Chapter 10

Small as these islanders are, however, their strength is relatively great. They use with ease bows which the strongest English sailors cannot string, though practice may have much to do with this facility. And they can send arrows with a force that seems out of accord with their size. Their agility is remarkable. Travellers speak of the speed of the bullet in describing their running--doubtless with some exaggeration. Their senses are strikingly acute. It is said that they can distinguish fruits by their odor when hidden in the foliage of the jungle, and have wonderful powers of sight and hearing. As in the case of the Aetas, their life is short, though the age of puberty is nearly as great as with us. Fifty is extreme old age with these people, and twenty-two is said to be their average length of life.

Mentally, they are at a low level, the lowest, in the opinion of Owen, among the races of mankind. In counting they have words for only one and two, but can count up to ten by touching the nose with each of the fingers in succession, saying each time, "this one also." Their language is of a primitive type, and in various respects they manifest low intelligence. Yet, as in the case of the Akkas mentioned, they can be taught to the level of other children of twelve or fourteen years. Their mind, in the opinion of Dr. Brander, seems rather to be asleep than incapable. One child was taught to read and write, and to speak English fluently, and gained some knowledge of arithmetic; and this was not an exceptional case.

It does not seem at all remarkable, when we consider the ease with which monkeys can be taught many arts and acts new to them, that those dwarfish men, like other savages, greatly superior as they are in brain power to the apes, should be capable of acquiring the minor elements of education. It is not what they can be taught, but what they have taught themselves, that we must consider in assigning them to their comparative place in intellectual development. In this respect the Mincopies are on a very low plane. They have not even acquired the art of making a fire, though this is almost universal with mankind. All they know is how to keep a fire alive, and in this they are very assiduous. It is probable that they may have obtained fire at first from volcanoes on neighboring islands.

They are lacking, like the Pygmy races in general, in the art of chipping stone, one of the earliest arts acquired by man. Their only means of shaping stone is to put it into the fire until it breaks or splinters, when they can use the sharp splinters for their purposes. They are quite destitute of the art of drawing, and have no means of communicating their thoughts except by speech.

Yet with these deficiencies, they have made some progress in the industrial arts. They make wooden vessels, and can produce pottery which stands the fire and in which they cook most of their food. They make nets of considerable size, which they use to fish with in the narrow streams. They have arrows and harpoons, whose points are fastened to the shaft by a long cord. The fish or land animal struck unwinds this cord in trying to get away, and its speed being checked by the shaft which it drags along, it is easily caught.

The Mincopies possess boats, and these seem to have been early possessions of the Negrito populations, by whose aid they were able to migrate from island to island. Their canoes have nautical qualities which have astonished English sailors. At one time they were probably bold and daring fishermen and navigators, until driven to the forests and mountains by the invasion of the Malays.

As the Pygmies were in all probability the aborigines of Africa, so the Negritos appear to have been the aboriginal people of the Eastern islands, if not of India. Quatrefages, in his work "The Pygmies," finds reason to believe that even at the present day traces of them, pure or mixed, can be found from southeast New Guinea to the Andaman Islands, and from the Sunda Islands to Japan. On the continent their range extends, according to him, "from Annam and the peninsula of Malacca to the western Ghauts, and from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas."

In one part of India the Negrito-like population are called _Bander-lokh_ (literally "man-ape") by the neighboring tribes. The Semangs of Malacca are jet-black in color, with thick lips, flat nose, and protruding abdomen. In regard to the characteristic of prognathism, it is possessed in various degrees, the most pronounced instance being seen in the photograph of one of the Kalangs of Java, a tribe which has recently become extinct. The face of this individual is strikingly ape-like in profile.

Everywhere that these dwarfish people are found, whether in Africa, India, or Malaysia, they present the appearance of being an aboriginal race, now largely annihilated by the incursions of larger and better-armed people, but once widespread and numerous. As to their place of origin, whether in Africa, India, or the island region, it is useless to speculate, as the facts on which an opinion could be based are not known. Wherever found they are in close relation to the black races, the negroes of Africa, the Papuans of Polynesia, and evidences of a considerable degree of mixture of races exist. This is especially the case in Polynesia and India, where the Negritos appear to shade off into the full-sized blacks through an intermediate series of half-breeds.

