Lastly, the whole of the northern half of China was originally in the
occupancy of tribes who were probably intermediate to their Chinese
conquerors, the Mantshús and the Koreans.
That the philological affinities necessary for making out the Asiatic
origin of the Americans lie anywhere but on the surface of the
language, I confess. Of the way whereby they should be looked for, the
following is an instance.
The _Yukahiri_ is an Asiatic language of the Kolyma and Indijirka.
Compare its numerals with those of the other tribes in the direction of
America. They differ. They are not Koriak, not Kamskadale, by no means
Eskimo; nor yet Kolúch. Before we find the name of a single Yukahiri
unit reappearing in other languages, we must go as far south along the
western coast of America as the parts about Vancouver’s Island. There
we find the Hailtsa tongue--where _malúk_ = _two_. Now the Yukahiri
term for _two_ is not _malúk_. It is a word which I do not remember.
Nevertheless, _malúk_ = _two_ does exist in the Yukahiri. The word for
_eight_ is _malúk_ × the term for four (2 × 4).
This phænomenon would be repeated in English if our numerals ran
thus:--1. _one_; 2. _pair_; 4. _four_; 8. _two-fours_; in which case
all arguments based upon the correspondence or non-correspondence
of the English numerals with those of Germany and Scandinavia would
be as valid as if the word _two_ were the actual name of the second
unit. Indeed, in one respect they would be more so. The peculiar way
in which the Hailtsa _malúk_ reappears in the Yukahiri is conclusive
against the name being _borrowed_. Whether it is _accidental_ is quite
another question. This depends upon the extent to which it is a single
coincidence, or one out of many. All that is attempted, at present, is
to illustrate the extent to which resemblances may be disguised, and
the consequent care requisite for detecting them[27].
II. _The connexion between Oceanica and South-eastern Asia._--The
physical conformation of the Malays is so truly that of the
Indo-Chinese, that no difficulties lie in this department. The
philological ones are a shade graver. They involve the doubt already
suggested in respect to the relations between a monosyllabic tongue
like the Siamese, and a tongue other than monosyllabic like the Malay.
This brings us to the great area of the monosyllabic tongues itself.
_Geographically_, it means China, Tibet, the Transgangetic Peninsula,
and the Sub-Himalayan parts of northern India, such as Nepal, Sikkim,
Assam, the Garo country, and other similar localities.
_Politically_, it means the Chinese, Nepalese, Burmese and Siamese
empires, along with several British-Indian and independent tribes.
The chief _religion_ is Buddhism; the physical conformation
unequivocally _Mongolian_.
The transition from _mono_-syllabic to _poly_-syllabic has never
created much difficulty with myself: nor do I think it will do so
with any writer who considers the greater difficulties involved in
the denial of it. What these are will become apparent when we look
at the map of Asia, and observe the tongues which come in contact
with those of the class in question. Then it will become clear
that _unless we allow it to form a connecting link, it not only
stands alone itself, but isolates other families_. Thus, it is only
through the Transgangetic Peninsula that the _Oceanic_ family can
be connected with the _Indian_; a connexion which rests on grounds
sufficiently good to have induced careful writers[28] to believe the
affiliation to be _direct_ and _immediate_. It is only through this
same Transgangetic Peninsula _plus_ Tibet and China that the great
Siberian families--Turanian and Japanese--can be similarly connected
with the Oceanic. Yet such a connexion really exists, though, from its
indirect character, it is but partially recognised. Nevertheless, it
_is_ recognised (often, perhaps, unconsciously) by every inquirer who
hesitates about separating the Malay from the Mongol.
A difficulty of far greater magnitude arises from the following
considerations:--There are two principles upon which languages may be
classified. According to the first, we take two or more languages as
we find them, ascertain certain of their characteristics, and then
inquire how far these characteristics coincide. Two or more languages,
thus taken, may agree in having a large per-centage of grammatical
inflexions, in which case they would agree in certain _positive_
characters. On the other hand, two or more languages may agree in
the _negative_ fact of having a small and scanty vocabulary, and an
inflexional system equally limited.
The complication here suggested lies in a fact of which a little
reflection will show the truth, viz. that _negative points of
similarity prove nothing in the way of ethnological connexion_; whence,
as far as the simplicity of their respective grammars is concerned, the
Siamese, Burmese, Chinese and Tibetan may be as little related to each
other, or to a common mother-tongue, as the most unlike languages of
the whole world of Speech.
Again--it by no means follows that because all the tongues of the
family in question are comparatively destitute of inflexion, they are
all in the same class. A characteristic of the kind may arise from
two reasons; _non_-development, or loss. There is a stage _anterior_
to the evolution of inflexions, when each word has but one form, and
when relation is expressed by mere juxtaposition, with or without the
superaddition of a change of accent. The tendencies of this stage are
to combine words in the way of composition, but not to go further.
Every word retains, throughout, its separate substantive character,
and has a meaning independent of its juxtaposition with the words with
which it combines.
But there is also a stage _subsequent_ to such an evolution, when
inflexions have become obliterated and when case-endings, like
the _i_ in _patr-i_, are replaced by prepositions (in some cases
by postpositions) like the _to_ in _to father_; and when personal
endings, like the _o_ in _voc-o_, are replaced by pronouns, like the
_I_ in _I call_. Of the _first_ of these stages, the Chinese is the
language which affords the most typical specimen that can be found in
the present _late_ date of languages--_late_, considering that we are
looking for a sample of its earliest forms. Of the _last_ of these
stages the English of the year 1851 affords the most typical specimen
that can be found in the present _early_ date of language--early,
considering that we are looking for a sample of its latest forms.
Hence--
_a._ How far the different monosyllabic tongues are _all_ in the same
stage--is one question.
_b._ Whether this stage be the _earlier_ or the _later_ one--is
another; and--
_c._ Whether they are connected by _relationship_ as well as in
_external form_--is a third.
In answer to this, it is safe to say (a.) that they are _all_
uninflected, because inflexions have yet to be evolved; not because
they have been evolved and lost--as is the case with the English, a
language which stands at one end of the scale, just as the Chinese does
at the other.
(b.) They are, also, all connected by a _bonâ fide_ ethnological
relationship; as can be shown by numerous tables; the Chinese and
Tibetans being, apparently, the two extremes, in the way of difference.
As for their geographical distribution, it is a blank-and-prize
lottery, with large and small areas in juxtaposition and contrast, just
as has been the case in America and in Africa; the Sub-Himalayan parts
of British India, Sikkim and Nepâl, and the Indo-Burmese frontier
(or the country about Assam and Munipúr) being the tracts where the
multiplicity of mutually unintelligible tongues within a limited
district is greatest.
Again--whenever the latter distribution occurs we have either a
mountain-fastness, political independence, or the primitive pagan
creed--generally all three.
The population speaking a monosyllabic language which is in the
most immediate contact with the continental tribes of the Oceanic
stock, is the Southern Siamese. This reaches as far as the northern
frontier of Kedah (Quedah), about 8° N. L. Everything north of this
is monosyllabic; with the exception of a Malay settlement (probably,
though not certainly, of recent origin) on the coast of Kambogia.
Now the great stock to which the Siamese belong is called Tʻhay. Its
direction is from north to south, coinciding with the course of the
great river Menam; beyond the head-waters of which the Tʻhay tribes
reach as far as Assam. Of these northern Tʻhay, the _Khamti_ are the
most numerous; and it is important to know that as many as 92 words
out of 100 are common to this dialect and to the classical Siamese of
Bankok.
Again, the intermediate tribes of the Upper and Middle Menam--the
Lau--speak a language as unequivocally Siamese as the Khamti. If so,
the Tʻhay tongue, widely extended as it is in the particular direction
from north to south, is a tongue falling into but few dialects; the
inference from which is, that it has spread within a comparatively
recent period. Consequently, it has encroached upon certain other
populations and effected certain displacements.
I think that even in the minuter details that now suggest themselves we
can see our way; so far, at least, as to determine in which direction
the movement took place--whether it were from north to south or from
south to north.
Few classes of tongues can be better studied for ethnological purposes
than the monosyllabic. A paper of Buchanan’s, and another of Leyden’s,
are amongst the most valuable articles of the Asiatic Researches. One
of Mr. Brown’s in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal gives us
numerous tabulated vocabularies for the Burmese, Assamese and Indian
frontiers. Mr. Hodgson and Dr. Robertson have done still more for the
same parts. Lastly, the chief southern dialects, which have been less
studied, are tabulated in the second volume of ‘Crawfurd’s Embassy to
Siam.’
Upon looking over these, we find specimens of the two tongues which
lie east and west of the southern Siamese; the first being the _Khô_
language of Kambogia, and the second the _Môn_ of Pegu. Each of these
is spoken over a small area; indeed the Môn, which is, at present,
nearly limited to the Delta of the Irawaddi, is fast giving way before
the encroaching dialects of the Burmese class, whilst the Khô of
Kambogia is similarly limited to the lower part of the Mekhong, and is
hemmed in by the Siamese, the Lau, and the Anamitic of Cochin China.
Now, separated as they are, the Môn and Khô are liker to each other
than either is to the interjacent Siamese; the inference from this
being that at one time they were connected by transitional and
intermediate dialects, aboriginal to the lower Menam, but now displaced
by the Siamese of Bankok introduced from the parts to the northwards.
If this be the case, the monosyllabic tongue most closely allied to
those of the Malayan Peninsula (which are _not_ monosyllabic) is
not the present Siamese, but the language which the present Siamese
displaced.
How far this view is confirmed by any special affinities between
the Malay dialects with the Môn and Khô is more than I can say. The
examination, however, should be made.
The _southern_ Tʻhay dialects are not only less like the Môn and Khô
than is expected from their locality, but the _northern_ ones are less
like those of the Indo-Burmese frontier and Assam than the geographical
contiguity prepares us to surmise; since the per-centage of words
common to the Khamti and the other dialects of Munipur and Assam is
only as follows[29].
Siamese. Khamti.
0 1 per cent. with the Aka.
0 1 „ „ Abor.
3 5 „ „ Mishimi.
6 8 „ „ Burmese.
8 8 „ „ Karien.
