As the physical environment is overshadowed in cultural significance by a neighboring culture, so it may vanish into nothingness in the face of what we may call cultural inertia—the tendency of a preëxisting cultural trait of indigenous growth to assert itself. A familiar example of this tendency is the exact imitation of forms of implements in quite different and often refractory material. Thus, the Central Eskimo generally make lamps and pots out of soapstone. In Southampton Island, where this material is lacking, they have not devised a new form but have at the expenditure of much ingenuity and labor cemented together slabs of limestone so as to produce the traditional shape.[7-iii]The same phenomenon appears in other fields. Grooved copper axes have been found in parts of theUnited States; their shape is patterned exactly on the stone axes characteristic of the same localities. The beginnings of the copper and bronze ages in Europe are equally suggestive in this regard. The incipient metallurgist does not automatically make the most of his material but slavishly follows his stone or bone models. His copper ornaments imitate bear’s teeth or bone beads, his implements resemble the stone celts and hammers of an earlier era.[8-iii]As Professor Boas points out on the basis of Bogoras’ descriptions, an equivalent development may be traced in the history of the Chukchee tent. This type of habitation is extremely clumsy and not at all well adapted to the roving life of the Reindeer division of the tribe, considerably hampering their progress. It represents, however, a variety of the older form of stationary house used when the Chukchee were a purely maritime people.[9-iii]
It might be objected that maladjustments of this sort are transitional, that just as the copper and bronze workers ultimately freed themselves from the influence of the preëxisting stone technique so the Chukchee would finally have abandoned their inconvenient tent and developed a new and more readily transportable lodge. This sounds, of course, very plausible but missesthe point of the argument. Undoubtedly, a more and more perfect adaptation to elements of the physical surroundings has repeatedly taken place. But the very fact that culture history, on its material side, implies this progressive adjustment also implies that the cultural phenomena at different periods of time differ where the same environmental stimuli persist and therefore cannot be explained by them, which is what we have been trying to prove.
Indeed, environment is not only unable to create cultural features, in some instances it is even incapable of perpetuating them. Thus, pottery was once distributed over an extensive region in the New Hebrides but is now restricted to a few isolated localities on a single island. Again, in southeastern New Guinea ancient pottery has been found that vastly surpasses its present representatives in point of craftsmanship.[10-iii]A similar phenomenon has been noted in the Southwest of the United States, where the evolution and deterioration of glazed earthenware may be clearly traced in the same region.[11-iii]Dr. Rivers has pointed out an even more instructive example of cultural degeneration. In the Torres Islands of Melanesia the natives have no canoes for traversing the channels which separate their islands from one another but are obliged touse unseaworthy bamboo rafts inadequate even for fishing purposes. Yet there is evidence that the Torres Islanders once shared the art of canoe-making with their fellow-Oceanians and that it has died out in recent times independently of European influence. It is difficult to conceive of any people less likelya priorito lose the art of navigation than a South Sea Island group; yet, their maritime environment proved inadequate to preserve so vital a feature of their daily life.
To sum up: Environment cannot explain culture because the identical environment is consistent with distinct cultures; because cultural traits persist from inertia in an unfavorable environment; because they do not develop where they would be of distinct advantage to a people; and because they may even disappear where one would least expect it on geographical principles.
Shall we then cavalierly banish geography from cultural considerations? This would be manifestly going beyond the mark. Geographical phenomena can no more be discarded than can psychological phenomena. They represent in the first place a limiting condition. As cultures cannot contravene psychological principles so they cannot, except in a limitedmeasure, override geographical factors. To use some drastically clear if somewhat hackneyed examples, the Eskimo do not eat coconuts nor do the Oceanians build snow-houses; where the horse does not occur it cannot be domesticated; in the Hopi country where watercourses are lacking navigation naturally did not develop. As Jochelson points out, the Koryak of northeastern Siberia cannot cultivate cereals because of the low temperature and they cannot succeed as cattle-breeders because of the poor quality of the grasses.[12-iii]This minimum recognition of environment as a purely negative factor, however, does not do full justice to it. Take the bison out of the Plains Indian’s life and his cultural atmosphere certainly changes. Nevertheless, we have seen that the presence of the bison by no means fully determined the cultural employment possible. Instead of hunting it as the Solutrean Europeans did the wild horse, the Indian might have domesticated it as his namesake by misnomer in Asia domesticated the buffalo. The environment, then, enters into culture, not as a formative but rather as an inert element ready to be selected from and molded. It is, of course, a matter of biological necessity for a people to establish some sort of adaptation to surrounding conditions, but suchadaptation is no more spontaneously generated by the environment than are strictly biological adaptations. There are alternatives to adaptation—migration and destruction.
It is true, as Dr. Wissler has forcibly pointed out, that when some kind of adjustment has once been established it will tend to persist in the region of its origin.[13-iii]This, however, illustrates not so much the active influence of environment as rather the tremendous force of cultural inertia which tends to perpetuate an old muddling-along adjustment, however imperfect, provided only it has bare survival value.
Altogether we may illustrate the relations of culture to environment by an analogy used by Dr. Wissler in another connection, which also brings us back to my initial analogy of the environmental theory with the associationist system in psychology. The environment furnishes the builders of cultural structures with brick and mortar but it does not furnish the architect’s plan. As the illustrations cited clearly prove, there is a variety of ways in which the same materials can be put together, nay, there is always a range of choice as regards the materials themselves. The development of a particular architectural style and the selection of a special material from among an indefinite number ofpossible styles and materials are what characterize a given culture. Since geography permits more than a single adjustment to the same conditions, it cannot give the interpretation sought by the student of culture. Culture can no more be built up of environmental blocks than can consciousness out of isolated ideas; and as the association of ideas already implies the synthetizing faculty of consciousness, so the assemblage and use of environmental factors after a definite plan already implies the selective and synthetic agency of a preëxisting or nascent culture.
Psychology, racial differences, geographical environment, have all proved inadequate for the interpretation of cultural phenomena. The inference is obvious. Culture is a thingsui generiswhich can be explained only in terms of itself. This is not mysticism but sound scientific method. The biologist, whatever metaphysical speculations he may indulge in as to the ultimate origin of life, does not depart in his workaday mood from the principle that every cell is derived from some other cell. So the ethnologist will do well to postulate the principle,Omnis cultura ex cultura.[1-iv]This means that he will account for a given cultural fact by merging it in a group of cultural facts or by demonstrating some other cultural fact out of which it has developed. The cultural phenomenon to be explained may either have an antecedent within the culture of the tribe where it is found or it may have been imported from without. Both groups of determinants must be considered.
The extraneous determinants of culture summed up under the heading of ‘diffusion’ or ‘contact of peoples’ have been repeatedlyreferred to in the preceding pages. A somewhat detailed examination seems desirable, for it is difficult to exaggerate their importance.
