CIII. The Asian-American Group.— Char acteristics: yellow or red skin, brachycephalic (broad-headed), narrow-eyed, lank or straight haired (cylindrical in cross-section). Area of distribution: eastern Asia and western Amer ica, chiefly• north of the equator along the semicircular shoreline of Asia and America.° This, however, deals only with living men and does not include extinct forms known by their fossilized fragments. Of these the fol lowing have been proposed: 1. Pithecanthropus Erectus.—A form found in Java, the zoological position of which is still in doubt.
2. Homo from a single lower jaw found at Mauer, near Heidel beg, Germany, in 1907.
3. Homo Neanderthalensis.— This is gen erally designated as Neanderthal man and is now known by skeletons from ten or more localities in western Europe.
A fragmentary skull found in Piltdown, England, has been classified as a new species, but since the validity of such a position has been seriously questioned, we omit it here. Finally, mention may be made of extinct varieties of the existing species of man, such as the Cro-Magnon, Brun, Alpine, etc., known by skeletons only.
This enumeration presents the bare content of this division of anthropology, the details of which must be sought elsewhere. As to man's precise zoological position we arc still in doubt, since the final solution of that problem will be found in fossils of man and related forms.
Linguistic Characters.— The most striking human character is the art of speech. No people have yet been found who were without a highly complex language by which they were able to express very fine shades of meaning. The comparative study of these languages is one of the highly specialized groups of prob lems that fall to the lot of the anthropologist, particularly the languages of the wilder peo ples. Notwithstanding the complexity of speech in general and the somewhat forbidding nature of the whole it has proved easier to classify men according to language than according to somatic structure. As a result, we now have a scheme of linguistic classification that embraces almost the whole of mankind. The fundamental problem here
is the same as in zoology, viz., ultimately to discover the genetic relationship between all languages. As a preliminary to this, the lan guages of the world are now classified into families or stocks, with their subdivisions of languages, dialects, etc. All that show cer tain evidences of having a common origin are grouped under one family name.. As the sub ject now stands we have something more than 200 such families, with a large number of distinct subdivisions. Further study promises to greatly reduce the number of these families, or at least discover genetic relations between many of them. It is the hope of anthropology that some day we may be able to project the historical evolution of this great human char acter. This will be a great triumph, for the birth and development of language must be in timately related to man's origin and subsequent career.
Cultural Characters.— The term culture is used to designate the total complex of man's habits and thoughts, or that which he acquires from the group into which he is born. In the zoological sense it is not inherited and so not inborn. Strictly applied, the term culture should include language also, but for purely practical reasons the two are separated. Cul ture is conceived of as composed of traits or elements, but recognized in complexes. Thus, the production of pottery in a tribal group would be regarded as a trait complex of that group. The term complex is preferred be cause the analysis of the phenomenon into ultimate trait elements is not only extremely difficult, but in the last analysis subjective. The subject matter of anthropology, there fore, is in part data on trait complexes, con sidered as group characters. Anthropologi cally speaking, a group of people is not ade quately described until we have enumerated its chief cultural trait complexes along with its somatic and linguistic characters.