“Although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c., yet, if their whole organization be taken into consideration, they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points. Many of these points are of so unimportant, or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races. The same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man.... Now, when naturalists observe a close agreement in numerous small details of habits, tastes and dispositions between two or more domestic races, or between nearly allied natural forms, they use this fact as an argument that all are descended from a common progenitor who was thus endowed; and, consequently, that all should be classed under the same species. The same argument may be applied with much force to the races of man.”—(Darwin,Descent of Man, part i. ch. 7.)
“Although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c., yet, if their whole organization be taken into consideration, they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points. Many of these points are of so unimportant, or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races. The same remark holds good with equal or greater force with respect to the numerous points of mental similarity between the most distinct races of man.... Now, when naturalists observe a close agreement in numerous small details of habits, tastes and dispositions between two or more domestic races, or between nearly allied natural forms, they use this fact as an argument that all are descended from a common progenitor who was thus endowed; and, consequently, that all should be classed under the same species. The same argument may be applied with much force to the races of man.”—(Darwin,Descent of Man, part i. ch. 7.)
The main difficulty of the monogenist school has ever been to explain how races which have remained comparatively fixed in type during the long period of history, such as the white man and the Negro, should, in even a far longer period, have passed by variation from a common original. To meet this A.R. Wallace suggests that the remotely ancient representatives of the human species, being as yet animals too low in mind to have developed those arts of maintenance and social ordinances by which man holds his own against influences from climate and circumstance, were in their then wild state much more plastic than now to external nature; so that “natural selection” and other causes met with but feeble resistance in forming the permanent varieties or races of man, whose complexion and structure still remained fixed in their descendants (see Wallace,Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 319). On the whole, it may be asserted that the doctrine of the unity of mankind stands on a firmer basis than in previous ages. It would be premature to judge how far the problem of the origin of races may be capable of exact solution; but the experience gained since 1871 countenances Darwin’s prophecy that before long the dispute between the monogenists and the polygenists would die a silent and unobserved death.
IV.Antiquity of Man.—Until the 10th century man’s first appearance on earth was treated on a historical basis as matter of record. It is true that the schemes drawn up by chronologists differed widely, as was natural, considering the variety and inconsistency of their documentary data. On the whole, the scheme of Archbishop Usher, who computed that the earth and man were created in 4004B.C., was the most popular (seeChronology). It is no longer necessary, however, to discuss these chronologies. Geology has made it manifest that our earth must have been the seat of vegetable and animal life for an immense period of time; while the first appearance of man, though comparatively recent, is positively so remote, that an estimate between twenty and a hundred thousand years may fairly be taken as a minimum. This geological claim for a vast antiquity of the human race is supported by the similar claims of prehistoric archaeology and the science of culture, the evidence of all three departments of inquiry being intimately connected, and in perfect harmony.
Human bones and objects of human manufacture have been found in such geological relation to the remains of fossil species of elephant, rhinoceros, hyena, bear, &c., as to lead to the distinct inference that man already existed at a remote period in localitieswhere these mammalia are now and have long been extinct. The not quite conclusive researches of Tournal and Christol in limestone caverns of the south of France date back to 1828. About the same time P.C. Schmerling of Liége was exploring the ossiferous caverns of the valley of the Meuse, and satisfied himself that the men whose bones he found beneath the stalagmite floors, together with bones cut and flints shaped by human workmanship, had inhabited this Belgian district at the same time with the cave-bear and several other extinct animals whose bones were imbedded with them (Recherches sur les ossements fossiles découverts dans les cavernes de la province de Liége(Liége, 1833-1834)). This evidence, however, met with little acceptance among scientific men. Nor, at first, was more credit given to the discovery by M. Boucher de Perthes, about 1841, of rude flint hatchets in a sand-bed containing remains of mammoth and rhinoceros at Menchecourt near Abbeville, which first find was followed by others in the same district (see Boucher de Perthes,De l’Industrie primitive, ou les arts à leur origine(1846);Antiquités celtiques et antédiluviennes(Paris, 1847), &c.). Between 1850 and 1860 French and English geologists were induced to examine into the facts, and found irresistible the evidence that man existed and used rude implements of chipped flint during the Quaternary or Drift period. Further investigations were then made, and overlooked results of older ones reviewed. In describing Kent’s Cavern (q.v.) near Torquay, R.A.C. Godwin-Austen had maintained, as early as 1840 (Proc. Geo. Soc. London, vol. iii. p. 286), that the human bones and worked flints had been deposited indiscriminately together with the remains of fossil elephant, rhinoceros, &c. Certain caves and rock-shelters in the province of Dordogne, in central France, were examined by a French and an English archaeologist, Edouard Lartet and Henry Christy, the remains discovered showing the former prevalence of the reindeer in this region, at that time inhabited by savages, whose bone and stone implements indicate a habit of life similar to that of the Eskimos. Moreover, the co-existence of man with a fauna now extinct or confined to other districts was brought to yet clearer demonstration by the discovery in these caves of certain drawings and carvings of the animals done by the ancient inhabitants themselves, such as a group of reindeer on a piece of reindeer horn, and a sketch of a mammoth, showing the elephant’s long hair, on a piece of a mammoth’s tusk from La Madeleine (Lartet and Christy,Reliquiae Aquitanicae, ed. by T.R. Jones (London, 1865), &c.).
