Race, John R. Baker

The entire book can be downloaded ‘here’ (274 Mo). And here is the PDF version.

“In his posthumous book [187] he [Camper] shows the skull of the orang-utan again, this time with the horizontal plane indicated in his standard way, and he gives the facial angles of this animal, of an unspecified monkey, and of certain races of man. His figures are these: monkey, 42°; orang-utan, 58° (the same figure as he had given before); a young Negro, 70°; a European, 80° (Fig. 3).” (p. 29)

“The German anthropologist von Eickstedt considered that the Europid smell was particularly strong in people of the Nordid subrace and other subraces of northern and central Europe. He remarked that the smell was pleasant to persons of the same race, but that to the Japanese it seemed ‘pungent and rancid’. [302]” (p. 174)

“It is stated by Adachi that all Negroes are smelly to the Japanese, and that the smell is very repulsive to them. [5] … Many records of the strong smell of Negroes to persons of other races are quoted by the German anthropologist Andree. [22] He mentions that the Masai of East Africa, who belong to the Aethiopid subrace of the Europids and are thus quite distinct from typical Negroes, find the smell of the coastal natives ‘verhaszt’ (odious).” (p. 175)

“The Aethiopids (‘Eastern Hamites’ or ‘Erythriotes’) of Ethiopia and Somaliland are an essentially Europid subrace with some Negrid admixture. Typically these are slender people of medium stature, dolicho- or mesocranial; the face is more or less of the Europid form, with rather narrow, prominent nose; there is no prognathism (Fig. 30B, p. 230). Various parts of the body give evidence, however, of Negrid influence. The skin is reddish- or blackish-brown. The dark brown or black scalp-hair is neither long, like that of most Europids, nor very short, as in Negrids. It is variable in texture in different local forms, but as a rule it is not wavy, like that of typical Europids, nor wound into many tight spirals (what the French call ‘cheveux crépus’) like that of Negrids, but of the intermediate condition described as ‘frizzy’ (‘cheveux frisés’), in which each hair curls into several ringlets, the spiral having a diameter of 1 cm or more.” (p. 225-226)

“In one sense the word ‘Moor’ means the Mohammedan Berbers and Arabs of north-western Africa, with some Syrians, who conquered most of Spain in the eighth century and dominated the country for hundreds of years, leaving behind some magnificent examples of their architecture as a lasting memorial of their presence. These so-called ‘Moors’ were far in advance of any of the peoples of northern Europe at that time, not only in architecture but also in literature, science, technology, industry, agriculture; and their civilization had a permanent influence on Spain. [1123, 860, 472] They were Europids, unhybridized with members of any other race [Note : see also ‘The racial fuss surrounding the “Moors” in medieval Europe’, HTML– PDF version]. The Berbers were (and are) Mediterranids, probably with some admixture from the Cromagnid subrace of ancient times. [302, 47] The Arabs were Orientalids, the Syrians probably of mixed Orientalid and Armenid stock. The skin of Orientalids and of some Berbers darkens readily under the influence of sunlight, and many of them become quite dark in the exposed parts of the body.” (p. 226-227)

“One of the first to give an adequate account of the physical characters of the true Moors was the French natural historian Michel Adanson, who went to Senegal as a young man and lived there for five years. [7] The fullest description is that by Collignon and Deniker, [218] who brought together the scattered information on the subject and carefully examined a few Moors who had come to Paris in 1895 – the first ever seen in France. They reached the conclusion that the true Moors are hybrids between Berbers and West African Negrids (that is to say, Sudanids), the Berber contribution predominating. This conclusion was accepted by Eickstedt. [302]” (p. 227)

“These authors [Roberts and Hiorns] used the principles that resulted from their theoretical investigation to make estimates of the European contribution to the genetic constitution of American Negro. Using evidence from different sources and making different assumptions, they obtained five figures, not widely divergent from one another, as follows: 23.2%, 23.4%, 26.0%, 26.1%, and 26.3%.” (p. 229)

