Read Ebook: Anthropology by Kroeber Alfred L
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The Cro-Magnon race of Aurignacian times, as represented by the finds at Cro-Magnon and Grimaldi, was excessively tall and large-brained, surpassing any living race of man in both respects.
The adult male buried at Cro-Magnon measured 5 feet 11 inches in life; five men at Grimaldi measured from 5 feet 10 1/2 inches to 6 feet 4 1/2 inches, averaging 6 feet 1 1/2 inches. The tallest men now on earth, certain Scots and Negroes, average less than 5 feet 11 inches. A girl at Grimaldi measured 5 feet 5 inches. This race was not only tall, but clean-limbed, lithe, and swift.
Their brains were equally large. Those of the five male skulls from Grimaldi contain from over 1,700 to nearly 1,900 c.c.--an average of 1,800 c.c.; that of the old man of Cro-Magnon, nearly 1,600 c.c.; of a woman there, 1,550 c.c. If these individuals were not exceptional, the figures mean that the size and weight of the brain of the early Cro-Magnon people was some fifteen or twenty per cent greater than that of modern Europeans.
The cephalic index is low--that is, the skull was long and narrow, as in all the types here considered; but the face was particularly broad. The forehead rose well domed; the supraorbital development was moderate, as in recent men; the features must have been attractive even by our standards.
Three of the best preserved skeletons of the Magdalenian period are those of women. Their statures run 4 feet 7 inches, 5 feet 1 inch, 5 feet 1 inch, which would indicate a corresponding normal height for men not far from that of the average European of to-day. The male from Obercassel attained a stature of about 5 feet 3 inches, a cranial capacity of 1,500 c.c., and combined a long skull with a wide face. The general type of the Magdalenian period might be described as a reduced Cro-Magnon one.
The Cro-Magnon peoples used skilfully made harpoons, originated a remarkable art, and in general attained a development of industries parallel to their high degree of bodily progress.
Several remains have been found in central Europe which have sometimes been considered as belonging to the Neandertal race and sometimes to the subsequent Cro-Magnon race, but do not belong clearly with either, and may perhaps be regarded as distinct from both and possibly bridging them. The type is generally known as the Br?nn race. Its habitat was Czecho-Slovakia and perhaps adjacent districts; its epoch, postglacial, in the Solutrean period of the Upper Palaeolithic . The Br?nn race, so far as present knowledge of it goes, was therefore both preceded and succeeded by Cro-Magnon man.
A skull of uncertain geologic age, found in 1888 at Galley Hill, near London, is by some linked with the Br?nn race. The same is true of an unusually well preserved skeleton found in 1909 at Combe-Capelle, in P?rigord, southern France. The period of the Combe-Capelle skeleton is Upper Palaeolithic Aurignacian. This was part of the era of the Cro-Magnon race in western Europe; and as the Combe-Capelle remains do not differ much from the Cro-Magnon type, they are best considered as belonging to it.
The Grimaldi race is to date represented by only two skeletons, those of a woman and a youth--possibly mother and son--found in 1906 in a grotto at Grimaldi near Mentone, in Italy, close to the French border. They reposed in lower layers, above which subsequent Cro-Magnon burials of Aurignacian date had been made. Their age is therefore early Aurignacian: the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic or later Cave period of the Old Stone Age. The statures are 5 feet 2 inches and 5 feet 1 inch--the youth was not fully grown; the skull capacities 1,375 and nearly 1,600 c.c.
The outstanding feature of both skeletons is that they bear a number of Negroid characteristics. The forearm and lower leg are long as compared with the upper arm and thigh; the pelvis high and small; the jaws prognathous, the nose flat, the eye orbits narrow. All these are Negro traits. This is important, in view of the fact that all the other ancient fossils of men are either more primitive than the living races or, like Cro-Magnon, perhaps ancestral to the Caucasian race.
No fossil remains of any ancestral Mongolian type have yet been discovered.
The New Stone Age, beginning about 10,000 or 8,000 B.C., brings the Grenelle and other types of man; but these are so essentially modern that they need not be considered here. In the Neolithic period, broad heads are for the first time encountered, as they occur at present in Europe and other continents, alongside of narrow ones. The virtual fixity of the human type for these last ten thousand years is by no means incredible. Egyptian mummies and skeletons prove that the type of that country has changed little in five thousand years except as the result of invasions and admixture.