This and other evidence (which is considered in more detail in the articleArchaeology) is now generally accepted by geologists as carrying back the existence of man into the period of the post-glacial drift, in what is now called the Quaternary period, an antiquity at least of tens of thousands of years. Again, certain inferences have been tentatively made from the depth of mud, earth, peat, &c., which has accumulated above relics of human art imbedded in ancient times. Among these is the argument from the numerous borings made in the alluvium of the Nile valley to a depth of 60 ft., where down to the lowest level fragments of burnt brick and pottery were always found, showing that people advanced enough in the arts to bake brick and pottery have inhabited the valley during the long period required for the Nile inundations to deposit 60 ft. of mud, at a rate probably not averaging more than a few inches in a century. Another argument is that of Professor von Morlot, based on a railway section through a conical accumulation of gravel and alluvium, which the torrent of the Tinière has gradually built up where it enters the Lake of Geneva near Villeneuve. Here three layers of vegetable soil appear, proved by the objects imbedded in them to have been the successive surface soils in two prehistoric periods and in the Roman period, but now lying 4, 10 and 19 ft. underground. On this it is computed that if 4 ft. of soil were formed in the 1500 years since the Roman period, we must go 5000 years farther back for the date of the earliest human inhabitants. Calculations of this kind, loose as they are, deserve attention.
The interval between the Quaternary or Drift period and the period of historical antiquity is to some extent bridged over by relics of various intermediate civilizations,e.g.the Lake-dwellings (q.v.) of Switzerland, mostly of the lower grades, and in some cases reaching back to remote dates. And further evidence of man’s antiquity is afforded by the kitchen-middens or shell-heaps (q.v.), especially those in Denmark. Danish peat-mosses again show the existence of man at a time when the Scotch fir was abundant; at a later period the firs were succeeded by oaks, which have again been almost superseded by beeches, a succession of changes which indicate a considerable lapse of time.
Lastly, chronicles and documentary records, taken in connexion with archaeological relics of the historical period, carry back into distant ages the starting-point of actual history, behind which lies the evidently vast period only known by inferences from the relations of languages and the stages of development of civilization. The most recent work of Egyptologists proves a systematic civilization to have existed in the valley of the Nile at least 6000 to 7000 years ago (seeChronology).
It was formerly held that the early state of society was one of comparatively high culture, and thus there was no hesitation in assigning the origin of man to a time but little beyond the range of historical records and monuments. But the researches of anthropologists in recent years have proved that the civilization of man has been gradually developed from an original stone-age culture, such as characterizes modern savage life. To the 6000 years to which ancient civilization dates back must be added a vast period during which the knowledge, arts and institutions of such a civilization as that of ancient Egypt attained the high level evidenced by the earliest records. The evidence of comparative philology supports the necessity for an enormous time allowance. Thus, Hebrew and Arabic are closely related languages, neither of them the original of the other, but both sprung from some parent language more ancient than either. When, therefore, the Hebrew records have carried back to the most ancient admissible date the existence of the Hebrew language, this date must have been long preceded by that of the extinct parent language of the whole Semitic family; while this again was no doubt the descendant of languages slowly shaping themselves through ages into this peculiar type. Yet more striking is the evidence of the Indo-European (formerly called Aryan) family of languages. The Hindus, Medes, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts and Slavs make their appearance at more or less remote dates as nations separate in language as in history. Nevertheless, it is now acknowledged that at some far remoter time, before these nations were divided from the parent stock, and distributed over Asia and Europe, a single barbaric people stood as physical and political representative of the nascent Aryan race, speaking a now extinct Aryan language, from which, by a series of modifications not to be estimated as possible within many thousands of years, there arose languages which have been mutually unintelligible since the dawn of history, and between which it was only possible for an age of advanced philology to trace the fundamental relationship.
From the combination of these considerations, it will be seen that the farthest date to which documentary or other records extend is now generally regarded by anthropologists as but the earliest distinctly visible point of the historic period, beyond which stretches back a vast indefinite series of prehistoric ages.