“Civilization,” says Tylor, “is a plant much oftener propagated than developed;”[2-iv]and the latest ethnographic memoir that comes to hand voices the same sentiment: “It is and has always been much easier to borrow an idea from one’s neighbors than to originate a new idea; and transmission of cultural elements, which in all ages has taken place in a great many different ways, is and has been one of the greatest promoters of cultural development.”[3-iv]
A stock illustration of cultural assimilation is that of the Japanese, who in the nineteenth century adopted our scientific and technological civilization ready-made, just as at an earlier period they had acquired wholesale the culture of China. It is essential to note that it is not always the people of lower culture who remain passive recipients in the process of diffusion. This is strikingly shown by the spread of Indian corn. The white colonist “did not simply borrow the maize seed and then in conformity with his already established agricultural methods, or on original lines, develop a maize culture of his own,” but “took over the entire material complex of maize culture” as found among theaborigines.[4-iv]The history of Indian corn also illustrates the remarkable rapidity with which cultural possessions may travel over the globe. Unknown in the Old World prior to the discovery of America, it is mentioned as known in Europe in 1539 and had reached China between 1540 and 1570.[5-iv]
The question naturally arises here, whether this process of diffusion, which in modern times is a matter of direct observation, could have been of importance during the earlier periods of human history when means of communication were of a more primitive order. So far as this point is concerned, we must always remember that methods of transportation progressed very slightly from the invention of the wheeled cart until the most recent times. As Montelius suggests, the periods of 1700B. C.and 1700A. D.differed far less in this regard than might be supposed on superficial consideration. Yet we know the imperfection of facilities for travel did not prevent dissemination of culture in historic times.
The great Swedish archæologist has, indeed, given us a most fascinating picture of the commercial relations of northern Europe in earlier periods and their effect on cultural development.[6-iv]We learn with astonishment thatin the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, trade was carried on with great intensity between the North of Europe and the Mohammedan culture sphere since tens of thousands of Arabic coins have been found on Swedish soil. But intercourse with remote countries dates back to a far greater antiquity. One of the most powerful stimuli of commercial relations between northern and southern Europe was the desire of the more southern populations to secure amber, a material confined to the Baltic region and occurring more particularly about Jutland and the mouth of the Vistula. Amber beads have been found not only in Swiss pile-dwellings[7-iv]but also in Mycenæan graves of the second millenniumB. C.Innumerable finds of amber work in Italy and other parts of southern Europe prove the importance attached to this article, which was exchanged for copper and bronze. The composition of Scandinavian bronzes indicates that their material was imported not from England but from the faraway regions of central Europe. That bronze was not of indigenous manufacture is certain because tin does not occur in Sweden at all while the copper deposits of northern Scandinavia remained untouched until about 1500 years after the end of the Bronze Age. Considering thehigh development of the bronze technique in Scandinavia and the fact that every pound of bronze had to be imported from without, it would be difficult to exaggerate the extent of contact with the southern populations. But intercourse was not limited to the South. For example, Swedish weapons and implements have been discovered in Finland. Again, crescent-shaped gold ornaments of Irish provenance have been found in Denmark, while a Swedish rock-painting represents with painstaking exactness a type of bronze shield common at a certain prehistoric period of England.
Montelius shows that historical connections of the type so amply attested for the Bronze Age also obtained in the preceding Neolithic era. Swedish hammers of stone dating back to the third pre-Christian millennium and flint daggers have been found in Finland, and earthenware characteristic of Neolithic Scandinavia also turns up on the Baltic coast of Russia. Stone burial cists with a peculiar oval opening at one end occur in a limited section of southwestern Sweden and likewise in England. Since such monuments have been discovered neither in other parts of Sweden nor in Jutland or the Danish islands, they point to a direct intercourse between Britain and western Sweden at about2,000B. C.A still older form of burial unites Scandinavia with other parts of the continent. Chambers built up of large stones set up edgewise and reaching from the floor to the roof, the more recent ones with and the older without a long covered passage, are highly characteristic of Sweden, Denmark, the British Isles, and the coasts of Europe from the Vistula embouchure to the coasts of France and Portugal, of Italy, Greece, the Crimea, North Africa, Syria, and India. Specific resemblances convince the most competent judges that some, at least, of these widely diffused ‘dolmens’ are historically connected with their Swedish equivalents, and since the oldest of these Northern chambers go back 3,000 years before our era, we thus have evidence of cultural diffusion dating back approximately five millennia.
It is highly interesting to trace under Montelius’ guidance the development of culture as it seems to have actually taken place in southern Sweden. Beginning with the earliest periods, we find the coastal regions inhabited by a population of fishermen and hunters. At a subsequent stage coarse pottery appears with articles of bone and antler, and there is evidence that the dog has become domesticated. In the later Neolithic era perfectly polished stone hammers andexquisitely chipped flint implements occur, together with indications that cattle, horses, sheep and pigs are domesticated and that the cultivation of the soil has begun. Roughly speaking, we may assume that the culture of Scandinavia at the end of the Stone Age resembled in advancement that of the agricultural North American and Polynesian tribes as found by the first European explorers. We may assume a long period of essentially indigenous cultural growth followed towards its close by intimate relations with alien populations. Nevertheless, it was the more extensive contact of the Bronze period that rapidly raised the ancestral Swedes to a cultural position high above a primitive level, with accentuation of agriculture, the use of woolen clothing, and a knowledge of metallurgy. It was again foreign influence that later brought the knowledge of iron and in the third century of our era transformed the Scandinavians into a literary people, flooded their country with art products of the highest then existing Roman civilization, and ultimately introduced Christianity.
The case of Scandinavian culture is fairly typical. We have first a long-continued course of leisurely and relatively undisturbed development, which is superseded by a tremendouslyrapid assimilation of cultural elements from without. Through contact with tribes possessing a higher civilization the ancient Scandinavians came to participate in its benefits and even to excel in special departments of it, such as bronze work, which from lack of material, they would have been physically incapable of developing unaided. Diffusion was the determinant of Scandinavian cultural progress from savagery to civilization.
It is obvious that this insistence on contact of peoples as a condition of cultural evolution does not solve the ultimate problem of the origin of culture. The question naturally obtrudes itself: If the Scandinavians obtained their civilization from the Southeast, how did the Oriental cultures themselves originate? Nevertheless, when we examine these higher civilizations of the Old World, we are again met with indubitable evidence that one of the conditions of development is the contact of peoples and the consequent diffusion of cultural elements. This appears clearly from a consideration of the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Babylonia, and China.
We now have abundant evidence for a later Stone Age in Egypt with an exceptionally high development of the art of chipping, as well as specimens of pottery and other indications of asedentary mode of life. About 5,000B. C.this undisturbed evolution began to suffer from a series of migrations of West Asiatic tribes, bringing in their wake a number of cultivated plants and domesticated animals, as well as various other features which possibly included the art of smelting copper, while the ceramic ware of the earlier period agrees so largely with that of Elam in what is now southern Persia that a cultural connection seems definitely established.