“Basing his study on the frequency of this gene, Reed reached the conclusion that the European contribution to the genetic composition of the Negro population of Oakland (California) was about 22%, of Detroit 26%, and of New York about 19%. Much lower figures were obtained in the southern states; in Charleston (South Carolina) the Europid contribution amounted to less than 4%. The much lower proportion of Europid genes in southern Negroes should be borne in mind when the results of cognition testing in the U.S.A. are considered.” (p. 229-230)

“It follows from what has been said that if Jacobs had restricted his interpretation of the word ‘Jew’ so as to exclude all who did not practise the religious rites of Judaism, he would not have been able to name a single ‘illustrious’ Jew among those who lived in the century covered by his studies, and the number of ’eminent’ Jews would have been considerably reduced.” (p. 235)

“There is a widespread impression that those Europeans who are commonly called Jews tend to conform to an ethnic type distinguished by facial features, so that a Jew can be recognized without any need to apply a religious test …” (p. 236)

“Joseph Jacobs … refers in another paper to a particular character of the type of nose often seen in Jews, which he illustrates diagrammatically in the sketch here reproduced as Fig. 34A. [545] It results from the facts already mentioned that when the nose is viewed from the left side, its edge, continuing as a curve into the edge of the nasal septum and thence into the deep groove already mentioned, forms a figure resembling an italic 6. As Jacobs remarks, when the part of the figure that is twisted round is omitted (Fig. 34B), the characteristic form to a large extent disappears, while if the part representing the edge of the nasal septum is drawn horizontally and the groove is not shown (because weakly developed in the subject), the whole character of the organ is changed, and it no longer resembles the nose of a Jew (Fig. 34C).” (p. 241)

“The evidence from blood-groups bears on the theory that the Ashkenazim have both Armenids and Orientalids for ancestors. Fig. 35 is a diagram in which the frequency of the gene responsible for blood-group ‘A’ is represented by black rectangles, and that for group ‘B’ by dotted ones. On the left side of the diagram the frequency of these genes in certain Jewish communities is compared with that found among Bedawin (a typical Orientalid group) and Armenians. The Jews represented here were immigrants of Ashkenazic stock to Tel Aviv, and Russian and Polish Jews; it may be assumed that all, or nearly all, were Ashkenazim. It will be noticed that the Jews were intermediate in their blood-group genes between Armenians and Bedawin. It must be borne in mind, however, that an intermediate position in a diagram of this sort does not by itself indicate a double origin; it can only support evidence from other sources. The right-hand part of Fig. 35 shows that Jews living among Gentiles retain their characteristic blood-group genes. The Dutch Jews and Russian Jews resemble one another in this respect and differ from the Gentiles among whom they live. The frequency of the gene for ‘A’ is about the same in Dutch Jews as in the Dutch population as a whole, but there is a big difference in the gene for ‘B’; and Russian Jews differ widely in both these frequencies from the Russian population as a whole.” (p. 242-243)

“For many purposes the best measure of prognathism is the Ganzprofilwinkel, that is to say the angle made with the standard (Frankfurt) horizontal plane by a line joining the nasion to the prosthion. The mean figure for Australids quoted by Martin and Saller is 76.8°. [708] This is the lowest (i.e. represents the greatest degree of prognathism) of all the figures quoted for total prognathism by these authors among the various ethnic taxa of man.  The prognathism of the region below the nose (alveolar prognathism) averages 66.6°, so that this part projects even more acutely than the upper part of the face. It was claimed by Thomson and Randall-Maciver at the beginning of this century, in their study of ancient Egyptian skulls, that the basion-nasion line is a better basis for the measurement of prognathism than the standard horizontal plane. [1046] The ‘nasion angle’ subtended at the nasion by the lines joining this point to the basion and the prosthion, was used by Morant in various biometric studies, [762, 763, 764] and was strongly recommended as a measure of prognathism by Weidenreich, who used it in his classical work on Pekin Man. [1128] The greater this angle, the higher the degree of prognathism. He gives 100° as the average for modern pongids; 81° for Java Man; 72° for Pekin Man. Morant found 72.1° from measurements of 44 Australid male skulls of the typical ‘A’ group. [763] He found the mean nasion angle in skulls from 15 western European ethnic taxa to be 65.0°; [764] in those from sixteen Anglo-Saxon burials in England and Scotland, 62.1°. [762]” (p. 281-282)

