The Project Gutenberg eBook ofCulture & Ethnology

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofCulture & EthnologyThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Culture & EthnologyAuthor: Robert Harry LowieRelease date: June 6, 2015 [eBook #49153]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Adrian Mastronardi, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CULTURE & ETHNOLOGY ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Culture & EthnologyAuthor: Robert Harry LowieRelease date: June 6, 2015 [eBook #49153]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Adrian Mastronardi, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Title: Culture & Ethnology

Author: Robert Harry Lowie

Author: Robert Harry Lowie

Release date: June 6, 2015 [eBook #49153]Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Adrian Mastronardi, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CULTURE & ETHNOLOGY ***

CULTURE & ETHNOLOGY

BYRobert H. Lowie, Ph.D.Associate Curator, AnthropologyAmerican Museum of Natural HistoryNEW YORKDOUGLAS C. McMURTRIE1917

This booklet is an attempt at popularization. The first four chapters are practically identical with as many lectures, delivered in 1917 as the January course offered by the Department of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History. The purpose of the January series, which was instituted in 1914 by Dr. P. E. Goddard and the writer, is to acquaint an audience of intelligent laymen with some of the results of modern ethnological work, the emphasis being on principles and problems, rather than on purely descriptive detail. The course, in short, occupies an intermediate position between technical discourses addressed to scientists and the more popular lectures which are designed to furnish mainly entertainment. Each year different topics have been chosen and several members of the staff have cooperated. Owing to the dearth of recent ethnological literature reflecting the position of American field-workers, and at the same time accessible to the interested outsider, I was easily persuaded to issue the 1917 lectures in the present form.

The last chapter may not seem to fit within the scope of this publication. It is obviously more technical than the rest in treatment and may appear to deal with too special a topic. My object, however, was to conclude with a concrete illustration of ethnological method, and I naturally selected a subject to which I had paid considerable attention during the last two years. It is a subject in which Morgan was able to arouse the interest of hundreds of laymen; and I can see no reason why an up-to-date exposition of the problems involved should not be able to hold their attention.

Robert H. Lowie

May, 1917

With the beginning of the European war the word ‘culture’ acquired a sense in popular English usage which had long prevailed in ethnological literature. Culture is, indeed, the sole and exclusive subject-matter of ethnology, as consciousness is the subject-matter of psychology, life of biology, electricity of a branch of physics. Culture shares with these other fundamental concepts the peculiarity that it can be properly understood only by an enlarged familiarity with the facts it summarizes. There is no royal shortcut to a comprehension of culture as a whole by definition any more than to a comprehension of consciousness; but as every analysis and explanation of particular conscious states adds to our knowledge of what consciousness is, so every explanation of particular cultural phenomena adds to our insight into the nature of culture. We must, however, start with some proximate notion of what we are to discuss, and for this purpose Tylor’s definition in the opening sentence of hisPrimitive Culturewill do as well as any: “Culture ... is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilitiesand habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

For purely practical reasons, connected with the minute division of labor that has become imperative with modern specialization, ethnology has in practice concerned itself with the cruder cultures of peoples without a knowledge of writing. But this division is an illogical and artificial one. As the biologist can study life as manifested in the human organism as well as in the amoeba, so the ethnologist might examine and describe the usages of modern America as well as those of the Hopi Indians. In these lectures I shall therefore not hesitate to draw upon illustrations from the higher civilizations where these seem most appropriate.

Indeed, it may be best for pedagogical reasons to commence with an enumeration of instances of cultural activity in our own midst. And since there is a persistent tendency to associate with culture the more impressive phenomena of art, science, and technology, it is well to insist at the outset that these loftier phases are by no means necessary to the concept of culture. The fact that your boy plays ‘button, button, who has the button?’ is just as much an element of our culture as the fact that a room is lighted by electricity. So is the baseball enthusiasm of ourgrown-up population, so are moving picture shows,thés dansants, Thanksgiving Day masquerades, bar-rooms, Ziegfeld Midnight Follies, evening schools, the Hearst papers, woman suffrage clubs, the single-tax movement, Riker drug stores, touring-sedans, and Tammany Hall.

These, then, represent the type of phenomena comprised under the caption of culture. They exist, and science, as a complete view of reality, cannot ignore them. But a question ominous for the worker who derives his bread and butter from ethnological investigation arises. All the phenomena mentioned and the rest of the same order relate to man, and they relate to man not as an animal but as an organism endowed with a higher mentality. Tylor’s definition expressly speaks of ‘capabilities and habits’. But there is a science that deals with capabilities and habits, to wit, psychology. Is it, then, necessary to have a distinct branch of knowledge, or can we not simply merge the cultural phenomena in those of the older science of psychology? It is this question that concerns us here. On the answer must depend our conception of culture and our attitude towards a science purporting to deal with cultural phenomena as something distinct from other data of reality.

In seeking light on this subject we must understand what sort of problems arise from the contemplation of cultural facts and attempt to connect them with the established principles of psychology. A few concrete examples will illustrate the situation.

One of the striking characteristics of our civilization, a trait of our material culture that is nevertheless an invaluable, nay indispensable, means for the propagation of knowledge under modern conditions, is the existence of paper, that is, of a cheap, readily manufactured material for writing and printing. The obvious problem that develops from this fact is, How did we get the art of paper-manufacture? Now we shall search in vain our psychological literature in quest of an explanation. Höffding and James, Wundt and Titchener have no answer to offer. An answer, nevertheless, exists. Europe learnt the art of paper-making from the Arabs, who as early as 795A. D.had established a paper factory in Bagdad. These in turn got their knowledge from the Chinese, who must be regarded as the originators of the technique. The answer is a perfectly satisfactory one, but it is obviously not couched in psychological terms: its nature is purelyhistorical.

