G. A. F. Van Rhyn

“ In the following rapid survey of the human races copious references have been made to the latest works of travel. Our space does not permit us to give in detail the customs and morals of each; we confine ourselves instead to a succinct enumeration of the physical characteristics, the languages, and the habitats. Beginning with the lowest types of man, we must consider first the Ulotriches or woolly-haired men, among whom the Papuans probably resemble very closely the primitive species. ”

“ The Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit forms have been added to show the degree of relationship of the Germanic to the cognate groups of the Aryan or Indo-European family of languages. The primitive tongue is understood to be the mother of all, and gives the forms from which linguistic scholars derive those of the most ancient as well as of the modern Aryan dialects. ”

“ The Dutch language has no literature earlier than the 16th century, but it is still a literary and national language; while Flemish, which was also used during this period in the courts of Flanders and Brabant, had to give way to the official languages of Holland and Belgium, and its use is almost completely confined to the Flemish peasantry. Anglo-Saxon is also a Low German dialect. The four Germanic tribes that invaded Britain have left no record in the dialects peculiar to each, and there are no facts from which to determine the precise nature of their speech. ”

“ The Mediterraneans have always been considered the best developed and most cultivated species. They were formerly classified as Caucasians, but the term was abandoned on account of the insignificance of the proper Caucasian branch, and Mediterranean was substituted because the most important races of this species flourished first on the shores of that sea. ”

“ The Scandinavians remained in comparative isolation. The Goths inhabited only a small portion of the Scandinavian peninsula, going no further north than the lakes Wener, Wetter, and Hielmar. From the population south of Jutland went forth the stock of the English-speaking race. During the 5th and 6th centuries three Germanic tribes, the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, crossed the North sea, settled in the British islands, and subjugated the former population. The country of the Rhine and the Weser then became the main abiding place of pure Germanic elements. ”

“ The Malays are ethnologically of great importance, though not very numerous. High authorities consider it certain that the forefathers of the Malays, called Pro-Malays, were the ancestors of most of the nations of Asia, Europe, and America. The modern Malays comprise three races far distant from each other. The Sundanese inhabit Malacca, the Sunda archipelago, and the Philippines; a branch of them is found on the island of Madagascar, and another is scattered over the Polynesian archipelago. The Malays are very fond of navigation, which explains the great territorial extent of the species. ”

“ Among the Indo-European languages, Gothic diverges widely from the primitive tongue, and must be considered as a younger sister of Sanskrit. Gothic was not the oldest of the Germanic tongues, though its literary documents date back further than any other. Old High German, old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Gothic were probably sister dialects; at least no one of them appears to be derived from any of the others. Old High German comprises a number of dialects which were spoken chiefly in South Germany, as the Thuringian, Frankish, Swabian, Alsatian, Swiss, and Bavarian. ”

“ Mongolians are all the inhabitants of the Asiatic continent, with the exception of the Hyperboreans in the north, a few Malays in the southeast, the Dravidas in Further India, and the Mediterraneans in the southwest. The species is represented in Europe by the Finns and Lapps in the north, the Osmanlis in Turkey, and the Magyars in Hungary. The color of the skin is yellow, with either a white or a brown tinge; the hair is straight and black; the head is either short or medium in size, long heads being rare; the face is round; the eyes are small, and often oblique ”

“ The genuine negro has always very thin calves and very long arms. This species separated probably very early into numerous tribes, inasmuch as the many totally different languages spoken by them cannot be retraced to the original tongue. The migrations of the African races so far noticed are due in part to the slavery practised among them, compelling the weaker tribes to move if possible beyond the reach of the stronger. ”

“ The history of the German empire after Otho I. is a series of contests between the emperors and the dukes of the principal races composing it. The Saxons, the Franconians, and the Swabians were in turn at the head of the empire in the persons of their own leaders. The political significance of special races ceased in the 13th century, but in language and manners there are still five which may be clearly distinguished. ”

“ Scherzer and Schwarz took numerous careful measurements of the bodies of individuals belonging to different races, and the conclusion arrived at, as given by Weissbach, was that the resemblance between man and apes is not restricted to any particular people, but is traceable in some portion of the body in all nations; that an heirloom of the relationship is owned by every one, and that even Europeans cannot claim exemption from it. (See Evolution.) The question of the unity or diversity of origin of the different races can also be answered only hypothetically. ”

“ But the pressure of the eastern races continued, and impelled by it about one half of the German warriors attacked the Roman empire, and divided southern Europe among them. The whole Gothic family of Vandals, Heruli, Rugii, Gepidæ, Alani, Suevi, Longobards, Burgundians, and Franks left Germany almost entirely, and the Slavs and Finnic races took possession of the thinly populated districts, and extirpated in several places the German inhabitants. The Gothic empire on the Danube, founded there after the exodus of the Goths from the Baltic territory, was conquered by the Huns. ”