3 3 „ „ Singpho.
10 10 „ „ Jili.
1 3 „ „ Garo.
3 3 „ „ Munipúri.
1 1 „ „ Songphu.
0 0 „ „ Kapwi.
1 1 „ „ Koreng.
0 0 „ „ Maram.
0 0 „ „ Kamphung.
0 0 „ „ Luhuppa.
0 0 „ „ North Tankhul.
0 0 „ „ Central Tankhul.
0 0 „ „ South Tankhul.
0 0 „ „ Khoibu.
0 0 „ „ Maring.
This shows that their original locality is to be sought in an _eastern_
as well as in a _northern_ direction.
If the Tʻhay dialects are less like the Burmese than most other members
of their class, they are more like the Bʻhot of Tibet.
_English_ boat.
Ahom _ru._
Khamti _hu._
Lau _heic._
Siamese _reng._
W. Tibetan[30] _gru._
S. Tibetan[30] _kua._
_English_ bone.
Khamti _nuk._
Lau _duk._
Siamese _ka-duk._
S. Tibetan _ruko._
_English_ crow.
Ahom _ka._
Khamti _ka._
Lau _ka._
Siamese _ka._
W. Tibetan _kha-ta._
_English_ ear.
Khamti (3) _hú._
W. Tibetan _sá._
S. Tibetan _amcho._
_English_ egg.
Ahom _khrai._
Khamti _khai._
Lau _khai._
Siamese _khai._
_English_ father.
Ahom (3) _po._
W. Tibetan _phá._
S. Tibetan _pálá._
_English_ fire.
Ahom (3) _fai._
W. Tibetan _má._
S. Tibetan _mé._
_English_ flower.
Ahom _blok._
Khamti _mok._
Lau _dok._
Siamese _dokmai._
W. Tibetan _me-tog._
S. Tibetan _men-tok._
_English_ foot.
Ahom _tin._
W. Tibetan _{r}kang-pa._
S. Tibetan _kango._
_English_ hair.
Ahom _phrum._
Khamti _phom._
Lau _phom._
Siamese _phom._
W. Tibetan _skra._
---- _spu._
S. Tibetan _ta._
---- _kra._
_English_ head.
Ahom _ru._
Khamti _ho._
Lau _ho._
Siamese _hoa._
W. Tibetan _mgo._
S. Tibetan _go._
_English_ moon.
Siamese _tawan._
W. Tibetan _{z}lava._
S. Tibetan _dawa._
_English_ mother.
Ahom (4) _me._
Tibetan _ama._
_English_ night.
Khamti (3) _khün._
W. Tibetan _m tshan-mo._
S. Tibetan _chen-mo._
_English_ oil.
Ahom _man grá._
Khamti _nam._
---- _man._
Lau (2) _nam._
---- _man._
S. Tibetan _num._
_English_ road.
Ahom (2) _táng._
Siamese _tháng._
W. Tibetan _lami._
S. Tibetan _lani._
_English_ salt.
Ahom _klu._
Khamti _ku._
Lau _keu._
---- _keou._
Siamese _kleua._
_English_ skin.
Ahom _plek._
W. Tibetan _pag-spa._
S. Tibetan _pag-pa._
_English_ tooth.
Ahom _khiu._
Khamti _khiu._
Lau _khiau._
Siamese _khiau._
Tibetan _só._
_English_ tree.
Ahom _tun._
Khamti _tun._
Lau _tón._
Siamese _tón._
W. Tibetan _l. jon-shing._
S. Tibetan _shin dong._
_English_ three.
Ahom (3) _sam._
W. Tibetan _q-sum._
S. Tibetan _sum._
_English_ four.
Ahom (3) _si._
W. Tibetan _bzhi._
S. Tibetan _zhyi._
_English_ five.
Ahom (3) _ha._
W. Tibetan _hna._
S. Tibetan _gna._
_English_ six.
Ahom _ruk._
Siamese (3) _hok._
W. Tibetan _druk._
S. Tibetan _thú._
_English_ nine.
Ahom (3) _kau._
W. Tibetan _d-gu._
S. Tibetan _guh._
_English_ in, on.
Ahom _nu._
Khamti _nau._
Lau _neu._
Tibetan _la, na._
_English_ now.
Ahom _tinai._
Khamti _tsang._
Lau _leng._
W. Tibetan _deng-tse._
S. Tibetan _thanda._
_English_ to-morrow.
Ahom _sang-manai._
Tibetan _sang._
_English_ drink.
Siamese _deum._
W. Tibetan _{p}thung._
S. Tibetan _thung._
_English_ sleep.
Ahom (2) _non._
W. Tibetan _nyan._
S. Tibetan _nyé._
_English_ laugh.
Ahom _khru._
Khamti _khó._
Lau _khóa._
Siamese _hoaro._
W. Tibetan _{b}gad._
S. Tibetan _{f}gá._
[30] S. means the _spoken_, W. the _written_ Tibetan. The collation has
been made from a table of Mr. Hodgson’s in the Journal of the Asiatic
Society of Bengal. The Ahom is a Tʻhay dialect.
The Bʻhot itself is spoken over a large area with but little
variation. We anticipate the inference. It is an intrusive tongue,
of comparatively recent diffusion. What has been its direction? From
east to west rather than from west to east; at least such is the
deduction from its similarity to the Tʻhay, and from the multiplicity
of dialects--representatives of a receding population--in the Himalayas
of Nepâl and Sikkim. This, however, is a point on which I speak with
hesitation.
Dialects of the Bʻhot class are spoken as far westward as the parts
about Cashmír and the watershed of the Indus and Oxus. This gives us
the greatest extent eastwards of any unequivocally monosyllabic tongue.
The Chinese seem to have effected displacements as remarkable for
both breadth and length as the Tʻhay were for length. We get at their
original locality by the exhaustive process. On the northern and
western frontier they keep encroaching at the present moment--at the
expense of the Mantshús and Mongolians. For the provinces of Chansi,
Pe-tche-li, Chantung, Honan, &c., indeed, for four-fifths of the whole
empire, the uniformity of speech indicates a recent diffusion. In
Setshuen and Yunnan the type changes probably from that of the true
Chinese to the Tibetan, Tʻhay and Burmese. In Tonkin and Cochin the
language is like but different--like enough to be the only monosyllabic
language which is placed by any one in the same section with the
Chinese, but different enough to make this position of it a matter of
doubt with many. Putting all this together, the south and south-eastern
provinces of China appear to be the oldest portions of the present area.
In fixing upon these as the parent provinces, the evidence of ethnology
on the one side, and that of the mass of tradition and inference which
passes under the honourable title of Chinese history on the other,
disagree. This latter is as follows:--
At some period anterior to 550 =B.C.=, the first monarch with whom
the improvement of China began, and whose name was Yao, ruled over a
small portion of the present empire, viz. its _north-west_ district;
and the first nations that he fought against were the Yen and Tsi, in
Pe-tche-li and Shantong respectively.
Later still, Honan was conquered.
=B.C.= 550. All to the south of the Ta-keang was barbarous; and the
title of King of Chinese was only _Vang_ or _prince_, not _Hoang-te_ or
_Emperor_.
At this time Confucius lived. Amongst other things he wrote the
_Tschan-tsen_, or Annals of his own time.
=B.C.= 213. Shi-hoang-ti, the first Emperor of all China, built the
great wall, colonized Japan, conquered the parts about Nankin, and
_purposely destroyed all the previously existing documents upon which
he could lay hand_.
=B.C.= 94. Sse-mats-sian lived. What Shi-hoang-ti missed in the way
of records, Sse-mats-sian preserved, and, as such, passes for the
Herodotus China.
A destruction of the earlier records, with a subsequent reconstruction
of the history which they are supposed to have embodied, is always
suspicious; and when once the principle of reconstruction is admitted,
no value can be attached to the intrinsic probability of a narration.
It may be probable. It may be true. It cannot, however, be historical
unless supported by historical testimony; since, if true, it is a
guess; and if probable, a specimen of the tact of the inventor. At
best, it can but be a _tradition_ or an _inference_, the basis of which
may be a certain amount of fact--little or great according to the
temperament of the investigator.
Now, in the previous notice of the history of Chinese civilization, we
have placed its claims to a high antiquity under as favourable a point
of view as is allowable. They bear the appearance of truth--so much so,
that if we had reason to believe that there were any means of recording
them at so early an epoch as 600 years =B.C.=, and of preserving them
to so late a one as the year ’51, scepticism would be impertinent. But
this is not the case. An historical fact must be taken upon evidence,
not upon probabilities; and to argue the antiquity of a civilization
like the Chinese from the antiquity of its history, and afterwards to
claim an historical value for remote traditions on the strength of an
early civilization, is to argue in a circle.
Without saying that _all_ argument upon the antiquity of the Chinese
Empire is of this sort, it may fairly be said that _much_ of it has
been so--so much as to make Confucius as mythological a character
as Minos, and to bring the earliest reasonable records to an epoch
subsequent to the introduction of Buddhism from India. Even this
antiquity is only probable.
A square block of land between the Ganges and Upper Irawaddi is
occupied by one dominant, and upwards of thirty subordinate sections
of one and the same population--the _Burmese_. Some of these are
mountaineers, and have retreated before the Indians from the south
and west--encroachers upon the originally Burmese countries of Assam,
Chittagong and Sylhet. Others are themselves intruders, or (what is
much the same) consolidators of conquered countries. Such are the Avans
of the Burmese Empire, properly so called, who seem to have followed
the course of the Irawaddi, displacing not only small tribes akin to
themselves, but the Môn of Pegu, as well. Lastly, the Kariens emulate
the Tʻhay in the length of their area and in its north-and-south
direction, being found in the southern part of the Tenasserim Provinces
(in 11° N. L.) and on the very borders of China (in 23° N. L.).
No great family has its distribution so closely coincident with a
water-system as the one in question. The plateau of Mongolia and the
Himalayas are its boundaries. It occupies the whole[31] of all the
rivers which rise within these limits, and fall into either the Bay of
Bengal or the Chinese Sea; whereas (with the exception of the Himalayan
portions of the Indus and the Ganges) it occupies none of the others.