Nevertheless, an objection may plausibly be raised here. Though an explanation has certainly been given, it does not account for all aspects of the phenomena we are considering. There is a psychological basis for each and every one of the events in our historical series. This series we may subdivide into three stages—the invention by the Chinese, the borrowing of this invention by the Arabs, and its transmission from Arab to European. Now the two last-named processes of transmission may not suggest the necessity of a special explanation at all. One may think that all that was required was for the Europeans to watch the Arabs and for the Arabs to watch the Chinese, and presto! the thing was done. This indeed, seems to be the view of an influential school of modern ethnologists. But the case is far from being so simple. We know of many instances, in the higher no less than in the lower cultures, corresponding to what the biologist calls symbiosis—a condition where distinct communities or countries persist in a division of labor for mutual benefit, each trading some of its intellectual or material products for equivalents secured from the other. In many parts of Africa there are fixed markets in which negroes from fairly remote localities congregate for the barter of wares, which are thus diffusedfar from their source of origin; but it is the finished products, not the arts, that are diffused. In New Guinea trading-vessels carry such objects as pottery hundreds of miles from the area of manufacture to natives who remain as ignorant of the ceramic technique as before. In northern Arizona the Hopi Indians occupying three eminences not more than eight miles distant from one another have no perfect uniformity of industrial knowledge. Pottery, which flourishes on the eastern Mesa, is wholly unknown as an art, though constantly used in its specimens, by the people of the central Mesa; a certain type of basketry plaque is made only at Oraibi village; another type is manufactured exclusively on the central Mesa. Conditions more ideala priorifor a transfer of knowledge than among the practically homogeneous neighboring Hopi groups could not be conceived. Nevertheless, it has not taken place. Cultural diffusion, therefore, cannot be taken for granted. We cannot take one people, place it alongside of another, and effect a cultural osmosis in the same way in which we produce a chemical reaction when two substances are brought together under proper conditions of temperature. We are face to face with a selective, with apsychologicalcondition. But when we turn once more to our text-books of psychology,we again find nothing that fits the case. About choice in general we get ample information. But we may rummage all the psychological seminar rooms in the world and yet shall find no reason why the Arabs learned the technique of paper-making from the Chinese instead of ignoring it or only importing Chinese paper.

Nor are we more fortunate when we turn to psychology for an account of how the original Chinese inventor came to conceive his epoch-making idea. This fact, of course, falls under the heading of ‘imagination’, and about imagination psychologists have much to tell us. But what, after all, does their interpretation amount to? We learn that imagination, as distinguished from the power of abstract thought, is the power of forming new concrete ideas. Since even the concrete individual idea is complex, being a product of association, its elements may be linked differently so as to produce new combinations. “The inventor of a new mechanism,” says Höffding, “combines given elements, the laws of whose activity he knows, into a totality and a connection which has no complete parallel in experience.” The scientist tries all possible combinations among his elements of experiences, forming a succession of individual ideas, which are rejected until the one appears that adequately represents reality.

We need hardly go farther to realize the impotence of psychological science for illuminating thepsychologyas well as the history of the paper-making art. The formulation of psychological science is admirable, but it is too general. It explains the invention of the steam-engine and the phonograph, the sewing-machine and the harvester no less than the origin of paper-making. We, however, do not want to know merely what ultimate psychological processes the invention of paper-making shares with all other inventions whatsoever, but also thedifferentialconditions that produced this one and unique result under the given circumstances. It is as though we asked about a man’s character and were told that he was a vertebrate. The type of psychological explanation we want is by no means unknown; however, we shall find its illustrations not in text-books of psychology, but in histories of literature, science, and art. When Taine raises the question how such a bore as Dr. Samuel Johnson could conceivably have attained his position in English literature and answers that it is because of the English predilection for sermons, he is giving the type of solution—whether right or wrong—that we want to secure for our cultural problem; it explains why the average Englishman, as a member of English society, acquiresthe habit of regarding Johnson in a certain way. When we inquire why Newton closes his treatise on optics with a statement as to the vanity of human things, our curiosity is satisfied when this expression appears as only one instance of the blending of theological and scientific thought current in his day. It is nonsense to say that these explanations are purely historical; they are psychological, for they take fully into account the subjective attitudes involved in the phenomena studied; and it is hopeless to expect this sort of explanation from psychological science, which deals with a quite distinct and far more generalized form of mental activity.

To turn from the technique of paper manufacture to a very different cultural feature in order to test the possibility of merging the observed phenomena in the principles of psychology. In several parts of the globe, and most prominently in parts of South America, the aborigines practise a custom known as the ‘couvade’, which forces the father of a new-born child to subject himself to a period of inactive confinement and a series of rigorously observed dietary and other regulations. Let us, for the sake of bringing out the point in high relief, ignore all historical considerations and concentrate exclusively on the subjectiveelements involved. Whence, then, this strange and wholly irrational association of ideas between fatherhood and a group of taboos? Now the subject of the association of ideas occupies hundreds of pages in psychological literature, yet all this, in itself valuable enough, material has no bearing on our problem, because it is again far too general. We do not doubt for a moment that the association we desire to have illuminated is due either to contiguity or to a perceived similarity of ideas, but why have we this particular association instead of the limitless multitude of associations that would be equally intelligible by the same formulae?

Again, many aboriginal tribes of Australia are subdivided into two halves, membership in which is inherited through the father, in some cases, through the mother in others. These moieties are what is technically called ‘exogamous’,i.e., marriage with a fellow-member is strictly forbidden. The regulation is, indeed, so stringent, the feeling of horror evoked by a transgression so violent, that in former times offenders were promptly put to death. This sentiment is so strong that even when visiting a remote tribe, perhaps a hundred miles away, where there is no possibility of blood-kinship, an Australian will avoid marriage with a member of the moiety bearing the same name as his own. Here, surely, there ismatter for psychology. An Australian has a violent emotional reaction akin to our aversion to incest, and may translate his feelings into the most violent action. Or, looking at the matter from another angle, the Australian exercises an admirable self-control, eschewing on principle marital relations with half the women of his community. Yet all that psychologists tell us of the ethical feelings and the will leaves the problem before us wholly untouched. Why this particular curious feeling developed, what place it occupies in mental life, the psychologist fails to explain. We get, again, simply general formulæ about feeling and will that are equally applicable to the case of a man’s beating his wife or a boy’s resisting the temptations of a lollypop. And this, it must be noted, is dealing with the distinctively psychological aspect of the data. Whether the rule in question originated in a common center and thence spread to other tribes, is also a cultural question of great importance, and this historical phase of the subject psychology is avowedly incompetent to deal with. Psychology, then, fails throughout to supply us with the interpretation we want. It is as impotent to reduce to really interpretative psychological principles the subjective aspect of cultural phenomena as it is to explain the historical sequence of events.

It is not necessary to multiply examples to establish the point. It is clear that cultural phenomena contain elements that cannot be reduced to psychological principles. The reason for the insufficiency is already embodied in Tylor’s definition of culture as embracing ‘capabilities and habitsacquiredby man as a member ofsociety’. The science of psychology, even in its most modern ramifications of abnormal psychology and the study of individual variations, does not grapple withacquiredmental traits nor with the influence ofsocietyon individual thought, feeling and will. It deals on principle exclusively withinnatetraits of theindividual. Now, whether the sharp separation assumed here between the innate and the acquired, between individual activity as determined by uniquely individual potentialities and as determined by social environment, can be made in practice or not, one thing is clear: therearephenomena that are acquired and in no sense innate, that are socially and not individually determined. When a Christian reacts in a definite way to the perception of a cross, it is clearly not because of an individual psychic peculiarity, for other Christians react in the same way. On the other hand, we are not dealing with a general human trait since the reactions of a Mohammedan or a Buddhist will bequite different. Innumerable instances of this sort show that individual thought, feeling and volition are co-determined by social influences. In so far forth as the potency of these social factors extends we have culture; in so far forth as knowledge, emotion, and will are neither the result of natural endowment shared with other members of the species nor rest on an individual organic basis, we have a thingsui generisthat demands for its investigation a distinct science.