V.Language.—In examining how the science of language bears on the general problems of anthropology, it is not necessary to discuss at length the critical questions which arise, the principal of which are considered elsewhere (seeLanguage). Philology is especially appealed to by anthropologists as contributing to the following lines of argument. A primary mental similarity of all branches of the human race is evidenced by their common faculty of speech, while at the same time secondary diversities of race-character and history are marked by difference of grammatical structure and of vocabularies. The existence of groups or families of allied languages, each group being evidently descended from a single language, affords one of the principal aids in classifying nations and races. The adoption by one language of words originally belonging to another, proving as it does the fact of intercourse between two races, and even to some extent indicating the results of such intercourse, affords avaluable clue through obscure regions of the history of civilization.
Communication by gesture-signs, between persons unable to converse in vocal language, is an effective system of expression common to all mankind. Thus, the signs used to ask a deaf and dumb child about his meals and lessons, or to communicate with a savage met in the desert about game or enemies, belong to codes of gesture-signals identical in principle, and to a great extent independent both of nationality and education; there is even a natural syntax, or order of succession, in such gesture-signs. To these gestures let there be added the use of the interjectional cries, such asoh! ugh! hey!and imitative sounds to represent the cat’smew, theclickof a trigger, theclaporthudof a blow, &c. The total result of this combination of gesture and significant sound will be a general system of expression, imperfect but serviceable, and naturally intelligible to all mankind without distinction of race. Nor is such a system of communication only theoretically conceivable; it is, and always has been, in practical operation between people ignorant of one another’s language, and as such is largely used in the intercourse of savage tribes. It is true that to some extent these means of utterance are common to the lower animals, the power of expressing emotion by cries and tones extending far down in the scale of animal life, while rudimentary gesture-signs are made by various mammals and birds. Still, the lower animals make no approach to the human system of natural utterance by gesture-signs and emotional-imitative sounds, while the practical identity of this human system among races physically so unlike as the Englishman and the native of the Australian bush indicates extreme closeness of mental similarity throughout the human species.
When, however, the Englishman and the Australian speak each in his native tongue, only such words as belong to the interjectional and imitative classes will be naturally intelligible, and as it were instinctive to both. Thus the savage, uttering the soundwaow!as an explanation of surprise and warning, might be answered by the white man with the not less evidently significantsh!of silence, and the two speakers would be on common ground when the native indicated by the namebwirrihis cudgel, flungwhirringthrough the air at a flock of birds, or when the native described as ajakkal-yakkalthe bird called by the foreigner acockatoo. With these, and other very limited classes of natural words, however, resemblance in vocabulary practically ceases. The Australian and English languages each consist mainly of a series of words having no apparent connexion with the ideas they signify, and differing utterly; of course, accidental coincidences and borrowed words must be excluded from such comparisons. It would be easy to enumerate other languages of the world, such as Basque, Turkish, Hebrew, Malay, Mexican, all devoid of traceable resemblance to Australian and English, and to one another. There is, moreover, extreme difference in the grammatical structure both of words and sentences in various languages. The question then arises, how far the employment of different vocabularies, and that to a great extent on different grammatical principles, is compatible with similarity of the speakers’ minds, or how far does diversity of speech indicate diversity of mental nature? The obvious answer is, that the power of using words as signs to express thoughts with which their sound does not directly connect them, in fact as arbitrary symbols, is the highest grade of the special human faculty in language, the presence of which binds together all races of mankind in substantial mental unity. The measure of this unity is, that any child of any race can be brought up to speak the language of any other race.
Under the present standard of evidence in comparing languages and tracing allied groups to a common origin, the crude speculations as to a single primeval language of mankind, which formerly occupied so much attention, are acknowledged to be worthless. Increased knowledge and accuracy of method have as yet only left the way open to the most widely divergent suppositions. For all that known dialects prove to the contrary, on the one hand, there may have been one primitive language, from which the descendant languages have varied so widely, that neither their words nor their formation now indicate their unity in long past ages, while, on the other hand, the primitive tongues of mankind may have been numerous, and the extreme unlikeness of such languages as Basque, Chinese, Peruvian, Hottentot and Sanskrit may arise from absolute independence of origin.