Yet one fact of ethnological importance needs to be mentioned. The Negritos and Pygmies are everywhere brachycephalic, or short-headed, with the exception of the Bushmen, who are dolichocephalic, or partially so. Negroes and Papuans are strongly dolichocephalic. In this respect the Pygmy peoples agree more closely with the short-headed Mongolian or yellow races than with the long-headed negro or black races, though in general features they come near the latter.

In truth, this race of dwarfs may be the primitive stock from which the Mongolians branched off on the one hand, and the Negroes on the other, since they are in some measure intermediate between the two. Latham says of the Rajmalis mountaineers, "Some say their physiognomy is Mongolian, others that it is African." Quatrefages is strongly of the opinion that the negro is of Indian origin, and reached Africa through migration. He bases his opinion on the negroid characters of existing tribes in India, Persia, and elsewhere in Asia, and on the similar characters of the aboriginal Polynesians. As regards the Pygmies, they probably spread over the whole of this section of the earth at a period of remote antiquity, and very long ago developed the racial differences which appear to exist between separate tribes. Distinctions of this kind can be seen in the East, and a marked one is pointed out by Stanley between the Wambutti and the Akka, as already stated.

Wherever found the Pygmies are hunters, usually making the deep forest their home, and are masters through their agility, cunning, and deadly weapons of the whole world of lower animals. Physically they are probably not far removed from the man-ape, their remote ancestor, for they retain various ape-like characters, as in aspect of face, shape of body, occasional hairiness, diminutive size, shortness of legs, imperfect development of the calf, occasional waddling gait in walking, and the other particulars above pointed out. There are certainly abundant reasons for believing them to be, as we have suggested, the final result of the first great conflict in the evolution of man, that with the lower animals.

This assured mastery once gained, the occasion for further development of this people ceased while they remained in the forest habitat which they had inherited from their ape ancestors. Here the problem of food getting was fully solved and there was nothing to instigate any new step in evolution. The period of conflict ended, a period of rest supervened, and, so far as the Pygmies are concerned, this period still continues. Though later races, their probable descendants, have left the forest and set up new stages of development through new conflicts with adverse conditions, the Pygmies remain in their resting state, and, if left to themselves, might continue in this state for ages in the future as they have done for ages in the past. As the case now stands, however, annihilation threatens some of them, while educative and other influences from without may bring to an end the physical and mental isolation of the others.

In considering the Pygmies as they exist to-day, in fact, it is impossible to say how far their habits and possessions are original with themselves and how far they have been derived from others. There can be no question that they have been influenced by the customs of surrounding peoples of higher culture, and that they have received implements and methods from without. To get down to the pure Pygmy, as an outcome of evolution within himself, we would need to strip off all these adventitious aids, if we could distinguish them from the conditions native to the race, and thus behold him as he was before he fell under the influence of men of higher grade. Were it possible to isolate him in this way, and present his original self, we should have before us an ethnological specimen of the highest interest and importance, as the ultimate resultant of the first great stage in the evolution of man from his ape ancestor.

X

THE CONFLICT WITH NATURE

It has been a frequently debated question whether man comprises a single species or two or more species of animal descent. If a line be drawn from the Gold Coast in tropical Africa to the steppes of Tartary in central Asia, it will present two markedly distinct races of men at its two extremities. At its southwestern end we find the most long-headed, prognathous, frizzly-haired, dark-skinned race of mankind. At its northeastern end is the most round-headed, orthognathous, straight-haired, and yellow-skinned race. Midway between these appear intermediate peoples, with heads round, oval, or oblong, hair straight or curly, skin fair or dark, faces upright or protruding, men possibly, to judge from their physical character, a result of the amalgamation of these two distinct races.

These differences may be the result of original difference in species or may be due to climatic and other influences of nature. Some writers accept the one view, some the other, and neither is sustained by any great weight of facts. The Pygmy race presents somewhat similar differences. Usually round-headed, these small men are in some instances long-headed, while such marked distinctions appear at times that Stanley classed two neighboring tribes as separate races. Here they present features of the Mongolian, there they are similar to the Negro. This goes to indicate that the distinction between the Negro and the Mongolian began far back in time, but it does not prove that it is the result of original difference in species, or that two distinct forms of ape separately developed into man. While this is quite possible, the theory of a single species has been most widely accepted. The chief writers on the subject think that the differences arose during that undeveloped stage of mankind when resistance to the transforming influences of nature was still weak, and when the structure of the human frame may have yielded readily to agencies which would have little or no effect upon it now.