Does it follow from the foregoing that there is no possible relation between psychology and culture, that psychological results are a matter of utter indifference to the ethnologist? In their desire to vindicate for their own branch of knowledge a place in the sun, some ethnologists have come very near, if they have not actually reached such a conclusion. To me the case appears in a somewhat different light. Whatever division of labor may be desirable for the economy of scientific work, knowledge as a whole knows nothing of watertight compartments. Further, the nominally distinct sciences are not subordinated to one another, but coexist in a condition of democratic equality and coöperativeness. We cannot reduce cultural to psychological phenomena any more than we can reduce biology to mechanics or chemistry, because in either casethe very facts we desire to have explained are ignored in the more generalized formulation. But for specific purposes, the student of culture can call for aid upon each and all of the other branches of learning. It is a very important cultural problem whether the natives of South America knew the bronze technique,i.e., whether they consciously produced the observed alloy of copper and tin. But how can the ethnologist solve this problem? Only by requisitioning the services of the chemist.

Now very few would deny that services of the kind rendered by chemistry can also be rendered to the study of culture by psychology. Indeed, most people would at once admit that the relationship with psychology isa priorilikely to be far more extensive and thorough-going. A few concrete examples will illustrate how this relationship may be conceived.

Among the quaint conceits with which primitive cultures abound is that of attaching to particular numbers a peculiar character of sanctity. “Everything in the universe,” a Crow Indian once told me, “goes by fours.” As a matter of fact, most things in Crow religious life are adjusted to this conception. An important ceremonial act is thrice feigned so as to be actually performed at the fourth attempt;religious processions halt four times; songs are sung in sets of four; in mythic tales it is the fourth trial that carries an heroic feat to a successful issue. Now this cultural fact very largely eludes psychological interpretation. The first thing that strikes us is that this feature is no peculiarity of the Crow, but is rather widely distributed among their immediate neighbors and even remote Indian tribes, though jointly occupying a continuous area. Since outside of this region other numbers figure as mystic, we cannot regard the view of the sacredness of Four as a general trait of human psychology but must assume that the concept was borrowed by most of the tribes now holding it. A wider survey teaches us that corresponding, though not identical, conceptions are very common.Sevenfigures in parts of Asia,Threein European folklore,Fivein Oregon and northern Nevada,Sixamong the Ainu of Yezo,Nineamong the Yakut,Tenamong the Pythagorean philosophers of ancient Greece, very much asFourdoes among the Crow. Now the fact that a particular Crow Indian regards Four as a sacred number does not mean that this is an individual peculiarity of his any more than the Christian’s reaction to a cross is a proof of some psychological idiosyncrasy. Individually the Crow Indian maybe quite indifferent to the number and yet he would view it as sacred because he has been taught so to regard it. This is, of course, the vital difference between ethnology and psychology which has already been emphasized. Nevertheless, the association must at one time have been formed in an individual mind, whether among the Crow or elsewhere, and the question arises as to what such an association means. Francis Galton showed some time ago that such associations of definite personal characteristics with numbers occur by no means infrequently among Europeans. The phenomenon we are dealing with is thus linked with a group of related phenomena and in so far forth is explained.

There are ethnologists who would not admit that such an explanation has anything to do with ethnology. They would contend that as soon as we cease to investigate the group as such we are passing from ethnology, the science of culture, to psychology, the science of individual minds. This seems an unnecessarily narrow doctrinaire view. Knowledge, as stated above, is not subdivided by hard-and-fast partitions. Interest certainly does not stop at an arbitrary point in the investigation but is centered on a comprehension of thewholephenomenon. Where that phenomenon is analloy of tin and copper, a decision as to its nature is naturally left to chemistry; it seems not unreasonable that where it is a type of association we should turn for enlightenment to psychology.

Another field supplies an additional illustration. One of the important subjects for ethnographic study is artistic form. The ethnologist notes in a purely descriptive way the decorative patterns employed by various tribes, the fact that curvilinear motives are prominent among the Maori of New Zealand while the rawhide bags of Plains Indians are covered with angular paintings. Here, once more, it is clear that many of the problems that arise are purely cultural. There are, nevertheless, psychological elements involved that may be misunderstood without psychological knowledge. Let us assume,e.g., that a certain tribe is artistically characterized by a fondness for squares. What does this predilection signify? It is a psychological commonplace that through an optical illusion we exaggerate the height as compared with the width of a rectangle; accordingly, the geometrical square does not coincide with the psychological square. This simple piece of information enables us to understandwhatwe are actually dealing with in the case of a square pattern. Atthe same time it sharpens our observation regarding such patterns. It is quite conceivable that in one place tribal taste should prefer the actual square while elsewhere the psychological square occupies the seat of honor. This would be a purely ethnographic fact, yet its discovery might be considerably expedited by some knowledge of experimental aesthetics.

Let us turn from mystic numbers and decorative designs to another aspect of primitive life. The Turkish tribes of western Siberia have a form of religion based on the belief that certain individuals enjoy the hereditary privilege of acting as intermediaries between their ancestral spirits and the people at large. With the aid of his sacred drum the shaman, as such an intermediary is technically called, is able to summon the supernatural beings, cure the sick, foretell the future, separate his own soul from his body and send it to the upper realms of light or the nether regions of darkness. Now, although a particular individual inherits the shaman’s office from his father, he receives no formal instruction nor does he make any active preparation for his mission. His call comes in the form of a sudden paroxysm. He is seized with a feeling of languor and a fit of violent convulsions, with abnormal yawning, and a powerful pressure on the chest,which causes him to utter inarticulate screams. He begins to shiver with cold, rolls his eyes, suddenly leaps up and madly circles about until he falls down covered with perspiration and writhing in epileptic spasms on the ground. His members are devoid of sensation, his hands grasp without discrimination red-hot iron, knives, pins; he swallows such objects without suffering the slightest injury, and again ejects them from his mouth. Finally, the prospective seer seizes a shaman’s drum and assumes the shaman’s office. Disobedience to the spirit’s call would spell disaster, madness and death amidst the most horrible tortures.[2-i]