The language spoken by any tribe or nation is not of itself absolute evidence as to its race-affinities. This is clearly shown in extreme cases. Thus the Jews in Europe have almost lost the use of Hebrew, but speak as their vernacular the language of their adopted nation, whatever it may be; even the Jewish-German dialect, though consisting so largely of Hebrew words, is philologically German, as any sentence shows: “Ich hab noch hoiom lo geachelt,” “I have not yet eaten to-day.” The mixture of the Israelites in Europe by marriage with other nations is probably much greater than is acknowledged by them; yet, on the whole, the race has been preserved with extraordinary strictness, as its physical characteristics sufficiently show. Language thus here fails conspicuously as a test of race and even of national history. Not much less conclusive is the case of the predominantly Negro populations of the West India Islands, who, nevertheless, speak as their native tongues dialects of English or French, in which the number of intermingled native African words is very scanty: “Dem hitti netti na ini watra bikasi dem de fisiman,” “They cast a net into the water, because they were fishermen.” (Surinam Negro-Eng.) “Bef pas ca jamain lasse poter cônes li,” “Le boeuf n’est jamais las de porter ses cornes.” (Haitian Negro-Fr.) If it be objected that the linguistic conditions of these two races are more artificial than has been usual in the history of the world, less extreme cases may be seen in countries where the ordinary results of conquest-colonization have taken place. The Mestizos, who form so large a fraction of the population of modern Mexico, numbering several millions, afford a convenient test in this respect, inasmuch as their intermediate complexion separates them from both their ancestral races, the Spaniard, and the chocolate-brown indigenous Aztec or other Mexican. The mother-tongue of this mixed race is Spanish, with an infusion of Mexican words; and a large proportion cannot speak any native dialect. In most or all nations of mankind, crossing or intermarriage of races has thus taken place between the conquering invader and the conquered native, so that the language spoken by the nation may represent the results of conquest as much or more than of ancestry. The supersession of the Celtic Cornish by English, and of the Slavonic Old-Prussian by German, are but examples of a process which has for untold ages been supplanting native dialects, whose very names have mostly disappeared. On the other hand, the language of the warlike invader or peaceful immigrant may yield, in a few generations, to the tongue of the mass of the population, as the Northman’s was replaced by French, and modern German gives way to English in the United States. Judging, then, by the extirpation and adoption of languages within the range of history, it is obvious that to classify mankind into, races, Aryan, Semitic, Turanian, Polynesian, Kaffir, &c., on the mere evidence of language, is intrinsically unsound.
VI.Development of Civilization.—The conditions of man at the lowest and highest known levels of culture are separated by a vast interval; but this interval is so nearly filled by known intermediate stages, that the line of continuity between the lowest savagery and the highest civilization is unbroken at any critical point.
An examination of the details of savage life shows not only that there is an immeasurable difference between the rudest man and the highest lower animal, but also that the least cultured savages have themselves advanced far beyond the lowest intellectual and moral state at which human tribes can be conceived as capable of existing, when placed under favourable circumstances of warm climate, abundant food, and security from too severe destructive influences. The Australian black-fellow or the forest Indian of Brazil, who may be taken as examples of the lowest modern savage, had, before contact with whites, attained to rudimentary stages in many of the characteristicfunctions of civilized life. His language, expressing thoughts by conventional articulate sounds, is the same in essential principle as the most cultivated philosophic dialect, only less exact and copious. His weapons, tools and other appliances such as the hammer, hatchet, spear, knife, awl, thread, net, canoe, &c., are the evident rudimentary analogues of what still remains in use among Europeans. His structures, such as the hut, fence, stockade, earthwork, &c., may be poor and clumsy, but they are of the same nature as our own. In the simple arts of broiling and roasting meat, the use of hides and furs for covering, the plaiting of mats and baskets, the devices of hunting, trapping and fishing, the pleasure taken in personal ornament, the touches of artistic decoration on objects of daily use, the savage differs in degree but not in kind from the civilized man. The domestic and social affections, the kindly care of the young and the old, some acknowledgment of marital and parental obligation, the duty of mutual defence in the tribe, the authority of the elders, and general respect to traditional custom as the regulator of life and duty, are more or less well marked in every savage tribe which is not disorganized and falling to pieces. Lastly, there is usually to be discerned amongst such lower races a belief in unseen powers pervading the universe, this belief shaping itself into an animistic or spiritualistic theology, mostly resulting in some kind of worship. If, again, high savage or low barbaric types be selected, as among the North American Indians, Polynesians, and Kaffirs of South Africa, the same elements of culture appear, but at a more advanced stage, namely, a more full and accurate language, more knowledge of the laws of nature, more serviceable implements, more perfect industrial processes, more definite and fixed social order and frame of government, more systematic and philosophic schemes of religion and a more elaborate and ceremonial worship. At intervals new arts and ideas appear, such as agriculture and pasturage, the manufacture of pottery, the use of metal implements and the device of record and communication by picture writing. Along such stages of improvement and invention the bridge is fairly made between savage and barbaric culture; and this once attained to, the remainder of the series of stages of civilization lies within the range of common knowledge.
