Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/512

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508
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

into other peoples, but this is not altogether due to intermarriage, as is commonly held, for it is more probably to be explained as due in a large part to climatic conditions. The Bantus, who are said to have originated in the Galla country and to have spread thence, are now regarded by the chief authorities as the result of an intermixture of Hamites and Negroes. But, on the grounds I have already stated, it is more rational to regard them as having been evolved in the area lying between the Hamitic peoples on the north and the Negroes on the south, just as we have corresponding types of the horse family in Nubia and Abyssinia and in the equatorial regions. The same hypothesis also explains the existence of those cattle-keeping tribes which lie west of the Nile, stretching across northern Nigeria, who border on the Berbers, but yet differ from them, and border also on the Negroes, but differ from them likewise. South of these tribes come the Negroes, the true children of the equator. The Bantu is able to live in elevated equatorial areas, and he has burst his way down to the subtropical and temperate parts of South Africa, where he especially flourishes in the highlands, thus showing that his race was originally evolved under similar conditions. The Bantu found in the south the Hottentots, who are especially distinguished by steatopygy, a feature which has led some to identify them with the primitive steatopygous race supposed to have once lived in southern Europe, Malta and North Africa, and to have left evidence of their characteristic in their representations of themselves. But, granting that such a race once lived in North Africa and southern Europe, there is really no more reason for supposing that they and the Hottentots formed one and the same race than there is for assuming that Daniel's quagga, which was practically a bay horse, was proximately akin to the bay horse of North Africa. The occurrence of steatopygy in two areas so wide apart is not due to an ethnical migration, but rather to similar climatic conditions producing similar characteristics.

As some anthropologists so commonly explain the origin of races such as the Bantus by intermarriage, it may be well to see whether intermarriage between two races, one of which is an invader, is likely to produce a permanent effect upon the general physique of a whole community. I have shown elsewhere that the many invasions of fair-haired races into the three southern peninsulas of Europe and into the Ægean islands have left no permanent trace on the population. It is a matter of common knowledge that the offspring of British and native parents in India have a constant tendency to die out. The same undoubtedly holds true for the offspring of British soldiers serving in Egypt, the Soudan and West Africa. The native race always reasserts itself. In America the Spanish blood has died out, or is dying out, everywhere except in the temperate regions of Chile, Quito and Argen-