The naïve reaction to this narrative on the part of common sense in the familiar form of common ignorance will probably be that the European traveler who is our authority is a very gullible individual if he believed his native informant’s statements. How can an individual be seized with such a spasm as that described? How is it possible for him to become devoid of sensation? Nevertheless, nothing is more certain than that the account given is substantially correct. It is simply a particular form of nervous affliction very common throughout Siberia and attested by dozens of trustworthy eyewitnesses.[3-i]This Arctic hysteria, as it has been misnamed(for there is nothing distinctively Arctic about it), manifests itself principally in two ways. Either the individual falls victim to an indiscriminate mania for mimicking the acts of others; or he is seized with the sort of paroxysm described for the Turkish shaman. Nothing is clearer than that in neither case is there usually conscious deception. Sometimes the imitation mania subjects the sufferer to ridicule and pain, as when an old woman in imitation of a Cossack, seized a salmon with her teeth, ran up a hill and down again, unable to prevent herself from plunging into the water, though normally she was barely able to walk. Similarly, the numerous hysterical individuals of the other type who do not become inspired shamans cannot possibly derive any benefit from their fits.

Abnormal psychology here steps in and teaches us that such trances are involuntary and not the result of fraud, that they occur in our own civilization and are accompanied with extraordinary lack of sensibility to pain, in short, psychiatry classifies the observed phenomena and tells us what we are really dealing with. It prevents a misconception alike of the shaman’s activities and of the attitude of his people towards him.

When, however, abnormal psychology has so far enlightened us, it has by no means exhaustedeven the purely subjective aspect of the case. How does the prospective shaman seized with his fit know about the shamanistic drum that forms a necessary accessory of his office? How does he know what mode of activity is expected from him? These arenotthings which he can get directly from his trance for we shall hardly accept the aboriginal theory that he is inspired by the ancestral spirits. He can derive his knowledge, however informally, only as the member of a group holding certain definite views as to the shamanistic office. The cultural phenomenon, then, even on its psychological side, comprises a very appreciableplusover and above the facts that psychology can explain, and these additional data accordingly require treatment by another science.

My conclusions as to the relation of psychology to culture are, accordingly, the following: The cultural facts, even in their subjective aspect, are not merged in psychological facts. They must not, indeed, contravene psychological principles, but the same applies to all other principles of the universe; culture cannot construct houses contrary to the laws of gravitation nor produce bread out of stones. But the principles of psychology are as incapable of accounting for the phenomena of culture as is gravitation to accountfor architectural styles. Over and above the interpretations given by psychology, there is an irreducible residuum of huge magnitude that calls for special treatment and by its very existence vindicates theraison d’êtreof ethnology. We need not eschew any help given by scientific psychology for the comprehension of specifically psychological components of cultural phenomena; but as no one dreams of saying that these phenomena are reduced to chemical principles when chemistry furnishes us with an analysis of Peruvian bronze implements, so no one can dare assert that they are reduced to psychological principles when we call upon psychology to elucidate specific features of cultural complexes. The ‘capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’ constitute a distinct aspect of reality that must be the field of a distinct science autonomous with reference to psychology.

If culture is a complex of socially acquired traits, it might appear that race could not possibly have any influence on culture, since by racial characteristics we understand those which are innate by virtue of ancestry. This, however, by no means follows. In order that certain traits be acquired, a certain type of organic basis is an absolute prerequisite; a chimpanzee or a bat is not able to acquire human culture through social environment. From an evolutionary point of view it appears, therefore, very plausible at first blush that within the human species, likewise, differences in organization should be correlated with the observed cultural manifestations of varying degree and complexity. There was, undoubtedly, some stage in human evolution where the organic basis for culture had not yet been acquired. Can the several races be regarded as transitional forms, each possessed of certain capabilities determining and limiting its cultural achievement? This question can be viewed in two ways. Comparative psychology may give us direct information as to qualitative and quantitative racial differences that would affect cultural activity. Or, we may infer suchdifferences as the only possible causes for the observed cultural differences. Both modes of approach are helpful for a comprehension of the problem.

Until recent years the psychological evaluation of primitive tribes rested largely on the offhand judgments of travelers and missionaries. With the advent of more exact psychological laboratory methods, these have been, in some measure, applied by competent investigators to aboriginal populations. Unfortunately, the results hitherto secured are somewhat meager. There are technical difficulties, among them the necessity of examining fairly large numbers of individuals in order to get a good sample of the population. Worse still, laboratory methods are most effective in regard to what may be called the lower mental operations, which partake almost more of a physiological than of a strictly psychological character. Clearly enough, what we should be most desirous of knowing is how primitive compares with civilized man in logical thought and imagination. But these are precisely the things not readily tested, and here the additional technical difficulty comes in that they can hardly be examined at all without a far more intimate knowledge of the native languages than the investigator is likely to command. Nevertheless,something has been done and I will attempt to present as briefly as possible the essential results, following Thorndike’s convenient summary.[1-ii]

Although some observers have attributed unusual acuity of sense perception to the more primitive peoples of the globe, the investigations of Rivers, Woodworth, and others in the main establish the psychic unity of mankind in this regard. For example, though the Kalmuk are renowned for their vision, only one or two of the individuals tested exceeded the European record, and while Bruner found Indians and Filipino inferior in hearing a watch tick or a click transmitted by telephone, the fairness of these tests for natives unused to such stimuli has been reasonably challenged. In their reaction-time tests, widely different groups were very similar. In the tapping test, measuring the rate at which the brain can at will discharge a series of impulses to the same muscle, marked differences were also lacking; but when accuracy as well as rapidity were examined, the Filipino seemed decidedly superior to the whites. Optical illusions were shared by all races tested, which indicates, as Woodworth points out, that simple sorts of judgments as well as sensory processes are common to the generality of mankind. Woodworthsubjected his subjects to an intelligence test, demanding that blocks of different shapes be fitted into a board with holes to match the blocks. In speed the average differences between whites, Indians, Eskimo, Ainu, Filipino, and Singhalese are small and there is considerable overlapping. On the other hand, the Igorrote and Philippine Negrito, as well as a group of supposed Pygmies from the Congo, proved remarkably deficient. “This crumb,” concludes our investigator, “is about all the testing psychologist has yet to offer on the question of racial differences in intelligence.”

It may well be, as Thorndike suggests, that if higher functions were studied, more striking differences would be revealed. But up to date we can simply say that experimental psychological methods have revealed no far-reaching differences in the mental processes of the several races. Even the Igorrote and Negrito deficiency may be due, Woodworth suggests, to their habits of life rather than to their native endowment.

