Asiatic Groups.—There are three groups in Asia, a northern or Arctic group, a central group, the Pareoeans (the Dwellers beside the Dawn) and a southern or Proto-Malay, it being pos sible that the two latter groups, formerly included under the term Southern Mongoloid, should be classed together.
The northern group is rather indeterminate, and includes a number of tribes living in the circumpolar regions of Asia and extending even as far west as northern Scandinavia, where they are represented by the Lapps. Most of these peoples have mixed with other races, to which fact their diversity is due, but they certainly include a mesocephalic and a round-headed subdivision. In eastern Asia at least there is a more northerly group, living in the most easterly extension of the continent and a more southerly group, but the difference is probably due to racial admixture, consequent on the intrusion of the peoples who brought in the Turko-Mongol culture from the west and thus divided the northern and central groups of the straight-haired peoples.
In Korea there is a narrow belt which forms a connecting link between the northern and the Pareoean peoples. The latter differ most strikingly from their northern neighbours in having less prominent cheek-bones and a broadish nose. In the north of China they are often tall ; in the south, where the type is found in greater purity, they are short and more stockily built. The Japanese represent a special variety of this type; they have mixed considerably with the Ainu, and this, at least in some cases, has altered their physical type.
The southern extension of these peoples, the Proto-Malays, are widely spread in south-eastern Asia and in the islands. They have been mixed with the various other peoples of this region and it is often difficult to distinguish them except by their broader heads.
The straight-haired peoples also extend into Central Asia, where they are known as Turks and Mongols. These terms are cultural and linguistic, and cannot be used in a racial sense. Great racial admixture has undoubtedly taken place in this region and much of the population is closely connected with the peoples of the west, but types occur with straight hair and other characters which show affinities with the Arctic group.
Most remote from the straight-haired peoples and showing certain relationships to them are the Polynesians, who live on the islands of the Pacific from Samoa to Easter I. and Hawaii to New Zealand. They probably represent an old mixture be tween the Proto-Malays and a group of the curly-haired people called Nesiots (islanders, see below), but other admixture has taken place and their position is difficult exactly to determine.
The Amerinds.—As regards the American aborigines, for whom the term Amerind has become conventionalised, it has been disputed whether they should be considered to belong to one race or not. The Eskimo, who to-day inhabit the Arctic coast of America, with a western extension into Asia, and an eastern into Greenland, once lived as far south as the coast of Massachusetts, and survived near Quebec till comparatively recent times. They differ from the other inhabitants of America in many respects notably in having extremely long skulls (the western Eskimo differ somewhat in this respect), which are compressed laterally and are very high-pitched. They have broad faces, an unusual feature in people with a long skull, and very narrow noses. The jaws are exceptionally well-developed and the individual teeth are very large, possibly owing to the nature of their food.
The Amerinds themselves vary considerably in most of those characters usually considered to be of racial significance. Hrd licka, however, believes that they all belong to the same race. Verneau has recently affirmed the concurrence of types akin to the Melanesians, a view previously held by others also. Haddon suggests with every degree of probability that side by side with the straight-haired peoples there is a cymotrichous type, which he has called Palaeo-Amerinds.
The subdivisions of the true straight-haired Amerinds are somewhat complicated and need not be discussed in great detail. The best basis for division is the cephalic index, but stature and other features must be taken into consideration. The nasal in dex, it should be noted, increases towards Central America.