If from Egypt we turn to the most probable source of alien culture elements found there,viz., to the region of Mesopotamia, possibly the oldest seat of higher civilization in Asia, we find again that the culture of Babylonia under the famous lawgiver Hammurabi (about 2,000B. C.) is not the product of purely indigenous growth but represents the resultant of at least two components, that of the Sumerian civilization of southern Babylonia and the Accadian culture of the North. It is certain that the Accadians adopted the art of writing from the Sumerians and were also stimulated by this contact in their artistic development. The evolution of Sumerian civilization is lost in obscurity but on the basis of well-established historical cases we should hesitate to assign to them an exclusively creative, and to other populations an exclusively receptive, rôle.We may quite safely assume that the early splendor of Sumerian civilization was also in large part due to stimuli received through foreign relations. That cultural elements of value may be borrowed from an inferior as well as from a higher level, has already been exemplified by the case of maize. It is also, among other things, illustrated by the history of the Chinese.
The Chinese have generally been represented as developing in complete isolation from other peoples. This traditional conception, however, breaks down with more intimate knowledge. Dr. Laufer has demonstrated that Chinese civilization, too, is a complex structure due to the conflux of distinct cultural streams. As an originally inland people inhabiting the middle and lower course of the Yellow River, they gradually reached the coast and acquired the art of navigation through contact with Indo-Chinese seafarers. Acquaintance with the northern nomads of Turkish and Tungus stock led to the use of the horse, donkey and camel, as well as the practice of felt and rug weaving, possibly even to the adoption of furniture and the iron technique.[8-iv]Most important of all, it appears that essentials of agriculture, cattle-raising, metallurgy and pottery, as well as less tangible features of civilization are common to ancient China and Babylonia,which forces us to the conclusion that both the Chinese and Babylonian cultures are ramifications from a common Asiatic sub-stratum. It would be idle to speculate as to the relative contributions of each center to this ancient cultural stock. The essential point is that the most ancient Asiatic civilizations of which we have any evidence already indicate close contact of peoples and the dispersal of cultural elements.
Contact of peoples is thus an extraordinary promoter of cultural development. By the free exchange of arts and ideas among a group of formerly independent peoples, a superiority and complexity is rendered possible which without such diffusion would never have occurred. The part played in this process by the cruder populations must not be underestimated. They may contribute both actively and passively; actively, by transmitting knowledge independently acquired, as in the case of the felt technique the Chinese learned from the northern nomads; passively, by forming a lower caste on which the economic labors devolve and thus liberating their conquerors for an enlarged activity in the less utilitarian spheres of culture.
Nevertheless, before peoples can communicate their cultures to others with whom they come into contact, they must first evolve these cultures.The question thus remains, What determines this evolution? In order to gain a proper perspective in this matter, we must for a moment consider the progress of human civilization as a whole. Archæological research shows that the modern era of steel and iron tools was preceded by an age of bronze and copper implements, which in turn was preceded by a stone age subdivided into a more recent period of polished, and an earlier of merely chipped, stone tools. Now the chronological relations of these epochs are extremely suggestive. The very lowest estimate by any competent observer of the age of Palæolithic man in Europe sets it at 50,000 years;[9-iv]since this is avowedly the utmost minimum value that can be assigned on geological grounds, we may reasonably assume twice that figure for the age of human culture generally. Using the rough estimate permissible in discussions of this sort, we may regard the end of the Palæolithic era as dating back about 15,000 years ago. In short, for more than eight-tenths of its existence, the human species remained at a cultural level at best comparable with that of the Australian. We may assume that it was during this immense space of time that dispersal over the face of the globe took place and that isolation fixed the broader diversities of language and culture, overand above what may have been the persisting cultural sub-stratum common to the earliest undivided human group. The following Neolithic period of different parts of the globe terminated at different times and had not been passed at all by most of the American aborigines and the Oceanians at the time of their discovery. However, from the broader point of view here assumed, it was not relieved by the age of metallurgy until an exceedingly recent past. The earliest estimate I have seen does not put the event back farther than 6000B. C.even in Mesopotamia. During nine-tenths of his existence, then, man was ignorant of the art of smelting copper from the ore. Finally, the iron technique does not date back 4,000 years; it took humanity ninety-six hundredths of its existence to develop this art.
We may liken the progress of mankind to that of a man a hundred years old, who dawdles through kindergarten for eighty-five years of his life, takes ten years to go through the primary grades, then rushes with lightning rapidity through grammar school, high school and college. Culture, it seems, is a matter of exceedingly slow growth until a certain ‘threshold’ is passed, when it darts forward, gathering momentum at an unexpected rate. For this peculiarity ofculture as a whole, many miniature parallels exist in special subdivisions of culture history. Natural science lay dormant until Kepler, Galileo and Newton stirred it into unexampled activity, and the same holds for applied science until about a century ago.
This discontinuity of development receives strong additional illustration from a survey of special subdivisions of ancient culture. Though the Palæolithic era certainly preceded the later Stone Age, archæologists have hitherto failed to show the steps by which the later could develop out of the earlier. This gap may, of course, be due merely to our lack of knowledge. Yet when we take subdivisions of the Palæolithic period, the same fact once more confronts us. There is no orderly progression from Solutrean to Magdalenian times. The highly developed flint technique of the former dwindles away in the latter and its place is taken by what seems a spontaneous generation of bone and ivory work, with a high development of realistic art.
In view of the evidence, it seems perfect nonsense to say that early European civilization, by some law inherent in the very nature of culture, developed in the way indicated by archæological finds. Southern Scandinavia could not possibly have had a bronze age without alien influence.In this case, discontinuity was the result of cultural contact. It may be that the lack of definite direction observed throughout the Stone Age may in part be due to similar causes, the migrations and contact of different peoples, as Professor Sollas suggests. But it is important to note that discontinuity is a necessary feature of cultural progress. It does not matter whether we can determine the particular point in the series at which the significant trait was introduced. It does not matter whether, as I have suggested in the discussion of racial features, the underlyingcausesof the phenomena proceed with perfect continuity. Somewhere in the observed culturaleffectsthere is the momentous innovation that leads to a definite break with the past. From a broad point of view, for example, it is immaterial whether the doctrine of evolution clings to the name of the younger or the elder Darwin, to Lamarck or St. Hilaire; the essential thing is that somehow the idea originated, and that when it had taken root it produced incalculable results in modern thought.
If culture, even when uninfluenced by foreign contact, progresses by leaps and bounds, we should naturally like to ascertain the determinants of such ‘mutations.’ In this respect, the discontinuity of indigenous evolution differssomewhat from that connected with cultural development due to diffusion. It was absolutely impossible that Scandinavia should produce bronze in the absence of tin. Buta prioriit is conceivable that an undisturbed culture might necessarily develop by what biologists call ‘orthogenetic evolution’,i.e., in a definite direction through definite stages. This is, indeed, what is commonly known as the classical scheme of cultural evolution, of which men like Morgan are the protagonists. Now, how do the observed facts square with this theoretical possibility?
