Man, Past and Present by Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (free reads .TXT) 📕

The question is not made any simpler by the frequent attacks that have been directed from more than one quarter against the long-established Caucasic terminology, and well-supported objections are raised to the use of such time-honoured names as "Hamitic," "Semitic," and even "Caucasic" itself. But no really satisfactory substitute for "Caucasic" has yet been suggested, and it is doubtful if any name could be found sufficiently comprehensive to include all the races, long-headed and short-headed, fair and dark, tall and short, that we are at present content to group under this non-committal heading. Undoubtedly the term "Caucasic" cannot be defended on ethnical grounds. "Nowhere else in the world probably is so heterogeneous a lot of people, languages and religions gathered together in one place as along the chain of the Caucasus mountains[1000]." But we are no more called upon to believe that the "Caucasic" peoples originated in the Caucasus, than that the Semites are all descendants of Shem or Hamites of Ham. "Caucasic" has one claim that can never be disputed, that of priority, and it would be well if innovators in these matters were to take to heart the sober language of Ehrenreich, who reminds us that the accepted names are, what they ought to be, "purely conventional," and "historically justified," and "should be held as valid until something better can be found to take their place[1001]." It was considerations such as these, weighing so strongly in favour of current usage, that induced me stare per vias antiquas in the Ethnology, and consequently also in the present work. Hence, here as there, the Caucasic Division retains its title, together with those of its main subdivisions--Hamitic, Semitic, Keltic, Slavic, Hellenic, Teutonic, Iranic, Galchic and so on.

The chief exception is "Aryan," a linguistic expression forced by the philologists into the domain of Ethnology, where it has no place or meaning. There was of course a time when a community, or group of communities, existed probably in the steppe region between the Carpathians and the Hindu-Kush[1002], by whom the Aryan mother-tongue was evolved, and who still for a time presented a certain uniformity in their physical characters, were, in fact, of Aryan speech and type. But while their Aryan speech persists in endlessly modified forms, they have themselves long disappeared as a distinct race, merged in the countless other races on whom they, perhaps as conquerors, imposed their Aryan language. Hence we can and must speak of Aryan tongues, and of an Aryan linguistic family, which continues to flourish and spread over the globe. But of an Aryan race there can be no further question since the absorption of the original stock in a hundred other races in remote prehistoric times. Where comprehensive references have to be made, I therefore substitute for Aryans and Aryan race the expression peoples of Aryan speech, at least wherever the unqualified term Aryan might lead to misunderstandings.

This way of looking at the question, which has now become more thorny than ever, has the signal advantage of being indifferent to any preconceived theories regarding the physical characters of that long vanished proto-Aryan race. How great this advantage is may be judged from the mere statement that, while German anthropologists are still almost to a man loyal to the traditional view that the first Aryans were best represented by the tall, long-headed, tawny-haired, blue-eyed Teutonic barbarians of Tacitus--who, Virchow tells us, have completely disappeared from sight in the present population--the Italian school, or at least its chief exponent, Sergi, was equally convinced that the picture was a myth, that such Aryans never existed, that "the true primitive Aryans were not long, but round-headed, not fair but dark, not tall but short, and are in fact to-day best represented by the round-headed Kelts, Slavs, and South Germans[1003]."

The fact is that the Aryan prototype has vanished as completely as has the Aryan mother-tongue, and can be conjecturally restored only by processes analogous to those by which Schleicher and other philologists have endeavoured with dubious success to restore the organic Aryan speech as constituted before the dispersion.

But here arises the more important question, by what right are so many and such diverse peoples grouped together and ticketed "Caucasians"? Are they to be really taken as objectively one, or are they merely artificial groupings, arbitrarily arranged abstractions? Certainly this Caucasic division consists apparently of the most heterogeneous elements, more so than perhaps any other. Hence it seems to require a strong mental effort to sweep into a single category, however elastic, so many different peoples--Europeans, North Africans, West Asiatics, Iranians and others all the way to the Indo-Gangetic plains and uplands, whose complexion presents every shade of colour, except yellow, from white to the deepest brown or even black.

But they are grouped together in a single division, because of certain common characteristics, and because, as pointed out by Ehrenreich, who himself emphasises these objections, their substantial uniformity speaks to the eye that sees below the surface. At the first glance, except perhaps in a few extreme cases for which it would be futile to create independent categories, we recognise a common racial stamp in the facial expression, the structure of the hair, partly also the bodily proportions, in all of which points they agree more with each other than with the other main divisions. Even in the case of certain black or very dark races, such as the Beja, Somali, and a few other Eastern Hamites, we are reminded instinctively more of Europeans or Berbers than of negroes, thanks to their more regular features and brighter expression. "Those who will accept nothing unless it can be measured, weighed, and numbered, may think perhaps that according to modern notions this appeal to the outward expression is unscientific. Nevertheless nobody can deny the evidence of the obvious physical differences between Caucasians, African Negroes, Mongols, Australians and so on. After all, physical anthropology itself dates only from the moment when we became conscious of these differences, even before we were able to give them exact expression by measurements. It was precisely the general picture that spoke powerfully and directly to the eye[1004]." The argument need not here be pursued farther, as it will receive abundant illustration in the details to follow.

