Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1917-02-06
Structure of Hair
By GARRETT P. SERVISS.

bodies? Do you think that in time TO come
people will be completely devoid OF hair
&c. L.. r."
The possession OF hair by man is an
ancestral trait. The Pliocene, or at
all events Miocene, precursor of man
was furred creature" so says an au-
thority on this subject. We have hair,
then, for the same reason that we are
coated with an epidermis; it is part
of the anatomy that we have inher-
tied from our animal forebears.
Hair is less imperatively useful to
man than it is to the animals most
nearly resembling him, such as the
anthropoid, or man-like, apes, and
those animals have more hair than
he has, but whether the earliest men
recognizable as men had notably
more hair on their bodies than we
have today is question not easy to
answer.
Judging by the representation Of
the human form found among the rel
les of the men of the stone age, they
were not hairier than we ourselves
are. The Oldest Egyptian mummies
reveal the presence of only normal
hirsute covering on the heads or bod
les. They also show the same char
acteristics in the form and structure
of the hair that we remark at the
present time.
1t is a very curious fact that hair
constitutes perhaps the most trust
worthy and invariable test of racial
purity that has been discovered.
Three principal types of human hair
are recognized. They are "woolly
hair" characteristic of nearly all the
black races, which is short, crispy,
black and elliptical in section, without
either pith or medullary tube;
straight hair" characteristic of the
yellow races, which is long, coarse,
almost invariably black, round in sec
ton and having a distinct medullary
tube with pith; and "wavy hair"
characteristic of European races,
which is smooth, soft, of various color,
generally more or less fair, oval in
section having a medullary tube with
out pith.
A fourth type, "frizzy hair" has
been noted as characteristic of the
Australian aborigines, Nubians and a
few other races. In the wavy, or
European, type the color varies from
black to very light, the blondness in
creasing in frequency toward the
northern ATTITUDES.
The yellow races have the least
hair; the Australians, Tasmanians and
Anus the most. In the wavy-haired
races the women have much longer
hair than the men, but in both the
woolly and the straight types there
is virtually no difference of hair
length between the sexes. That some
highly interesting points in the evolu-
ton of man are concealed in the yet
unwritten history of human hair is
shown by the fact that while the
present dwelling place of the anthro-
poid apes corresponds with that of
the woolly-haired races of mankind,
those apes have hair of type not at
all resembling the wool" of the ne
groes, but much like that OF the wavy-
haired races, so that, as far as this
criterion goes, the European races
are closer to anthropoid apes than
are the negroes, while the yellow
races, in this respect, occupy an in
termediate position.
A mechanical explanation of the
progression from frizziness in the
black type through simple waviness
in the white, to straightness in the
yellow, is afforded by the difference
in the shape of the cross-section.
Frizzy or woolly hair is, roughly
speaking, fiat in section, and that
shape enables it to curl closely, and
because of curling closely it is short;
wavy hair is oval in section, offering
some resistance to curling, but not
altogether preventing it, and the
length is medium; straight hair is
round in section, resisting curvature
equally in all directions, and conse-
quently it grows not only straight,
but very long.
Among the American Indians,
classed with the yellow races, exam
pies of hair nine feet long are said
to have been found. | know of no
explanation of the marked difference
between the length of the hair Of men
and women in the white races. Civ
ilization would appear to have no in
huence in this matter. Since the wall
paintings discovered in prehistoric
caves in Spain show the women with
hair longer than that of the men.
The same story seems to be told by
prehistoric carvings.
But while we have no evidence from
archaeology that the hair of man has
been notably diminished in length or
quantity within historic ages, never
theless there are other indications that
our remote ancestors were more hir-
suite than we are. One of these is
found in the presence of prenatal
hair, as we'll as of rudimentary hairs
covering nearly all parts of the hu-
man body-an almost irrefragable
proof that at one time in the past,
when perhaps the human type was
only in posse, and not yet in esse,
mans body was as furry as that Of
the creatures with whose comfortable
pelts he now adorns and warns HIM