When we consider how injurious some insects are to vertebrate life, being suspected of having caused in some cases the extinction of species, can it be said that facility in ridding oneself of such vermin as lice and ticks is an inadequate cause of human nakedness, or not one that might outweigh the drawbacks of cold and wet? It is not, however, incompatible with the action of sexual selection, tending to the same result; nor, again, with the preferential destruction of hairy children if ever infanticide was practised. A further possible ground of deliberate selection may have been the mere ambition of differing from other animals; for a tribe on the Upper Amazons is reported to depilate to distinguish themselves from the monkeys, and the wish to be superior to other animals led a tribe in Queensland to pretend that they, unlike kangaroos, etc., have no fathers according to the flesh.[20] Admitting that this last motive can hardly have been primitive, still, our nakedness may be a resultant of several causes.
(4) Cannibalism, where it has been found amongst extant peoples, or is known to have been formerly practised, was often justified by certain magical or animistic ideas, but sometimes frankly by dietetic taste, or by the satisfaction of revenge or of emphatic triumph over an enemy. Was it an ancient and perhaps general custom? The excavations at Krapina in Croatia disclosed along with remains of the Neanderthal species, which seems to have had a habitation there, those of rhinoceros and cave-bear and of some other kind of Man; and “some of the human bones had been apparently split open: on that slender basis the Krapina men have been suspected of cannibalism.”[21] If the suspicion is valid, the practice existed (say) 50,000 years ago in one species of Man; and perhaps much earlier, if we consider how it was merely an extension of the practice of devouring game to include the slain members of a hostile pack; for as primitive Man, or Lycopithecus, his pre-human forebear, no doubt regarded other animals as upon the same level as himself, so he will have regarded human enemies as upon the same footing with other animals. That true carnivores are not generally cannibals may be put down to their more ancient and perfect adaptation to a predatory life. For them persistent cannibalism would have been too destructive, and for us it belongs to the experimental stage of history; though, of course, even in recent times, under stress of famine, reversion to the practice is not unknown to civilised men.
(5) The extraordinary variability of modern Man (considered as one species) in stature, shape of skull, size and power of brain, colour, hairiness, quality of hair, and other characters, physical and mental, may be referred chiefly to his having become adapted to various local conditions upon settling here or there for long periods of time after wandering over the world in quest of game. The settling of offshoots of the original stock in certain regions long enough for them to undergo adaptation to local circumstances is the simplest explanation of existing races: the Negro adapted to equatorial Africa; the Asiatic stock (“Mongolian”) to Central Asia; the Mediterranean race to the neighbourhood of the sea after which it is named. As to the Nordic sub-race (of the Mediterranean, we may suppose), with its fair hair and skin, it has the appearance of an Arctic beast of prey, like the Polar bear. The snow-leopard of the Himalaya is found at a midway stage of such adaptation. Some geologists and zoologists now believe that, during the Glacial Period, the climate of Northern Europe was not everywhere such as necessarily to destroy the local fauna and flora, and in that case our ancestors may for ages have maintained themselves there; or, if that was impossible (as the absence of palæolithic remains in Scandinavia seems to indicate), they may have roamed for many ages along the borders of glaciation, perhaps as far as the Pacific Coast. Chinese annals refer to fair tribes in Eastern Siberia 200 years before the Christian era;[22] and it seems requisite to imagine some extensive reservoir of mankind in order to explain the origin of the vast hordes which in prehistoric as in historical times again and again invaded Europe—hordes
“which the populous North
Poured ever from her frozen loins, to pass
Rhene or the Danau; when her barbarous sons
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.”
That the race was formerly fairer than it is now may be inferred from the whiteness of its children’s hair: the trait has outlived its utility. The occurrence of a fair complexion in some mountain tribes, in the Alps, e.g., has occasioned the conjecture that it may be due in some way to mountainous conditions,[23] of which snow might be one; but, if we suppose that the Nordic race extended during the Glacial Period into Western Europe (having already acquired its distinctive characters), a fair complexion in the Alps may be understood by supposing that, whilst the greater number of them followed the ice-sheet back to the north-east, some followed it southward up into the mountains—if the complexion is really ancient there.
Two objections to this hypothesis will occur to every one: (i) Why are not the Esquimo fair? Because, I suppose, they are much more recent immigrants into the Arctic regions, and perhaps were fully clothed when they arrived there. (ii) Could the Nordic people have existed in such circumstances unclothed? Whether this was possible physiologists must judge. We see the Fuegians maintain themselves, practically naked, under very inclement conditions. And it is not necessary to assume that the Nordic hunters were entirely naked; since the correlation between the hair, eyes and all parts of the skin is such that, if the whitening of any part (say the hair) was sufficiently advantageous to determine natural selection, the remainder of the body would be similarly affected. And, no doubt, the Mediterranean race was always whitish.
The Amerinds seem to have been derived chiefly from the Asiatic race. Pygmies and Australians may represent separate and still older stocks. But, as a result of migrations and conquests, most peoples are of mixed descent; and hence (i) individuals in the same locality sometimes vary greatly, because they inherit the blood of different strains in different proportions; and (ii) classification is difficult, so that whilst some observers are content to find half a dozen races, Deniker enumerates twenty-nine.
Besides general racial differences, there exist within each race and within each national group further differences between individuals in their physical, and still more in their mental, stature and ability. As it was necessary that Man should vary greatly in undergoing adaptation to the hunting life (as well as to different local environments), he was in an organic condition favourable to further variation.[24] And this has been utilised in his adaptation to a certain special condition of his gregariousness, namely, life in the hunting-pack; for this requires a difference of personality between leaders and followers, first in the chase and later in war. A good democrat may think it would have been a better plan to make all men equal from the first; and I would it had been so; for then the head of the race would not have had to drag along such an altogether disproportionate tail: a tail so huge and unwieldy that one may doubt whether it can ever be extricated from the morass of barbarism. But in the early days of gregariousness, a pack could not have held together, or have hunted efficiently, if all had been equal and each