The teaching of history, during the three to four thousand years of which contemporary chronicles have been preserved, is that civilization is gradually developed in the course of ages by enlargement and increased precision of knowledge, invention and improvement of arts, and the progression of social and political habits and institutions towards general well-being. That processes of development similar to these were in prehistoric times effective to raise culture from the savage to the barbaric level, two considerations especially tend to prove. First, there are numerous points in the culture even of rude races which are not explicable otherwise than on the theory of development. Thus, though difficult or superfluous arts may easily be lost, it is hard to imagine the abandonment of contrivances of practical daily utility, where little skill is required and materials are easily accessible. Had the Australians or New Zealanders, for instance, ever possessed the potter’s art, they could hardly have forgotten it. The inference that these tribes represent the stage of culture before the invention of pottery is confirmed by the absence of buried fragments of pottery in the districts they inhabit. The same races who were found making thread by the laborious process of twisting with the hand, would hardly have disused, if they had ever possessed, so simple a labour-saving device as the spindle, which consists merely of a small stick weighted at one end; the spindle may, accordingly, be regarded as an instrument invented somewhere between the lowest and highest savage levels (Tylor,Early Hist. of Mankind, p. 193). Again, many devices of civilization bear unmistakable marks of derivation from a lower source; thus the ancient Egyptian and Assyrian harps, which differ from ours in having no front pillar, appear certainly to owe this remarkable defect to having grown up through intermediate forms from the simple strung bow, the still used type of the most primitive stringed instrument. In this way the history of numeral words furnishes actual proof of that independent intellectual progress among savage tribes which some writers have rashly denied. Such words ashand, hands, foot, man, &c., are used as numerals signifying 5, 10, 15, 20, &c., among many savage and barbaric peoples; thus Polynesianlima,i.e.“hand,” means 5; Zulutatisitupa,i.e.“taking the thumb,” means 6; Greenlandisharfersanek-pingasut,i.e.“on the other foot three,” means 18; Tamanactevin itoto,i.e.“one man,” means 20, &c., &c. The existence of such expressions demonstrates that the people who use them had originally no spoken names for these numbers, but once merely counted them by gesture on their fingers and toes in low savage fashion, till they obtained higher numerals by the inventive process of describing in words these counting-gestures. Second, the process of “survival in culture” has caused the preservation in each stage of society of phenomena, belonging to an earlier period, but kept up by force of custom into the later, thus supplying evidence of the modern condition being derived from the ancient. Thus the mitre over an English bishop’s coat-of-arms is a survival which indicates him as the successor of bishops who actually wore mitres, while armorial bearings themselves, and the whole craft of heraldry, are survivals bearing record of a state of warfare and social order whence our present state was by vast modification evolved. Evidence of this class, proving the derivation of modern civilization, not only from ancient barbarism, but beyond this, from primeval savagery, is immensely plentiful, especially in rites and ceremonies, where the survival of ancient habits is peculiarly favoured. Thus the modern Hindu, though using civilized means for lighting his household fires, retains the savage “fire-drill” for obtaining fire by friction of wood when what he considers pure or sacred fire has to be produced for sacrificial purposes; while in Europe into modern times the same primitive process has been kept up in producing the sacred and magical “need-fire,” which was lighted to deliver cattle from a murrain. Again, the funeral offerings of food, clothing, weapons, &c., to the dead are absolutely intelligible and purposeful among savage races, who believe that the souls of the departed are ethereal beings capable of consuming food, and of receiving and using the souls or phantoms of any objects sacrificed for their use. The primitive philosophy to which these conceptions belong has to a great degree been discredited by modern science; yet the clear survivals of such ancient and savage rites may still be seen in Europe, where the Bretons leave the remains of the All Souls’ supper on the table for the ghosts of the dead kinsfolk to partake of, and Russian peasants set out cakes for the ancestral manes on the ledge which supports the holy pictures, and make dough ladders to assist the ghosts of the dead to ascend out of their graves and start on their journey for the future world; while other provision for the same spiritual journey is made when the coin is still put in the hand of the corpse at an Irish wake. In like manner magic still exists in the civilized world as a survival from the savage and barbaric times to which it originally belongs, and in which is found the natural source and proper home of utterly savage practices still carried on by ignorant peasants in Great Britain, such as taking omens from the cries of animals, or bewitching an enemy by sticking full of pins and hanging up to shrivel in the smoke an image or other object, that similar destruction may fall on the hated person represented by the symbol (Tylor,Primitive Culture, ch. i., iii., iv., xi., xii.;Early Hist. of Man, ch. vi.).