Since exact methods tell us nothing of those higher operations we are most eager to know about, it might be deemed advisable to fall back on general estimates by the most competent observers. Unfortunately, the personal equationenters here to an extent that completely nullifies the value of individual judgments. Travelers in foreign lands are likely to make quite unusual demands on the capacities of the natives with whose aid they are working, and in this way too frequently arrive at an unfair conclusion as to their mental characteristics. In a corresponding test Europeans might do little better. It is, at all events, remarkable that unbiased observers who are fairly sympathetic and remain in long contact with a primitive people usually entertain a rather favorable opinion of their powers. Thus, Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied, expresses the view that, whether other varieties of mankind differ or not, the American aborigines are not inferior to the whites,[2-ii]and corresponding estimates have been made of other races. Still, these are merely personal opinions and we must turn to our second method for possibly more objective, if indirect, evidence on the subject. Are, then, cultural differences necessarily the result of racial differences?

In thus investigating the relations between race and civilization we may fruitfully employ the method of variation. Making the racial factor a constant, we may inquire whether culture, too, is thereby made a constant, and whether a change in racial propinquity is correlated with aproportionate change of culture. On the other hand, we may start with culture as a constant and inquire whether each form or grade of culture is the concomitant of definite racial characteristics and whether a change in culture is accompanied by a corresponding change of race.

To begin with the latter method, which may be briefly disposed of: Taking our own type of culture, as represented in western Europe and North America, we find that it is shared by at least one people of quite distinct stock, the Japanese, who have already made important contributions to the general civilization of the world in such lines as biology and scientific medicine. An obvious objection is that the Japanese are not the originators of our cultural foundation but have borrowed it ready-made (as they once borrowed that of China), and merely added a few additional stones to the superstructure. This fact cannot, of course, be questioned, but as soon as we investigate historically the origin of our own modern civilization we find that it, too, is largely the product of numerous cultural streams, some of which may be definitely traced to distinct races or sub-races. Our immediate indebtedness to Rome and Greece has been drilled into us with such fulsomely exaggerated emphasis in ourschooldays that the less said about it the better for a fair estimate of general culture history. That the Greeks were merely the continuators and inheritors of an earlier Oriental culture, must be considered an established fact. Our economic life, based as it is on the agricultural employment of certain cereals with the aid of certain domesticated animals, is derived from Asia; so is the technologically invaluable wheel.[3-ii]The domestication of the horse certainly originated in inner Asia; modern astronomy rests on that of the Babylonians, Hindu, and Egyptians; the invention of glass is an Egyptian contribution; spectacles come from India;[4-ii]paper, to mention only one other significant element of our civilization, was borrowed from China. What is right for the goose, is right for the gander; and if the Japanese deserve no credit for having appropriated our culture, we must also carefully eliminate from that culture all elements not demonstrably due to the creative genius of our race before laying claim to the residue as our distinctive product. As Thorndike, among others, has pointed out,[5-ii]the races have not remained in splendid isolation, but any particular one has obtained most of its civilization from without, and “of ten equally gifted races in perfect intercourse each will originate only one-tenth of what itgets.” This, to be sure, represents an ideal condition, and we have no right to assume gratuitously that the peoples in contact are all equally gifted; but it is worth noting that momentous ideas may be conceived by what we are used to regard as inferior races. Thus, the Maya of Central America conceived the notion of the zero figure, which remained unknown to Europeans until they borrowed it from India; and eminent ethnologists suggest that the discovery of the iron technique is due to the Negroes.

In short, the possessors of a culture are not necessarily its originators; often they are demonstrably borrowers of specific elements of the greatest significance. The same culture may thus become the property of distinct races, as is rapidly becoming the case in modern times. Owing to the very extensive occurrence of diffusion the question what a particular people or race has originated becomes extremely complicated; while it is an established fact that important additions to human civilization have been made by diverse stocks.

It may not be out of place to point out that not only the more tangible elements of culture, but very much subtler ingredients than those hitherto mentioned are shared by distinct groups of mankind. Thus, common to ourselves and theChinese, though strikingly lacking among the Hindu, who, nevertheless, are racially nearer to us, is a marked sense for historical perspective. Common to the ancient Romans, the modern Germans, and the modern Japanese, is the talent for rationalistic organization of administrative affairs. We cannot assume under the circumstances that the Japanese are organically nearer to the Germans than to other Asiatics. These instances seem the more valuable because here borrowing is excluded. The racial factor may in some way be involved; it is conceivable that only with a certain minimum of organic equipment could a particular cultural trait be developed or even assimilated. But obviously the same cultural traits may be coupled with different racial characteristics.

But what results from making race a constant? That no essential organic change has taken place in the human race during the historic period is universally admitted without question by biologists, physical anthropologists, and brain specialists. Accordingly, when we concentrate our attention on a definite people and follow their fortunes during historic times, we are dealing with a genuine constant from the racial point of view. It requires no very great acquaintance with history to note startling cultural diversitycorrelated with this stability of organic endowment.

The culture of the Mongol proper about the beginning of the thirteenth century was that of an essentially primitive people, sharing the shamanistic beliefs of their general habitat and ignorant of writing. Suddenly we find them attaining an extraordinary political importance, dominating Asia and menacing Europe, conversant successively with several forms of script, practising the art of printing, and becoming ardent exponents of Buddhism. Today they appear fallen from their high estate, devoid of political power, and with their semi-sedentary nomad life again give the impression of primitiveness, though tempered with evidences of a higher civilization.[6-ii]These changes are not only manifestly independent of the racial factor, but can in part be directly traced to other causes. Buddhism, of course, was derived ultimately from India. Under Jenghis Khan both Chinese characters and an alphabet derived from the Syrian, which had been spread through central Asia by Nestorian missionaries, came into use; while another system of writing was based on that of Tibet, and the art of printing was learned from the Chinese.[7-ii]The political predominance of the Mongols was due to a few powerful personalities;and economic factors seem to have been at least potent agents in the degenerative process of Mongol civilization. In short, we have a group of determinants that are not even remotely connected with hereditary racial traits.

Somewhat similar results appear from a consideration of Manchu history. The Manchu were originally an insignificant and rude tribe of the Tungusic family in eastern Siberia. Through contact with the Mongols they became a literary people. They subjected China in 1644, and adopted the Chinese speech and mode of thinking to such an extent that their language is no longer spoken and almost every vestige of their former lore is irretrievably lost.[8-ii]

An equally striking illustration is furnished by the Arabs. Here, too, we have a people of crude civilization suddenly emerging from an unimportant position in the world’s affairs to blossom forth not only as a military and political, but a cultural power as well, deriving from Persia and Babylonia the impulse to philological and historical studies, from Byzantium the technique of naval warfare, the art of paper-manufacture from the Chinese, Euclid from the Syrian outposts of Greek culture, and from India the decimal notation.[9-ii]We find further that they were not passive assimilators, but original elaborators and activetransmitters of the received elements, to whom European science is under a lasting debt of gratitude and whose art constitutes at least a highly creditable and individual achievement.

