In considering the Pygmies as they exist to-day, in fact, it is impossible to say how far their habits and possessions are original with themselves and how far they have been derived from others. There can be no question that they have been influenced by the customs of surrounding peoples of higher culture, and that they have received implements and methods from without. To get down to the pure Pygmy, as an outcome of evolution within himself, we would need to strip off all these adventitious aids, if we could distinguish them from the conditions native to the race, and thus behold him as he was before he fell under the influence of men of higher grade. Were it possible to isolate him in this way, and present his original self, we should have before us an ethnological specimen of the highest interest and importance, as the ultimate resultant of the first great stage in the evolution of man from his ape ancestor.
It has been a frequently debated question whether man comprises a single species or two or more species of animal descent. If a line be drawn from the Gold Coast in tropical Africa to the steppes of Tartary in central Asia, it will present two markedly distinct races of men at its two extremities. At its southwestern end we find the most long-headed, prognathous, frizzly-haired, dark-skinned race of mankind. At its northeastern end is the most round-headed, orthognathous, straight-haired, and yellow-skinned race. Midway between these appear intermediate peoples, with heads round, oval, or oblong, hair straight or curly, skin fair or dark, faces upright or protruding, men possibly, to judge from their physical character, a result of the amalgamation of these two distinct races.
These differences may be the result of original difference in species or may be due to climatic and other influences of nature. Some writers accept the one view, some the other, and neither is sustained by any great weight of facts. The Pygmy race presents somewhat similar differences. Usually round-headed, these small men are in some instances long-headed, while such marked distinctions appear at times that Stanley classed two neighboring tribes as separate races. Here they present features of the Mongolian, there they are similar to the Negro. This goes to indicate that the distinction between the Negro and the Mongolian began far back in time, but it does not prove that it is the result of original difference in species, or that two distinct forms of ape separately developed into man. While this is quite possible, the theory of a single species has been most widely accepted. The chief writers on the subject think that the differences arose during that undeveloped stage of mankind when resistance to the transforming influences of nature was still weak, and when the structure of the human frame may have yielded readily to agencies which would have little or no effect upon it now.