As Professor Boas and American ethnologists generally have maintained,[10-iv]many facts are quite inconsistent with the theory of unilinear evolution. That theory can be tested very simply by comparing the sequence of events in two or more areas in which independent development has taken place. For example, has technology in Africa followed the lines ascertained for ancient Europe? We know today that it has not. Though unlike southern Scandinavia, the Dark Continent is not lacking in copper deposits, the African Stone Age was not superseded by a Copper Age, but directly by a period of Iron. Similarly, I have already pointed out that the possession of the same domesticated animals does not produce the same economic utilization of themwhile the Tungus rides his reindeer, other Siberians harness their animals to a sledge; the Chinaman will not milk his cattle, while the Zulu’s diet consists largely of milk. That a particular innovation occurred at a given time and place is, of course, no less the result of definite causes than any other phenomenon of the universe. But often it seems to have been caused by an accidental complex of conditions rather than in accordance with some fixed principle.
For example, the invention of the wheel revolutionized methods of transportation. Now, why did this idea develop in the Old World and never take root among the American Indians? We are here face to face with one of those ultimate data that must simply be accepted like the physicist’s fact that water expands in freezing while other substances contract. So far as we can see, the invention might have been made in America as well as not; and for all we know it would never have been made there until the end of time. This introduces a very important consideration. A given culture is, in a measure, at least, a unique phenomenon. In so far as this is true it must defy generalized treatment, and the explanation of a cultural phenomenon will consist in referring it back to the particular circumstances that preceded it. In other words, the explanation willconsist in a recital of its past history; or, to put it negatively, it cannot involve the assumption of an organic law of cultural evolution that would necessarily produce the observed effect.
Facts already cited in other connections may be quoted again by way of illustration. When a copper implement is fashioned not according to the requirements of the material, but in direct imitation of preëxisting stone patterns, we have an instance of cultural inertia: it is only the past history of technology that renders the phenomena conceivable. So the unwieldy Chukchee tent, which adheres to the style of a pre-nomadic existence, is explained as soon as the past history of the tribe comes to light.
Phenomena that persist in isolation from their original context are technically known as ‘survivals’, and form one of the most interesting chapters of ethnology. One or two additional examples will render their nature still clearer. The boats of the Vikings were equipped for rowing as well as for sailing. Why the superfluous appliances for rowing, which were later dropped? As soon as we learn that the Norse boats were originally rowboats and that sails were a later addition, the rowing equipment is placed in its proper cultural setting and the problem is solved. Another example may be offered from a differentphase of life. Among the Arapaho Indians there is a series of dance organizations graded by age. Membership is acquired by age-mates at the same time, each receiving the requisite ceremonial instructions from some older man who passed through the dance in his day. These older men, who are paid for their services by the candidates, may belong to any and all of the higher organizations. Oddly enough, each group of dancers is assisted by a number of ‘elder brothers’, all of whom rank them bytwogrades in the series of dancers. This feature is not at all clear from the Arapaho data alone. When, however, we turn to the Hidatsa Indians, with whom there is evidence this system of age-societies originated, we find that here the youngest group of men does not buy instructions from a miscellaneous assemblage of older men, but buys the dance outright from the whole of the second grade; this group, in order to have the privilege of performing a dance, must buy that of the third grade, and so on. In all these purchases the selling group seeks to extort the highest possible price while the buyers try to get off as cheaply as possible and are aided by the second higher group,i.e., the group just ranking the sellers. Here the sophomore-senior versus freshman-junior relationship is perfectly intelligible; both the freshmanand the junior, to pursue the analogy, bear a natural economic hostility against the sophomore, and vice versa. The Arapaho usage is intelligible as a survival from this earlier Hidatsa condition.
Our own civilization is shot through with survivals, so that further illustrations are unnecessary. They suggest, however, another aspect of our general problem. Of course, in every culture different traits are linked together without there being any essential bond between them. An illustration of this type of association is that mentioned by Dr. Laufer for Asiatic tribes,viz., that all nations which use milk for their diet have epic poems, while those which abstain from milk have no epic literature. This type of chance association, due to historical causes, has been discussed by Dr. Wissler[11-iv]and Professor Czekanowski.[12-iv]But survivals show that there may be anorganicrelation between phenomena that have become separated and are treated as distinct by the descriptive ethnologist. In such cases, one trait is the determinant of the other, possibly as the actually preceding cause, possibly as part of the same phenomenon in the sense in which the side of a triangle is correlated with an angle.
A pair of illustrations will elucidate the matter. Primitive terms of relationship often reveal characteristicdifferences of connotation from their nearest equivalents in European languages. On the other hand, they are remarkably similar not only among many of the North American Indians but also in many other regions of the globe, such as Australia, Oceanica, Africa. The most striking peculiarity of this system of nomenclature lies in the inclusiveness of certain terms. For example, the word we translate as ‘father’ is applied indiscriminately to the father, all his brothers, and some of his male cousins; while the word for ‘mother’ is correspondingly used for the mother’s sisters and some of their female cousins. On the other hand, paternal and maternal uncle or aunt are rigidly distinguished by a difference in terminology. As Morgan divined and Tylor clearly recognized, this system is connected with the one-sided exogamous kin organization by which an individual is reckoned as belonging to the exogamous social group of one, and only one, of his parents. The terminology that appears so curious at first blush then resolves itself very simply into the method of calling those members of the tribe who belong to the father’s social group and generation by the same term as the father, while the maternal uncles, who must belong to another group because of the exogamous rule, are distinguishedfrom the father. In short, the terminology simply expresses the existing social organization. In a world-wide survey of the field Tylor found that the number of peoples who use the type of nomenclature I have described and are divided into exogamous groups, is about three times that to be expected on the doctrine of chances: in other words, the two apparently distinct phenomena are causally connected.[13-iv]This interpretation has recently been forcibly advocated by Dr. Rivers, and I have examined the North American data from this point of view. It developed, as a matter of fact, that practically all the tribes with exogamous ‘clans’,i.e., matrilineal kin groups, or exogamous ‘gentes’,i.e., patrilineal kin groups, had a system of the type described, while most of the tribes lacking such groups also lacked the nomenclature in question. Accordingly, it follows that there is certainly a functional relation between these phenomena, although it is conceivable that both are functionally related to still other phenomena, and that the really significant relationship remains to be determined.
