On the race history and facial characteristics of the aboriginal Americans / by W.H. Holmes.

  • William Henry Holmes
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: On the race history and facial characteristics of the aboriginal Americans / by W.H. Holmes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/38 page 427
    ON THE EACE HISTOEY AND FACIAL CHAEACTEEIS- TICS OF THE ABOEIGINAL AMEEICANS. By W. H. Holmes. [With 14 plates.] BIRTH OF THE RACE. Among the many marvels that modern science has brought to light none is more wonderful and none less welcome than that which defines the place of man in the scheme of nature—his origin and his kinship, physical and intellectual, with the whole vast range of living things. It is made clear that the several races of man to-day represent the culminating stages of a branching series which con¬ nects back through simpler and still more simple ancestral forms to the primary manifestations of life in the remote past. As outlined by the researches of the naturalist, the story of the becoming of the race is simply told. It is observed that the forms taken by the evolving life series were necessarily due largely to the environmental conditions under which they developed—that a world of waters molded forms fitted to live and move in the water, that a world of land developed distinct types accommodated to the condi¬ tions of the land, and that an environment comprising both land and water brought into existence types adjusted to both land and water. On the land there were further adaptations to special con¬ ditions of the particular environment. The inhabitants of the plains differed essentially from the inhabitants of the forests, for while the one employed the four members of the body in locomotion, the other used the feet to walk and the hands to climb and to do; and here is found the point of departure in the shaping up of the special being called man. Fitness for higher things was determined by the forest, for life among the branches and the vines developed the grasping hand, and the hand made man a possibility. The hands alone, how¬ ever, were not responsible for the full result, since had the race con¬ tinued to dwell in the forest man would to-day be merely a simple, undeveloped denizen of the woodland. The feet made the conquest of the earth possible. It is assumed that by reason of some unde¬ termined contingency, such as great increase in population, the de¬ pletion of the forest food supply, or other gradually developing
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