Half Hours With Modern Scientists: Lectures and EssaysTyndall, John
Philosophy
Half Hours With Modern Scientists: Lectures and Essays
Tyndall, John
Science
But the remains of that being which is supposed to have been the
progenitor of man may have been discovered a short time since in the
cave of Naulette, Belgium, with the bones of the extinct rhinoceros
and elephant.
We all admit the existence of higher and lower races, the latter
being those which we now find to present greater or less
approximations to the apes. The peculiar structural characters that
belong to the negro in his most typical form are of that kind,
however great may be the distance of his remove therefrom. The
flattening of the nose and prolongation of the jaws constitute such
a resemblance; so are the deficiency of the calf of the leg, and the
obliquity of the pelvis, which approaches more the horizontal
position than it does in the Caucasian. The investigations made at
Washington during the war with reference to the physical
characteristics of the soldiers show that the arms of the negro are
from one to two inches longer than those of the whites: another
approximation to the ape. In fact, this race is a species of the
genus Homo, as distinct in character from the Caucasian as those we
are accustomed to recognize in other departments of the animal
kingdom; but he is not distinct by isolation, since intermediate
form’s between him and the other species can be abundantly found.
And here let it be particularly observed that two of the most
prominent characters of the negro are those of immature stages of
the Indo-European race in its characteristic types. The deficient
calf is the character of infants at a very early stage; but, what is
more important, the flattened bridge of the nose and shortened nasal
cartilages are universally immature conditions of the same parts in
the Indo-European. Any one may convince himself of that by examining
the physiognomies of infants. In some races—_e.g._, the Slavic—this
undeveloped character persists later than in some others. The Greek
nose, with its elevated bridge, coincides not only with æsthetic
beauty, but with developmental perfection.
This is, however, only “_inexact_ parallelism,” as the characters of
the hair, etc., cannot be explained on this principle _among
existing races_. The embryonic characters mentioned are probably a
remnant of those characteristic of the primordial race or species.
But the man of Naulette, if he be not a monstrosity, in a still more
distinct and apelike species. The chin, that marked character of
other species of men, is totally wanting, and the dentition is quite
approximate to the man-like apes, and different from that of modern
men. The form is very massive, as in apes. That he was not abnormal
is rendered probable by approximate characters seen in a jaw from
the cave of Puy-sur-Aube, and less marked in the lowest races of
Australia and New Caledonia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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