The Monmouth inquirer. [volume] (Freehold, N.J.) 1865-1933, 1926-10-21
Scientist Finds Dwarfs of
Asia and Africa Have
Surviving Traits.


London. The possibility that the
pygmies of Asia and Africa preserve
some of the characteristics of early
types of modern man was advanced by
Professor HI. ]. Fleure in the course
of an address on The Regional Bal
ance of Racial Evolution" before the
meeting at Oxford of the British assoc
citation for the Advancement of Sci
ence.
Looking at certain groups of living
men, he said, and thinking of their
present distribution in relation to the
supposed home of the earliest men
of modern type, anthropologists were
led to interpret some characteristics
of the dwarfs as survivals of early
stages of the evolution of modern
from ancient man.
characteristics Of Asian Pyomies.
THE Andamanese, Semang. Aeta
and Tapiro all live around the south
easterly fringe of Asia in region
where land connections must have
been far more extensive when the
coastline was near the present 100
fathom line" he explained They are
all very short, with small heads of
moderate relative length i. e., there
is every ground for. thinking that
among them the growth in length not
ed for a number of early types of mod
ern man has not taken place. Their
noses are fiat and broad, again an
early feature, but this is less marked
In the Tapiro. The skin is very dark
and the hair is set in close spirals. 1t
seems almost necessary to think that
some of these types have left their
mark on the population of various
parts of India Papua has other pyg-
my and short peoples besides the Ia
piro, people who have spirally curved
hair and are moderatc-headed, some
even very long-headed.
''The Aka and other pygmies of
equatorial Africa are again small and
small-headed, the relative head length
being again only moderate, so that the
cephalic index is 1881, but lower in
some groups. In these people pigmen-
tation is less than it usually is in
Africa, and downy. hair occurs in no
table development, especially on the
legs; these points suggest partial in
fantilism, especially as the very short
stature is due rather to extremely
short legs than to smallness of the
trunk length The absence of the very
dark coloring otherwise so general in
Africa has been supposed to be due
to forest life, and this environmental
influence may have played an imbor
ltant part in the evolution of the
pygmy.
THE Tasmanians, now just extinct,
were of moderate height The head
form ranged from brachyeephaIy to
well-marked autobiography. One skull,
has a cranial index of 1872. The basi-
bregmatic height of the skull is not
great, but its average value is only 5
mm less than that of the breadth, and
only rs per cent of the skulls known
from Tasmania have the height less
than. the breadth. The color of the
Tasmanians was very dark, their hair
was in close spirals and was fairly
abundant, their nose was very broad
and fiat. Their brow ridges, in con-
tradistinction to those of the peoples
mentioned before. are strongly marked.
On the whole, the Tasmanians seem
to have descended from early types of
modern man in which the process of
skull lengthening has proceeded some
distance.
Lono-I1eadedness in Negroids.
s.Among the negroids we find gem
eral indication of ong-headedness as
a basic character; high-headedness is
also widespread, and both features are
sometimes developed to extremes. The
close-spiral hair arising from curved
roots near the surface of the skin, the
great development Of blood vessels in
the skin, the poverty Of body hair and
the utilization of the sebaceous secre-
ton for keeping the skin surface sup
pie and alive so that nonconducting
layers do not accumulate MUCH, the
variable but dark coloring. the fiat,
broad nose lin many but not all cases),
the thick everted lips, are all WE'LL
known characters.
Some are presumed here to be in
heritances from early types of mod