The comparative science of civilization thus not only generalizes the data of history, but supplements its information by laying down the lines of development along which the lowest prehistoric culture has gradually risen to the highest modern level. Among the most clearly marked of these lines is that which follows the succession of the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages (seeArchaeology). The Stone Age represents the early condition of mankind in general, and has remained in savage districts up to modern times, while the introduction of metals need not at once supersede the use of the old stone hatchets and arrows, which have often long continued in dwindling survival by the side of the new bronze and even iron ones. The Bronze Age had its most important place among ancient nations of Asia and Europe, andamong them was only succeeded after many centuries by the Iron Age; while in other districts, such as Polynesia and Central and South Africa, and America (except Mexico and Peru), the native tribes were moved directly from the Stone to the Iron Age without passing through the Bronze Age at all. Although the three divisions of savage, barbaric, and civilized man do not correspond at all perfectly with the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, this classification of civilization has proved of extraordinary value in arranging in their proper order of culture the nations of the Old World.
Another great line of progress has been followed by tribes passing from the primitive state of the wild hunter, fisher and fruit-gatherer to that of the settled tiller of the soil, for to this change of habit may be plainly in great part traced the expansion of industrial arts and the creation of higher social and political institutions. These, again, have followed their proper lines along the course of time. Among such is the immense legal development by which the primitive law of personal vengeance passed gradually away, leaving but a few surviving relics in the modern civilized world, and being replaced by the higher doctrine that crime is an offence against society, to be repressed for the public good. Another vast social change has been that from the patriarchal condition, in which the unit is the family under the despotic rule of its head, to the systems in which individuals make up a society whose government is centralized in a chief or king. In the growth of systematic civilization, the art of writing has had an influence so intense, that of all tests to distinguish the barbaric from the civilized state, none is so generally effective as this, whether they have but the failing link with the past which mere memory furnishes, or can have recourse to written records of past history and written constitutions of present order. Lastly, still following the main lines of human culture, the primitive germs of religious institutions have to be traced in the childish faith and rude rites of savage life, and thence followed in their expansion into the vast systems administered by patriarchs and priests, henceforth taking under their charge the precepts of morality, and enforcing them under divine sanction, while also exercising in political life an authority beside or above the civil law.
The state of culture reached by Quaternary man is evidenced by the stone implements in the drift-gravels, and other relics of human art in the cave deposits. His drawings on bone or tusk found in the caves show no mean artistic power, as appears by the three specimens copied in the Plate. That representing two deer (fig. 6) was found so early as 1852 in the breccia of a limestone cave on the Charente, and its importance recognized in a remarkable letter by Prosper Merimée, as at once historically ancient and geologically modern (Congrès d’anthropologie et d’archéologie préhistoriques, Copenhagen (1869), p. 128). The other two are the famous mammoth from the cave of La Madeleine, on which the woolly mane and huge tusks ofElephas primigeniusare boldly drawn (fig. 7); and the group of man and horses (fig. 8). There has been found one other contemporary portrait of man, where a hunter is shown stalking an aurochs.
That the men of the Quaternary period knew the savage art of producing fire by friction, and roasted the flesh on which they mainly subsisted, is proved by the fragments of charcoal found in the cave deposits, where also occur bone awls and needles, which indicate the wearing of skin clothing, like that of the modern Australians and Fuegians. Their bone lance-heads and dart-points were comparable to those of northern and southern savages. Particular attention has to be given to the stone implements used by these earliest known of mankind. The division of tribes in the stone implement stage into two classes, the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age, and the Neolithic or New Stone Age, according to their proficiency in this most important art furnishes in some respects the best means of determining their rank in general culture.
In order to put this argument clearly before the reader, a few selected implements are figured in the Plate. The group in fig. 9 contains tools and weapons of the Neolithic period such as are dug up on European soil; they are evident relics of ancient populations who used them till replaced by metal. The stone hatchets are symmetrically shaped and edged by grinding, while the cutting flakes, scrapers, spear and arrow heads are of high finish. Direct knowledge of the tribes who made them is scanty, but implements so similar in make and design having been in use in North and South America until modern times, it may be assumed for purposes of classification that the Neolithic peoples of the New World were at a similar barbarous level in industrial arts, social organization, moral and religious ideas. Such comparison, though needing caution and reserve, at once proved of great value to anthropology. When, however, there came to light from the drift-gravels and limestone caves of Europe the Palaeolithic implements, of which some types are shown in the group (fig. 10), the difficult problem presented itself, what degree of general culture these rude implements belonged to. On mere inspection, their rudeness, their unsuitability