West of the area occupied by the chief mass of the Xanthochroi, and
north of the Sahara, is a broad belt of land, shaped like a =Y=.
Between the forks of the =Y= lies the Mediterranean; the stem of it
is Arabia. The stem is bathed by the Indian Ocean, the western ends of
the forks by the Atlantic. The people inhabiting the area thus roughly
sketched have, like the Xanthochroi, prominent noses, pale skins and
wavy hair, with abundant beards; but, unlike them, the hair is black
or dark, and the eyes usually so. They may thence be called the
MELANOCHROI. Such people are found in the British Islands, in Western
and Southern Gaul, in Spain, in Italy south of the Po, in parts of
Greece, in Syria and Arabia, stretching as far northward and eastward
as the Caucasus and Persia. They are the chief inhabitants of Africa
north of the Sahara, and, like the Xanthochroi, they end in the
Canary Islands. They are known as Kelts, Iberians, Etruscans, Romans,
Pelasgians, Berbers, Semites. The majority of them are long-headed,
and of smaller stature than the Xanthochroi.
It is needless to remark upon the civilization of these two great
stocks. With them has originated everything that is highest in
science, in art, in law, in politics, and in mechanical inventions.
In their hands, at the present moment, lies the order of the social
world, and to them its progress is committed.
South of the Atlas, and of the Great Desert, Middle Africa exhibits
a new type of humanity in the NEGRO, with his dark skin, woolly hair,
projecting jaws, and thick lips. As a rule, the skull of the Negro
is remarkably long; it rarely approaches the broad type, and never
exhibits the roundness of the Mongolian. A cultivator of the ground,
and dwelling in villages; a maker of pottery, and a worker in the
useful as well as the ornamental metals; employing the bow and arrow
as well as the spear, the typical negro stands high in point of
civilization above the Australian.
Resembling the Negroes in cranial characters, the BUSHMEN of South
Africa differ from them in their yellowish brown skins, their tufted
hair, their remarkably small stature, and their tendency to fatty and
other integumentary outgrowths; nor is the wonderful click with which
their speech is interspersed to be overlooked in enumerating the
physical characteristics of this strange people.
The so-called "Drawidian" populations of Southern Hindostan lead us
back, physically as well as geographically, towards the Australians;
while the diminutive MINCOPIES of the Andaman Islands lie midway
between the Negro and Negrito races, and, as Mr. Busk has pointed
out, occasionally present the rare combination of Brachycephaly, or
short-headedness, with woolly hair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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