“Australid brains that have been weighed amount to about 85% of the normal Europid organ. The gyri (convolutions) of the cerebral hemispheres are said to be simpler in arrangement [914] and less tortuous [293] than those of Europeans.” (p. 292)

“Four brains of Australids in the Cambridge University Anatomical Museum were examined by W.L.H. Duckworth … A sulcus lunatus of typical pongid type was found in two of the four specimens. One of them, copied from Duckworth’s drawing, is represented in Fig. 49B. The resemblance to Fig. 49A (orang-utan) is obvious.” (p. 294)

“Captain James Cook (then Lieutenant), on the homeward voyage of his first circumnavigation of the world, called at Cape Town in 1771, and took the opportunity to investigate what he called ‘the great question among natural historians, whether the women of this country have or have not that fleshy flap or apron which has been called the Sinus pudoris’. A local physician declared that he had examined many hundreds of Hottentot women, and ‘never saw one without two fleshy, or rather skinny appendages, proceeding from the upper part of the Labia, in appearance somewhat resembling the teats of a cow, but flat; they hung down, he said, before the Pudendum, and were in different subjects of different lenghts, in some not more than half an inch, in others three or four inches’. [223]” (p. 314)

“It is said that in former times Bushwomen deliberately exposed the labia minora to the view of men in the course of erotic dances. [288] What appear to be enormously elongated labia minora are represented in many examples of Bushman rock art (Fig. 55C). Although the artists were experts at the naturalistic representation of animals (see Fig. 82, p. 547), and also produced tolerable likenesses of Negrids and Europids, their representations of members of their own taxon, both male and female, were highly stylized and fanciful.” (p. 317)

“It is improbable that the enlarged buttocks of female Khoisanids represent a storehouse of nutriment on which the body may call in times of scarcity. … It is far more likely that the buttocks became enlarged in response to sexual selection. This is what Darwin implied in the case of Hottentot women, in whom ‘the posterior part of the body projects in a wonderful manner’. [258] He mentions the admiration felt for this peculiarity by the males of their tribe.” (p. 318)

“About this time very extraordinary notions about Europeans were entertained by some of the natives of this part of Africa. [373] It was supposed that they were not actually men at all, but marine creatures that traversed the ocean in large shells. Their food was the tusks of elephants, which were laid on the shore for them to take away. In return, they brought beads, which they had collected from the bottom of the sea.” (p. 340)

“The chief tools made by Negrids blacksmiths were hoes (especially the heart-shaped variety called molote), knives, and choppers, but they were also capable of making delicate instruments, such as razors; and the Zulu and Wanyoro were skilful enough to make iron needles. … Another very delicate instrument was made by the Bongo for a purpose that would astonish Europeans, for they were designed to pluck out the eyebrows and eyelashes of the women. Such instruments, made by Negrids, are often called ‘pincers’, but this name is incorrect, since there was no pivot, the points having been directly joined by a springy piece of iron. ‘Tongs’ is the right name.” (p. 353)

“Schweinfurth remarks that the loggoh kullutty was the only equivalent of money in central Africa; but he must have meant the only equivalent that was made in central Africa, for as we have seen, imported beads served the same purpose over a very wide area.” (p. 353)

“Among the striking negative characters of the Ethiopian zoogeographical region of Wallace [1116] – that is to say, the whole of Africa from the southern part of the Sahara to the extreme south of the continent – is the absence from the indigenous fauna of certain animals that have long been domesticated in other parts of the world. Among these are the subfamilies Ovinae (sheep) and Caprinae (goats and their allies), and the genera Bos (cattle), Sus (boar), and Gallus (fowl). Certain members of these subfamilies and genera are much more frequently mentioned by the explorers as being kept by the Negroes in the domesticated state than any other animal except perhaps the dog.” (p. 356-357)