As a linked illustration, the following phenomena may be presented. Among the Crow of Montana, the Hopi of Arizona, and some Melanesian tribes, the same term is applied to a father’s sister and to a father’s sister’s daughter;indeed, among the Crow and the Hopi the term is extended to all the female descendants through females of the father’s sisterad infinitum. Such a usage is at once intelligible from the tendency to call females of the father’s group belonging to his and younger generations by a single term, regardless of generation,ifdescent is reckoned through the mother, for in that case, and that case only, will the individuals in question belong to the same group. And the fact is that in each of the cases mentioned, group affiliation is traced through the mother, while I know of not a single instance in which paternal descent coexists with the nomenclatorial disregard of generations in the form described.
My instances show, then, that cultural traits may be functionally related, and this fact renders possible a parallelism, however limited, of cultural development in different parts of the globe. The field of culture, then, is not a region of complete lawlessness. Like causes produce like effects here as elsewhere, though the complex conditions with which we are grappling require unusual caution in definitely correlating phenomena. It is true that American ethnologists have shown that in several instances like phenomena can be traced to diverse causes; that, in short, unlike antecedents converge to the same point.However, at the risk of being anathematized as a person of utterly unhistorical mentality, I must register my belief that this point has been overdone and that the continued insistence on it by Americanists is itself an illustration of cultural inertia. Indeed, the vast majority of so-called convergencies are not genuine, but false analogies due to our throwing together diverse facts from ignorance of their true nature, just as an untutored mind will class bats with birds, or whales with fish. When, however, rather full knowledge reveals not superficial resemblance but absolute identity of cultural features, it would be miraculous, indeed, to assume that such equivalence somehow was shaped by different determinants. When a Zulu of South Africa, an Australian, and a Crow Indian all share the mother-in-law taboo imposing mutual avoidance on the wife’s mother and the daughter’s husband, with exactly the same psychological correlate, it is, to my mind, rash to decree without attempt to produce evidence that this custom must, in each case, have developed from entirely distinct motives. To be sure, this particular usage has not yet, in my opinion, been satisfactorily accounted for. Nevertheless, in contradistinction to some of my colleagues and to the position I myself once shared, I now believe that it is pusillanimous to shirkthe real problem involved, and that in so far as any explanation admits the problem, any explanation is preferable to the flaunting of fine phrases about the unique character of cultural phenomena. When, however, we ask what sort of explanation could be given, we find that it is by necessity aculturalexplanation. Tylor,e.g., thinks that the custom is correlated with the social rule that the husband takes up his abode with the wife’s relatives and that the taboo merely marks the difference between him and the rest of the family. We have here clearly one cultural phenomenon as the determinant of another.
It is not so difficult as might at first appear to harmonize the principle that a cultural phenomenon is explicable only by a unique combination of antecedent circumstances with the principle that like phenomena are the product of like antecedents. The essential point is that in either case we have past history as the determinant. It is not necessary that certain things should happen; but if they do happen, then there is at least a considerable likelihood that certain other things will also happen. Diversity occurs where the particular thing of importance, say the wheel, has been discovered or conceived in one region but not in another. Parallelism tends to occurwhen the same significant phenomenon is shared by distinct cultures. It remains true that in culture history we are generally wise after the event.A priori, who would not expect that milking must follow from the domestication of cattle?
When we find that a type of kinship terminology is determined by exogamy or matrilineal descent, we have, indeed, given a cultural explanation of a cultural fact; but for the ultimate problems how exogamy or maternal descent came about, we may be unable to give a solution. Very often we cannot ascertain an anterior or correlated cultural fact for another cultural fact, but can merely group it with others of the same kind. Of this order are many of the parallels that figure so prominently in ethnological literature. For example, that primitive man everywhere believes in the animation of nature seems an irreducible datum which we can, indeed, paraphrase and turn hither and thither for clearer scrutiny but can hardly reduce to simpler terms. All we can do is to merge any particular example of such animism in the general class after the fashion of all scientific interpretation. That certain tendencies of all but universal occurrence are characteristic of culture, no fair observer can deny, and it is the manifest business of ethnology toascertain all such regularities so that as many cultural phenomena as possible may fall into their appropriate categories. Only those who would derive each and every trait similar in different communities of human beings from a single geographical source can ignore such general characteristics of culture, which may, in a sense, be regarded as determinants of specific cultural data or rather, as the principles of which these are particular manifestations.
Recently I completed an investigation of Plains Indian societies begun on the most rigorous of historical principles, with a distinct bias in favor of the unique character of cultural data. But after smiting hip and thigh the assumption that the North American societies were akin to analogous institutions in Africa and elsewhere, I came face to face with the fact that, after all, among the Plains Indians, as among other tribes, the tendency of age-mates to flock together had formed social organizations and thus acted as a cultural determinant.
Beyond such interpretative principles for special phases of civilization, there are still broader generalizations of cultural phenomena. One has been repeatedly alluded to under the caption of cultural inertia, or survival—the irrational persistence of a feature when thecontext in which it had a place has vanished. But culture is not merely a passive phenomenon but a dynamic one as well. This is strikingly illustrated in the assimilation of an alien cultural stimulus. As I have already pointed out, it is not sufficient to bring two cultures into contact in order to have a perfect cultural interpenetration. The element of selection enters in a significant way. Not everything that is offered by a foreign culture is borrowed. The Japanese have accepted our technology but not our religion and etiquette. Moreover, what is accepted may undergo a very considerable change. While the whole range of phenomena is extremely wide and cannot be dismissed with a few words, it appears fairly clear that generally the preëxisting culture at once seizes upon a foreign element and models it in accordance with thenativepattern. Thus, the Crow Indians, who had had a pair of rival organizations, borrowed a society from the Hidatsa where such rivalry did not exist. Straightway, the Crow imposed on the new society their own conception, and it became the competitor of another of their organizations. Similarly the Pawnee have a highly developed star cult. Their folklore is in many regards similar to that of other Plains tribes, from which some tales have undoubtedly been borrowed.Yet in the borrowing these stories became changed and the same episodes which elsewhere relate to human heroes now receive an astral setting. The preëxisting cultural pattern synthetizes the new element with its own preconceptions.
Another tendency that is highly characteristic of all cultures is the rationalistic explanation of what reason never gave rise to. This is shown very clearly in the justification of existing cultural features or of opinions acquired as a member of a particular society. Hegel’s notion that whatever exists is rational and Pope’s ‘whatever is, is right’ have their parallels in primitive legend and the literature of religious and political partisanship. In the special form of justification employed we find again the determining influence of the surrounding cultural atmosphere. Among the Plains Indians almost everything is explained as the result of supernatural revelation; if a warrior has escaped injury in battle it is because he wore a feather bestowed on him in a vision; if he acquires a large herd of horses it is in fulfilment of a spiritistic communication during the fast of adolescence. In a community where explanations of this type hold sway, we are not surprised to find that the origin of rites, too, is almost uniformlytraced to a vision and that even the most trivial alteration in ceremonial garb is not claimed as an original invention but ascribed to supernatural promptings. Thus, the existing culture acts doubly as the determinant of the explanation offered for a particular cultural phenomenon. It evokes the search for its ownraison d’être; and the type of interpretation called forth conforms to the explanatory pattern characteristic of the culture involved.
