Pedagogical Anthropology by Maria Montessori (best novels of all time TXT) 📕

a reciprocal correspondence. The light colourings, as well as the dark, generally go together; i.e., a person having blond hair has also light eyes and a fair skin, and vice versa—in other words, the entire organism has either a greater or less accumulation of pigment in all its centres of pigmentation. Furthermore, these anthropological characteristics are accompanied by others of equal ethnical importance, such as the stature, the cephalic index, etc.; and all of them combine to determine an ethnic type in all its complex morphology.

In this, as in all other anthropological data, it is necessary to determine the limits between which it may oscillate. In the races of mankind, the colour of the skin ranges from a black brown to a gray brown, to brick red, to yellow, and to white; but among the population of Italy, and among Europeans in general (excepting certain localised groups, like the Lapps, etc.), the variation is confined within the limits of the so-called white tones, that is, from brunette to a sallow white, a rosy white, or a florid red, with each of which tints there are special corresponding grades of pigmentation for hair and eyes, and also, on broad, general lines, different ethnical characteristics oscillating within our normal limits of stature and cephalic index.

All of which may be summarised in the following table:

Pigmentation Stature Cephalic index Skin Hair Iris Brunette Black Black Medium or low Dolichocephalic, Yellow-white
Pink-white Light chestnut & blond. Chestnut and blue. Medium or high Brachycephalic Florid red Red Gray (Outside of ethnical characteristics: the red colour of the hair is abnormal)

in which we have also included the abnormal colour of red hair, which plays a part in the actual colour scale of Italian pigmentation: not, however, as a racial characteristic, but rather as a deviation.

In addition to the oscillation of limits, we should also study in any given population the geographic distribution of a definite anthropological datum. This must also be done in the case of the pigments. Among Livi's splendid charts, there is one regarding the distribution of the brunette type in Italy. From this it appears that the greatest prevalence of the brunette type is in Sardinia and Calabria, and that in general there is a prevalence of the dark types in the southern districts; while the lowest percentage of brunettes is found in Piedmont, Lombardy and Venetia, and in general the number of brunettes is less in northern and central Italy.

The relative distribution of other ethnical data should be noted, such as the stature and the cephalic index, in the corresponding charts.

By combining these results, we find that in the north of Italy the prevalent type is blond, brachycephalic, and of tall stature; while in the south it is a dark, dolichocephalic type, of low stature. This is what I succeeded in showing in my work upon the women of Latium, in which I sought to complete the details of these two ethnic types. In Latium there is a prevalence of the dark, dolichocephalic type of low stature, a type that is still almost pure at Castelli Romani; this type is fine, slender and delicate in formation, and corresponds to Sergi's Mediterranean stock, to which are due the great Egyptian and Græco-Roman civilisations. The other race is blond, tall and brachycephalic, and has only a scanty representation in southern Latium, but is prevalent in an almost pure form in the neighborhood of Orte. This type is much coarser and more massive in its formation, with a euriplastic skeleton, and corresponds to Sergi's Eurasian race that immigrated from the continent.

In general, we may say that it is foreordained in our biological destiny not only what form, but also what colouring we ought to attain in the course of our individual evolution, when we finally arrive at mature development.

The Pigments during Growth.—In the course of individual evolution, it is not only the form that becomes modified, but the pigments as well. We know, for example, that children are more blond than adults. Transformations in regard to the pigments occur, however, more especially at the period of puberty.

Pigmentation of the Hair.—The colour of the hair becomes darker in the course of growth, changing from light chestnut to dark, from blond to light chestnut, from dark to black, from light auburn to fiery red. Sometimes this darkening of the hair is accompanied by a change in tone (from blond to chestnut); at other times it consists in an intensification of the original colour through an increase of pigment, which fixes and defines a colour that was previously indefinite.

In children who were ill or ailing during their early years, in other words, weakly children (through denutrition, exhausting illnesses, overexertion), this phenomenon is imperfectly achieved, just as their growth as a whole is imperfectly achieved. The consequence is that these weaklings retain a paler and less decided pigmentation, which explains the fact that statistics show a greater proportion of frail, rachitic, tuberculous and mentally deficient persons among the blonds than among the brunettes; but it is among that class of blonds whose light colour represents an arrest of development (suppressed brunettes).

