Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/336

324 III. The Caucasian, or white division, according to my view, includes the two groups called by Professor Huxley Xanthochroi and Melanochroi, which, though differing in color of eyes and hair, agree so closely in all other anatomical characters, as far, at all events, as has at present been demonstrated, that it seems preferable to consider them as modifications of one great type than as primary divisions of the species.

Whatever their origin, they are now intimately blended, though in different proportions, throughout the whole of the region of the earth they inhabit; and it is to the rapid extension of both branches of this race that the great changes now taking place in the ethnology of the world are mainly due.

A. The Xanthochroi, or blonde type, with fair hair, eyes, and complexion, chiefly inhabit Northern Europe—Scandinavia, Scotland, and North Germany—but, much mixed with the next group, they extend as far as Northern Africa and Afghanistan, Their mixture with Mongoloid people in North Europe has given rise to the Lapps and Finns.

B. Melanochroi, with black hair and eyes, and skin of almost all shades from white to black. They comprise the great majority of the inhabitants of Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and Southwest Asia, and consist mainly of the Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic families. The Dravidians of India, and probably the Ainos of Japan, the Maoutze of China, also belong to this race, which may have contributed something to the mixed character of some tribes of Indo-China and the Polynesian Islands, and, as before said, given at least the characters of the hair to the otherwise Negroid inhabitants of Australia. In Southern India they are probably mixed with a Negrito element, and in Africa, where their habitat becomes conterminous with that of the negroes, numerous cross-races have sprung up between them all along the frontier line. The ancient Egyptians were nearly pure Melanochroi, though often showing in their features traces of their frequent intermarriage with their Ethiopian neighbors to the south. The Copts and fellahs of modern Egypt are their little-changed descendants.

In offering this scheme of classification of the human species, I have not thought it necessary to compare it in detail with the numerous systems suggested by previous anthropologists. These will all be found in the general treatises on the subject. As I have remarked before, in its broad outlines it scarcely differs from that proposed by Cuvier nearly sixty years ago, and that the result of the enormous increase of our knowledge during that time having caused such little change is the best testimony to its being a truthful representation of the facts. Still, however, it can only be looked upon as an approximation. Whatever care be bestowed upon the arrangement of already acquired details, whatever judgment be shown in their due subordination one to another, the acquisition of new knowledge may at any time call for a complete or partial rearrangement of our system.