Culture thus appears as a closed system. We may not be able to explain all cultural phenomena or at least not beyond a certain point; but inasmuch as wecanexplain them at all, explanation must remain on the cultural plane.
What are the determinants of culture? We have found that cultural traits may be transmitted from without and in so far forth are determined by the culture of an alien people. The extraordinary extent to which such diffusion has taken place proves that the actual development of a given culture does not conform to innate laws necessarily leading to definite results, such hypothetical laws being overridden by contact with foreign peoples. But even where a culture is of relatively indigenous growth comparison with other cultures suggests thatone step does not necessarily lead to another, that an invention like the wheel or the domestication of an animal occurs in one place and does not occur in another. To the extent of such diversity we must abandon the quest for general formulæ of cultural evolution and recognize as the determinant of a phenomenon the unique course of its past history. However, there is not merely discontinuity and diversity but also stability and agreement in the sphere of culture. The discrete steps that mark culture history may not determine one another, but each may involve as a necessary or at least probable consequence other phenomena which in many instances are simply new aspects of the same phenomenon, and in so far forth one cultural element as isolated in description is the determinant or correlate of another. As for those phenomena which we are obliged to accept as realities without the possibility of further analysis, we can, at least, classify a great number of them and merge particular instances in a group of similar facts. Finally, there are dominant characteristics of culture, like cultural inertia or the secondary rationalization of habits acquired irrationally by the members of a group, which serve as broad interpretative principles in the history of civilization.
In short, as in other sciences, so in ethnology there are ultimate, irreducible facts, special functional relations, and principles of wider scope that guide us through the chaotic maze of detail. And as the engineer calls on the physicist for a knowledge of mechanical laws, so the social builder of the future who should seek to refashion the culture of his time and add to its cultural values will seek guidance from ethnology, the science of culture, which in Tylor’s judgment is ‘essentially a reformer’s science.’
Most descriptive monographs on primitive tribes contain lists of the words with which the natives designate their relatives by blood and marriage. The reason is far from obvious. Why should not this topic be left in the hands of a linguist-lexicographer? It is true that primitive usage in this regard is very quaint from our point of view, but so are primitive conceptions on a variety of subjects that likewise find expression in speech. The refinement of spatial distinctions in North American languages, the classification of colors or animals or other groups of natural phenomena are of equal intrinsic interest from a psychological point of view. Why, then, single out a particular department of the aboriginal vocabulary in a treatise on culture? The answer is simply this, that kinship terms have a direct relation to cultural data.
The very fact that primitive tribes frequently use terms of kinship as words of address where we should substitute personal names is a social practice of ethnological interest. But the essential point is that the terms used are often very definitely correlated with specific social usages. Generally speaking, the use of distinct words fortwo types of relatives is connected with a real difference in their social relations to the speaker. Thus, a majority of primitive tribes draw no distinction between the father’s sister’s daughter and the mother’s brother’s daughter. But among the Miwok of California, where one of the cousins may be married while the other is within the prohibited degrees, a discrimination is made in language. Again, in many regions of the globe an altogether special bond connects the maternal uncle with the sister’s son, and accordingly we find that he is very often sharply distinguished from the paternal uncle in nomenclature.
On the other hand, we can often explain very naturally the use of a single word for two or more relatives whom we designate by as many distinct words. The Vedda of Ceylon, for example, call the man’s father-in-law and maternal uncle by the same term. The reason is that here a man commonly marries his mother’s brother’s daughter; the mother’s brotherishis father-in-law, and this identity is expressed in the terminology. A different illustration is supplied by the Crow of Montana, who have one term for the man’s mother-in-law and his wife’s brother’s wife. The simple explanation is that both stand to him in the relationship of mutual avoidance, and it is this social fact that is expressed by the commondesignation. The same Indians apply the word for ‘father’ in a very inclusive manner, possibly to dozens of individuals; but closer examination shows that all of the people so addressed are entitled to the same kind of treatment by the speaker, to a peculiar form of reverence, and to a preferential rank in the distribution of gifts.
These few and casual examples possibly suffice to show why kinship terms deserve the ethnologist’s attention. Terms of relationship are, in some measure, indices of social usage. Where relatives whom other people distinguish are grouped together, there is some likelihood that the natives regard them as representing the same relationship because they actually enjoy the same privileges or exercise the same functions in tribal life. Where relatives whom other peoples group together are distinguished, there is some probability that the distinction goes hand in hand with a difference in social function.
Lewis H. Morgan, the pioneer in this domain of knowledge, was keenly alive to the social implications of kinship nomenclature. But while he endeavored to give an ultimate interpretation of it in terms of various social conditions, he was confronted with the fact that not every tribe had a terminologysui generis, but that nomenclatures of remote peoples were sometimes marvelouslysimilar. Morgan boldly argued that such community of nomenclature established ultimate racial unity and on this ground coolly suggested a racial connection between the Hawaiians and the South African Zulu, between the natives of India and those of the Western Hemisphere.[1-v]
These speculations as to racial affinity have been rightly disregarded by later students, because to accept Morgan’s premises means running counter to the most obvious facts of physical anthropology. As Lubbock pointed out, we cannot assume that the Two-Mountain Iroquois are more closely akin to remote Oceanians than to their fellow Iroquois because some of their kinship terms resemble in connotation those of the Hawaiians. Nevertheless, Morgan was right in feeling thatsomehistorical conclusions could be drawn from similarities of relationship nomenclature. We must simply bring this particular group of ethnological data under the same principle as other cultural phenomena. When the same feature occurs within a definite continuous region, we shall assume that it has developed in a single center and spread by borrowing to other parts of the area. When the same feature occurs in disconnected regions, we shall incline to the theory of independent development and shall inquirewhether the course of evolution may have been due to the same cultural determinants,i.e., in this case, to the same social institutions.
After these preliminary remarks, we may turn to a closer scrutiny of the facts.
‘Systems’. Abstractly considered, it is conceivable that every individual relative might be designated by a different term of relationship by every other individual, just as each object in nature might theoretically be defined by some distinctive word instead of being placed in some such category as ‘tree’, ‘animal’, or ‘book’. Indeed, primitive people go rather far in their distinctions. Thus, in the Menomini family circle boys are not called ‘son’ or ‘brother’, but each is addressed by a word indicating the order of his birth, the oldest being ‘mudjikiwis’, the second ‘osememau’, the third ‘akotcosememau’, the fourth ‘nanaweo’.[2-v]But in this, as in every other department of language, economy has been exercised and instead of a chaotic number of distinct terms for every possible relationship, there is always a limited series, many distinct individual relationships being always grouped together under a single head. Thus, in English we apply the word ‘brother’ to a number of individuals regardless of their age relatively to ourselves or to one another and irrespective of the sex of thespeaker. Yet, as the Menomini instance shows, the age distinction might very well have been expressed in speech and there are many Indian languages in which one set of terms is used by female and another by male speakers.