“A fictitious value was placed on the animal, depending largely – in the case of the sanga – on the length of the horns. Cattle were used in place of money, especially in the purchase of wives. So intense was the interest of some of the pastoral tribes in their herds that they despised and neglected the cultivation of crops and sometimes suffered starvation as a result. Baker writes of the ‘Kytch’, a Nilotid tribe, ‘The misery of these unfortunate blacks is beyond description; they will not kill their cattle, neither do they taste meat unless an animal dies of sickness; they will not work, thus they frequently starve.’ … The Dinka castrated one-third of their bulls. These castrated animals were useless, since, like other cattle, they were not slaughtered for eating nor used for riding or transport. ‘Ask the Dinka what good they get from their possessions of oxen,’ write Schweinfurth, ‘and they have ever the answer ready that it is quite enough if they get fat and look nice’.” (p. 360)

“Schweinfurth makes the interesting observation that the dogs of the Shillouk and Dinka tribes (both Ni) resembled the pariah-dogs of the Egyptians and Bedouins in lacking the dew-claw (hallux-claw) of the hind foot, which always exists (unless removed) in European dogs. He mentions that the Azande (Pan 3), a cannibal tribe occupying territory to the north-west of Lake Albert, maintained a special breed of fat, short-haired dogs with large erect ears, pointed muzzles, and a short tail curled like that of a young pig. This breed, which was used partly for food, also lacked the dew-claw of the hind foot. Schweinfurth’s drawing of this dog shows a remarkable resemblance to the breed fashionable in the Middle Kingdom of ancient Egypt, and provides strong evidence that the Azande obtained their dogs from the north. It is probable that dogs spread through the continent from North Africa in an already domesticated state.” (p. 363)

“Several tribes, among them the Abanga (Pan 3) and Monbuttu, practised circumcision … It is uncertain whether circumcision can be regarded as indigenous among Negrid tribes. If not, it must have spread in the distant past from Arab or Turkish sources; but the Monbuttu circumcised at puberty, which is not the Muslim practice.” (p. 367)

“The sanitary laws of Buganda required every man to build for himself something corresponding to a lavatory, but no details of its construction are available. Schweinfurth says that Negrids were generally more observant of ‘decorum’ (by which he presumably means privacy) in respect of defaecation ‘than any Mohammedan’; but he never saw anything of the nature of a lavatory, with this single exception, that the king of the Monbuttu had a little conical hut, provided with sanitary arrangements identical with those usual in Turkish dwelling-houses.” (p. 368)

“The wheel appears to have been unknown throughout the secluded area. Not only is there no record of its use in pottery or the grinding of corn, but no pivoted circular object, made by Negrids, is anywhere mentioned in the works of the explorers. The people of Linyanti, for instance, had never seen a wheeled vehicle till Livingstone arrived there.” (p. 373)

“The guinea-fowl, Numida meleagris, is palatable, and very easily maintained in captivity, but the explorers nowhere mention its being kept as a domestic animal by Negrids. This is all the more remarkable in view of its great abundance. … Guinea-fowl occur not only in the part of Africa explored by Schweinfurth, but in southern Africa as well; but Kroll, [615] in his detailed study of the domestic animals of the ‘Bantu’ (that is, of the Kafrids and Pan 1), makes no mention of this bird, and thus reinforces the negative evidence of the explorers.” (p. 375)

“The explorers express little appreciation of the ability of Negrids as composers of music, though some exceptions to this are to be found in their writings. Schweinfurth considered that among the many tribes he visited, only the Mittu (Pan 3) had any real talent for the composition of melodies. … The fact is that the explorers, being Europeans, looked for melody and harmony, and were usually disappointed; but they lacked the experience that would enable them to appreciate to the full the complexity of Negrid rhythms, which are perhaps unequalled in the music of any other race of mankind. Similarly, a Negrid might think poorly of European music, on account of the relative simplicity of rhythm in most of it.” (p. 379-380)

“Referring to the people of all the many tribes among whom he travelled, Du Chaillu remarks that ‘… their whole lives are saddened and embittered by the fears of evil spirits, witchcraft, and other kindred superstitions under which they labour’. ‘Their religion, if such it may be called,’ says Livingstone, ‘is one of dread.’ (p. 381)

“Nearly all Negrids, according to Livingstone had unbounded faith in the efficacy of fetishes, or, as he called them, ‘charms’. It may be remembered that belief in fetishes, more than anything else, had caused Kant to regard Negrids as intellectually inferior (p. 19).” (p. 382)

