A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients | Page 8

London, Nutt, 1891.]
[Footnote C: _Nature_, 1892, ii. 616.]
[Footnote A: _Nature_, 1892, i. 269.]
Finally, in Madagascar it is possible that there may be a dwarf race. Oliver[A] states that "the Vazimbas are supposed to have been the first occupants of Ankova. They are described by Rochon, under the name of Kunios, as a nation of dwarfs averaging three feet six inches in stature, of a lighter colour than the Negroes, with very long arms and woolly hair. As they were only described by natives of the coast, and have never been seen, it is natural to suppose that these peculiarities have been exaggerated; but it is stated that people of diminutive size still exist on the banks of a certain river to the south-west." There are many tumuli of rude work and made of rough stones throughout the country, which are supposed to be their tombs. In idolatrous days, says Mullens,[B] the Malagasy deified the Vazimba, and their so-called tombs were the most sacred objects in the country. In this account may be found further evidence in favour of Mr. Gomme's theory, to which attention has already been called.
[Footnote A: _Anthrop. Memoirs_, iii. 1.]
[Footnote B: _Jour. Anthrop. Inst._, v. 181.]
In the great continent of America there does not appear to have ever been, so far as our present knowledge teaches, any pigmy race. Dr. Brinton, the distinguished American ethnologist, to whom I applied for information on this point, has been good enough to write to me that, in his opinion, there is no evidence of any pigmy race in America. The "little people" of the "stone graves" in Tennessee, often supposed to be such, were children, as the bones testify. The German explorer Hassler has alleged the existence of a pigmy race in Brazil, but testimony is wanting to support such allegation. There are two tribes of very short but not pigmy stature in America, the Yahgans of Tierra del Fu��go and the Utes of Colorado, but both of these average over five feet.
Leaving aside for the moment the Lapps, to whom I shall return, there does not appear to have been at any time a really pigmy race in Europe, so far as any discoveries which have been made up to the present time show. Professor Topinard, whose authority upon this point cannot be gainsaid, informs me that the smallest race known to him in Central Europe is that of the pre-historic people of the Loz��re, who were Neolithic troglodytes, and are represented probably at the present day by some of the peoples of South Italy and Sardinia. Their average stature was about five feet two inches. This closely corresponds with what is known of the stature of the Platycnemic race of Denbighshire, the Perthi-Chwareu. Busk[A] says of them that they were of low stature, the mean height, deduced from the lengths of the long bones, being little more than five feet. As both sexes are considered together in this description, it is fair to give the male a stature of about five feet two inches,[B] It also corresponds with the stature assigned by Pitt-Rivers to a tribe occupying the borders of Wiltshire and Dorsetshire during the Roman occupation, the average height of whose males and females was five feet two and a half inches and four feet ten and three-quarter inches respectively.
[Footnote A: _Jour. Ethn. Soc._, 1869-70, p. 455.]
[Footnote B: Since these pages were printed, Prof. Kollmann, of Basle, has described a group of Neolithic pigmies as having existed at Schaffhausen. The adult interments consisted of the remains of full-grown European types and of small-sized people. These two races were found interred side by side under precisely similar conditions, from which he concludes that they lived peaceably together, notwithstanding racial difference. Their stature (about three feet six inches) may be compared with that of the Veddahs in Ceylon. Prof. Kollmann believes that they were a distinct species of mankind.]
Dr. Rahon,[A] who has recently made a careful study of the bones of pre-historic and proto-historic races, with special reference to their stature, states that the skeletons attributed to the most ancient and to the Neolithic races are of a stature below the middle height, the average being a little over five feet three inches. The peoples who constructed the Megalithic remains of Roknia and of the Caucasus, were of a stature similar to our own. The diverse proto-historic populations, Gauls, Franks, Burgundians, and Merovingians, considered together, present a stature slightly superior to that of the French of the present day, but not so much so as the accounts of the historians would have led us to believe.
[Footnote A: _Recherches sur les Ossements Humaines, Anciens et Pr��histonques. M��m. de la Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris_, S��r, ii. tom. iv. 403.]
It remains now to deal with two races whose physical characters are of