Of one thing we can be sure, which is that there was a wide migration of the apes in remote times. Leaving the tropics, many species spread to the north, extending into Europe, which at that time seems to have been connected by land bridges with Africa, and spreading far through Asia. There was probably nothing at that time in atmospheric conditions to check such a migration. The Tertiary climate of Europe is believed to have been quite mild. And the ape family is by no means necessarily confined to warm regions. Monkeys are found to-day at high elevations on the mountains of India, enduring the chill of ten thousand feet of altitude.

Of the migration to Europe abundant evidence exists, fossil remains of monkeys having been found in many localities of that continent. Among these residents of early Europe was at least one representative of the anthropoid apes, the fossil species known as Dryopithecus, from the middle Miocene deposits of St. Gaudens, France. This species, apparently most nearly allied to the chimpanzee, was taller than any existing ape. Two or three other fossil remains, possibly of anthropoid apes of smaller size, have been found, and Europe seems to have been well supplied with apes of a considerable degree of development at a remote geological period. Among those may have been the form we have designated the man-ape, the ancestor of the human race, though no fossil relic attributable to such a species has been recognized.

Coming down to a much lower period, we begin to find traces of man, first in his rudely chipped and later in his polished stone weapons and tools. And the bones of man himself appear, extending through what is known as the Quaternary or Pleistocene period. Nearly all these remains have been preserved by the art of burial, a fact indicating some degree of mental progress, though their residence in caves and the rudeness of their implements are evidence that the race was still low in culture.

An interesting fact in connection with these ancient human remains is that most of them indicate a small race, with narrow skulls and prognathous jaws, recalling the Pygmies in general structure. This rude and small race continued until a late period of prehistoric time. It extended down from the cave bear and mammoth period through the later reindeer period, as is proved by discoveries made in the caves of the Belgian province of Namur. And there is good reason to believe that it continued into the age of bronze, for the small size of the handles of bronze weapons show they must have been intended for men with small hands.

These diminutive people seem to have been not over four feet eight inches high. They were not alone, however. Men of normal height were in Europe with them. The northward migration of the Pygmies seems to have been accompanied or followed by that of a full grown people. Yet the Pygmies have held their own in Europe as in Africa, with certain modifications. In Sicily and Sardinia, which form part of a supposed former land bridge between Africa and Europe, a small people about five feet high still exist, whom Dr. Kollman looks upon as representing a distinct race, the predecessors of the tall Europeans. In the Lapps of northern Europe we possess another small race, possibly the lineal descendents of the Quaternary Pygmies. Everywhere the small man has been forced to retire into forests, deserts, and icy barrens before the taller and stronger man. The folk-lore of Europe is full of traditions of a race of dwarfs, and its conflict with men of larger mould, and there are various indications that this race was once widespread.

What has been said here of the migration of man into Europe and his development in that country is preliminary to a consideration of the second great stage of human development, that due to the conflict with nature. The conflict with the animal world appears to have ended in the production of a dwarfish, forest-dwelling variety of man, in the lowest human stage of mental evolution. The conflict with nature ended in the development of a full-sized variety of man, dwelling largely in the open country and much superior in intellect, as indicated by his higher powers of thought and advanced degree of organization.

The conflict with nature took several forms, in accordance with the conditions of the several regions inhabited by man. Its result was to subdue nature to the use and benefit of mankind, and the methods, in the tropical localities of original man, consisted in the reduction of animals to the domestic state and a similar domestication of food plants. In other words, one of its early stages was the development of the herding habit, while a far more important one was that of the appearance of the agricultural industries. In Europe a third and still more vigorous influence supervened, that of the conflict with cold and man's gradual adaptation to the conditions of a frigid climate.

If the nomad dwarfs were the aboriginal men, all later races must have developed from them. While remaining in the forest and retaining their primitive habits, the Pygmies presented an instance of arrested evolution. For a new development to begin it was necessary to abandon the old locality and with it the old habits, and this they probably began to do at a remote period. When, indeed, the earth was their dominion, there was no reason for their remaining restricted to a forest residence, as they have been since the larger races took possession of the open country. We do not need to go back far in time in the East to find the Pygmy race in full control of the Philippine and other islands, and probably of Malacca and parts of Hindostan. Their present restriction and partial extermination have been due to the incursions of the warlike Malays. The Andaman Mincopies remained undisturbed until a recent date, and added fishing to their hunting pursuits. And the canoes which these islanders now possess were probably the invention of their race, and furnished the means by which the aborigines spread from island to island of those thickly studded seas.