“The Azande (Pan 3) were firmly convinced that the possession of certain roots, charmed by a magician, gave success in hunting. Those who killed an exceptionally great number of antelopes or buffaloes were not credited, as a general rule, with any special skill in the use of their weapons: their achievement was attributed to the possession of the appropriate fetishes.” (p. 383)

“The Pan 1 territory through which Livingstone passed was far to the south-east of Gabon, but his experiences were in many respects similar to those of Du Chaillu. He describes ordeal by poison derived from a plant called goho, inflicted on women suspected of sorcery. Those who vomited were regarded as innocent, but those who defaecated were put to death by burning. The women eagerly desired the test, because they believed implicitly in its reliability and were certain that it would reveal their innocence (p. 621). In Angola a poisonous infusion of a certain tree was used. The accuser would repeat his charge if the woman vomited, and she would be forced to repeat the dose until she died. Every year hundreds of women came to a particular place near Cassange to undergo this ordeal, and perished as a result (p. 434). The people believed that death was in all cases due to one of two causes: either witchcraft, or failure to appease disembodied spirits by use of the appropriate charms (p. 440).” (p. 387)

“Livingstone states clearly that throughout all the country traversed by him from 20°S. northwards (that is to say, Pan 1 territory), people were slaughtered to accompany the departed souls of chiefs.” (p. 387)

“Like Du Chaillu, Livingstone mentions the custom among certain tribes of putting to death one member of a pair of twins, and he also says that in one tribe a child that showed even a minor deformity (for instance, an unusual sequence in cutting of the teeth) was not allowed to live (p. 577).” (pp. 387-388)

“In several places the native inhabitants knew that cannibalism existed elsewhere; Speke and Baker give examples of this. Fynn mentions a tribe living in the vicinity of the Zulu that was stated to have taken to eating human flesh when their cattle were stolen; but this was not confirmed by direct observation, and the vast majority of Kafrid tribes were never cannibals, so far as is known.” (p. 390)

“The Azande made no secret of their use of human flesh as nutriment. They spoke freely on the subject, telling the explorer that no corpses were rejected as unfit for food, unless the person had died of some loathsome skin-disease. … Any person who died without relatives to protect his body was sure to be devoured in the very district in which he had lived; and in times of war, any member of a conquered tribe was regarded as suitable for eating. … Schweinfurth came across a baby, about a day old, the offspring of a woman just taken away by slave-traders. It was left, gasping feebly in the full glare of the noon-day sun. The Azande awaited its death and the meal that was to follow.” (p. 392)

“Nevertheless Schweinfurth stresses the poverty of Negrid languages, in particular those of the Bongo and Azande, in words denoting abstract ideas He mentions also a number of examples of single words, used by the Bongo to express similar but not identical ideas. For instance, there was no means of distinguishing verbally between shadow and cloud, or between bitter and annoying.” (p. 393)

“There was no written language in any part of the secluded area, and indeed it was found difficult to convey to the native inhabitants the idea of what was meant by it. The Ovambo frankly disbelieved that Galton could express words by writing on paper, and he had to prove that this was possible by jotting down the names of a number of people and then reading them out.” (p. 394)

“Some of the Negrid peoples knew nothing of their history. Among the Rek, a section of the Dinka (Ni), ‘… all the lives and deeds of men have been long forgotten’. The people were ‘without traditions, without history’. Speke writes of the Wanyamwezi (Ka) that ‘There are no historical traditions known to the people.’ … Livingstone, however, did find here and there some clues to former times.” (p. 394)