The lines of migration with the Indo-Chinese populations have generally
followed the water-courses of the Indo-Chinese rivers; and civilization
has chiefly flourished along their valleys. Yet, as these lead to an
ocean interrupted by no fresh continent, the effect of their direction
has been to isolate the nations who possess them. I imagine that this
has much more to do with peculiarities of the Chinese civilization than
aught else. Had the Hoang-ho fallen into a sea like the Mediterranean,
the Celestial Empire would, probably, have given and taken in the way
of social and political influence, have acted on the manners of the
world at large, and have itself been reacted on. Differences should
only be attributed to so indefinite and so impalpable a force as _race_
when all other things are equal.
Upon the principle of taking the questions in the order of complexity,
so as to dispose of the simplest first, I pass over, for the present,
the connexion between Africa and South-Western Asia, and take the
easier of the two European ones.
_The Turanians._--The line which, beginning at Lapland, and, after
exhibiting the great Turanian affiliations, ends at the wall of China,
comprising the Ugrians, Samoeids[32], Yeniseians[32], Yukahiri[32],
Turks, Mongols, and Tungusians[33], is connected with the area of the
monosyllabic languages in different degrees of clearness according to
the criterion employed. The physical conformation is nearly identical.
The languages differ--the Turanian, like the Oceanic and the American,
being inflected and polysyllabic[34]. With this difference, the
complexities of the affiliation begin and end. Their amount has been
already suggested.
A great part of Northern Europe, Independent Tartary, Siberia,
Mongolia, Tibet, China, and the Transgangetic Peninsula, has now been
disposed of. Nevertheless, India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Caucasus
remain; in size inconsiderable, in difficulty great--greatly difficult
because the points of contact between Europe and Asia, and Africa
and Asia, fall within this area; greatly difficult because the
displacements have been enormous; greatly difficult because, besides
displacement, there has been intermixture as well. Lest any one
undervalue the displacement, let him look at Asia Minor, which is now
Turk, which has been Roman, Persian and Greek, and which has no single
unequivocal remnant of its original population throughout its whole
length and breadth. Yet, great as this is, it is no more than what we
expect _à priori_. What families are and have been more encroaching
than the populations hereabouts--Turks from the north, Arabs from the
south, and Persians from the east? The oldest empires of the world lie
here--and old empires imply early consolidation; early consolidation,
premature displacement. Then come the phænomena of intermixture. In
India there is a literary language of considerable age, and full of
inflexions. Of these inflexions not one in ten can be traced in any
modern tongue throughout the whole of Asia. Yet they are rife and
common in many European ones. Again, the _words_ of this same language,
_minus_ its inflexions, are rife and common in the very tongues where
the inflexions are wanting; in some cases amounting to nine-tenths of
the language. What is the inference from this? Not a very clear one at
any rate.
Africa has but one point of contact with Asia, _i.e._ Arabia. It
is safe to say this, because, whether we carry the migration over
the Isthmus of Suez or the Straits of Babel-Mandeb, the results are
similar. The Asiatic stock, in either case, is the same--Semitic. But
Europe, in addition to its other mysteries, has two; perhaps three. One
of these is simple enough--that of the Lap line and the Turanian stock.
But the others are not so. It is easy to make the Ugrians Asiatic; but
by no means easy to connect the other Europeans with the Ugrians. The
Sarmatians, nearest in geography, have never been very successfully
affiliated with them. Indeed, so unwilling have writers been to admit
this relationship, that the Finnic hypothesis, with all its boldness,
has appeared the better alternative. Yet the Finnic hypothesis is but a
guess. Even if it be not so, it only embraces the Basks and Albanians;
so that the so-called Indo-Europeans still stand over.
For reasons like these, the parts forthcoming will be treated with far
greater detail than those which have preceded; with nothing like the
detail of _minute_ ethnology, but still slowly and carefully.
All that thus stands over for investigation is separated from the area
already disposed of by that line of mountains which is traced from the
Garo Hills in the north-east of Bengal to the mouth of the Kuban in the
Black Sea. First come the Eastern Himalayas, which, roughly speaking,
may be said to divide the Indian kingdoms and dependencies from the
Chinese Empire. They do not do so exactly, but they do so closely
enough for the present purpose.
They may also be said, in the same way, to divide the nations of the
Hindu from those of more typically Mongolian conformation.
They may also be said, in the same way, to divide the Indian tongues
from the monosyllabic.
On the _north_ side of this range, languages undoubtedly, monosyllabic
are spoken as far westwards as Little Tibet. On the _south_ there are
Hindu characteristics both numerous and undoubted as far in the same
direction as _Cashmír_.
Then comes a change. To the north and west of Cashmír is a _Kohistan_,
or _mountain-country_, which will soon require being described in
detail. The line, however, which we are at present engaged upon is
that of the northern boundary of the Valley of the Kabúl River, the
mountains between Cabul and Herat, and the continuation of the same
ridge from Herat to the south-eastern corner of the Caspian. _North_ of
this we have--roughly speaking--the Uzbek and Turcoman Turks; south of
it, the Afghans and Persians Proper. Bokhara, however, is Persian, and
the _Kohistan_ in question is _not_ Turk--whatever else it may be.
To proceed--this line runs nearly parallel to the southern shore
of the Caspian. Of the provinces to the north of it, Asterabad is
partly Turk and partly Persian; Mazenderan and Ghilan, Persian. From
Ghilan northwards and westwards, the valleys of the Cyrus and Araxes
form the chief exception--but, saving these, all is mountain and
mountaineership. Indeed, it is Ararat and Armenia which lie on our
left, and the vast and vague Caucasus which rears itself in front.
The simplest ethnology of the parts between this range, the Semitic
area, and the sea, is that of the Persian province of Khorasan. With
Persia we are so much in the habit of connecting ideas of Eastern pomp
and luxury, that we are scarcely able to give it its true geographical
conditions of general sterility. Yet it is really a desert with
oases--a desert with oases for the far greater part of its area. And
of all its provinces few are more truly so than Khorasan. Here we
have a great elevated central table-land; pre-eminently destitute of
rivers; and with but few towns. Of these Yezd is the chief in interest:
the head-quarters of remains of the old fire-worship: Yezd the city
of the Parsees, more numerous there than in all the others in Persia
besides. Perhaps, too, it is the ethnological centre of the Persian
stock; since in a westerly direction they extend to Kurdistan, and in a
north-eastern one as far as Badukshan and Durwaz on the source of the
Oxus.
The northern frontier is Turcoman, where the pastoral robbers of the
parts between Bokhara and the Caspian encroach, and have encroached.
As far south as Shurukhs they are to be found; and east of Shurukhs
they are succeeded by the Hazarehs--probably _wholly_, certainly
_partially_, of Mongolian blood.
Abbasabad on the north-west is a Georgian colony. On the line between
Meshed and Herat are several Kurd colonies. In Seistan we have
Persians; but further south there are Biluch and Brahúi. Due east the
Afghans come in.
Kerman is also Persian; and that to a greater degree than Khorasan.
Fars is the same; yet west of Fars the population changes, and Arabian
elements occur. They increase in Khuzistan; and in Irak Arabi we,
at one and the same time, reach the rich alluvia of the Tigris and
Euphrates and a doubtful frontier. Whether this was originally Arab or
Persian is a matter of doubt.
From Irak we must subtract Laristan, and the Baktyari Mountains, as
well as the whole north-western half. Hamadan is the ancient Ecbatana;
the ancient Ecbatana was Median--but that the Medes and Persians were
as closely allied in blood as we suppose them to have been in their
unalterable laws, is by no means a safe assumption. The existence
of a _third_ language in the arrow-headed inscriptions yet awaits a
satisfactory explanation.
On the other hand, Mazenderan is wholly Persian; and so is Ghilan
Proper. The Talish, however, to the north of that province, are,
possibly, of another stock. Asterabad, as stated above, is a frontier
province.
I think that there is good reason for believing Ajerbijan to have been,
originally, other than Persian.
In Balkh and Bokhara, the older--but not necessarily the
oldest--population appears to be Persian under recently immigrant Uzbek
masters. Beyond these countries, the Persians reappear as the chief
population, _i.e._ in Badukshan and Durwaz.
Here the proper Persian population ends--but not either wholly or
abruptly.
Three modifications of it occur--
1. In Biluchistan to the south-east.
2. In Kurdistan to the west.
3. In Afghanistan to the east.
Besides which, there are Persians encroaching upon the Armenian and
Caucasian area in Shirvan, Erivan, and Karabagh--in all of which
countries, as well as in Ajerbijan, I believe it to have been intrusive.
_The Biluch._--East and south-east of the proper Persians of Kerman
come the Biluch, of Biluchistan. There is certainly a change of type
here. Physically, the country is much like the table-land of Kerman.
India, however, is approached; so that the Biluch are frontier tribes.
To a certain extent they are encroachers. We find them in Sind, in
Múltan, and in the parts between the Indus and the Sulimani Mountains,
and in the middle part of the Sulimani Mountains themselves. They
style themselves _Usul_ or _The Pure_, a term which implies either
displacement or intermixture in the parts around. Their language is
a modified (many call it a _bad_) Persian. Philologically, however,
it may be the older and more instructive dialect--though I have no
particular reasons for thinking it so. Hindu features of physiognomy
now appear. So do Semitic elements of polity and social constitution.
We have tribes, clans, and families; with divisions and sub-divisions.
We have a criminal law which puts us in mind of the Levites. We have
classes which scorn to intermarry; and this suggests the idea of
_caste_. Then we have pastoral habits as in Mongolia. The religion,
however, is Mahometan, so that if any remains of the primitive
Paganism, available for the purposes of ethnological classification,
still exist, they lie too far below the surface to have been observed.
Captain Postans distinguishes the Biluch from the Mekrani of Mekran;
but of this latter people I know no good description. They are,
probably, Kerman Persians. The hill-range between Jhalawan and Sind is
occupied by a family which has commanded but little notice; yet is it
one of the most important in the world, the Brahúi.