for being hafted, and the absence of shaping and edging by the grindstone, mark their inferiority to the Neolithic implements. Their immensely greater antiquity was proved by their geological position and their association with a long extinct fauna, and they were not, like the Neoliths, recognizable as corresponding closely to the implements used by modern tribes. There was at first a tendency to consider the Palaeoliths as the work of men ruder than savages, if, indeed, their makers were to be accounted human at all. Since then, however, the problem has passed into a more manageable state. Stone implements, more or less approaching the European Palaeolithic type, were found in Africa from Egypt southwards, where in such parts as Somaliland and Cape Colony they lie about on the ground, as though they had been the rough tools and weapons of the rude inhabitants of the land at no very distant period. The group in fig. 11 in the Plate shows the usual Somaliland types. These facts tended to remove the mystery from Palaeolithic man, though too little is known of the ruder ancient tribes of Africa to furnish a definition of the state of culture which might have co-existed with the use of Palaeolithic implements. Information to this purpose, however, can now be furnished from a more outlying region. This is Tasmania, where as in the adjacent continent of Australia, the survival of marsupial animals indicates long isolation from the rest of the world. Here, till far on into the 19th century, the Englishmen could watch the natives striking off flakes of stone, trimming them to convenient shape for grasping them in the hand, and edging them by taking off successive chips on one face only. The group in fig. 12 shows ordinary Tasmanian forms, two of them being finer tools for scraping and grooving. (For further details reference may be made to H. Ling Roth,The Tasmanians, (2nd ed., 1899); R. Brough Smyth,Aborigines of Victoria(1878), vol. ii.;Papers and Proceedings of Royal Society of Tasmania; and papers by the present writer inJournal of the Anthropological Institute.) The Tasmanians, when they came in contact with the European explorers and settlers, were not the broken outcasts they afterwards became. They were a savage people, perhaps the lowest in culture of any known, but leading a normal, self-supporting, and not unhappy life, which had probably changed little during untold ages. The accounts, imperfect as they are, which have been preserved of their arts, beliefs and habits, thus present a picture of the arts, beliefs and habits of tribes whose place in the Stone Age was a grade lower than that of Palaeolithic man of the Quaternary period.
Plate
The Tasmanian stone implements, figured in the Plate, show their own use when it is noticed that the rude chipping forms a good hand-grip above, and an effective edge for chopping, sawing, and cutting below. But the absence of the long-shaped implements, so characteristic of the Neolithic and Palaeolithic series, and serviceable as picks, hatchets, and chisels, shows remarkable limitation in the mind of these savages, who made a broad, hand-grasped knife their tool of all work to cut, saw, and chop with. Their weapons were the wooden club or waddy notched to the grasp, and spears of sticks, often crooked but well balanced, with points sharpened by tool or fire, and sometimes jagged. No spear thrower or bow and arrow was known. TheTasmanian savages were crafty warriors and kangaroo-hunters, and the women climbed the highest trees by notching, in quest of opossums. Shell-fish and crabs were taken, and seals knocked on the head with clubs, but neither fish-hook nor fishing-net was known, and indeed swimming fish were taboo as food. Meat and vegetable food, such as fern-root, was broiled over the fire, but boiling in a vessel was unknown. The fire was produced by the ordinary savage fire-drill. Ignorant of agriculture, with no dwellings but rough huts or breakwinds of sticks and bark, without dogs or other domestic animals, these savages, until the coming of civilized man, roamed after food within their tribal bounds. Logs and clumsy floats of bark and grass enabled them to cross water under favourable circumstances. They had clothing of skins rudely stitched together with bark thread, and they were decorated with simple necklaces of kangaroo teeth, shells and berries. Among their simple arts, plaiting and basket-work was one in which they approached the civilized level. The pictorial art of the Tasmanians was poor and childish, quite below that of the Palaeolithic men of Europe. The Tasmanians spoke a fairly copious agglutinating language, well marked as to parts of speech, syntax and inflexion. Numeration was at a low level, based on counting fingers on one hand only, so that the word for man (puggana) stood also for the number 5. The religion of the Tasmanians, when cleared from ideas apparently learnt from the whites, was a simple form of animism based on the shadow (warrawa) being the soul or spirit. The strongest belief of the natives was in the power of the ghosts of the dead, so that they carried the bones of relatives to secure themselves from harm, and they fancied the forest swarming with malignant demons. They placed weapons near the grave for the dead friend’s soul to use, and drove out disease from the sick by exorcising the ghost which was supposed to have caused it. Of greater special spirits of Nature we find something vaguely mentioned. The earliest recorders of the native social life set down such features as their previous experience of rude civilized life had made them judges of. They notice the self-denying affection of the mothers, and the hard treatment of the wives by the husbands, polygamy and the shifting marriage unions. But when we meet with a casual remark as to the tendency of the Tasmanians to take wives from other tribes than their own, it seems likely that they had some custom of exogamy which the foreigners did not understand. Meagre as is the information preserved of the arts, thoughts, and customs of these survivors from the lower Stone Age, it is of value as furnishing even a temporary and tentative means of working out the development of culture on a basis not of conjecture but of fact.