“Knowledge of mathematics was everywhere rudimentary, though there were differences between the tribes in this respect. The Ovaherero seem to have occupied an extreme position in the scale. Galton claimed that though they might possess words of higher numbers, they did not actually make use of any numeral higher than three. When they wished to express four, they used their fingers instead of an appropriate word. The Madi, according to Schweinfurth, only counted up to ten; greater numbers were generally indicated by gestures. To convey how many bearers were required, reeds were tied together in bundles of ten; these were handed to a chief to express the total number he was asked to supply. Similarly, a chief impersonating Kamurasi sent twenty-four small pieces of straw to denote the number of presents given to the latter by Speke, and ten to indicate the insufficiency of the number given by Baker. It seems possible, however, that in these cases words denoting number would have been used instead of symbols, if information had only to be transmitted from one native speaker to another, without any need to be certain that a foreigner understood it. The use of fingers to convey number was, however, widespread. The Zulu had numerals to express large numbers, but used their fingers nevertheless. Chaka asked Fynn to count a huge drove of oxen. He counted 5,654 and announced the result. The crowd of people who had watched this performance burst out laughing, since he had not once counted up to ten with his fingers; it was impossible to shake their incredulity. The Ovambo, on the contrary, counted Galton’s oxen (a very much smaller number) as quickly as he could have done it himself. It is unfortunate that there is so little information in the explorers’ books about the Negrids’ ability to calculate. Galton says that it would ‘sorely puzzle’ the Ovaherero to realize that if one sheep cost two sticks of tobacco, two sheep would cost four. He regarded this tribe as ‘intensely stupid’, and intellectually very much inferior to the Ovambo. Schweinfurth tells of a game (probably not of Negrid origin) called mungala, played by most of the tribes in the Bahr-el-Ghazal country; this required considerable facility in ready reckoning.” (pp. 395-396)

“Schweinfurth remarks of the countryside at the border of Dinka (Ni), Dyoor (Ni), and Bongo (Pan 3) territory, ‘The extreme productiveness of the luxuriant tropics is well exemplified in these fields, which for thirteen years have undergone continual tillage without once lying fallow and with no other manuring but what is afforded by the uprooted weeds.’ The land of the Mittu (Pan 3) ‘… is very productive. … On account of its fertility the land requires little labour in its culture.’ ‘The Monbuttoo [Pan 3] land greets us as an Eden upon earth.’ In some districts of the Azande ‘… the exuberance is unsurpassed. … the cultivation of the soil is supremely easy. The entire land is pre-eminently rich in many spontaneous products, animal and vegetable alike, that conduce to the direct maintenance of human life.’ Baker says of the country in what is now the borderland between Sudan and Uganda, ‘… we were in a beautiful open country, naturally drained by its undulating character, and abounding in most beautiful low pasturage’. He describes Shooa (Ladwong) in Acholi (Ni) territory, as ‘… “flowing with milk and honey”; fowls, butter, goats, were in abundance and ridiculously cheap’.” (pp. 397-398)

“… he [Livingstone] writes, ‘To one who has observed the hard toil of the poor in old civilized countries, the state in which the inhabitants here live is one of glorious ease. … Food abounds, and very little labour is required for its cultivation; the soil is so rich that no manure is required’.” (p. 398)

“It is questionable, however, whether the inhabitants of the secluded area were in a worse situation, in respect of illness, than those of comparable tropical and subtropical countries elsewhere, in some of which, especially India, great advances in intellectual life had been made from remote times onwards. … The explorers certainly do not present a picture of universal sickness among the inhabitants of the inland parts of Africa. Du Chaillu says of the Ashira (Pan 1), ‘The natives are generally tolerably healthy. I have seen cases of what I judge the leprosy, but they have little fever among them, or other dangerous diseases.’ … Galton says of Ovamboland that ‘There are no diseases in these parts except slight fever, frequent ophthalmia, and stomach complaints.’ … he [Schweinfurth] remarks that ‘My health was by no means impaired, but, on the contrary, I gained fresh vigour in the pure air of the southern highlands.’ … he [Livingstone] remarked that the hilly ridges of this region ‘may even be recommended as a sanatorium for those whose enterprise leads them on to Africa. … they afford a prospect to Europeans, of situations superior in point of salubrity to any of those on the coast’. He says also that ‘… they resemble that most healthy of all healthy climates, the interior of South Africa, near and adjacent to the [Kalahari] Desert’.” (pp. 399–400)

“Still, although building in stone would not have developed far without the immense stimulus of the gold-trade, it is impossible to attribute the overall design of the buildings to outsiders. The irregularity of the plans is not suggestive of foreign control. One cannot suppose that a literate person, in drawing the plan on paper, would have designed the Great Enclosure at Zimbabwe as it actually exists. Retaining walls, which form the major part of the ruins at Khami and elsewhere, cannot be attributed to Arabs, who were not accustomed to build them.” (p. 407)