_The Kurds._--A line drawn obliquely across Persia from Biluchistan
towards the north-west brings us to another frontier population; a
population conterminous with the Semitic Arabs of Mesopotamia, and the
unplaced Armenians. These are mountaineers--the Kurds of Kurdistan.
Name for name, they are the _Carduchi_ of the Anabasis. Name for
name, they are the _Gordyæi_. Name for name, they are, probably,
the _Chaldæi_ and _Khasd-im_--a fact which engenders a difficult
complication, since the Chaldæi in the eyes of nine writers out of
ten--though not in those of so good an authority as Gesenius--are
Semitic. The Kurd area is pre-eminently irregular in outline. It is
equally remarkable for its physical conditions. It is a range of
mountains--just the place wherein we expect to find old and aboriginal
populations rather than new and intrusive ones. On the other hand,
however, the Kurd form of the Persian tongue is not remarkable for the
multiplicity and difference of its dialects--a fact which suggests the
opposite inference. Kurds extend as far south as the northern frontier
of Fars, as far north as Armenia, and as far west as the head-waters
of the Halys. Have they encroached? This is a difficult question. The
Armenians are a people who have generally given way before intruders;
but the Arabs are rather intruders than the contrary. The Kurd
direction is vertical, _i.e._ narrow rather than broad, and from north
to south (or _vice versâ_) rather than from east to west (or _vice
versâ_), a direction common enough where it coincides with the valley
of a river, but rare along a mountain-chain. Nevertheless it reappears
in South America, where the Peruvian area coincides with that of the
Andes.
_The Afghans._--The Afghan area is very nearly the water-system of the
river Helmund. The direction in which it has become extended is east
and north-east; in the former it has encroached upon Hindostan, in
the latter upon the southern members of a class that may conveniently
be called the Paropamisan. In this way (I think) the Valley of the
Cabul River has become Afghan. Its relations to the Hazareh country
are undetermined. Most of the Hazarehs are Mongolian in physiognomy.
Some of them are Mongolian in both physiognomy and language. This
indicates intrusion and intermixture--intrusion and intermixture which
history tells us are subsequent to the time of Tamerlane. Phænomena
suggestive of intrusion and intermixture are rife and common throughout
Afghanistan. In some cases--as in that of Hazarehs--it is recent, or
subsequent to the Afghan occupation; in others, it is ancient and prior
to it.
_Bokhara._--I have not placed the division containing the Tajiks of
Balkh, Kúnduz, Durwaz, Badukshan, and Bokhara, on a level with that
containing the Afghans, Kurds and Biluch, because I am not sure of
its value. Probably, however, it is in reality as much a separate
substantive class as any of the preceding. Here the intrusion has
been so great, the political relations have been so separate, and the
intermixed population is so heterogeneous as for it to have been, for a
long time, doubtful whether the people of Bokhara were Persian or Turk.
Klaproth, however, has shown that they belong to the former division,
though subject to the Uzbek Turks. If so, the present Tajiks represent
the ancient Bactrians and Sogdians--the Persians of the valley and
water system of the Oxus. But what if these were intruders? I have
little doubt about the word _Oxus_ (_Ok-sus_) representing the same
root as the _Yak_ in _Yaxsartes_ (_Yak-sartes_), and the _Yaik_, the
name of the river flowing into the northern part of the Caspian. Now
this is the _Turanian_ name for _river_, a name found equally in the
Turk, Uguari, and Hyperborean languages. At any rate, Bokhara is on an
ethnological frontier.
But Bactria and Sogdiana were Persian at the time of Alexander’s
successors; they were Persian at the very beginning of the historical
period. Be it so. The historical period is but a short one, and there
is no reason why a population should not encroach at one time and be
itself encroached upon at another.
All the parts enumerated, and all the divisions, are so undoubtedly
Persian, that few competent authorities deny the fact. The most that
has ever been done is to separate the Afghans. Sir W. Jones did this.
He laid great stress upon certain Jewish characteristics, had his
head full of the Ten Tribes, and was deceived in a vocabulary of
their languages. Mr. Norris also is inclined to separate them, but on
different grounds. He can neither consider the Afghan language to be
Indo-European, nor the Persian to be otherwise. His inference is true,
if his facts are. But what if the Persian be other than Indo-European?
In that case they are both free to fall into the same category.
But the complexities of the Persian population are not complete.
There is the division between the _Tajiks_ and the _Iliyats_; the
former being the settled occupants of towns and villages speaking
Persian, the others pastoral or wandering tribes speaking the Arab,
Kurd, and Turk languages. That _Tajik_ is the same word as the root
_Taoc_, in _Taoc-ene_, a part of the ancient country of Persis (now
_Fars_), and, consequently, in a pre-eminent Persian locality, is a
safe conjecture. The inference, however, that such was the original
locality of the Persian family is traversed by numerous--but by no
means insuperable--difficulties. In respect to their chronological
relations, the general statement may be made, that wherever we have
Tajiks and Iliyats together, the former are the older, the latter the
newer population. Hence it is not in any Iliyat tribe that we are to
look for any nearer approach to the aborigines than what we find in the
normal population. They are the analogues of the Jews and gipsies of
Great Britain rather than of the Welsh--recent grafts rather than parts
of the old stock. In Afghanistan this was not so clearly the case.
Indeed, the inference was the other way.
The antiquities and history of Persia are too well-known to need
more than a passing allusion. The creed was that of Zoroaster;
still existent, in a modified (perhaps a corrupted, perhaps an
improved) form, in the religion of the modern Parsis. The language
of the Zoroastrian Scriptures was called Zend. Now the Zend is
Indo-European--Indo-European and highly inflected. The _inflexions_,
however, in the modern Persian are next to none; and of those few it
is by no means certain that they are Zend in origin. Nevertheless, the
great majority of modern Persian words _are_ Zend. What does this mean?
It means that the philologist is in a difficulty; that the grammatical
structure points one way and the vocabulary another. This difficulty
will meet us again.
_India._--In the time of Herodotus, and even earlier, India was part of
the Persian empire. Yet India was not Persia. It was no more Persia in
the days of Darius than it is English now. The original Indian stock
was and is peculiar--peculiar in its essential fundamentals, but not
pure and unmodified. The vast extent to which this modification implies
encroachment and intermixture is the great key to nine-tenths of the
complexities of the difficult ethnology of Hindostan. Whether we look
to the juxtaposition of the different forms of Indian speech, the
multiform degrees of fusion between them, the sections and sub-sections
of their creeds--legion by name,--the fragments of ancient paganism,
the differences of skin and feature, or the institution of caste,
intrusion followed by intermixture, and intermixture in every degree
and under every mode of manifestation, is the suggestion.
And now we have our duality--viz. the primitive element and the foreign
one--the stock and the graft. Nothing is more certain than that the
graft came from the north-west. Does this necessarily mean from Persia?
Such is the current opinion; or, if not from Persia, from some of
those portions of India itself nearest the Persian frontier. There are
reasons, however, for refining on this view. Certain influences foreign
to India may have come _through_ Persia, without being Persian. The
proof that a particular characteristic was introduced into India _viâ_
Persia is one thing: the proof that it originated in Persia is another.
They have often, however, been confounded.
In the south of India the foreign element is manifested less than in
the north; so that it is the south of India which exhibits the original
stock in its fullest form. Its chief characteristics are referable
to three heads, physical form, creed, and language. In respect to
the first, the southern Indian is darker than the northern--_cæteris
paribus_, _i. e._ under similar external conditions; but not to the
extent that a mountaineer of the Dekhan is blacker than a Bengali from
the delta of the Ganges. Descent, too, or caste influences colour, and
the purer the blood the lighter the skin. Then the lips are thicker,
the nose less frequently aquiline, the cheek-bones more prominent,
and the eyebrows less regular in the southrons. The most perfect form
of the Indian face gives us regular and delicate features, arched
eyebrows, an aquiline nose, an oval contour, and a clear brunette
complexion. All this is Persian.
Depart from it and comparisons suggest themselves. If the lips thicken
and the skin blackens, we think of the Negro; if the cheek-bones stand
out and if the eye--as it sometimes does--become oblique, the Mongol
comes into our thoughts.
The original Indian creeds are best characterized by negatives. They
are neither Brahminic nor Buddhist.
The language, for the present, is best brought under the same
description. No man living considers it to be _Indo-European_.
In proportion as any particular Indian population is characterized by
these three marks, its origin, purity, and indigenous nature become
clearer--and _vice versâ_. Hence, they may be taken in the order of
their outward and visible signs of aboriginality.
First come--as already stated--the Southrons of the Continent[35]; and
first amongst these the mountaineers. In the Eastern Ghauts we have
the Chenchwars, between the Kistna and the Pennar; in the Western the
Cohatars, Tudas, Curumbars, Erulars, and numerous other hill-tribes;
all agreeing in being either imperfect Brahminists or Pagans, and in
speaking and languages akin to the Tamul of the coast of Coromandel;
a language which gives its name to the class, and introduces the
important philological term _Tamulian_. The physical appearance of
these is by no means so characteristic as their speech and creed. The
mountain _habitats_ favour a lightness of complexion. On the other, it
favours the Mongol prominence of the cheek-bones. Many, however, of the
Tudas have all the regularity of the Persian countenance--yet they are
the pure amongst the pure of the native Tamulian Indians.
In the _plains_ the language is Tamulian, but the creed Brahminic;
a state of evidence which reaches as far north as the parts about
Chicacole east, and Goa west.
In the _South_, then, are the chief samples of the true Tamulian
aborigines of Indian; the characteristics of whom have been preserved
by the simple effect of distance from the point of disturbance.
Distance, however, alone has been but a weak preservative. The
combination of a mountain-stronghold has added to its efficiency.
In _Central_ India one of these safeguards is impaired. We are nearer
to Persia; and it is only in the mountains that the foreign elements
are sufficiently inconsiderable to make the Tamulian character of the
population undoubted and undeniable. In the Mahratta country and in
Gondwana, the Ghonds, in Orissa the Kols, Khonds, and Súrs, and in
Bengal the Rajmahali mountaineers are Tamulian in tongue and Pagan in
creed--or, if not Pagan, but imperfectly Brahminic. But, then, they are
all mountaineers. In the more level country around them the language is
Mahratta, Udiya, or Bengali.
