Mongoloid race

“ Men, flocks, and tents have vanished, and nought remains to mark the visit of this wandering race, but the curling smoke of their unquenched fires, or the birds of prey hovering over the carcase of some dying camel, or feeding on the remains of their late repast. The Mongols are irreclaimable nomads, though some tribes of them, as the Tsakhars, Ortous, and Solous, cultivate the soil. The four khanates of the Kalkas are called Outer Mongolia, and comprise within their borders, several well built towns, though none of any size, compared with the cities in China. ”

“ The Mongolian of Asia is not indeed to be spoken of as one unvarying type any more than the American. But the extent to which the Mongolian head-form and peculiar physiognomy characterise one widely diffused section of the population of the eastern continent, gives it special prominence among the great ethnical divisions of the human race. Morton assigns 1421 as the cranial capacity of eighteen Mongol, and only 1234 as that of 164 American skulls other than Peruvian or Mexican. ”

“ He will do surprisingly well, in fact, if he succeeds in his new attempt to govern himself. The traveler cannot but be struck by the astonishing scarcity of children in Mongolia, especially if he has just come from Japan and China, until he learns that fully a third of the population of the country as a whole are lamas, and notes the prevalence of missing noses among both sexes and all classes in the streets of Urga. The most educated Mongol, in our Western sense, with whom I came in contact declared that within a century his race will completely have disappeared. ”

“ Of all Mongolians they physically differ most from the true Mongol type (see Mongols) . Their colour is a brown rather than a yellow, and their eyes are open and not oblique. They have, however, the broad flat face, high cheekbones and lank black hair of their race. ”

“ Others again by their dark hair, slight beard, sunk nose or rather projecting cheek-bones and oblique eyes, remind us distinctly of the Mongolian race, and finally we meet among them with very fair faces, with features and complexion which lead us to suspect that they are descendants of runaways or prisoners of war of purely Russian origin. ”

“ They are fond of a nomadic life, and have at different periods made wide conquests; but they have, as a rule, become absorbed in the races they have overcome. The Mongols are still, however, the rulers of the Chinese Empire. They belong either to the Buddhist or to the Mahometan faith.
This branch is divided into three great families, analogous with the differences in their language: the Mongols, the Tunguses, and the Turks. We may add to them a fourth family, the Yakuts, for these latter possess the physical characteristics of the Yellow Race, and speak a Turkish dialect. ”

“ True Mongolian features are certainly to be met with also, more especially among the women and children of the poorer class; but, though I have seen very few really beautiful Kirghiz women, I have met with quite as few of the grotesque faces so common among other undoubted Mongols. The characteristics are unmistakably more suggestive of a mixed race than of any one sharply defined stock. ”

“ The region from the White Sea to the Ural Mountains is inhabited by a race called Samoyeds, brachycephalic Mongols with a Finnish admixture. Of short stature, averaging a fraction over 5 feet, they have the short broad Mongolian face, long oblique eyes, high cheek-bones and flat noses. Like the Lapps they are dependent for locomotion, clothes, and food on their herds of reindeer, and they also have dogs for rounding up the deer. ”

“ These large Mongol communities, under the eye and hand of the Emperor, answer the double purpose of conciliators on the one hand, and of hostages for the loyalty of distant tribes on the other. The Mongols are as little a match for the Chinese in craft, as they are superior to them in martial energy. It is supposed that the Chinese government have a deep design in supporting and encouraging [40] lamaism, an institution which makes nearly one-third of the Mongol race celibats—for there are female as well as male lamas—the object being to keep down the population of the tribes. ”

“ Mongolia extends for 1,500 miles along the northern frontier of China, and as its eastern border is coterminous with Manchuria, a few words regarding the Mongols may not be out of place in these notes. The race is said to come with the Manchus from a common Tartar stock, but, except in colour and features, there is little resemblance between the two races. The Mongol is essentially a nomad, hating towns and houses. He prefers to wander about the steppes, pitching his 'yourt,' or felt tent, wherever water and pasture are for the time most plentiful. ”

“ The type, although essentially Mongolic in the somewhat flat features, very prominent cheek-bones, slant eyes, long lank hair, yellowish brown colour and low stature, seems to show admixture with a higher race in the shapely frame, the nimble, active figure, and quick, intelligent expression, and especially in the variable skull. While generally round (indices 80° to 84°) , the head is sometimes flat on the top, like that of the true Mongol, sometimes high and short, which, as Hamy tells us, is specially characteristic of the Turki race [618] . ”

“ Mongols.The Mongols have remained a race apart from the Chinese and have, as already stated, preserved a strong race-consciousness, as well as their tribal system, aristocracy, language, dress, special modes of life, manners, customs and religion. Though still mainly a pastoral people, they are increasingly engaged in agriculture and in the transportation of products by carts and animals. The Mongols bordering Manchuria have suffered increasingly from Chinese immigrants who obtain possession of and cultivate their lands from which they are being gradually extruded. ”

“ The almost entire absence of beard is a remarkable feature in the Mongolians. As regards this and other marks of race, it may be useful to compare the Mongols with their near neighbours the Chinese. The two races have a sufficient number of broad characteristics in common to warrant their classification under one great type of mankind. ”

“ The Mongol literature goes back to the thirteenth century, the period when the race rose to importance in history, but is almost equally scanty. The Mongol alphabet was the original of the present Manchu, and, in its turn, was derived from that of the Uigur Turks; the latter, again, goes back to the Syriac, having been brought into central Asia by Nestorian missionaries. The Uigurs, the easternmost members of the family of Turkish tribes, seem to have been the first among them to acquire and use the art of writing ”

