muscles that move the tongue.[1] In this respect he is among the least advanced of ail races. The lower jaw of the Hottentot is much better formed, but is not by any means as massive as that of a member of the Bantu family or a European. The skulls of the three classes of people described also differ from each other and from those of Europeans in many particulars which are only intelligible to professional anatomists. The subject can be studied in special works, and it is not necessary therefore to enter more deeply into it here.[2]
The pygmy hunters, who were the primitive inhabitants of South Africa, having no word of their own to distinguish themselves from other races, received from the first European colonists the name of Bushmen, on account of their preference for places abounding in bushes or shrubs, where they had a wonderful faculty of concealing themselves, partly owing to the colour of their skins being almost the same as that of the soil.
After the advent of the Hottentots and Bantu the Bushmen lost the ground adjoining the coast that the invaders chose to occupy, but they managed to keep possession for a long time of the mountains and even the lower country between the widely separated kraals of the recent immigrants. Constant war was carried on against them, but they fought with the utmost determination, and could not be expelled as long as a dozen men in any locality remained capable of
- ↑ This was pointed out to me many years ago by Dr. Waterston when we were comparing some Hottentot and Bushman skulls in the South African Museum.
- ↑ It is perhaps presumptuous for one who knows nothing of anatomy to venture to make observations upon skull measurements, but it strikes me forcibly that in some particulars at least the form of the cranium might be slightly changed by the food ordinarily consumed by the people. Take, for instance, the Ancient Shellmound Men living for numberless generations on the seacoast of South Africa, and consuming food easily masticated, the muscles that move the lower jaw would not be so powerful as those of people of the same race living upon tough flesh and hard roots. This might in time cause modifications, though maybe very slight, in the bones of the skull.