The relations of the several fossil types of man and their gradual progression are most accurately expressed by certain skull angles and proportions, or indexes, which have been specially devised for the purpose. The anthropometric criteria that are of most importance in the study of living races, more or less fail in regard to prehistoric man. The hair, complexion, and eye-color are not preserved. The head breadth, as indicated by the cephalic index, is substantially the same from Pithecanthropus to the last Cro-Magnons. Stature on the other hand varies from one to another ancient race without evincing much tendency to grow or to diminish consistently. Often, too, there is only part of a skull preserved. The following proportions of the top or vault of the skull--the calvarium--are therefore useful for expressing quantitatively the gradual physical progress of humanity from its beginning.
If now we see a skull lengthwise, or draw a projection of it, and connect the glabella and the inion by a line GI, and the glabella and the bregma by a line GB, an acute angle, BGI, is formed. This is the "bregma angle." Obviously a high vaulted skull or one that has the superior point B well forward will show a greater angle than a low flat skull or one with its summit lying far back.
THE SKULL OF MODERN AND FOSSIL MAN
Chancelade 57 60 Combe-Capelle 54.5 58 Aurignac 54.5 Cro-Magnon I 50 54 33
Br?nn I 51 52 75 Galley Hill 48 52 82 Br?x 48 51? 75?
Le Moustier 47 Krapina C 46 52 70 Spy II 44 50 35 67 Krapina D 42 50 32 66 Chapelle-aux-Saints 40.5 45.5 36.5 65 Spy I 41 45 35 57.5 Gibraltar 40 50 73? Neandertal 40 44 38 62
Pithecanthropus 34 38 42 52.5
Maximum for any Anthropoid ape 38 39.5 63 Chimpanzee 32 34 47 56 Gorilla 20 22 42 Orang-utan 27 32 45
SUMMARIZED AVERAGES
Modern races 59 58 31 90 Cro-Magnon race 54 57 33 Br?nn race 49 52 77 Neandertal man 42 48 35 66 Pithecanthropus 34 38 42 52 Anthropoid apes 26 30 45
If now we compute the proportion of the GX part of the line GI to the whole of this line, we have the "bregma position index"; that is, a numerical indication of how far forward on the skull the highest point B lies. A sloping or retreating forehead naturally tends to have the bregma rearward; whereas if the frontal bone is nearly vertical, resulting in a high, domed expanse of forehead, the bregma tends to be situated farther forward, the point X shifts in the same direction, the distance GX becomes shorter in comparison to the whole line GI, and the "bregma position index" falls numerically.
All these data can be obtained from the mere upper fragment of a skull; they relate to that feature which is probably of the greatest importance in the evolution of man from the lower animals--the development of the brain case and therefore of the brain, especially of the cerebrum or fore-brain; and they define this evolution rather convincingly. The table, which compiles some of the most important findings, shows that progress has been fairly steadily continuous in the direction of greater cerebral development.
LIVING RACES
Almost every one sooner or later becomes interested in the problem of the origin of the human races and the history of their development. We see mankind divided into a number of varieties that differ strikingly in appearance. If these varieties are modifications of a single ancestral form, what caused them to alter, and what has been the history of the change?
It is no different in other fields of biology. As long as the zo?logist or botanist reviews his grand classifications or the wide sweep of organic evolution for fifty million years back, he seems to obtain striking and simple results. When he turns his attention to a small group, attempting to trace in detail its subvarieties, and the relations and history of these, the task is seen to be intricate and the accumulated knowledge is usually insufficient to solve more than a fraction of the problems that arise.
There is, then, nothing unusual in the situation of partial bafflement in which anthropology still finds itself as regards the human races.
What remains is the possibility of making an accurate survey of the living races in the hope that the relationships which a classification brings out may indicate something as to the former development of the races. If for instance it could be established that the Ainu or aborigines of Japan are closely similar in their bodies to the peoples of Europe, we would then infer that they are a branch of the Caucasian stock, that their origin took place far to the west of their present habitat, and that they have no connection with the Mongolian Japanese among whom they now live. This is working by indirect evidence, it is true; but sooner or later that is the method to which science always finds itself reduced.
In addition, the lines of demarcation between races have time and again been obliterated by interbreeding. Adjacent peoples, even hostile ones, intermarry. The number of marriages in one generation may be small; but the cumulative effect of a thousand years is often quite disconcerting. The half-breeds or hybrids are also as fertile as each of the original types. There is no question but that some populations are nothing but the product of such race crossing. Thus there is a belt extending across the entire breadth of Africa of which it is difficult to say whether the inhabitants belong to the Negro or to the Caucasian type. If we construct a racial map and represent the demarcation between Negro and Caucasian by a line, we are really misrepresenting the situation. The truth could be expressed only by inserting a transition zone of mixed color. Yet as soon as we allow such transitions, the definiteness of our classification begins to crumble.