“ Ethnologically the Chinese are classed among the Mongolian races (in which division the Manchus are also included) , although they present many marked contrasts to the Mongols. The Tatars, Tibetans, Burmese, Shans, Manchu and other races—including the Arab and Japanese—have mingled with the indigenous population to form the Chinese type, while aboriginal tribes still resist the pressure of absorption by the dominant race (see ante, Population) . The Chinese are in fact ethnically a very mixed people, and the pure Mongol type is uncommon among them. ”

“ They may have marched across the island or skirted around its southern cape and spread themselves out in the province of Hyūga, where in the Japanese accounts we first find them. This migration probably occurred long after the first, and came evidently from a more cultured tribe of the great Mongolian race. That they came from the same race is evident from their understanding the same language, and having habits and methods of government which were not a surprise to the new-comers, and in which they readily co-operated. ”

“ Considering first the peoples of the Northern Mongolian division, we find in the typical Manchurian what is perhaps the nearest among modern people to the original race. Spreading northward and westward from the middle Asiatic plains, this great wave has produced the nomadic tribes of Siberia, like the Chukchi, the Buryats, and the Yukaghir. The present inhabitants of Turkestan connect those forms which have remained near the original home with the races of Mongolian origin that live farther to the westward, like the Turks of Asia. ”

“ The northern culture existed to the west of that culture, in the region of the present Chinese province of Shansi and in the province of Jehol in Inner Mongolia. These people had been hunters, but then became pastoral nomads, depending mainly on cattle. The people of this culture were the tribes later known as Mongols, the so-called proto-Mongols. Anthropologically they belonged, like the Tunguses, to the Mongol race.
(c) The people of the culture farther west, the north-west culture, were not Mongols. ”

“ By nature the Mongols were hard riding, hard living warriors, accustomed to privation and fatigue. The poison of luxury ate into the very fibers of their being and gradually they lost the characteristics which had made them great. The ruin of the race was completed by the introduction of Lamaism, a religion which carries only moral destruction where it enters, and eventually the Mongols passed under the rule of the once conquered Chinese and then under the Manchus. ”

“ These reflections might properly be productive of uneasiness did we not reassure ourselves with the self-satisfying assumption of the mental, moral and physical superiority of the Indo-European race, and the conviction that it is our destiny to inherit the earth. We indulge in a comparison of ourselves with the Mongolian in a way which leaves him relatively far down in the human scale, and have taken it for granted, hastily perhaps, that he can not rise. ”

“ References in Chinese annals to the green eyes of the Wu-suns or to the Hiung-Nu in central Asia are almost the only evidence we have of the Nordic race in contact with the peoples of eastern Asia, though there are statements in ancient Chinese or Mongolian records as to the existence of blond and tall tribes and nations in those parts of northern Asia where Mongols are now found exclusively. ”

“ As for southern Europeans, have you not observed that nearly all of them possess brachycephalic skulls, indicating the influence upon them of Mongolian invasions thousands of years ago and supplying, perhaps, a very substantial argument that, if we find the faintly Mongoloid type of emigrant repugnant to us, we can never expect to assimilate the pure-bred Mongol. ”

“ There is complete present, and probably previous long-existing, geographical continuity in the area over which they are found. There is also considerable similarity Mongolians. of climate and other conditions throughout the northern half of Asia which they occupy. The extension of modified forms of the Mongolian type over the whole American continent may be mentioned as a remarkable circumstance connected with this branch of the human race.
The Mongolians of the northern half of Asia are almost entirely nomadic, hunters and shepherds or herdsmen. ”

“ Yet in every instance wherein we detect Mongolians on the monuments, they are represented as foreigners and enemies. The annexed wood-cut, with the small and somewhat depressed nose, shaven head, and crown-lock, scanty beard, moustache, and sallow complexion, seems clearly to indicate a man of that race. It is copied from a drawing in Rosellini, in which Rameses the Third is represented fighting against the Sheto or Scythians, among whom the Mongols appear to be allies or mercenaries. ”

“ The Mongolian race probably assumed its distinctive features, yellowish skin, coarse black hair, and characteristic facial and bodily traits, in Eastern Asia; and the aboriginal population of America was sprung mainly from the less-specialized branch of this race. The so-called white races include three main stocks, a people of short stature, olive complexion, and long heads, the Mediterranean race; a taller people with fair hair and long heads, the Nordic race ”

“ In addition, there are many traits typical of Asiatic Mongoloids which appear very irregularly in the Americas. The “Mongoloid fold”—an overhanging fold of skin on the upper eyelid—is found in some tribes and not in others, and in certain individuals of a tribe and not in others. The bony structure of the face varies greatly. Some tribes have strong chins; some, weak 209 ones. The nose of the typical Plains Indian is hawklike—a violent departure from the Mongoloid’s rather flat nasal equipment. The “Semitic” nose of the Maya is Japanese but not at all Chinese. ”

“ In the American Indians, Mongoloid blood undoubtedly predominates but the high-bridged nose of some of the tribes and their high stature undoubtedly point to admixture with other races.
The Mongol is not inferior to the Nordic in intelligence, as is the Negro, but represents such a divergent type that the mixture between Nordics and Chinese or Japanese is not a good one. The overflow of these Asiatics into our Pacific Coast might have Mongolized the States there, had not the Amer [Pg 38] ican laboring man taken alarm and secured legislation forbidding their immigration. ”

“ These people, already racially mixed, spread over the New World carrying with them a primitive fishing and hunting culture. Their coming must have preceded the occupation of eastern Asia by the present predominantly Mongoloid peoples, since the purer 220 types of these dolichocephals do not show the characteristic Mongoloid features. ”