The ethnological position may be briefly summed up; and in order to
avoid any but the most indispensable detail the schedule of types and
variants and the scheme of reversion and survival in which they
are concerned are here presented with a diagrammatic meagerness and
simplicity which would not be admissible for any other purpose. The man
of our industrial communities tends to breed true to one or the other
of three main ethic types; the dolichocephalic-blond, the
brachycephalic-brunette, and the Mediterranean--disregarding minor and
outlying elements of our culture. But within each of these main ethnic
types the reversion tends to one or the other of at least two main
directions of variation; the peaceable or antepredatory variant and the
predatory variant. The former of these two characteristic variants
is nearer to the generic type in each case, being the reversional
representative of its type as it stood at the earliest stage
of associated life of which there is available evidence, either
archaeological or psychological. This variant is taken to represent the
ancestors of existing civilized man at the peaceable, savage phase of
life which preceded the predatory culture, the regime of status, and the
growth of pecuniary emulation. The second or predatory variant of the
types is taken to be a survival of a more recent modification of
the main ethnic types and their hybrids--of these types as they were
modified, mainly by a selective adaptation, under the discipline of
the predatory culture and the latter emulative culture of the
quasi-peaceable stage, or the pecuniary culture proper.
Under the recognized laws of heredity there may be a survival from a
more or less remote past phase. In the ordinary, average, or normal
case, if the type has varied, the traits of the type are transmitted
approximately as they have stood in the recent past--which may be called
the hereditary present. For the purpose in hand this hereditary present
is represented by the later predatory and the quasi-peaceable culture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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