In spite of these difficulties, some general truths can be discovered from a careful race classification, and certain constant principles of importance emerge from all the diversity.
Since every human being obviously possesses a large number of physical features or traits, the first thing that the prospective classifier of race must do is to determine how much weight he will attach to each of these features.
Then, too, stature has been proved to be rather readily influenced by environment. Each of us is a fraction of an inch taller when he gets up in the morning than when he goes to bed at night. Two races might differ by as much as a couple of inches in their heredity, and yet if all the individuals of the shorter race were well nourished in a favorable environment, and all those of the taller group were underfed and overworked, the naturally shorter race might well be actually the taller one.
Obviously it would be easiest to arrive at a clear-cut classification by grouping all the peoples of the earth according to a single trait, such as the shape of the nose, or color. But any such classification must be artificial and largely unsound, just because it disregards the majority of traits. The only classification that can claim to rest upon a true or natural basis is one which takes into consideration as many traits as possible, and weights the important more heavily than the unimportant features. If the outcome of such a grouping is to leave some peoples intermediate or of doubtful place in the classification, this result is unfortunate but must be accepted.
RACIAL CLASSIFICATION OF MANKIND
CAUCASIAN OR "WHITE" Nordic Wavy Abundant Narrow Narrow Alpine " " Broad " Mediterranean " " Narrow " Hindu " " " Variable
MONGOLOID OR "YELLOW" Mongolian Straight Slight Broad Medium Malaysian " " " " American Indian " " Variable "
NEGROID OR "BLACK" Negro Woolly Slight Narrow Broad Melanesian " " " " Dwarf Black " " Broad "
OF DOUBTFUL CLASSIFICATION Australian Wavy Abundant Narrow Broad Vedda, Irula, Kolarians, Moi, Senoi, Toala, etc. " Moderate " " Polynesian " " Variable Medium Ainu " Abundant Narrow "
CAUCASIAN OR "WHITE" Nordic Slight Very "white" Tall Alpine " White Above aver. Mediterranean " Dark white Medium Hindu Moderate Brown Above aver.
MONGOLOID OR "YELLOW" Mongolian Medium Light brown Below aver. Malaysian " Brown " American Indian " " Tall to med.
NEGROID OR "BLACK" Negro Strong "Black" Tall Melanesian " " Medium Dwarf Black Moderate " Very short
OF DOUBTFUL CLASSIFICATION Australian Strong Black Above aver. Vedda, Irula, Kolarians, Moi, Senoi, Toala, etc. Medium Dark brown Short Polynesian " Brown Tall Ainu " Light brown Medium
CAUCASIAN OR "WHITE" Nordic Hair blond, eyes light. Alpine Hair brown, eyes brown. Mediterranean Hindu Probable Australoid admixture in South.
MONGOLOID OR "YELLOW" Mongolian "Mongolian" eye, broad face. Malaysian American Indian Broad face.
NEGROID OR "BLACK" Negro Melanesian Dwarf Black Bushmen show several special features.
OF DOUBTFUL CLASSIFICATION Australian Negroid traits preponderate, some Caucasian resemblances. Vedda, Irula, Kolarians, Generalized pre-Caucasian with Australoid Moi, Senoi, Toala, etc. resemblances. "Indo Australians." Polynesian Perhaps Mongoloid with some Caucasian traits and local Negroid admixture. Ainu A generalized Caucasian or divergent Mongoloid type.
Hair and eyes are "black" unless otherwise stated in Remarks.
If now we follow this plan and review the peoples of the earth, each with reference to all its physical traits, we obtain an arrangement something like that which is given in the table on the previous page. It will be seen that there are three grand divisions, of which the European, the Negro, and the Chinaman may be taken as representative. These three primary classes are generally called Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid. The color terms, White, Black, and Yellow, are also often used, but it is necessary to remember that they are employed merely as brief convenient labels, and that they have no descriptive value. There are millions of Caucasians who are darker in complexion than millions of Mongoloids.
These three main groups account for more than nine-tenths of all the nations and tribes of the world. As to the number of individuals, they comprise probably 99 per cent of all human beings. The aberrant forms are best kept separate. Some of them, like the before-mentioned Ainu and Australians, appear to affiliate preponderantly with one of the three great classes, but still differ sufficiently in one or more particulars to prevent their being included with them outright. Other groups, such as the Polynesians, seem to be, at least in part, the result of a mixture of races. Their constituent elements are so blended, and perhaps so far modified after the blending, as to be difficult to disentangle.
Each of the three great primary stocks falls into several natural subdivisions.
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