In Africa the only existing indication of a migration of the forest folk into the open country is found in the Bushmen and Hottentots of the far south. The former, confined to the desert, remain nomad hunters and present no step of advance beyond the Akka and other equatorial tribes. The Hottentots, on the contrary, have made an important step of progress. While still nomads and addicted to hunting, they have domesticated cattle and sheep and become essentially a herding people, though mentally the lowest race of herders on the face of the earth.

With this change in habits, the Hottentots have significantly increased in stature. While still of medium height, they are considerably larger than their Bushmen kindred, to whom they present a close resemblance in other respects. This increase in size is a common result of a change in habits which insures a fuller supply of food with less strain upon the muscular organization in obtaining it; a fact of which the lower animal world is full of illustrations. The life of the forest and desert hunters is one of incessant activity, and their food supply is precarious. The Hottentots, on the contrary, take life easily and are inclined to indolence, their herds supplying them with food in abundance with little exertion. They retain enough of the primeval strain to be fond of hunting, and while thus engaged display the activity of their ancestral race, but ordinarily they pursue an idle, wandering life, and their increase in size may well be a result of their change in habits.

The Hottentots, while still low in the human scale, are mentally a stage in advance of the Bushmen, they having a more developed social organization and superior powers of thought. The latter is indicated by their myths and legends, of which they have a considerable store, though they are in great measure destitute of religious conceptions, such religion as they possess taking in great part the primitive form of ancestor worship. Under the influence of Europeans they are gradually abandoning their old habits and adopting those of civilized life, but while improving in social and industrial conditions there is little evidence of intellectual advance.

The development in method of food-getting displayed by the Hottentots was really but the completion of the old battle for dominion with the animal host. It consisted in subjecting some of the docile herbivora more fully to human mastership. The hunter has to do with hostile beasts, victims but not servants of man. The herder has reduced some of these animals to servitude, and no longer has to overcome them through the arduous labors of the chase. He is able to obtain, as we have said, more food with less exertion, a larger population can live in a limited district, and the beneficial effects upon the mind of a closer social intercourse are shown.

But the most important event in this stage of evolution was the subjection of the plant world to man. For ages of interminable length this was not thought of. Fruits and other vegetable products formed part of man's food; but these were the growth of wild nature, and the plant world was left to its own will, with no effort to bring it under human control. There is nothing to show that the idea of agriculture ever entered the mind of a Pygmy. Of the plants surrounding him, far the greater number were useless for food, only the few were available; but the conception of favoring the few at the expense of the many apparently never occurred to him. There is, indeed, some crude and simple agriculture pursued by a few of the Negritos of Luzon, but evidently as an imitation of the Malay agriculture or as a result of direct teaching, certainly not as an original conception. The conflict of the Pygmies with nature has been confined to the animal world, and reached its highest level in the herding industries of the Hottentots.

Where and when the subjugation of the plant world began it is impossible to say. It very probably had its origin in the fertile open lands of the tropics. But that it originated in the central region of Africa, or that the agriculturists of that region were of native origin, are both subjects open to question. The forest folk may have spread into the open country, there developed a crude agriculture, favored the growth of food plants at the expense of useless shrubs and trees, and gradually advanced in this new form of industry. This would be in accordance with the opinion of Virchow, who looks upon the negro as the descendant of the Pygmy. No great change was necessary to convert the one into the other. The Pygmy is negro-like in cast of countenance and bodily formation. He differs in size, in complexion, and in shape of head. But new conditions may have given rise to these differences. The fierce suns of the African lowlands may well have caused an increased deposit of pigment, changing the yellowish hue of the Pygmy to the deep black of the negro. An increase in size is a natural result when exertion diminishes and food increases. And a tendency for the head to change from the short to the long shape is shown in the Bushmen.

On the other hand, certain anthropologists, of whom we may name Quatrefages, take an opposite view, and believe that the negroes migrated from Asia or the Eastern islands to Africa, being, like the negro-like Papuans, descendants of the sable or dark brown Negritos of the East. In this case agriculture may have originated in Asia and have been brought by migrants to Africa. All we know historically concerning it is that the earliest traceable seats of agriculture appear to have been the fertile valleys of India, Babylonia, and Egypt. But the known culture of the earth in these regions goes back only a few thousands of years, while for the first crude stages of agriculture we must probably measure years by tens of thousands.