among monkeys, should have been overlooked in man, when, in
reality, the negroes and Australians differ in precisely the same
manner from the other races; they having a broad partition, and
nostrils opening sideways, like the monkeys of South America, while
the other types of the human family have a narrow partition and
nostrils opening downward, like the monkeys of Asia and Africa.
Again, the minor differences, such as the obliquity of the anterior
teeth, the thickness of the lips, the projection of the
cheek-bones, the position of the eyes, the characteristic hair, or
wool, afford as constant differences as those by which the
chimpanzees, orangs, and gibbons are separated into distinct
genera; and their respective species differ no more than do the
Greeks, Germans, and Arabs,--or the Chinese, Tartars, and Finns,
--or the New Zealanders and Malays, which are respectively referred
to the same race. The truth is, that the different SPECIES admitted
by some among the orangs are in reality RACES among monkeys, or
else the races among men are nothing more than what are called
species among certain monkeys. . .Listen for a moment to the
following facts, and when you read this place a map of the world
before you. Upon a narrow strip of land along the Gulf of Guinea,
from Cape Palmas to the Gaboon, live two so-called species of
chimpanzee; upon the islands of Sumatra and Borneo live three or
four orangs; upon the shores of the Gulf of Bengal, including the
neighborhood of Calcutta, Burmah, Malacca, Sumatra, Borneo, and
Java together, ten or eleven species of gibbons, all of which are
the nearest relatives to the human family, some being as large as
certain races of men; altogether, fifteen species of anthropoid
monkeys playing their part in the animal population of the world
upon an area not equaling by any means the surface of Europe. Some
of these species are limited to Borneo, others to Sumatra, others
to Java alone, others to the peninsula of Malacca; that is to say
to tracts of land similar in extent to Spain, France, Italy, and
even to Ireland; distinct animals, considered by most naturalists
as distinct species, approaching man most closely in structural
eminence and size, limited to areas not larger than Spain or Italy.
Why, then, should not the primitive theatre of a nation of men have
been circumscribed within similar boundaries, and from the
beginning have been as independent as the chimpanzee of Guinea, or
the orangs of Borneo and Sumatra? Of course, the superior powers of
man have enabled him to undertake migrations, but how limited are
these, and how slight the traces they have left behind them. . .
Unfortunately for natural history, history so-called has recorded
more faithfully the doings of handfuls of adventurers than the real
history of the primitive nations with whom the migrating tribes
came into contact. But I hope it will yet be possible to dive under
these waves of migration, to remove, as it were, the trace of their
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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