Now the Mahratta, Udiya[36] and Bengali are _not_ unequivocally and
undeniably Tamulian. They are so far from it, that they explain what
was meant by the negative statement as to the Tamulian tongues not
being considered _Indo-European_. This is just what the tongues in
question _have_ been considered. Whether rightly or wrongly is not very
important at present. If rightly, we have a difference of language as
_primâ facie_--but not as _conclusive_--evidence of a difference of
stock. If wrongly, we have, in the very existence of an opinion which
common courtesy should induce us to consider reasonable, a practical
exponent of some considerable difference of some sort or other--of a
change from the proper Tamulian characteristics to something else so
great in its _degree_ as to look like a difference in _kind_. With the
Bengali--and to a certain extent with the other two populations--the
foreign element approaches its _maximum_, or (changing the expression)
the evidence of Tamulianism is at its _minimum_. Yet it is not
annihilated. The physical appearance of the Mahratta, at least, is
that of the true South Indian. Even if the language be other than
Tamulian, the Hindús of northern India may still be of the same stock
with those of Mysore and Malabar, in the same way that a Cornishman is
a Welshman--_i. e._ a Briton who has changed his mother-tongue for the
English.
Intermediate to the Khonds and the Bengali, in respect to the evidence
of their Tamulian affinities, are the mountaineers of north-western
India. Here, the preservative effects of distance are next to nothing.
Those, however, of the mountain-fastnesses supply the following
populations--Berdars, Ramusi, Wurali, Paurias, Kulis, Bhils, Mewars,
Moghis, Minas, &c. &c., speaking languages of the same class with the
Mahratta, Udiya, and Bengali, but all imperfectly Brahminic in creed.
The other important languages of India in the same class with those
last-mentioned, are the Guzerathi of Guzerat, the Hindú of Oude, the
Punjabi of the Punjab, and several others not enumerated--partly
because it is not quite certain how we are to place them[37], partly
because they may be sub-dialects rather than separate substantive
forms of speech. They take us up to the Afghan, Biluch, and Tibetan
frontier.
These have been dealt with. But there is one population, belonging to
these selfsame areas, with which we have further dealings, Bilúchistan
has been described; but not in detail. The Bilúch that give their name
to the country have been noticed as Persian. But the Bilúch are as
little the only and exclusive inhabitants of it, as the English are of
Great Britain. We have our Welsh, and the Bilúch have their Brahúi.
Again--the range of mountains that forms the western watershed of the
Indus is not wholly Afghan. It is Bilúch as well. But it is not wholly
Bilúch. The Bilúch reach to only a certain point southwards. The range
between the promontory of Cape Montze and the upper boundary of Kutch
Gundava is _Brahúi_. There is no such word as _Brahúistan_; but it
would be well if there were.
_Now the language of the Brahúi belongs to the Tamulian family._
The affinity by no means lies on the surface--nor is it likely that
it should. The nearest unequivocally Tamulian dialect on the same
side of India is as far south as Goa--such as exist further to the
north being either central or eastern. Supposing, then, the original
continuity, how great must have been the displacement; and if the
displacement have been great, how easily may the transitional forms
have disappeared, or, rather, how truly must they once have been met
with!
However, the Brahúi affinities by no means lie on the surface. The
language is known from one of the many valuable vocabularies of Leach.
Upon this, no less a scholar than Lassen commented. Without fixing it,
he remarked that the numerals were like those of Southern India. They
are so, indeed; and so is a great deal more; indeed the collation of
the whole of the Brahúi vocabularies with the Tamul and Khond tongues
_en masse_ makes the Brahúi Tamulian.
Is it original or intrusive? All opinion--_valeat quantum_--goes
against it being the former. The mountain-fastness in which it occurs
goes the other way.
* * * * *
Our sequence is logical rather than geographical, _i. e._ it takes
localities and languages in the order in which they are subservient
to ethnological argument rather than according to their contiguity.
This justifies us in making a bold stride, in passing over all Persia,
and in taking next in order--Caucasus, with all its conventional
reminiscences and suggestions.
The languages of Caucasus fall into a group, which, for reasons
already given, would be inconveniently called _Caucasian_, but which
may conveniently be termed _Dioscurian_[38]. This falls into the
following five divisions:--1. The Georgians; 2. the Irôn; 3. the
Mizjeji; 4. the Lesgians; and 5. the Circassians.
1. _The Georgians._--It is the opinion of Rosen that the central
province of Kartulinia, of which Tiflis is the capital, is the original
seat of the Georgian family; the chief reasons lying in the fact of
that part of the area being the most important. Thus, the language is
called _Kartulinian_; whilst the provinces round about Kartulinia are
considered as additions or accessions to the Georgian domain, rather
than as integral and original portions of it--a fact which makes the
province in question a sort of _nucleus_. Lastly, the Persian and
Russian names, _Gurg-istan_ and _Gr-usia_, by which the country is most
widely known, point to the valley of the Kur.
To all this I demur. The utmost that is proved thereby is the greater
political prominence of the occupants of the more favoured parts of the
country; as the middle course of the Kur really is.
Of the two sides of the watershed that separates the rivers of the
Black Sea[39] from those of the Caspian[40], it is the _western_ which
has the best claim to be considered the original _habitat_ of the
Georgians. Here it is that the country is most mountainous, and the
mountains most abrupt. Hence it is, too, that a population would have
both the wish and power to migrate towards the plains rather than _vice
versâ_.
More weighty still is the evidence derived from the dialects. The
Kartulinian is spoken over more than half the whole of Georgia:
whereas, for the parts _not_ Kartulinian, we hear of the following
dialects:--
1. The _Suanic_, on the head-waters of the small rivers between
Mingrelia, and the southern parts of the Circassian area--the Ingur,
the Okoumiskqual, &c. This is the most northern section of the Georgian
family.
2, 3. The _Mingrelian_ and the _Imiritian_.
4, 5. The _Guriel_ and _Akalzike_ in Turkish Georgia.
6. The _Lazic_.--This is the tongue of the most western dialects. The
hills which form the northern boundary of the valley of the Tsorokh are
the Lazic locality; and here the diversity has attained its _maximum_.
Small as is the Lazic population, every valley has its separate
variety of speech.
I believe, then, that in Central Caucasus the Kartulinian Georgians
have been intrusive; and this is rendered probable by the character
of the populations to the north and east of them. Between Georgia and
Daghestan we have, in the pre-eminently inaccessible parts of the
eastern half of Caucasus[41], two fresh families, different from each
other, different from the Lesgians, and different from the Circassians.
With such reasons for believing the original direction of the Georgian
area to have been westernly, we may continue the investigation. That
they were the occupants of a considerable portion of the eastern half
of the ancient Pontus, is probable from the historical importance of
the Lazi in the time of Justinian, when a Lazic war disturbed the
degenerate Romans of Constantinople. It is safe to carry them as far
west as Trebizond. It is safe, too, to carry them farther. One of the
commonest of the Georgian terminations is the syllable _-pe_ or _-bi_,
the sign of the plural number; a circumstance which gives the town of
_Sino-pe_ a Georgian look--_Sinope_ near the promontory of _Calli-ppi_.
2. _The Irôn._--To the north-west of Tiflis we have the towns of Duchet
and Gori, one on the Kur itself, and one on a left-hand feeder of it.
The mountains above are in the occupation of the _Irôn_ or _Osetes_. In
Russian Georgia they amount to about 28,000. The name _Irôn_ is the one
they give themselves; _Oseti_ is what they are called by the Georgians.
Their language contains so great a per-centage of Persian words or
_vice versâ_, that it is safe to put them both in the same class. This
has, accordingly, been done--and a great deal more which is neither
safe nor sound has been done besides.
3. _The Mizjeji._--Due east of the mountaineer Irôn come the equally
mountaineer Mizjeji, a family numerically small, but falling into
divisions and subdivisions. Hence, it has a pre-eminent claim to be
considered aboriginal to the fastnesses in which it is found. The parts
north of Telav, to the north-east of Tiflis, form the Mizjeji area. It
is a small one--the Circassians bound it on the north, and on the east--
4. _The Lesgians_ of Eastern Caucasus or Daghestan, next to the
Circassians the most independent family of Caucasus. None falls into
more divisions and subdivisions: _e.g._
_a._ The _Marulan_ or _Mountaineers_ (from _Marul_ = _mountain_)
speak a language called the Avar, of which the Anzukh, Tshari, Andi,
Kabutsh, Dido and Unsoh are dialects.
_b._ _The Kasi-kumuk._
_c._ _The Akush._
_d._ _The Kura of South Daghestan._
The displacements of the Irôn and Mizjeji--and from the limited area
of their occupancies, displacement is a legitimate inference--must
have been chiefly effected by the Georgians alone; that of the
Lesgians seems referable to a triple influence. That the Talish to
the north of Ghilan are Lesgians who have changed their native tongue
for the Persian, is a probable suggestion of Frazer’s. If correct, it
makes the province of Shirvan a likely part of the original Lesgian
area--encroachment having been effected by the Armenians, Persians, and
Georgians.
5. _The Circassians_ occupy the northern Caucasus from Daghestan to the
Kuban; coming in contact with the Slavonians and Tartars, for the parts
between the Sea of Azov and the Caspian. As both these are pre-eminent
for encroachment, the earlier contact was, probably, that of the most
northern members of the Circassian family, and the southern Ugrians.
The divisions and subdivisions of the Circassian family are both
numerous and strongly marked.
_The Armenians._--Except amongst the mountaineer Irôn and Mizjeji,
there are Armenians over the whole of Russian Caucasus--mixed, for the
most part, with Georgians. They are sojourners rather than natives. In
Shirvan, Karabagh, and Karadagh they are similarly mixed with Persians
and Turks. In this case, however, the Armenian population is probably
the older; so that we are approaching the original nucleus of the
family. In Erivan there are more Armenians than aught else; and in
Kars and Erzerúm they attain their _maximum_. In Diarbekr the frontier
changes, and the tribes which now indent the Armenian area are the
Semitic Arabs and Chaldani of Mesopotamia, and the Persian Kurds of
Kurdistan.