All the terms used by a people to designate their relatives by blood or marriage are jointly called their ‘kinship system’. This phrase is wholly misleading, if it is understood to imply that all the constituent elements form a well-articulated whole, for this probably never applies to more than a limited number of them, as will appear presently. But as a convenient word for the entire nomenclature of relationship found in a particular region the word ‘system’ may be provisionally retained. We may say, then, that systems of different peoples vary in their mode of classifying kin and it seems the ethnographer’s first duty to determine the types of system found and their geographical distribution.
At the present moment a satisfactory grouping of the world’s kinship systems is impossible, owing to our lack of knowledge of many areas. The task is also rendered very difficult by the frequent coexistence of distinct and even contradictory principles in the same ‘system’. Each of these may be defined separately, but to weld both or all of them into a unified whole defiesour efforts. For example, the Masai of East Africa, in referring to the paternal uncle, simply combine the stems for ‘father’,baba, and ‘brother’,alasche, thus forming by juxtaposition of these primary terms the compound expressionol alasche le baba, which means literally ‘the brother of the father’. This mode of defining a relative’s status by combining primary terms of relationship or a primary term with a qualifying adjective as in our ‘grandfather’, is technically known as ‘descriptive’, and ethnologists are wont to speak of descriptive systems. As a matter of fact, this descriptive principle is highly characteristic of the Masai—but not when relatives are directly addressed by them. In such vocative usage, as it may be called, the father’s brother is calledbabalike the father himself; the mother’s brother is not designated by a phrase composed of primary stems but by a new stem,abula, which is also used reciprocally for the nephew; whilekokoserves to call both a paternal and a maternal aunt. These connotations introduce into the Masai ‘system’ a discordant principle by which relatives, instead of being defined descriptively, are grouped together in classes. But this ‘classificatory’ feature by no means characterizes all the vocative nomenclature. By far the majority of relatives areaddressed by terms suggestive of the presents of live stock presented to them by the speaker; if the gift consisted of a bull, the word used isb-ainoni, fromoinoni, bull; if an ass was given away, the vocative term isba-sigiria, fromsigiria, ass; and so forth. Accordingly, the vocative terms cited above are only employed by children, who have not yet presented stock to their kin.[3-v]In short, Masai terminology is molded by at least three entirely disparate principles.
We shall, accordingly, do well to amend our phraseology and to speak rather of kinship categories, features, or principles of classification than of types of kinship systems.
The Descriptive Principle.When we approach our subject in a purely empirical way, we are confronted with the fact that features do not, as a rule, occur sporadically but are distributed over continuous areas. Imperfect as is our knowledge of African systems, for example, we know that the descriptive feature of the Masai nomenclature does not appear everywhere, but flourishes especially among East African tribes, such as the Shilluk, Dinka, and other Upper Nile populations, and perhaps more widely where Arabic influence extends, the Arabian terminology being of a markedly descriptive character. In East Africa, indeed, there is almost quantitative proofof the dependence of kinship terminology on historical connection and geographical proximity. Among the Baganda, as among most Bantu Negroes, the descriptive feature is lacking and such a relative as the mother’s brother’s son, instead of being designated by a compound expression, is classed with the brother.[4-v]The Masai, who live surrounded by Bantu tribes, have a purely descriptive system for non-vocative usage but their vocative forms are in part classificatory, while some neighboring Bantu peoples have a correspondingly mixed system. The Shilluk and Dinka seem to use the descriptive principle exclusively, as do the Arabs. The Masai are undoubtedly closely allied with the Nilotes and markedly different from the Bantu. The conclusion is, therefore, inevitable that their terminology—whatever may be its ultimateraison d’être—is a function of their historical relations. They have descriptive features because they belong to a group of peoples of whom such features are characteristic. They have classificatory features because they have come into contact with peoples whose systems were characterized by such features and from whom they have borrowed them. The Shilluk lack the classificatory principle because they have not had the same alien influences as the Masai. The restriction ofdescriptive features to a definite part of Africa and their amalgamation with other features in the marginal section of this area show that kinship nomenclatures follow precisely the same rules as other elements of culture and that their distribution indicates probable or corroborates known tribal relations.
The descriptive principle is not restricted to East Africa and the Semitic family, but has been found in the Persian, Armenian, Celtic, Esthonian, and Scandinavian languages.[5-v]Although guesses might be offered, I do not feel that our present knowledge permits definite statements as to the historical relations suggested by the total range of the descriptive principle on the face of the globe.
The Hawaiian Principle.While the term ‘descriptive’ admits of a fairly unambiguous definition, the same cannot be said for the word ‘classificatory’. Morgan, after explaining his use of the former, states that a system of the second type reduces blood-relatives to great classes by a series of apparently arbitrary generalizations, applying the same terms to all the members of the same class. “It thus confounds relationships, which, under the descriptive system, are distinct, and enlarges the signification both of the primary and secondary terms beyond their seeminglyappropriate sense.”[6-v]This is looking at the matter from the arbitrarily selected point of view of our own nomenclature (which Morgan improperly, as Rivers has shown, regarded as descriptive). Objectively considered, even descriptive terminologies are classificatory, inasmuch as they do not individualize, but content themselves with such generalizations as classing together, say, all the father’s brothers instead of uniformly specializing according to age. For this reason I regard as misplaced Dr. Rivers’ emphasis on whether a term designates a single individual or a wider group. What, then, lies at the basis of the classificatory principle? Dr. Rivers, following Tylor, reduces it to the clan factor or rather to the influence of the dual organization of ancient society, by which it was divided into exogamous moieties. But this important suggestion, to which we shall have to revert, applies avowedly only to one form of the classificatory system and involves, therefore, the hypothesis that this preceded other forms. This may prove to be valid, but we cannot prejudice an empirical survey by taking its proof for granted and cannot, therefore, simply substitute ‘clan’ for ‘classificatory’ systems—apart from the fact that to talk of systems instead of principles or features in this connection is demonstrably misleading.
It is quite clear that ‘classificatory’ can be used only in a loose sense, to indicate wider groupings of kin than those to which we are accustomed; and that there is nonecessaryevolutionary relation between the two forms usually classed under this head. The empirical data are simply these. In certain systems, blood-relatives are classed according to generation regardless of nearness of kinship and of their maternal or paternal affiliations; in others, there is bifurcation, the maternal and paternal kin of at least the generations nearest to the speaker being distinguished. We may call the former the ‘unforked merging’, or geographically the ‘Hawaiian’ mode of classification; the latter may be correspondingly referred to as ‘forked merging’, or ‘Dakota’. One point which it is essential to remember even at this early stage of our survey is that these principles, together with the descriptive one, are very far from exhausting the varieties found.