“ It is believed that in the development of the brain, especially of the frontal lobe, may be retraced the history of man, and that skulls of primitive man furnish a clue to the intellectual spirit of primitive ages. ”

“ Germanic tribes were for centuries put to their utmost to prevent the further advance to the north of their southern enemies. Cæsar and Tacitus are the most valuable authorities upon the condition of the western districts of Germany in their time. Cæsar states that the Rhine was the eastern boundary of Gaul, and affirms that in Switzerland, southern Alsace, near the upper Moselle, and on the shores of the strait of Dover, there were only four Celtic tribes, the Helvetii, Sequani, Mediomatrici, and Morini. ”

“ Those ethnologists who give a plural origin to mankind account for the present distribution of the races by tracing their migrations to several starting points or primitive homes. The majority of ethnologists adopt, however, the monophyletic hypothesis, and regard the southern part of Asia as the birthplace of man, placing it either in the highlands of the Himalayas, or near the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, or between the Euphrates and Tigris, or in the southern part of Arabia, or on the ancient continent of Lemuria. ”

“ The stationary existence of the Norse language in Icelandic, in which it has been preserved almost intact to the present day, is explained by the secluded position of the island, and the zeal with which the old songs and sagas, as collected and fixed in the two Eddas, have been cultivated by the inhabitants. ”

“ Huxley, Wallace, Darwin, Haeckel, and many others have advocated the hypothesis that man is a descendant of an ape-like animal. It is, however, acknowledged that no one of the now living genera of apes was the immediate ancestor of man. The orang has the closest resemblance to man in the convolutions of the brain; the chimpanzee, in the form of the skull ”

“ Cuvier divides mankind into three stocks: 1, Caucasian, with the branches Armenian, Indian, and Scythian or Tartar; 2, Mongol or Altaic, with the branches Calmucks, Kalkas, Mantchoos, Japanese, and Siberians; 3, Negro or Ethiopian. He adopts the ill-chosen term “Caucasian” from Blumenbach. It originated from the prevalent belief at that time that the white races had their cradle in the mountains of Caucasus ”

“ Modern geology and archæology have rendered valuable assistance toward its solution, and at the present stage of these sciences it seems most probable that the time of man's advent must be placed in the tertiary or in the beginning of the diluvial age. ”

“ Cuvier compares the areas of the cranium and face sawed vertically on the median line from before backward; according to this measurement, the area of the former in the highest races is four times that of the face, in the negro the area of the face being one fifth larger. The norma verticalis of Blumenbach measures the breadth of the skull and the projection of the face, and consists in viewing skulls from behind and above, the eye being fixed on the vertex of each. ”

“ The first germs of Swedish and Danish are considered to have existed long before the 11th century in the dialects of the Scandinavian tribes. Swedish scholars distinguish between the East and West Scandinavian, which division they consider as having taken place before the Northmen settled in Norway and Sweden. ”

“ In order to overcome this evidence, it is necessary to accept the doctrine that primitive man was speechless. (See Language.) The difficulties in the way of classifying the numerous races or types of man are as great as in the case of animals and plants. All varieties are connected by numberless forms of transition, and it is impossible to settle beyond all dispute what is genus, and what species ”

“ Dr. Latham, in his “Natural History of the Varieties of Man” (1850) , separates the human family into three primary divisions, the Mongolidæ, Atlantidæ, and Japetidæ. The Mongolidæ inhabit Asia, Polynesia, and America, and are subdivided into: a, Altaic Mongolidæ, including the Seriform (Chinese, &c.) and Turanian (Mongol) stocks; b, Dioscurian Mongolidæ (the Caucasian races of earlier writers) ; c, oceanic Mongolidæ, including Malays, Polynesians, Papuans, and Australians; d, hyperborean Mongolidæ, Samoyeds and similar nations ”

“ Agassiz, in the “Types of Mankind,” by Messrs. Nott and Gliddon (1854) , asserts “that what are called human races, down to their specialization as nations, are distinct primordial forms of the types of man.” He makes the following realms: I. Arctic, inhabited by Hyperboreans; II. Asiatic, by Mongols; III. European, by white men; IV. American, by American Indians; V. African, by Nubians, Abyssinians, Foolahs, Negroes, Hottentots, and Bushmen; VI. East Indian or Malayan, by Telingans, Malays, and Negrillos; VII. Australian, by Papuans and Australians ”

“ They resemble the negroes in having a black or brown-black skin, a flat and retreating forehead, a thick nose, and puffy lips, and in the almost total want of calves. Their hair is either quite straight or somewhat curly. ”

“ Fischer, in his Synopsis Mammalium, divides man into homo Japeticus, with the branches Caucasicus, Arabicus, and Indicus; H. Neptunianus, with the branches Occidentalis and Papuensis (the Malay race) ; H. Scythicus (Calmucks and Mongols) , with the branches Sinicus and Hyperboreus ”