The conclusion suggested by these examples is very strongly corroborated by an examination of our own race. We need not enter into the subtleties of sub-racial classifications for the present purpose, but will simply regard the European race in relation to European culture generally. It is clear that all those startling technological advantages that most sharply divide us from other peoples are a mushroom growth little over a century old. In the first half of the nineteenth century matches were unknown and the processes of fire-making were not superior to those of many primitive tribes. The steam-engine and the industrial revolution are of very little greater antiquity, not to speak of electrical contrivances and applied chemistry. The difference between ourselves and our forefathers is at first blush so tremendous thata prioriit would seem to be explainable only by very great mental differences, yet nothing is more certain than that their innate mentality was exactly the same. The cultural difference becomes more and more glaring as we proceed backwards, say, to the period antedating the art of printing. A portion of ourMiddle Ages compares rather unfavorably with contemporaneous Arabian or Chinese civilization. “If we go back to the fifteenth century,” says Professor Giles, “we shall find that the standard of civilization, as the term is usually understood, was still much higher in China than in Europe; while Marco Polo, the famous Venetian traveler of the thirteenth century, who actually lived twenty-four years in China, and served as an official under Kublai Khan, has left it on record that the magnificence of Chinese cities, and the splendor of the Chinese court, outrivaled anything he had ever seen or heard of.”[10-ii]

Certainly the racial factor, which is a constant, cannot account for the amazing changes in culture which we encounter in passing from one period of our era to another. If we are interested in explaining these cultural phenomena, we must cast about for some other determinants.

In a subject that is constantly confused by partisanship it is important to make no greater claims for an argument than the facts absolutely warrant. Accordingly, I hasten to explain what has really been shown and what I have failed to show hitherto. It is, I think, fair to say that culture cannot be adequately explained by race, and that the same race varies extraordinarily inculture even within a very narrow space of time. But we have not furnished proof that, say, the Central African Pygmies, the Tasmanians, or the aborigines of Australia would have been capable of attaining unaided to the level of our civilization. What we can say, however, is this: The Chinese and some of our American Indians, such as the ancient Central Americans and Peruvians, did attain a very high level, which may be equated with that of Europe at a relatively recent period. The difference between European culture then and now cannot be due to hereditary causes, and it would, therefore, be unjustifiable to allege that such causes account for the difference between Europe of today and China or ancient Central America. Quite generally it is true that the so-called primitive tribes are anything but primitive in the strict sense of the term. Ingenious contrivances, such as the boomerang, occur among the Australians, usually regarded as one of the lowliest of races, and here we also find a remarkable complexity of social organization. The Negroes of Africa are not only conversant with the art of metallurgy, which is possibly their own invention, but are conspicuous for their ability to form large and powerful political states and have shown at least the ability of assimilating the culture of Islam.If we contrast Negro culture on the average not with the highest products of Dutch, Danish, or Swiss culture, but with the status of the illiterate peasant communities in not a few regions of Europe, the difference will hardly be so great as to suggest any far-reaching hereditary causes. As the highly civilized Manchu of today have for their next racial kin very crude Siberian populations, so the white race, even today, embraces very primitive as well as highly advanced constituent groups. We cannot wholly isolate the racial factor from others, and we cannot give an ocular demonstration of what the several inferior races, so-called, are capable of achieving under the most favorable conditions. But with great confidence we can say that since the same race at different times or in different subdivisions at the same time represents vastly different cultural stages, there is obviously no directproportionalrelation between culture and race. And if great changes of culture can occur without any change of race whatsoever, we are justified in considering it probable that a relatively minute change of hereditary ability might produce enormous differences. An analogy may render the matter clearer. Suppose that it is of vital importance to lift a heavy weight, say 400 pounds, to which only a single individual has access at the sametime. Then a very slight difference in muscular power will either accomplish or fail in producing the desired effect, and the ultimate effect (say in repelling an attack on a fortress under relatively primitive conditions) will be entirely incommensurate with the additional strength required to produce it. So we may readily understand how a slightly greater mechanical aptitude might render one race able to launch a remarkable series of inventions for which another, by barely missing the required degree of development, would be forever debarred. This is only a special form of the Darwinian doctrine of the survival value of small variations, applied not to the question of the struggle for existence (with which, nevertheless, it may be most intimately related), but to the creation of new cultural values.

This aspect of the subject naturally leads to another that is closely connected with it and is essential to an understanding of the entire question. Mental endowment is a variable phenomenon within any particular people or tribe. However democratic may be our ideals, the doctrine that all individuals are born equal in point of ability can no longer be seriously maintained. Every race must, therefore, be regarded not as representing a single point of mental development,but as a continuum of mental values with a certain range of variation. In comparing the different races we must, accordingly, apply the canons used by statisticians in comparing series of variable measurements. Here a matter of vital importance challenges our attention. Two series may have the same average value and yet differ considerably in range. Now it is obvious that, where the number of individuals considered is small, excessive values are less likely to occur than in a larger series. In a gathering of a hundred men, we are not likely to find a man above 6 feet 6 inches in height; the average stature of all New Yorkers will probably not be any greater than that of one hundred men selected at random, yet in the entire city we shall find a number of individuals of gigantic stature. When we apply this fact to our special problem we see at once that extraordinary deviations from the norm cannot be expected to occur in a tribe of 500 or even 5,000, while among the vast populations of India, China or the Caucasian countries of America and Europe such favorable variants are likely to occur with considerable absolute frequency. These variations, as has already been suggested, need not even be excessive to produce significant cultural results. Again, we may urge the principle of minimal variations.Alittlegreater energy or administrative talent may be just sufficient to found a powerful state; aslightlygreater amount of logical consistency may lead to the foundation of geometrical reasoning or of a philosophical system; asomewhatkeener interest, above the purely utilitarian one, in surrounding nature may give a remarkable impetus to the development of science.