“There are, however, some suggestions of foreign influence in minor details of architecture. It has been claimed that the chevron decoration at the top of the wall that encircles the Great Enclosure at Zimbabwe (Fig. 67), and other comparable decorations elsewhere, resemble Arabian designs. [54, 1175] The four little turrets on the western wall of the Western Enclosure of the ‘Acropolis’ may well represent someone’s recollection of a minaret seen (but obviously not understood) at Sofala (cf. Gayre [396]). The high quality of the masonry at such places as Dhlo-Dhlo and Khami (Figs. 68 and 69B) may owe something, too, to Portuguese influence.” (p. 408)

“Zimbabwe has been included as one of the subjects of a fine book entitled Vanished civilizations. [821] It may be queried whether the term ‘civilization’ is fully applicable here. … We see no sign of anything that might have been a school, far less a university; the people were illiterate, and no native record of anything exists, apart from the stones themselves, …” (pp. 408-409)

“There is a suggestion that a very rudely developed system of picture-writing had existed from former times among the Vai people, … but the evidence for this is weak, and it has not been generally accepted. The Vai people of 1927 had no knowledge of the supposed picture-writing of their remote ancestors; [598] and in any case the great majority of the signs appear to be non-pictorial inventions of Bukele’s group.” (p. 410)

“The heads represent a wide range of ethnic taxa. The first fact that strikes one is that few of them represent typical Negrids of any subrace.” (p. 414)

“The Ife heads of the ‘ruler’ group cannot be assigned with confidence to any ethnic taxon that exists at the present day. Most of their morphological features suggest that they represent a racial hybrid, predominantly Europid in ancestry, possibly with some Negrid admixture indicated by the everted lips and slightly widened nose. … The identity of the sculptors has not been established. … The heads have been examined by specialists in the sculpture of Africa (including Egypt), Persia, India, and Europe, but they have failed to find evidence that would definitely establish cultural affinities with any particular country. [739] … [Segy] considers that ‘such an eruption of a new style as that of Ife must have been the effect of a foreign influence’. [955] In his opinion this style could only have been achieved by artists for whom it was already an established tradition. Like Frobenius, he inclines to the probability that the art was derived from the Mediterranean region, and he remarks that the heads ‘have a classical Greco-Roman cast’.” (pp. 416-417)

“The mean IQ of Negro schoolchildren in the southern states was 80.6; of those in the intermediate (‘Border’) and northern states, respectively 89.8 and 89.7. … The combined mean IQ, as calculated by Shuey, was 85, but the figures varied considerably in different parts of the country, from 77 in the northern rural districts to 91 in the intermediate urban. … The Progressive Matrices were tried with Negro and Europid children aged seven to nine in a population of low socio-economic grade in a north-eastern city. The mean Negro IQ resulting from this test was 80.5, the Europid 90.8. It may be remembered that this very ingenious culture-free test involves inductive reasoning and is supposed to be highly loaded for g.” (pp. 484-485)

“McGurk carried out a rather elaborate experiment to find out how the cultural environment of the home affects responses to a cognition test. [723, 724] The testees were High School students, 213 of them Negroes and the same number Europids. Each Negro was ‘matched’ as exactly as possible with a Europid by consideration of his age and of a wide variety of social and economic factors, including the school he attended and the curriculum he followed. … The Europids surpassed the Negroes easily on the non-cultural questions, but by a smaller margin on the cultural ones.” (p. 489)

“A group of almost exactly one-quarter of all the Negroes, consisting of those who were judged ‘lowest’ in socio-economic status, and their matched Europid counterparts, were considered separately. It was found that in this selected group the Europids again did better than the Negroes on the non-cultural questions, by a significant margin; but on the cultural ones the Negroes surpassed the Europids (though the difference was not statistically significant).” (p. 489)