Since the discovery of the New and the Austral Worlds, the Caucasic division as represented by the chief European nations has received an enormous expansion. Here of course it is necessary to distinguish between political and ethnical conquests, as, for instance, those of India, held by military tenure, and of Australia by actual settlement. Politically the whole world has become Caucasic with the exception of half-a-dozen states such as China, Turkey, Japan, Siam, Marocco, still enjoying a real or fictitious autonomy. But, from the ethnical standpoint, those regions in which the Caucasic peoples can establish themselves and perpetuate their race as colonists are alone to be regarded as fresh accessions to the original and later (historical) Caucasic domains. Such fresh accessions are however of vast extent, including the greater part of Siberia and adjoining regions, where Slav branches of the Aryan-speaking peoples are now founding permanent new homes; the whole of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, which have become the inheritance of the Caucasic inhabitants of the British Isles; large tracts in South Africa, already occupied by settlers chiefly from Holland and Great Britain; lastly the New World, where most of the northern continent is settled by full-blood Europeans, mainly British, French and German, while in the rest (Central and South America) the Caucasic immigrants (chiefly from the Iberian peninsula) have formed new ethnical groups by fusion with the aborigines. These new accessions, all acquired within the last 400 years, may be roughly estimated at about 28 million square miles, which with some 12 millions held throughout the historic period (Africa north of Sudan, most of Europe, South-West and parts of Central and South Asia, Indonesia) gives an extent of 40 million square miles to the present Caucasic domain, either actually occupied or in process of settlement. As the whole of the dry land scarcely exceeds 52 millions, this leaves not more than about 12 millions for the now reduced domains of all the other divisions, and even of this a great part (e.g. Tibetan table-land, Gobi, tundras, Greenland) is barely or not at all inhabitable. This, it may be incidentally remarked, is perhaps the best reply to those who have in late years given expression to gloomy forebodings regarding the ultimate fate of the Caucasic races. The "yellow scare" may be dismissed with the reflection that the Caucasian populations, who have inherited or acquired nearly four-fifths of the earth's surface besides the absolute dominion of the high seas, is not destined to be submerged by any conceivable combination of all the other elements, still less by the Mongol alone[1005].

Where have we to seek the primeval home of this most vigorous and dominant branch of the human family? Since no direct evidence can be cited, the answer necessarily takes the form of a hypothesis, and must rely mainly on the indirect evidence supplied by our vague knowledge of geographical conditions in pleistocene times, on past and present zoological distributions, with here and there, the assistance of a hint gleaned from archaeological discoveries. We may deal first with the arguments brought forward in favour of Africa north of Sudan. Here were found in quaternary times all the physical elements which zoologists demand for great specialisations--ample space, a favourable climate and abundance of food, besides continuous land connection at two or three points across the Mediterranean, by which the pliocene and early pleistocene faunas moved freely between the two continents.

Many of the speculations on the subject failed to convince, largely because the writers took, so to say, the ground from under their own feet, by submerging most of the land under a vast "Quaternary Sahara Sea," which had no existence, and which, moreover, reduced the whole of North Africa to a Mauretanian island, a mere "appendix of Europe," as it is in one place expressly called. Then this inconvenient inland basin was got rid of, not by an outflow--being on the same level as the Atlantic, of which it was, in fact figured as an inlet--but by "evaporation," which process is however somehow confined to this inlet, and does not affect either the Mediterranean or the Atlantic itself. Nor is it explained how the oceanic waters were prevented from rushing in according "as the Sahara sea evaporated to become a desert." The attempt to evolve a "Eurafrican race" in such an impossible area necessarily broke down, other endless perplexities being involved in the initial geological misconception.

Not only was the Sahara dry land in pleistocene times, but it stood then at a considerably higher altitude than at present, although its mean elevation is still estimated by Chavanne at 1500 feet above sea-level. "Quaternary deposits cover wide areas, and were at one time supposed to be of marine origin. It was even held that the great sand dunes must have been formed under the sea; but at this date it is scarcely necessary to discuss such a view. The advocates of a Quaternary Sahara Sea argued chiefly from the discovery of marine shells at several points in the middle of the Sahara. But Tournouer has shown that to call in the aid of a great ocean in order to explain the presence of one or two shells is a needless expenditure of energy[1006]."

At an altitude of probably over 2000 feet the Sahara must have enjoyed an almost ideal climate during late pliocene and pleistocene times, when Europe was exposed to more than one glacial invasion, and to a large extent covered at long intervals by a succession of solid ice-caps. We now know that these stony and sandy wastes were traversed in all directions