On the Plurality of Civilizations by Feliks Koneczny

Author:Feliks Koneczny [Koneczny, Feliks]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2020-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

II WHAT RACES ARE THERE?

The canon of racial features is still an open question; for there is no agreement on which somatic variations are to be considered indications of racial difference. At one time (from Cuvier 17691832) the canon was colour of skin, but Cuvier recognised only three races: white, black and yellow, treating Indians as a variant of yellow, in opposition to Linnaeus and Blumenbach who recognised the separateness of the “red-skinned” races. But then more and more “colours” were discovered and described. To avoid misunderstandings, shade-tables of these colours were compiled. The best of them, drawn up by the Frenchman Paul Broca (1824-1880) and accepted almost everywhere, enumerates thirty-four shades, indicated by the numbers used to designate them. The English anthropological institute prepared an edition with the shades simplified to ten, according to the suggestions of Topinard.

Soon, however, colour of the skin came to be regarded as only a secondary racial feature, and first place was taken by variety of skull, of the head as a whole and of certain facial details and even hair. In 1843 the Swede A. Retzuis introduced the division into long and short-headed, and Paul Broca, having reduced to order all that we call anthropometric measurement, added a third division — the medium-headed.

Max Mueller’s idea of seeking in linguistic relationships, in combination with somatic features, a means of indicating racial affiliations and kinship was rejected. After all race is a zoological matter, and language social. It was easy also to discover that different races sometimes speak the same tongue, or a similar one, and people of the same race different tongues. Nor are “present-day linguistic areas identical with anthropological areas”.[408]

On the other hand, there was increasing readiness to accept the view of Huxley, who in 1870 defined races by hair, although Haeckel’s suggestion in 1879 that this should be adopted as a basic feature did not survive. In the end, science adopted a combination of the features of hair, “colour” and anthropometric measurements.

As somatological differences became better known, more races appeared for the anthropologists. Adding “secondary” races to “chief” races, in 1860 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire obtained thirteen, ten years later Huxley fourteen, while in 1879 Haeckel got to 34: Topinard in 1885 counted nineteen races, Quatrefages in 1889 one less.[409]

Now the most recent expression of scientific opinion is the table (fruit of thirty years’ work) drawn up by J. Deniker, enumerating 29 races and dozens of “sub-races” grouped in “categories”. The basic division is into five categories (A — F) according to hair, account being taken of colour of eyes (and in one case shape of nose), while the sub-divisions come from combinations of all the features and are even in two stages. The population of Europe is not fitted into a single category, but divided between two.[410] On a special map of Europe Deniker indicates six “principal” races: Nordic, coastal or Atlantic-Mediterranean, eastern. Adriatic or Dinaric, insular-Iberian, western or Cevennole — and four “secondary”: sub-Nordic, north-western, Vistulan and sub-Adriatic.[411]

Jan Czekanowski treats these matters in more or less the same way.

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