On the phenomena of hybridity in the genus HomoBroca, Paul
Science
On the phenomena of hybridity in the genus Homo
Broca, Paul
Hominids -- Hybridization; Miscegenation
It is not merely in the region of the mop-headed Papuans that
the other three races are to be met with. The Malays, an invading
people _par excellence_, have, like the English, established themselves
on all the coasts accessible to their vessels, and if the mop-headed
race occupies only a very confined district, and is perfectly unknown
elsewhere where the same elements are present, we are permitted to
conclude that it is not the result of an intermixture. Moreover, Dr.
Latham, the most zealous of Dr. Prichard’s pupils, informs us that Mr.
Earle has seen and described “the real and undoubted hybrids” of the
Papuans and Malays, and that these are altogether different from the
mop-headed Papuans.[10]
It will be perceived that the example of the Papuans is a worse
selection than that of the Griquas, since it is very probable that
those mop-headed men, the type of which was so perfectly described
by Dampier two centuries ago, having been since preserved without
alteration, are a pure race. Granting even that it is demonstrated
that they belong to a hybrid race, they can scarcely be cited as a
mixed race persisting by themselves, since, so far from living secluded
from the two races from which they are said to be the issue, they
live with them in the same localities. MM. Quoy and Gaimard, in their
description of these pretended mongrels, add that there were Negroes
among them (by which name they designate the Papuans proper) which
formed a part of the tribe which visited us daily. There were even
among them two individuals of a higher complexion, which, rightly or
wrongly, were considered to be descended from Europeans or Chinese. It
was thus a very mixed people. Mr. Lesson, speaking of the population
of the small island of Waigiou,[11] says that two races are found
there, the Malays and the Alfourous, besides the hybrid races of the
Papuans: “These are men without vigour or moral energy, subjected to
the authority of the Malay rajahs, and frequently reduced to slavery
by the surrounding islanders.”[12] But it is well known what is the
consequence of slavery, especially under an equatorial climate, and
among a people given to incontinency. It is, then, simply impossible
that the mop-headed race of the Isle of Waigiou should remain free from
intermixture with the Alfourous and the Malays, and if this race be
really hybrid, it is not easy to see how Prichard and his adherents are
authorised to assert that they persist by themselves.
The three examples adduced by Prichard having thus proved without any
absolute value, a diametrically opposite doctrine has been advanced. It
has been said that since this author was obliged to go so far for such
indifferent examples, it amounts to a proof that he could not find any
others,[13] and the conclusion was arrived at that a mixed race neither
has nor could have a permanent existence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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