“[Shuey] finds that those in the ‘high’ class have tended, in general, to attain an IQ rating much lower than that of Europids of the same class; lower, in fact, by no less than 20.3 IQ points, on average. This difference is considerably greater than that which distinguishes the average Negro schoolchild from his or her counterpart in the Europid population of the U.S.A. (about 15 or 16 IQ points). The Negro children of the ‘high’ socio-economic class have shown a mean IQ 2.6 points below that of the Europids of the ‘lower’ and ‘lowest’ socio-economic classes.” (p. 489)

“The Upper Egyptians had narrower skulls, and consequently somewhat lower cranial indices (commonly about 73.5, in comparison with 75.0 or rather more among the Lower Egyptians) and one may condense a very large body of statistical data into a few words by saying that in all the six criteria by which Egyptian skulls can be distinguished from Negrid ones, the Upper Egyptian skulls approximated at first a little more closely towards the Negrid condition than did those from Lower Egypt. This differentiation did not persist, however. Extremely gradually, as one dynasty succeeded another, over an immense period, the skulls of the Upper Egyptians changed, until at last they were scarcely distinguishable from those of the Lower Egyptians, even by the most refined statistical techniques. [761] Morant considers two possible causes of the change: either miscegenation in Upper Egypt on a very large scale, with eventual predominance of the Lower Egyptian element, or an independent evolutionary change in the Upper Egyptian population. … Eickstedt maintained a third opinion, that the Upper Egyptians were pushed out of the country towards the south by their relatives from downstream. [302]” (p. 519)

“It must be remembered that the Middle Americans had nothing that could properly called a narrative script. Their numerals were inscribed, sometimes on stone, sometimes on surfaces beaten out from the bark of a particular tree and folded in a special way to form what may be called a book; but nearly all of their inscriptions were concerned with numbers and the calendar. Their hieroglyphs were mainly ideographic, though some only indirectly, through use of the ‘rebus’ or pun principle. There was no way of writing verbs, and abstract ideas (apart from number) could not be inscribed. [382, 1082] It would not appear that the technique even of the Maya lent itself to a narrative form, except in a very limited sense. Most of the Middle Americans conveyed non-calendrical information only by speech or by the display of series of paintings.” (pp. 523-524)

“On the basis of what has already been said, one might still be inclined to classify the Middle Americans, or at any rate the Maya, as civilized; but anyone who does not happen to have studied their culture will learn with a shock that they had no weights (unlike the Andeans), no metal-bladed hoes or spades, and no wheels (unless perhaps a few toys were actually provided with wheels and really formed part of the Mayan culture). [382, 1043] Throughout Middle America exchange was effected by barter; and money, in the accepted sense, can scarcely be said to have existed. Beyond all this, the Middle Americans were excessively superstitious. Their religions, which actually governed their lives, contained no other element than superstition.” (p. 524)

“The slaughter and eating of prisoners was intended to propitiate the gods … the Maya reserved the hands and feet of the victims for the high priest and supreme lord as ‘the most delicate morsels’ …” (p. 525)

“Sommerfelt, for instance, says that the differences between ‘peoples and tribes’ are due to ‘natural surroundings and history, not to innate characteristics of these peoples’. [991] This, however, is not by any means always the experience of those who have actually travelled among primitive peoples in their natural environments. Livingstone, for instance, was struck by the mental differences between members of different races living in the Kalahari Desert. The Bakalahari, a Kafrid tribe, had been forced into this environment in the remote past.

Living ever since on the same plains with the Bushmen, subjected to the same influences of climate, enduring the same thirst, and subsisting on the same food for centuries, they seem to supply a standing proof that locality is not always sufficient of itself to account for differences in races. [676]” (p. 527)

“It would be wrong to suppose that civilization developed wherever the environment was genial, and failed to do so where it was not. … It has been pointed out by an authority on the Maya that their culture reached its climax in that particular part of their extensive territory in which the environment was least favourable, and in reporting this fact he mentions the belief that ‘civilizations, like individuals, respond to challenge’. [1043] … The Sumerians found no Garden of Eden awaiting them in Mesopotamia and the adjoining territory at the head of the Persian Gulf, but literally made their environment out of unpromising material by constructing an elaborate system of canals for the drainage and watering of their lands. A very large number of Aztecs and members of several other Middle American tribes lived and made their gardens on artificial islands that they themselves constructed with their hands.” (p. 528)