distinct, that some
authorities would trace the original divergence between them right
back to the times before man and the apes had parted company, linking
the Neanderthal race with the gorilla and the Cro-Magnon race with
the orang. The Cro-Magnon head-form is refined and highly developed.
The forehead is high, and the chin shapely, whilst neither the
brow-ridge nor the lower jaw protrudes as in the Neanderthal type.
Whether this race survives in modern Europe is, as was said in the
last chapter, highly uncertain. In certain respects--for instance,
in a certain shortness of face--these people present exceptional
features; though some think they can still find men of this type in
the Dordogne district. Perhaps the chances are, however, considering
how skulls of the neolithic period prove to be anything but uniform,
and suggest crossings between different stocks, that we may claim
kinship to some extent with the more good-looking of the two main types
of palaeolithic man--always supposing that head-form can be taken as
a guide. But can it? The Pygmies of the Congo region have medium heads;
the Bushmen of South Africa, usually regarded as akin in race, have
long heads. The American Indians, generally supposed to be all, or
nearly all, of one racial type, show considerable differences of
head-form; and so on. It need not be repeated that any race-mark is
liable to deceive.

* * * * *

We have sufficiently considered the use to which the particular
race-mark of head-form has been put in the attempted classification
of the very early men who have left their bones behind them. Let us
now turn to another race-mark, namely colour; because, though it may
really be less satisfactory than others, for instance hair, that is
the one to which ordinary people naturally turn when they seek to
classify by races the present inhabitants of the earth.

When Linnaeus in pre-Darwinian days distinguished four varieties of
man, the white European, the red American, the yellow Asiatic, and
the black African, he did not dream of providing the basis of anything
more than an artificial classification. He probably would have agreed
with Buffon in saying that in every case it was one and the same kind
of man, only dyed differently by the different climates. But the
Darwinian is searching for a natural classification. He wants to
distinguish men according to their actual descent. Now race and descent
mean for him t