Man, Past and PresentKeane, A. H. (Augustus Henry)
History
Man, Past and Present
Keane, A. H. (Augustus Henry)
Anthropology; Ethnology
From all this we see how fully justified is J. W. Powell's remark that
the natural history of early man becomes more and more a geological, and
not merely an ethnological problem[63]. We also begin to understand how
it is that, after an existence of some five score millenniums, the first
specialised human varieties have diverged greatly from the original
types, which have thus become almost "ideal quantities," the subjects
rather of palaeontological than of strictly anthropological studies.
And here another consideration of great moment presents itself. During
these long ages some of the groups--most African negroes south of the
equator, most Oceanic negroes (Negritoes and Papuans), and Australian
and American aborigines--have remained in their original habitats ever
since what may be called the first settlement of the earth by man.
Others again, the more restless or enterprising peoples, such as the
Mongols, Manchus, Turks, Ugro-Finns, Arabs, and most Europeans, have no
doubt moved about somewhat freely; but these later migrations, whether
hostile or peaceable, have for the most part been confined to regions
presenting the same or like physical and climatic conditions. Wherever
different climatic zones have been invaded, the intruders have failed to
secure a permanent footing, either perishing outright, or disappearing
by absorption or more or less complete assimilation to the aboriginal
elements. Such are some "black Arabs" in Egyptian Sudan, other Semites
and Hamites in Abyssinia and West Sudan (Himyarites, Fulahs and others),
Finns and Turks in Hungary and the Balkan Peninsula (Magyars, Bulgars,
Osmanli), Portuguese and Netherlanders in Malaysia, English in tropical
or sub-tropical lands, such as India, where Eurasian half-breeds alone
are capable of founding family groups.
The human varieties are thus seen to be, like all other zoological
species, the outcome of their several environments. They are what
climate, soil, diet, pursuits and inherited characters have made them,
so that all sudden transitions are usually followed by disastrous
results[64]. "To urge the emigration of women and children, or of any
save those of the most robust health, to the tropics, may not be to
murder in the first degree, but it should be classed, to put it mildly,
as incitement to it[65]." Acclimatisation may not be impossible but in
all extreme cases it can be effected only at great sacrifice of life,
and by slow processes, the most effective of which is perhaps Natural
Selection. By this means we may indeed suppose the world to have been
first peopled.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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