Now this puts an entirely different construction on the facts. Assume that racial differencesareat the bottom of some of the observed cultural differences. This fact would not necessarily mean, then, that theaverageability of the inferior races is less, but only that extreme variations of an advantageous character occur less frequently among them. This, for example, is the view taken by Professor Eugen Fischer, the physical anthropologist, a very firm believer in racial differences, but as regards variability rather than in point of average intellectual equipment. It is also essentially, if I understand him, the point made by Professor Thorndike. But precisely because the population of the several races differs so enormously, we are for many of them without a fair standard of comparison. Statistically, any actual number of measurements is only a small sample of an infinite series; but we have no means of ascertaining empirically what the extremevariations of which Veddas or Australians are organically capable, would be like. This, necessarily, leaves the ultimate problem of racial differences unsolved. Nevertheless, our considerations have not been in vain. They show, for one thing, how many factors have to be weighed in arriving at a fair estimate of racial capabilities, factors which are naively ignored in most popular discussions of the subject. We can, farther, say positively that whatever differences may exist have been grossly exaggerated. In the simpler mental operations, comparative psychological studies indicate a specific unity of mankind. Differences in culture are certainly not proportionate to mental differences,i.e., relatively slight differences in native ability may well have produced tremendous cultural effects. Since, finally, cultural differences of enormous range occur within the same race, and even within very much smaller subdivisions, the ethnologist cannot solve his cultural problems by means of the race factor. Even if an ultimate investigation should definitely fix the cultural limits to which a given race is hereditarily subject, such information could not solve the far more specific problem why the same people a few hundred years earlier were a horde of barbarians and a few hundred years later formed a highly civilized community.The supposed explanation by racial potentialities would be far too general to interpret the actual happenings. Racial psychology, no less than general psychology, thus fails to solve the problems of culture.

The influence of geographical environment on culture seems a matter not so much of logical inference as of direct observation. Taking our own continent, we know that cotton is raised in the South, that our wheat belt lies in Minnesota and the adjoining states and Canadian provinces, that the Rocky Mountain and some of the Plateau states are the seat of the mining industry while Florida and California form our tropical fruit orchards. With these obvious facts are combined correlations not so clear, perhaps, yet very convincing to the mind as yet undebauched by ethnological learning. What seems more natural than that culture in its highest forms should develop only in temperate regions, that the gloomy forests of the North be reflected in a mythology of ogres and trolls, that liberty should flourish amidst snowy mountain tops and languish in the tepid plain, or that islanders should be expert mariners?

This geographical theory of culture bears a certain resemblance to the classical associationist theory in psychology. According to that doctrine, the mind is something in the nature of a wax tablet on which the outer world producesimpressions and all the higher mental activities are, in the last instance, reducible to combinations of the represented impressions or ‘ideas’. Modern psychology, however, regards this system, fascinating as it appears at a first glance, as little better than an historical curiosity. The association of ideas itself is now conceived merely as a special manifestation of the synthetic nature of consciousness. In short, the tables are completely turned, and association, instead of explaining consciousness, is interpreted in terms of consciousness. The analogy with the geographical view of culture will become apparent in the course of our discussion.

To begin with the culture of our own country: The environmental features of southern California, of Nevada, and the South have not changed during the last few centuries. Yet, what do we find on considering the aboriginal cultures of these regions? Southern California and Nevada were unreclaimed desert wastes inhabited by a roving, non-agricultural population, the natural mining resources of the latter state remained untouched, no attempt was made to grow cotton in the Southern cotton area. How can such facts be interpreted on a geographical basis? Quite obviously, the reverse holds. The utilization of part of the environment, instead of beingan automatic response, has for an indispensable prerequisite a certain type of culture. Granted the existence of an agricultural technique, attempts may be made to apply it even in a forbidding arid climate, where a more primitive culture would not be able to develop it. The unfavorable environment may have checked such development, and in so far forth exerted cultural influence at one stage, but it is unable to check it at another stage, where the preëxisting culture, instead of ‘remaining put’, molds the environment to its own purposes.

The case I have chosen is an extreme one because I have correlated environment with extremes of culture—one of the lowest forms of aboriginal North American culture and our modern advanced scientific methods of subduing nature to our will. But if we consider only the cruder forms of civilization the same point appears with equal clearness.

Professor Kirchhoff, by no means an extreme adherent of the geographical school since he does not reduce man to a mere automaton in the face of his surroundings, nevertheless believes in a far-reaching influence of the environment and cites in particular the resemblances between inhabitants of arid territories. Unfortunately for his argument we have glaring instances inwhich desert-like conditions coexist with disparate modes of culture not only in similar but in identical regions of the globe.

Thus, the Hopi and Navajo Indians have both occupied for a long period the same part of northeastern Arizona and on the environmental theory we should therefore expect among them the same mode of life. In this, however, we are thoroughly disappointed. The Hopi are intensive farmers who succeed in raising crops where white agriculturists fail; the Navajo also plant corn but to a distinctly lesser extent and under Spanish influence have readily developed into a pastoral people, raising sheep for food and wool. Though the same building material is available, the Hopi construct the well-known terraced sandstone houses with a rectangular cell as the architectural unit, while the Navajo dwell in conical earth-covered huts. North American ceramic art attains one of its highwater marks among the Hopi, while the pottery of the Navajo is hopelessly crude in comparison. Cotton was raised by the Hopi, but there is no trace of its use by the neighboring people. What is true of the material aspect of native life applies equally to its less tangible elements. There is at least one marked difference in the sexual division of labor: with the Hopi it is the man’s business tospin and weave while this work falls to woman’s share among the Navajo. The Hopi were always strict monogamists, while among the Navajo polygamy was permissible. In conjunction with their agricultural pursuits Hopi ceremonialism centered in the magico-religious production of rain; the Navajo applied often the identical ritualistic stock-in-trade to the cure of sickness. A stringent regulation of the Navajo social code forbids all conversation between son-in-law and mother-in-law; but the Hopi merely view the taboo as a Navajo idiosyncrasy. The general cast of Hopi psychology, as fashioned by Hopi society, is that of an eminently peaceable population; the Navajo rather recall in their bearing the warlike and aggressive tribes of the Plains. Where resemblances occur, ase.g., in the objective phase of the native cults, we are able to prove that the parallelism is due not to an independent response to environmental stimuli, but to contact and borrowing. But quite apart from such cases, the basic differences in Hopi and Navajo civilization show that the environment alone cannot account for cultural phenomena.