A great deal has been said about the extent to which the Armenian
language differs from the Georgian, considering the geographical
contact between the two. True it is that the tongues are in contact
_now_, and so they probably were 2000 years ago. Yet it by no means
follows that they were always so. The Georgian has encroached, the Irôn
retreated; a fact which makes it likely that, at a time when there was
no Georgian east of Imiritia, the Osetic of Tshildir and the Armenian
of Kars met on the Upper Kur. The inference drawn from the relations
between the Môn, Khô, and Tʻhay tongues is repeated here, inasmuch as
the Irôn and Armenian are more alike than the Armenian and Georgian.
As a rough measure of the likeness, I may state the existence of the
belief that both are Indo-European.
_Asia Minor._--From Armenia the transition is to Asia Minor. One of
the circumstances which give a pre-eminent interest and importance to
the ethnology of Asia Minor is the certainty of the original stock
being, at the present moment, either wholly extinct, or so modified
and changed as to have become a _problem_ rather than a _fact_. There
is neither doubt nor shadow of doubt as to this--since it is within
the historical period that this transformation has taken place. It is
within the historical period that the Osmanli Turks, spreading, more
immediately from the present country of Turkestan, but remotely from
the chain of the Altaic Mountains, founded the kingdom of Roum under
the Seljukian kings, and as a preliminary to the invasion and partial
occupation of Europe, made themselves masters of the whole country
limited by Georgia, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Syria on the east and
south, and by the Euxine, the Bosporus, the Propontis, the Hellespont,
and the Ægean Sea westwards. Since then, whatever may be the _blood_,
the language has been Turk. This is, of course, _primâ facie_ evidence
of the stock being Turk also. Nor are there any _very_ cogent reasons
on the other side. The physiognomy is generally described as Turk, and
the habits and customs as well.
Such is what we get from the general traveller--and a more minute
ethnology than this has not yet been applied. What will be the
result, when a severer test is applied, is another question. It is
most probable that points of physiognomy, fragmentary traditions
and superstitions, old customs, and peculiar idiotisms in the way
of dialect, will point to a remnant of the older stock immediately
preceding it. In such a case, the ethnological question becomes
complicated--since the present Turks will be then supposed to have
_mixed_ with the older natives, rather than to have replaced them _in
toto_: so that the phænomena will rather be those exhibited in England
(where the proportion of the _older_ Celtic and the _newer_ Anglo-Saxon
is an open question) than those of the United States of America,
where the blood is purely European, and where the intermixture of the
aboriginal Indian--if any--goes for nothing.
Of the occupants of Asia Minor previous to the Osmanli Turks we can
ascertain the elements, but not the proportions which they bore to each
other.
1. There was an element supplied by the Byzantine Greek
population--itself pre-eminently mixed and heterogeneous.
2. There was an element supplied by the purer Greek population of
Greece Proper and the Islands.
3. There were, perhaps, traces of the old Greek populations of Æolia,
Doris, and Ionia.
4. There was an extension of the Armenian population from the east.
5. Of the Georgian from the north-east.
6. Of the Semitic from the south-east.
7. There was also Arab and Syriac intermixture consequent on the
propagation of Mahometanism.
8. There were also remnants of a Proper Roman population introduced
during the time of the Republic and Western Empire, _e.g._ of the sort
that the Consulate of Cicero would introduce into Cilicia.
9. There were also remnants of the _Persian_ supremacy, _e.g._ of a
sort which would be introduced when it was a Satrapy of Tissaphernes or
Pharnabazus.
10. Lastly, there would be traces of the _Macedonian_ Greeks; whose
impress would be stamped upon it during the period which elapsed
between the fall of Darius and that of Antiochus.
All this suggests numerous questions--but they are questions of
minute rather than general ethnology. The latter takes us to the
consideration of the populations of the frontier. Here we find--
1. Georgians.
2. Armenians.
3. Semites of Mesopotamia and Syria.
4. Greeks of the Ægean Islands.
5. Bulgarians, and Turks of Thrace.
Of these, the last are recent intruders; so that the real ethnology to
be considered is that of _ancient_ Thrace. Unfortunately this is as
obscure as that of Asia Minor itself.
The Greeks of the Ægean are _probably_ intrusive; the other three are
ancient occupants of their present areas.
Now, in arguing upon the conditions afforded by this frontier, it is
legitimate to suppose that each of the populations belonging to it
had some extension beyond their present limits, in which case the
_à-priori_ probabilities would be that--
1. On the north-west there was an extension of the Thracian population.
2. On the north-east, of the Georgian.
3. On the east, of the Armenian.
4. On the south, of the Syrian and Mesopotamian.
Now, the population of Asia Minor _may_ have been a mere extension of
the populations of the frontiers--one or all.
But it also may have been separate and distinct from any of them.
In this case, we are again supplied with an alternative.
1. The population may have been _one_--just as that of Germany is _one_.
2. The population may have fallen in several--nay, numerous
divisions--so that the so-called races may have been _one_, _two_,
_three_, _four_, or even more.
Dealing with these questions, we first ask what are the reasons for
supposing the population--whether single or subdivided--of Asia to
have been _peculiar_, _i.e._ different from that of the frontier
areas--Georgia, Thrace, Armenia, Mesopotamia and Syria?
This is answered at once by the evidence of the Lycian Inscriptions,
which prove the _Lycian_, at least, to have been distinct from all or
any of the tongues enumerated.
The following extracts, however, from Herodotus carry us farther:--
“The Lycians were originally out of Crete; since, in the old times, it
was the Barbarians who held the whole of Crete. When, however, there
was a difference in Crete, in respect to the kingdom, between the sons
of Europa, Minos and Sarpedon, and when Minos got the best in the
disturbance, he (Minos) expelled both Sarpedon himself and his faction;
and these, on their expulsion, went to that part of Asia which is the
_Milyadic_ land. For that country which the Lycians now inhabit was in
the old times _Milyas_; and the _Milyæ_ were then called _Solymi_. For
a time Sarpedon ruled over them. They called themselves by the name
which they brought with them; and even now, the Lycians are called by
the nations that dwell around them, _Termilæ_. But when Lycus, the
son of Pandion, driven away from Athens, and like Sarpedon, by his
brother (Ægeus), came to the Termilæ under Sarpedon, they, thence, in
the course of time, were called, after the name of Lycus, Lycians. The
usages are partly Cretan, partly Carian. One point, however, they have
peculiar to themselves, and one in which they agree with no other men.
They name themselves after their mothers, and not from their fathers:
so that if any one be asked by another _who he is_, he will designate
himself as the son of his mother, and number up his mother’s mothers.
Again, if a free woman marry a slave, the children are deemed free;
whereas, if a man be even in the first rank of citizens, and take
either a strange wife or a concubine, the children are dishonoured.”
Whilst Asia Minor was being conquered for Persia, under the reign of
Cyrus, by Harpagus, the _Carians_ made no great display of valour;
with the exception of the citizens of Pedasus. These gave Harpagus
considerable trouble; but, in time, were vanquished. Not so the
Lycians.--“The Lycians, as Harpagus marched his army towards the
Xanthian plain, retreated before him by degrees, and fighting few
against many, showed noble deeds: but being worsted and driven back
upon the town, they collected within the citadel their wives, and
children, and goods, and servants. They then set light to the citadel
to burn it down. This being done, they took a solemn oath, and making
a sally died to a man, sword in hand. But of those Lycians who now
called themselves Xanthians, the majority are, except eighty hearths,
strangers (ἐπήλυδες). These eighty hearths (families) were then away
from the country. And so they escaped. Thus it was that Harpagus took
Xanthus. In like manner he took Caunus. _For the Caunians resemble the
Lycians in most things._”
And now we have a _second_ fact, the following, viz.--_that what the
Lycians were the Caunians were also_.
1. _The Caunians._--According to the special evidence of Herodotus, the
Caunians had two peculiar customs--one, to make no distinction between
age and sex at feasts, but to drink and junket promiscuously--the
other, to show their contempt of all strange foreign gods by marching
in armour to the Calyndian mountains, and beating the air with spears,
in order to expel them from the boundaries of the Caunian land. Still
the _Caunians were Lycian_.
Were any other nations thus Lycian? Caunian? Lyco-Caunian? or
Cauno-Lycian? since the particular designation is unimportant.
_The Carians._--The language of the Carians and the Caunians was the
same; since Herodotus writes--_The Caunian nation has either adapted
itself to the Carian tongue, or the Carian to Caunian._
2. On the other hand, the worship of the national Eponymus was
different. _The Lydians and Mysians share in the worship of the Carian
Jove. These do so. As many, however, of different nations (ἔθνος) as
have become identical in language with the Carians do not do so._
And here comes a difficulty--one part of the facts connects, the other
disconnects the Carians from the Lycians. The language goes one way,
the customs another.
But this is not the only complication introduced by the _Carian_
family. The whole question of their origin is difficult, and that
of their affinities is equally so. It was from the islands to the
continent, rather than from the continent to the islands, that the
Carians spread themselves; and they did this as subjects of Minos,
and under the name of Leleges. As long as the system of Minos lasted,
these Carian Leleges paid no tribute; but furnished, when occasion
required, ships and sailors instead. And this they did effectually,
inasmuch as the Carian was one of the most powerful nations of its
day, and, besides that, ingenious in warlike contrivances. Of such
contrivances three were adopted by the Greeks, and recognised as the
original invention of the Carians. The first of these was the crest
for the helmet; the second, the _device_ for the shield; the third,
the _handle_ for the shield. Before the Carians introduced this
last improvement, the fighting-man hung his buckler by a leathern
thong, either on his neck or his left shoulder. Such was the first
stage in the history of Carian Leleges, who were insular rather than
continental, and Lelegian rather than Carian. It lasted for many years
after the death of Minos; but ended in their being wholly ejected from
the islands, and exclusively limited to the continent, by the Dorians
and Ionians of Greece.
This would connect the--
1. Carians with the aboriginal islanders of the Ægean--these being
_Leleges_.