Social conditions also exert an influence upon the colour of the hair; a larger number of blonds and of lighter and more indefinite blonds are to be found in the schools for the poor than in those for the rich; also a larger number in country schools, where the poverty is greater, than in city schools. Consequently we may conclude that there are two classes of blonds: that which is associated with a racial type, and that which is the consequence of arrested development. The first type has a vivid, uniform and decisive colour tone, accompanied by physiological robustness; the second is indefinite in colour tone and lacks uniformity—for example, the more exposed parts of the body are paler, and the hair varies in tone, some locks showing greater intensity of colour than others. This is especially noticeable in frail young girls from the country, where the sun discolours the surface layer of hair. In this connection it should be remembered that in those geographical regions where the rays of the sun are most nearly perpendicular, the pigments are, on the contrary, darker and that the skin becomes bronzed under the ardent kiss of the sun. But while the sun intensifies the tints that are strong with life, it destroys those that are weak and moribund, just as it does in the case of lifeless fabrics, which become bleached out by the action of the solar light.

Accordingly the pigments give us an important test for judging the robustness of the body; the blonds who are the product of arrested development of brown tones that have not been attained because of weakness, are frail in health and physical resistance, which is the basis of the popular belief that vigorous wet-nurses must be brunettes.

As a matter of fact, in our own population of Latium the brunette type prevails over the blond by a percentage of 86 per cent.; and it may be that a blond Roman wet-nurse is a weakly creature, just as a Roman red wine is in all probability a white wine that has been coloured.

Pigmentation of the Iris.—In regard to the coloration of the eyes, a change often takes place at puberty which is the opposite to that already noted in regard to the hair: the eyes become more uniformly light; this happens in the majority of cases.

In the coloration of the eyes it is necessary to distinguish two factors, the uvea and the pigment.

The iris has a fundamental and uniform light colour (due to the uvea) which oscillates, according to the individual, between blue and greenish.

In this layer the pigment is deposited; it may be more or less intense in tone, shading from yellow to a dark maroon.

When the pigment is wanting or is very scant, the fundamental blue or greenish colour of the uvea is apparent.

In little children the pigment is distributed over the uvea in a manner by no means uniform, in little masses or spots that are usually of a mixed colour, so that the colour of the iris in infancy may be uncertain. At puberty a uniform distribution of the pigment already accumulated takes place; but rarely an intensification. Hence the colour becomes more decided, but not deeper, as Godin has recently succeeded in proving.

Pigmentation of the Skin.—In the colouring of the skin it is necessary to distinguish between that which is due to the blood and that which is due to the pigment.

The blood, whose colour shows transparently through the layers of the epidermis, produces the various pinkish tones.

The pigment, deposited in all races of mankind under the Malpighian layer, produces the various brownish tones. The quantity of cutaneous pigment is a constant racial factor—a hereditary factor. Nevertheless, in certain individuals, it may be influenced by external agents (sunshine, heat) which tend to cause it to vary; such alterations produce individual varieties, and also variations in coloration of the skin between the covered parts of the body and those exposed to the sun or to atmospheric action in general; these variations, one and all, are not hereditary.

At puberty the pigment is increased in certain portions of the body in connection with the generative functions which become established at that time. Besides this, the general pigmentation is intensified; children are whiter than adults.

The Skin and the Hair during the Evolution of the Organism.—In the case of the hair also, the pigment does not remain a constant quantity throughout the different periods of life. Grey hair is a normal sign of the decadence of an organism which has entered upon its involution. As is well known, the hair of the head, the beard, and in general all the piliferous appendages turn white, beginning in the regions where the hair is most abundant, i.e., on the head. In some men, however, the hairs of the beard are the first to turn grey; this is not perfectly normal, it is an inferior manner of growing old. A German proverb says, that he who works much with the head (the thinking class) turns grey first in his hair, and that he who works much with his mouth (the hearty eater) turns grey first in his beard.

The skin also gives manifest signs of decadence in the form of wrinkles. These serve up to a certain point as documentary evidence of the life which the individual has led and the high or low type to which he belongs. Just as in the case of grey hair, it is the class of thinkers who have the most wrinkles on their forehead; those who were given over to baser passions, such as called for labial rather than frontal expression, have on the contrary, more wrinkles around the mouth. We know how the peasant class has a veritable halo of wrinkles around the mouth.

Thinkers, on the contrary, have a single vertical furrow in the middle of the forehead: the line of thought. The transverse lines on the forehead are parallel and unconnected.

Faces with precocious wrinkles may be met with, even in children (denutrition, mental anxiety, dystrophic conditions); and conversely, there are faces which have been preserved unwrinkled up to an advanced age (especially in the case of women of the aristocracy, in whom it may happen that neither suffering nor mental effort has left its traces on their lives).

Pigmentation of the Hair.—This anthropological datum merits special consideration, since it plays so large a part in the æsthetics of the human body; and also preserves certain constant characteristics that serve to differentiate the races. In a study of the hair it is necessary to consider the quantity, the disposition and the form. Abundant, strong, sleek hair is in physiological relation to robustness of body. Thin hair, on the contrary, or hair that is easily extirpated at the slightest pull, or dry hair, indicate insufficient nutrition, which may also be connected with dystrophic or