If we pass from the southwestern United States to South Africa, a corresponding situation confronts us. The same area at one time formedthe habitat of the Bushmen and the Hottentots; yet, their mode of life varies fundamentally. The Bushmen are essentially hunters and seed-collectors, while the Hottentots are an eminently pastoral people. Caves and crude windbreaks form the Bushman’s original dwellings, while the Hottentots have mat-covered portable beehive-shaped huts. The Bushman’s principal weapons are bow and arrow, with the Hottentot these implements are of secondary importance as compared with the spear. It is true that not only material objects but even myths and folktales are shared by both tribes, but in many instances of this sort we have clearly a case not of independent response to the same external conditions but rather the result of borrowing. Thus, some of the traits common to Hottentot and Bushman, for example, a fair number of mythic episodes, occur likewise among the Bantu Negroes inhabiting contiguous but geographically different territory. One of the most interesting traits of ancient Bushman culture is the life-like representation of animals on rocks and the walls of caves. Oddly enough, these engravings and mural paintings, which distinguish the Bushmen from their South African neighbors, have their nearest parallels in the Spanish cave-paintings of Palæolithic Europe.The picturing of the mammoth and reindeer by these old South European artists clearly proves that they belonged to a glacial epoch, during which geographical conditions could hardly have resembled those of the Kalahari desert.[2-iii]

One other illustration from the same general region of the Dark Continent is suggestive. The Ovambo and Herero, neighbors though they are, differ in the essential features of their economic life. While the Ovambo depend only to a very limited extent on their herds, deriving their sustenance mainly from the cultivation of millet and other plants, the Herero are the only non-agricultural Bantu people, being predominantly pastoral.

Instead of comparing the effect of environment as a whole on different peoples, we can also isolate its single factors, such as the presence of particular species of plants or animals. One of the strongest cases against the creative influence of environment on culture lies in the phenomena relating to the domestication of animals in the Old and the New World. The one animal domesticated in both hemispheres is the dog, which occurs in Neolithic Europe and is also found with archæological remains in America. But while in the Old World there is in addition an imposing series of species subjected to man fordefinite economic utilization, it is only in Peru that the American natives entered into a symbiotic arrangement with other animals,viz., the llama and the alpaca. Why was not the bison of the great Plains tamed like the buffalo of southern Asia or the various races of cattle in the Eastern Hemisphere? No valid reason can be advanced on geographical grounds. More striking still in this regard is the difference between the hyperborean populations of Asia and North America. The Chukchee of north-easternmost Siberia and the Eskimo share the same climatic conditions and their territories are both inhabited by the reindeer (caribou). Yet the Chukchee breed half-tamed reindeer on a large scale, using the animals for food and draught with sledges, while no attempt in this direction was made by the Eskimo or any of their Indian neighbors. The same external condition fails to produce the same cultural result. But even among the Chukchee there is evidence that the use of reindeer did not take place in response to an environmental stimulus. It appears that the extraordinary development of reindeer breeding is a relatively new thing with the Chukchee, who were formerly hunters of sea-mammals like the Eskimo. Before the recent efflorescence of their reindeer culture, theChukchee waged war on their southern neighbors, the Koryak, for the purpose of carrying off their herds; and altogether it seems that both Chukchee and Koryak adopted the idea of taming the reindeer from tribes of the Tungus stock living to the west and south.[3-iii]We are, then, dealing with another instance of acculturation due to contact.

The facts of domestication are unusually suggestive as regards our general problem for they show in an absolutely convincing manner that even where the same animals have been domesticated by different peoples the use to which they are put may differ widely and give a distinct aspect to this phase of culture. Thus, we find that of Siberian reindeer-breeders the Tungus and Lamut use their animals only for transportation, not for slaughter, and that many bands, unlike other Arctic populations, ride on their reindeer instead of harnessing them to sledges. It is true that a rationalistic motive can be given for the fact that the Chukchee do not ride reindeer-back since their variety seems physically unfit for the saddle. That, however, is not the essential point. We should like to know how the Tungus came to use the saddle with their animals while other tribes with the same variety did not do so, and for thispositivereaction to their faunal environment geography furnishes no clue. A similar group of questions arises in connection with the horse. Wild horses were game animals in Solutrean times in Europe, their flesh forming in fact the staple diet. Domestication certainly set in at a very much later period and its economic consequences vary appreciably with different peoples and in different times. The Kirgis, for example, milk their mares, thus obtaining the famous kumyss, though the operation is difficult and even dangerous.[4-iii]The ancient Babylonians, Chinese, and East Indians used the horse as a draught-animal harnessed to war-chariots. Its use for riding was an invention of Central Asiatic nomads. In the most recent period the consumption of horse flesh is a matter of course among the poorer classes of continental Europe, revolting as the idea is not only to the white American but to some of the Plains Indians as well, according to the testimony of some of my informants. There is thus no such thing as the presence of the horse determining its cultural use in a definite sense.

Again, the ancient Chinese kept both sheep and goats, but the idea of utilizing wool for clothing was foreign to them. We have historical evidence for the fact that the use of wool forfelt and rugs was taught to the Chinese in more recent times by the nomadic populations of central Asia. Most startling of all perhaps is the different attitude assumed in different countries towards cattle. To us nothing seems more obvious than that cattle should be kept both for meat and dairy products. This, however, is by no means a universal practice. The Zulu and other Bantu tribes of South Africa use milk extensively but hardly ever slaughter their animals except on festive occasions. On the other hand, we have the even more astonishing fact that Eastern Asiatics, such as the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Indo-Chinese, have an inveterate aversion to the use of milk. Though the Chinese, as Dr. Laufer points out, have raised a variety of animals from which milk could be derived and have been in constant contact with Turkish and Mongol nations whose staple food consists in dairy products, they have never acquired what seems so obvious and useful an economic practice. Accordingly, Dr. Laufer justifiably concludes that “our consumption of animal milk cannot be looked upon as a self-evident and spontaneous phenomenon, for which it has long been taken, but that it is a mere matter of educated force of habit.”[5-iii]In other words, the use of environmental factors is notan automatic and necessary response to them but varies with the culture of the peoples concerned.

The creative impotence of environment and more particularly the subordinate part it plays as compared with purely cultural determinants of culture, such as the influence of a certain trait in a neighboring tribe or the preëxistence of indigenous cultural features, may be instructively illustrated by several other instances.

Thus, we find that of the Northern Athabaskans of western Canada, the southern Carrier and the Chilcotin Indians share with the Shuswap Indians of Salish stock the use of semi-subterranean huts which even in winter seem like ovens. Are we to recognize in this an adaptation to the inclemencies of the climate? Hardly, when we find that this type of dwelling is used precisely by those Athabaskans living farthest south, where of course the climate is much milder, while the more northern tribes of the family get along with crude double shelters about a central fireplace. The use of the semi-subterranean lodge by the Carrier and Chilcotin is perfectly explained as a contact phenomenon. They have simply adopted the idea from their Salish neighbors: the cultural environment has proved more effective than the physicalenvironment in determining a cultural trait. Other members of the same family furnish corresponding instances. Though many of the Northern Athabaskans have long, snowy winters, only the Loucheux, who are in contact with the Eskimo, have adopted the wooden goggles of the Eskimo, which serve as a protection against snow-blindness. Similarly, they are the only members of the stock to substitute for the widespread Canadian toboggan the Eskimo sledge with runners.[6-iii]


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