2. Also with the Caunians.
3. Also with the Lycians. Unfortunately, the evidence is not
unqualified. It is complicated by--
_The native tradition._--The Carian race is not insular, but aboriginal
to the continent; bearing from the earliest times the name it bears
at the present time. As a proof of this, the worship of the Carian
Jupiter is common to two other, unequivocally continental nations--the
_Lydians_ and the _Mysians_. All three have a share in a temple
at Mylasa, and each of the three is descended from one of three
brothers--Car, Lydus, or Mysus--the respective eponymi of Caria, Lydia,
and Mysia.
All this is not written for the sake of any inference; but to
illustrate the difficulties of the subject. A new series of facts must
now be added--or rather two new ones.
1. There are special statements in the classics that the Phrygian,
Armenian, and Thracian languages were the same.
2. One of the three languages of the arrow-headed inscriptions has yet
to be identified with any existing tongue.
The reader is in possession of a fair amount of complications. They can
easily be increased.
Instead of enlarging on them, I suggest the following doctrine:--
1. That, notwithstanding certain conflicting statements, the
populations of Mysia, Lydia, Caria, and part of Lycia, were closely
allied.
2. That a language akin to the Armenian was spoken as far westwards as
eastern Phrygia.
3. That some third population, either subject to Persia or in alliance
with it, spoke the language of the Lycian inscriptions--properly
distinguished by Mr. Forbes and others from the ancient Lycian of the
Milyans--which last _may_ have been Semitic.
4. That the third language of arrow-headed inscriptions, supposing
its locality to have been Media, may have indented the north-eastern
frontier.
5. That, besides the Greek, two intrusive languages may have been
spoken in the north-west and south-western parts respectively, viz.--
_a._ The Thracian of the opposite coast of the Bosporus.
_b._ The Lelegian of the islands.
Of these, the former was, perhaps, Sarmatian, whilst the latter may
have borne the same relation to the Carian as the Malay of Sumatra does
to that of the Orang Binúa of the Malayan Peninsula.
It may be added, that the similarity of the name _Thekhes_, the
_mountain_ from which the 10,000 Greeks saw the sea, to the Turk
_Tagh_, suggests the likelihood of Turk encroachments having existed
as early as the time of Artaxerxes.
_Lastly_--The termination _-der_, in _Scaman-der_ (a bilingual
appellation) and _Mæan-der_, indicates Persian intrusion of an equally
early date.
Of the glosses collected by Jablonsky, none are illustrated by any
modern language, except the following:--
_English_ axe.
Lydian _labr-ys._
Armenian _dabar._
Persian _tawar._
Kurd _teper._
_English_ fire.
Phrygian _pyr._
Armenian _pur._
Afghan _wur, or._
Kurd _ûr._
Greek, &c. πῦρ, _fire, &c._
_English_ dog.
Phrygian _kyn._
Armenian _shun._
Sanskrit _shune._
Lettish _suns._
_English_ bread.
Phrygian _bekos._
Armenian _khaz._
Akush _kaz._
_English_ water.
Phrygian _hydôr._
Armenian _tshur._
Greek, &c. ὕδωρ, _water, &c._
There is no denying that these affinities are Indo-European rather
than aught else, and that they are Armenian as well--an objection to
several of the views laid down in the preceding pages which I have no
wish to conceal. However, all questions of this kind are a balance of
conflicting difficulties. As a set-off to this, take the following
table, where the Armenian affinities are Turk, Dioscurian, and Siberian
also.
_English_ man.
Scythian _oior._
Uigur _er._
Kasan _ir._
Baskir _ir._
Nogay _ir._
Tobolsk _ir._
Yeneseian _eri._
Teleut _eri._
Kasach _erin._
Casikumuk _ioori._
Armenian _air._
_The watershed of the Oxus and Indus._--We are in the north-eastern
corner of Persia. The Púshta-Khur mountain, like many other hills of
less magnitude, contains the sources of two rivers, different in their
directions--of the Oxus that falls into the Sea of Aral; and of the
right branch of the Kúner, a feeder of the Cabúl river--itself a member
of the great water-system of the Indus. Its south-western prolongation
gives us the corresponding watershed. This is a convenient point for
the study of a difficult but interesting class of mountaineers, who
may conveniently be called _Paropamisans_ from the ancient name of
the Hindu-kúsh. Their northern limits are the heights in question.
Southwards they reach the Afghan frontier in the Kohistan of Cabúl.
Eastward they come in contact with India. There is no better way of
taking them in detail than that of following the water-courses, and
remembering the watersheds of the rivers.
I. _The Oxus._--At the very head-waters of the Oxus, and in contact
with the Kirghiz Turks of Pamer, comes the small population of Wokhan,
speaking a language neither Turk nor Persian--at least not exactly
Persian; and, next to Wokhan, Shughnan, where the dialect (possibly the
language) seems to change. Roshan, next (along the Oxus) to Shughnan,
seems to be in the same category. Durwaz, however, is simply Tajik. All
are independent, and all Mahometan.
II. _The Indus._--1. _The Indus._--The Gilghit[42] river feeds the
Indus--two other feeders that join it from the east being called the
Hunz and the Burshala, Nil, or Nagar. The population of each of these
rivers is agricultural, and is, accordingly, called _Dunghar_, a
Hindu, but no native term. Their Rajah is independent; their religion
a very indifferent Mahometanism. On the Gilghit and the parts below
its junction with the Hunz and Nagar rivers, the dialect (perhaps the
language) seems to change, and the people are known as _Dardoh_ (or
Dards) and _Chilass Dardoh_--the Daradæ of the Greek and the Daradas
of the Sanskrit writers. These, too, are imperfect Mahometans. The
Dards and Dunghers carry us as far as Little Tibet (Bultistan) and the
Cashmírian frontiers.
2. _The Jhelum._--This is the river of the famous valley of
Cashmír--the population whereof (with some hesitation) I consider
Paropamisan.
3. _The Cabul River._--1. _The Kúner._--The eastern watershed of the
Upper Kúner is common to the Gilghit river. The population is closely
akin to the Dardoh and Dungher; its area being Upper and Lower Chitral,
its language the Chitrali, its religion Shia Mahometanism.
South of the Chitral, on the _middle_ Kúner, the creed changes, and we
have the best known of the Paropamisans, the _Kaffres_ of Kafferistan,
reaching as far westwards and northwards as Kunduz and Badukshan--the
Kaffres, or Infidels, so called by their Mahometan neighbours, because
they still retain their primitive paganism.
Now when we approach the Cabúl river itself, the direction of which,
from west to east, is nearly at right angles with the Kúner, the
characteristics of the Dardoh, Chitrali, and Kaffre populations
decrease--in other words, the area is irregular, and the populations
themselves either partially isolated or intermixed. Thus, along the
foot of the mountains north of the Cabúl river and west of the Kúner
comes the Lughmani country; the language being by no means identical
with the Kafir, and the Kafir paganism being reduced to an imperfect
Mahometan--_némchú Mussulman_, or _half Mussulman_, being the term
applied to the speakers of the Lughmani tongue of the valley of the
Nijrow and the parts about it.
The Der, Tirhye, and Pashai vocabularies of Leach all represent
Paropamisan forms of speech spoken by small and, more or less,
fragmentary populations.
The valley of the Lundye has, almost certainly, been within a recent
period, Paropamisan. Thus is it that Elphinstone writes of its chief
occupants:--“The Swatís, who are also called Deggauns, appear to be
of Indian origin. They formerly possessed a kingdom extending from
the western branch of the Hydaspes to near Jellabahad. They were
gradually confined to narrower limits by the Afghan tribes; and Swaut
and Búnér, their last seats, were reduced by the Eusofzyis in the
end of the fifteenth century. They are still very numerous in those
countries.” By _Indian_ I believe a population akin to that of Cashmeer
is _denoted_--I do not say _intended_. Another extract carries us
further still:--“The Shulmauni formerly inhabited Shulmaun, on the
banks of the Korrum. They afterwards moved to Tíra, and in the end of
the fifteenth century they were in Hustnugger, from which they were
expelled by the Eusofzyes. The old Afghan writers reckon them Deggauns,
but they appear to have used this word loosely. There are still a few
Shulmauni in the Eusofzye country who have some remains of a peculiar
language.”
Hence, the Paropamisans may safely be considered as a population of a
receding frontier, the encroachment upon their area having been Afghan.
With these the Asiatic populations end.
* * * * *
If we now look back upon the ground that has been gone over, we shall
find that the evidence of the human family having originated in one
particular spot, and having diffused itself from thence to the very
extremities of the earth, is by no means absolute and conclusive. Still
less is it certain that that particular spot has been ascertained.
The present writer _believes_ that it was somewhere in intratropical
Asia, and that it was _the single locality of a single pair_--without,
however, professing to have proved it. Even this centre is only
_hypothetical_--near, indeed, to the point which he looks upon as the
starting-place of the human migration, but by no means identical with
it. The Basks and Albanians he does not pretend to have affiliated; but
he does not, for this reason, absolutely isolate them. They have too
many _miscellaneous_ affinities to allow them to stand wholly alone.
In the way of physical conformation, the Hottentot presents the
_maximum_ of peculiarities. The speech, however, of the latter is
simply African; whilst, in form and colour, the Basks and Albanians
are European. A fly is a fly even when we wonder how it came into the
amber; and men belong to humanity even when their origin is a mystery.
This gives us a composition of difficulties, and it is by taking
this and similar phænomena into account, that the higher problems in
ethnology must be worked. Nothing short of a clear and comprehensive
view of the extent to which points of difference in one department
are compensated by points of likeness in another, will give us even a
philosophical hypothesis; all _partial_ argument from partial points
of disagreement being as unscientific as a similar overvaluation of
resemblances.
As for the detail of the chief difficulties, the writer believes
that he, unwillingly and with great deference, differs from the
best authorities, in making so little of the transition from
America to Asia, and so much of that between Europe and Asia. The
conviction that the Semitic tongues are simply African, and that all
the theories suggested by the term _Indo-European_ must be either
abandoned or modified, is the chief element of his reasoning upon this
point--reasoning far too elaborate for a small work like the present.
