Original Book Cover
THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES.
EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS.
THE RACES OF MAN.
THE RACES OF MAN:
AN OUTLINE OF ANTHROPOLOGY
AND ETHNOGRAPHY
BY
J. DENIKER, Sc.D. (PARIS),
Chief Librarian of the Museum of Natural History, Paris; HonoraryFellow of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain;Corresponding Member of the Italian Anthropological,Netherland Geographical, and Moscow NaturalScience Societies, etc.
WITH 176 ILLUSTRATIONS AND 2 MAPS.
LONDON
WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1900
PREFACE.
My object in the present work has been to give in a condensed form theessential facts of the twin sciences of anthropology and ethnography.The very nature of such an undertaking condemns the author to be brief,and at the same time somewhat dogmatic; inevitable gaps occur, andnumerous inequalities in the treatment. To obviate, partly at least,such defects, I have endeavoured not merely to present the actualfacts of the subject, but also to summarise, with as much fidelity aspossible, the explanations of these facts, in so far as such may beeduced from theories among which there is often sufficient perplexityof choice. In many cases I have ventured, however, to give my personalopinion on different questions, as, for instance, on the significationof the laryngeal sacs among anthropoid apes, on many questions ofanthropometry in general, on the classing of “states of civilisation,”on fixed and transportable habitations, on the classification of races,on the races of Europe, on the Palæ-American race, etc.
My book is designed for all those who desire to obtain rapidly ageneral notion of ethnographic and anthropological[Pg viii] sciences, or tounderstand the foundations of these sciences. Thus technical terms areexplained and annotated in such a manner that they may be understood byall.
Those who may wish for further details on special points will be ableto take advantage of the numerous bibliographical notes, at the footof the pages, in which I have sought to group according to plan themost important or accessible works. I believe that even professionalanthropologists will be able to consult my work profitably. They willfind condensed in it information which is scattered over a vast crowdof notes and memoirs in all languages. I trust also that they mayappreciate the Appendices, as well as the lists in the text itself,in which are collected from the best sources some hundreds of figuresrelating to the chief dimensions of the human body.
The illustrations which complete and elucidate the text have beenselected with very gre