Let us now consider the ‘unforked’ principle somewhat more closely as it finds expression among the Hawaiians. These people apply a single term,makua, to both parents and to all their parents’ brothers and sisters, sex being distinguished only by qualifying words meaning ‘man’ and ‘woman’. All related individuals of one’s generation are classed as brothers and sisters,certain distinctions being drawn according to the age of their parents relatively to that of one’s own parents and also according to the speaker’s sex, but none resulting from the differences innearnessof kinship. The children of all these brothers and sisters are classed with one’s own children, andtheirchildren with one’s grandchildren, while a single term embraces grandparents and all related members of their generation.[7-v]This age-stratification of blood-relatives with disregard of differences as to father’s or mother’s side occurs not only in Hawaii, but also in New Zealand, Kusaie, the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.[8-v]It is not uninteresting to note that Hawaii and New Zealand, though far removed from each other, coincide closely in other cultural features not shared with fellow-Polynesians, as Professor Dixon has recently shown in his treatment of Oceanian mythology. The geographical proximity of Micronesia to Hawaii hardly requires mention. Dr. Rivers points out[9-v]that certain Polynesian tribes in contact with Melanesians, whose systems display essentially the forked principle,e.g., the Tongans, use an intermediate nomenclature. We are thus again able to summarize the data in terms of historical connection. The assumption may be made that the ancient Polynesian terminology was that ofHawaii and New Zealand, which was modified where the Polynesians came into contact with diverse populations, and is shared by populations whose territory was presumably traversed by the Hawaiians. Dr. Rivers also states that the Burmese, Karen, Chinese and Japanese systems conform to the Hawaiian principle. He seems to depend on Morgan’s statement of the case, which may require revision. But, accepting the data as given and assuming that the Malay proper classify kin according to the unforked method, we should still have a perfectly continuous distribution for the Hawaiian features.
This would no longer hold if we accepted Morgan’s view that the Zulu of South Africa share the Hawaiian form, on which slender basis he advances the hypothesis that Kaffir and Polynesian have a common ancestry.[10-v]As a matter of fact, the Zulu nomenclature secured by Morgan does in some instances slur over the difference of paternal and maternal lines, to the exclusive dominance of the generation factor. Thus, man and woman call all the brother’s and sister’s children their sons and daughters without distinction, and the children of the father’s sister are classed with one’s brothers and sisters.
Nevertheless, even Morgan’s list reveals fundamental deviations from the Hawaiian principle.As he notes, the mother’s brother isnotclassed with the father’s brother and father, and the assumption that he formerly was is mere guesswork. What particularly astonished Morgan, however, was that the father’s sister was not called mother, but father. This is, indeed, amazing, if we start from our own notions as to the necessity of distinguishing parental sex, and in addition assume that the Zulu system is a variant of the Hawaiian one. If we free our minds from these preconceptions, there is no mystery; the father’s sister is classed with the father simply in order to express the difference from the maternal line in accordance with the principle of bifurcation.
In order to gain greater clearness in this matter it is necessary to extend our investigation to other Bantu tribes, preferably to those whose territories approach that of the Zulu. The essential point to ascertain is whether paternal and maternal uncles and aunts are merged in one group or are distinguished.[11-v]Among the Thonga, who live north of the Zulu, the father’s sister, as in Zulu, is classed with the father, the word meaning literally ‘female father’ and thus emphasizing her separation from the mother’s side of the family. The Herero, according to Schinz, seem to class all aunts with the mother in vocativeusage, but when not directly referring to these relatives they employ quite distinct expressions for the father’s and the mother’s sisters. In Baganda the difference between the two sides is marked.Mangeis mother, and the same word with the qualifiermutomeans mother’s sister, while father’s sister issengawe. Even clearer is the case for the maternal uncle. In the Ronga group of the Thonga he is called by a distinct word,malume, which almost coincides with Morgan’s Zulu term. In the Djonga division he is classed with the grandfather, not the father. By a quite distinct stem, the Herero sharply distinguish the mother’s brother from the father and his brothers. The same applies to the Baganda. As for the correlative term, from which Morgan infers that the Zulu once called the maternal uncle ‘father’, the Ronga have a distinct word for nephew,mupsyana, while the Djonga who class the mother’s brother with the grandfather consistently enough call the sister’s son ‘grandson’. Among the Herero, though uncles and aunts generally regard their nephews and nieces as their own children, the maternal uncle applies to them a distinct term,ovasia. Among the Baganda a man calls his sonmutabaniormwana, but his sister’s son ismujwa. I may add that the altogether peculiar bond of familiarity thatlinks together mother’s brother and sister’s son[12-v]among some Bantu people is inconsistent with Morgan’s assumption that the relationships of maternal uncle and father were once grouped under a single head among tribes of this family, for as stated above, such specific social relationships are generally expressed by specific terms for the relatives.
The conditions obtaining within the speaker’s generation at first seem to lend some support to the conception of the Bantu system as dominated by the Hawaiian principle, since the terms for brother and sister are more widely employed by some Bantu than is compatible with the forked division of kin. But closer inspection proves that, whatever may be at the root of the Bantu classification, it is not the Hawaiian notion of marking off generations. Even in Morgan’s Zulu series, while a man calls his maternal uncle’s children by a special term, they address him as brother; that is to say, members of the same generation and sex are not all classed together. Among the Herero, where the children of a brother and sister (but not ofGeschwisterof the same sex) regularly intermarry, they are placed in a category distinct from that of the children of two brothers and two sisters, who are one another’s brothers and sisters. In Thonga a boy callshis mother’s brother’s daughter ‘mother’, and she calls him ‘son’. To be sure, the Baganda draw no distinction between the brother, the father’s brother’s, the father’s sister’s, the mother’s brother’s and the mother’s sister’s son. On the other hand, only the father’s brother’s daughter and the mother’s sister’s daughter are a man’s sisters; his father’s sister’s and his mother’s brother’s daughter belong to the special category ofkizibwewe, quite distinct from that of the sister,mwanyina.
To cut a long story short, all the evidence is opposed to Morgan’s assumption that the Bantu systems are patterned on the Hawaiian principle of grading relatives by generations. There are merely occasional suggestions of that principle which will be discussed below as to their theoretical bearing.
So far as I know, there is only one region of the globe outside of Oceania and the possible Asiatic range defined above, where a definitely Hawaiian classification of relatives by generations has been reported,viz., among the Yoruba of West Africa.[13-v]Unfortunately, no more recent check data for this section seem available. For another part of West Africa we have Mr. Northcote W. Thomas’ tables,[14-v]which reveal a rather perplexing condition of affairs that seems to demand intensivereinvestigation together with linguistic analysis. The principle of bifurcation seems to hold sway only in a very limited measure.