He also believes that the languages of Kafferistan, the Dardoh country,
and north-eastern Afghanistan, are transitional to the monosyllabic
tongues and those of Persia--in other words, that the modern Persian
is much more monosyllabic than is generally supposed. Yet even this
leaves a break. How far the most _western_ tongue of this class can be
connected with those of Europe, and how far the most _south_-western
one has Semitic affinities are questions yet to examine--questions
beset with difficulties. However, as the skeleton of system he believes
the present work to be true as far as it goes, and at the same time
convenient for the investigator. That there is much in all existing
classifications which requires to be unlearnt is certain. Lest any
one think this a presumptuous saying, let him consider the new and
unsettled state of the science, and the small number of the labourers
as compared with the extent of the field.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES
[27] Since this chapter was written, the news of the premature death
of the most influential supporter of the double doctrine of (a.) _the
unity of the American families amongst each other_, and (b.) _the
difference of the American race from all others_--Dr. Morton, of
Philadelphia,--has reached me. It is unnecessary to say, that the
second of these positions is, in the mind of the present writer, as
exceptionable as the first is correct. Nor is it likely to be otherwise
as long as the _eastern_ side of the Rocky Mountains is so exclusively
studied as it is by both the American and the English school. I have
little fear of the Russians falling into this error. With this remark
the objections against the very valuable labours of Dr. Morton begin
and end. His _Crania Americana_ is by far the most valuable book of
its kind. His _Crania Ægyptiaca_ and other minor works, especially his
researches on _Hybridism_, are all definite additions to ethnological
science. The impulse which he, personally, gave to the very active
study of the Human Species, which so honourably characterises his
countrymen, is more than an Englishman can exactly value. Perhaps,
it is second only to that given by Gallatin: perhaps, it is scarcely
second.
[28] Mr. Norris, for instance, of the Asiatic Society, has given
reasons for connecting the Australian tongues with those of the Dekhan.
[29] Taken, with much besides, from Mr. Brown’s Tables, in the Journal
of the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
[31] Considering the Burampúter and Ganges as separate rivers.
[32] Conveniently thrown into a single class, and called _Hyperboreans_.
[33] The great family of which the _Mantshús_ are the best-known
members.
[34] Not necessarily with _many_ syllables, but with _more than
one_--_hyper-mono-syllabic_.
[35] Observe--_not_ of the island of Ceylon.
[36] Of Orissa.
[37] The Cashmírian of Cashmír is in this predicament. It is not safe
to say that it is Hindu rather than Persian, or Paropamisan--a term
which will soon find its explanation.
[38] From the town of _Dioscurias_, in which Pliny says business was
carried on through 130 interpreters--so numerous were the languages and
dialects.
[39] The Phasis, Tshorok, &c.
[40] The Kur and Aras.
[41] The _Irôn_ and _Mizjeji_.
[42] From Moorcroft’s Travels in the Himalayan Provinces, and Vigne’s
Cashmír.
PRINTED BY RICHARD TAYLOR,
RED LION COURT, FLEET STREET.
=London, January 1863.=
Catalogue of Books
PUBLISHED BY MR. VAN VOORST.
INDEX.
Accentuated List of Lepidoptera _p._ 6
Adams & Baikie’s Manual Nat. Hist. 11
Adams’s Genera of Mollusca 5
Aikin’s Arts and Manufactures 13
Anatomical Manipulation 12
Ansted’s Ancient World 9
---- Elementary Course of Geology 9
---- Geologist’s Text-Book 9
---- Gold-Seeker’s Manual 9
---- Scenery, Science, and Art 13
Babington’s Flora of Cambridgeshire 7
---- Manual of British Botany 7
Baptismal Fonts 13
Bate and Westwood’s British Crustacea 4
Beale on Sperm Whale 3
Bell’s British Quadrupeds 3
---- British Reptiles 4
---- British Stalk-eyed Crustacea 4
Bennett’s Naturalist in Australasia 10
Bloomfield’s Farmer’s Boy 14
Boccius on Production of Fish 4
Bonaparte’s List of Birds 3
Brightwell’s Life of Linnæus 13
Burton’s Falconry on the Indus 3
Church and Northcote’s Chem. Analysis 8
Clark’s Testaceous Mollusca 5
Clermont’s Quadrupeds & R. of Europe 3
Couch’s Illustrations of Instinct 11
Cumming’s Isle of Man 12
Cups and their Customs 13
Currency 15
Dallas’s Elements of Entomology 5
Dawson’s Geodephaga Britannica 6
Domestic Scenes in Greenland & Iceland 13
Douglas’s World of Insects 6
Dowden’s Walks after Wild Flowers 8
Drew’s Practical Meteorology 10
Drummond’s First Steps to Anatomy 11
Economy of Human Life 15
Elements of Practical Knowledge 13
England before the Norman Conquest 13
Entomologist’s Annual 5
Fly Fishing in Salt and Fresh Water 4
Forbes’s British Star-fishes 5
Forbes’s Malacologia Monensis 5
---- and Hanley’s British Mollusca 5
---- and Spratt’s Travels in Lycia 12
Garner’s Nat. Hist. of Staffordshire 12
Gosse’s Aquarium 12
---- Birds of Jamaica 3
---- British Sea-Anemones, &c. 12
---- Canadian Naturalist 12
---- Handbook to Marine Aquarium 12
---- Manual of Marine Zoology 12
---- Naturalist’s Rambles on Dev. Coast 12
---- Omphalos 9
---- Tenby 12
Gray’s Bard and Elegy 14
Greg and Lettsom’s British Mineralogy 9
Griffith & Henfrey’s Micrographic Dict. 10
Harvey’s British Marine Algæ 7
---- Thesaurus Capensis 7
---- Flora Capensis 7
---- Index Generum Algarum 7
---- Nereis Boreali-Americana 8
---- Sea-side Book 12
Henfrey’s Botanical Diagrams 7
---- Elementary Course of Botany 7
---- Rudiments of Botany 7
---- Translation of Mohl 7
---- Vegetation of Europe 7
---- & Griffith’s Micrographic Dict. 10
---- & Tulk’s Anatomical Manipulation 11
Henslow, Memoir of 10
Hewitson’s Birds’ Eggs 3
---- Exotic Butterflies 6
Hunter’s Essays, by Owen 10
Instrumenta Ecclesiastica 13
Jeffreys’s British Conchology 5
Jenyns’s Memoir of Henslow 10
---- Observations in Meteorology 10
---- Observations in Natural History 10
---- White’s Selborne 12
Jesse’s Angler’s Rambles 4
Johnston’s British Zoophytes 5
---- Introduction to Conchology 5
---- Terra Lindisfarnensis 8
Jones’s Aquarian Naturalist 10
Jones’s Animal Kingdom 11
---- Natural History of Animals 11
Knox’s (A. E.) Rambles in Sussex 3
Knox (Dr.), Great Artists & Great Anat. 11
Latham’s Descriptive Ethnology 11
---- Ethnology of British Colonies 11
---- Ethnology of British Islands 11
---- Ethnology of Europe 11
---- Man and his Migrations 11
---- Varieties of Man 11
Leach’s Synopsis of British Mollusca 5
Letters of Rusticus 12
Lettsom and Greg’s British Mineralogy 9
Lowe’s Faunæ et Floræ Maderæ 8
---- Manual Flora of Madeira 8
Malan’s Catalogue of Eggs 3
Martin’s Cat. of Privately Printed Books 15
Melville and Strickland on the Dodo 3
Meyrick on Dogs 13
Micrographic Dictionary 10
Mohl on the Vegetable Cell 7
Moule’s Heraldry of Fish 4
Newman’s British Ferns 8
---- History of Insects 5
---- Letters of Rusticus 12
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OOTHECA WOLLEYANA.
BY ALFRED NEWTON, M.A., F.L.S.
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BY SIR OSWALD MOSLEY, BART., D.C.L., F.L.S., F.G.S.
FLORA OF MARLBOROUGH.
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NOTES ON THE ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY OF ELY CATHEDRAL.
BY THE REV. D. J. STEWART, M.A.
JEFFREYS’S BRITISH CONCHOLOGY.
VOLS. II., III., IV.--MARINE UNIVALVES, BIVALVES, AND NUDIBRANCHS.
JOHN VAN VOORST, 1 PATERNOSTER ROW.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
In Chapter II, Mr. D. Wilson’s table showing relative proportions of
skulls was split into two tables to fit a 75-character width.
Punctuation errors were corrected.
Inconsistent hyphenation was retained.
To match the spelling of chapter topics in Contents with that in the
main text,
on page v, two occurrences of “history” were changed from “History”
(Physical history of Man; Physical history) and two occurrences
of “Extract” were changed from “extract” (Extract from Knox;
Extract); and
on page vi, “area” was changed from “areas” (size of area) and
“Area” was changed from “area” (Monosyllabic Area).
On page 18, “te ipsum” was changed from “teipsum” (Nosce te ipsum).
On page 38, “Lawrence” was changed from “Lawrance” (the work of
Lawrence).
On page 49, “Troglodytes” was changed from “Trolodytes” (than the
_Troglodytes Gorilla_).
On page 95, “Mediterranean” was changed from “Mediterannean” (from
the Mediterranean).
On page 97, “Kaffre” was changed from “Caffre” (to the Kaffre).
On page 101, “Papuás” was changed from “Papuá”.
On page 107, “architectural” was changed from “architectual”
(architectural impulses).
On page 158, “hypothesis” was changed from “hypotheses” (Finnic
hypothesis).
On page 216, “Norris” was changed from “Norriss” (Mr. Norris also).
On page 220, “Buddhist” was changed from “Bhuddhist” (nor Buddhist).
On page 237, “his mother’s” was changed from “mothers” (his mother’s
mothers).
On page 241, “Mysus” was changed from “Myrus” (Car, Lydus, or Mysus).
On page 243, space was inserted before “_-der_” (termination _-der_).
In footnote [19], “pp.” was changed from “p.” (pp. 224–228).
In Mr. Van Voorst’s Catalogue,
on page 6, “Vols.” was changed from “Vol.” (Vols. I. to VII.).
on page 8, “DESERTAS” was changed from “DEZERTAS”.
on page 15, “Parts” was changed from “Part” (Parts 1 to 10).
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