Conclusion.—To-day anthropology is grappling with the heavy task of systematizing the vast stores of knowledge to which the key was found by Boucher de Perthes, by Lartet, Christy and their successors. There have been recently no discoveries to rival in novelty those which followed the exploration of the bone-caves and drift-gravels, and which effected an instant revolution in all accepted theories of man’s antiquity, substituting for a chronology of centuries a vague computation of hundreds of thousands of years. The existence of man in remote geological time cannot now be questioned, but, despite much effort made in likely localities, no bones, with the exception of those of the much-discussedPithecanthropus, have been found which can be regarded as definitely bridging the gulf between man and the lower creation. It seems as if anthropology had in this direction reached the limits of its discoveries. Far different are the prospects in other directions where the work of co-ordinating the material and facts collected promises to throw much light on the history of civilization. Anthropological researches undertaken all over the globe have shown the necessity of abandoning the old theory that a similarity of customs and superstitions, of arts and crafts, justifies the assumption of a remote relationship, if not an identity of origin, between races. It is now certain that there has ever been an inherent tendency in man, allowing for difference of climate and material surroundings, to develop culture by the same stages and in the same way. American man, for example, need not necessarily owe the minutest portion of his mental, religious, social or industrial development to remote contact with Asia or Europe, though he were proved to possess identical usages. An example in point is that of pyramid-building. No ethnical relationship can ever have existed between the Aztecs and the Egyptians; yet each race developed the idea of the pyramid tomb through that psychological similarity which is as much a characteristic of the species man as is his physique.
Bibliography.—J.C. Prichard,Natural History of Man(London, 1843); T.H. Huxley,Man’s Place in Nature(London, 1863); and “Geographical Distribution of Chief Modifications of Mankind,” inJournal Ethnological Societyfor 1870; E.B. Tylor,Early History of Man(London, 1865),Primitive Culture(London, 1871), andAnthropology(London, 1881); A. de Quatrefages,Histoire générale des races humaines(Paris, 1889),Human Species(Eng. trans., 1879); Lord Avebury,Prehistoric Times(1865, 6th ed. 1900) andOrigin of Civilization(1870, 6th ed. 1902), Theo. Waitz,Anthropologie der Naturvolker(1859-1871), E.H. Haeckel,Anthropogenie(Leipzig, 1874-1891), Eng. trans., 1879; O. Peschel,Volkerkunde(Leipzig, 1874-1897); P. Topinard,L’Anthropologie(Paris, 1876);Éleménts d’anthropologie générale(Paris, 1885); D.G. Brinton,Races and Peoples(1890); A.H. Keane,Ethnology(1896), andMan: Past and Present(1899); G. Sergi,The Mediterranean Race(Eng. ed., 1889); F. Ratzel,History of Mankind(Eng. trans., 1897); G. de Mortillet,Le Préhistorique(Paris, 1882); A.C. Haddon,Study of Man(1897); J. Deniker,The Races of Man(London, 1900); W.Z. Ripley,The Races of Europe(1900, with long bibliography);The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain;Revue d’anthropologie(Paris);Zeitschrift für Ethnologie(Berlin). See also bibliographies under separate ethnological headings (Australia,Africa,Arabs,America, &c.).
Bibliography.—J.C. Prichard,Natural History of Man(London, 1843); T.H. Huxley,Man’s Place in Nature(London, 1863); and “Geographical Distribution of Chief Modifications of Mankind,” inJournal Ethnological Societyfor 1870; E.B. Tylor,Early History of Man(London, 1865),Primitive Culture(London, 1871), andAnthropology(London, 1881); A. de Quatrefages,Histoire générale des races humaines(Paris, 1889),Human Species(Eng. trans., 1879); Lord Avebury,Prehistoric Times(1865, 6th ed. 1900) andOrigin of Civilization(1870, 6th ed. 1902), Theo. Waitz,Anthropologie der Naturvolker(1859-1871), E.H. Haeckel,Anthropogenie(Leipzig, 1874-1891), Eng. trans., 1879; O. Peschel,Volkerkunde(Leipzig, 1874-1897); P. Topinard,L’Anthropologie(Paris, 1876);Éleménts d’anthropologie générale(Paris, 1885); D.G. Brinton,Races and Peoples(1890); A.H. Keane,Ethnology(1896), andMan: Past and Present(1899); G. Sergi,The Mediterranean Race(Eng. ed., 1889); F. Ratzel,History of Mankind(Eng. trans., 1897); G. de Mortillet,Le Préhistorique(Paris, 1882); A.C. Haddon,Study of Man(1897); J. Deniker,The Races of Man(London, 1900); W.Z. Ripley,The Races of Europe(1900, with long bibliography);The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain;Revue d’anthropologie(Paris);Zeitschrift für Ethnologie(Berlin). See also bibliographies under separate ethnological headings (Australia,Africa,Arabs,America, &c.).