Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/329

Rh knights' suits would be too small for the cuirassiers of the European armies; yet they were worn by the selected men, who were better fed, stronger, and more robust than the rest of the population. The bones of the ancient Gauls, which are uncovered in the excavations of tumuli, while they are of large dimensions, are comparable with those of the existing populations of many places in France.

The Egyptian mummies are the remains of persons of small or medium stature, as are also the Peruvian and Mexican mummies, and the mummies and bones found in the ancient monuments of India and Persia. And even the most ancient relics we possess of individuals of the human species, the bones of men who lived in the Tertiary period, an epoch the remote antiquity of which goes back for hundreds of centuries, do not show any important differences in the sizes of the primitive and of the modern man.

Considerable differences will be found to exist, when we compare the statures of the various races of mankind; and it is the exaggeration of this fact that has given rise to the legends of dwarf and giant peoples. Individuals of the supposed dwarf races would appear quite large if compared with real dwarfs. A dwarf much over three feet high begins to lose interest as a dwarf; if he reaches four feet and more, he ceases to be a dwarf, and becomes a "little man." Now, the well-shaped adults of the smaller human races always, with very few exceptions, exceed four feet in height. These races are not, therefore, dwarfs, but simply small races. It is, nevertheless, interesting to study them, and compare them with the larger races. So, in these latter races, men much exceeding seven feet are exceptional, and merit the name of giants. Still, the average of stature in these larger races is much more considerable than in the smaller races; and a man of the average size, among them, would be a giant compared with an average specimen of the smaller races.

Among the smaller races are the Esquimaux, averaging five feet, two inches; the Lapps—men, five feet one inch, women, four feet seven inches; the Akkas seen by Schweinfurth in Africa; the Negritos of the Philippine and Andaman Islands, and Malacca; the dwarf race of Madagascar; and the Bushmen, whose height ranges from four feet five inches to four feet six and three fourths inches.

Among the large races may be mentioned the Norwegians, the Canadians, the North American Indians, the Caffres, the Patagonians, and the Polynesians, the average height of the last two of which is estimated at about six feet. The difference in the mean height of the various human races is, therefore, that between four feet five inches and six feet, or one foot seven inches. The mean between these two numbers is about five feet three inches; and this standard is generally agreed upon by anthropologists as a division line in the approximative classification of the races according to their height. Those are called medium races which average from five and one fourth to five