The Britannica Gazetteer
What has already been said, although it suggests rather than exhausts the subject of geography in the Britannica,will show that the student will find in it a text-book of geography which is unparalleled elsewhere in size, scope, authority and interest. Besides, the Britannica contains the equivalent of a great gazetteer and atlas. Place-names are so entered in the Index (Vol. 29) that their location on maps may be discovered immediately and the articles on towns, villages, cities, states, etc., are full and authoritative. The reader who turns to an article in the Britannica on some small town or city with a population of 5,000 or less finds there within the limits of a few lines of print the results of elaborate research and laborious correspondence with local authorities. Such articles give not merely location, population, railway service, commercial and manufacturing information, description of buildings, etc., but a historical sketch of the place, in which every date and detail has been verified with no sparing of expense or pains.
The Britannica as a Guide Book
The Encyclopaedia Britannica is not merely a geographical text-book and gazetteer, however. It is an excellent guide book. The same care in details that makes it valuable as a gazetteer makes it a wonderful companion for the traveler, full of literary charm and readableness. Such articles asNew York,Philadelphia,Boston,San FranciscoandSt. Louiscontain valuable sketches of the culture, literary and artistic, of these cities. The world’s “show” and vacation spots have elaborate treatment—for instance the EnglishLake District,Riviera,Catskills,Lake George,Yosemite,Grand Canyon, etc.
Besides the student can turn immediately in the Britannica, as he could in no book purely geographical, from the description of a locality, say Mount Vernon, Stockbridge, Cooperstown, Tarrytown or Salem, to the biographies that these articles make him need,—Washington, Jonathan Edwards, Cooper, Irving and Hawthorne. See the last chapter in this Guide for an illustration of this use of the Britannica.
The following list ofgeneralarticles on geography will give the reader an idea of the great scope of the Britannica in geographical literature. If this list included all the geographical articles in the Britannica it would be nearly 60 times as long. For a complete list classified by different continents and countries see the Index Volume, beginning on p. 895.
CHAPTER LIANTHROPOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY
These two sciences are devoted to the study of mankind before written history began; and they have an interest for every reader who has asked, when he was a child and had a story told him: “What happenedbeforethat?” In the chapter in this Guide onLanguage and Writing, we have told the story of those two great inventions which made civilization possible. The present chapter is devoted to the story of man before writing was commonly used—that is, before historical documents could exist.
Just as the study of children and their habits is something new and peculiarly characteristic of the last generation, so these sciences of anthropology and ethnology which deal with the childhood of the human race are of recent origin. But in comparison with child-psychology these two sciences are at a disadvantage in a very important respect: there are always children to be studied, but the childhood of the race is long past and remote from the student of it, save for the primitive tribes which can still be observed, and even these tribes are now scattered and few, and by contact with civilization they are rapidly losing the characteristics which invite scientific study. A hundred years ago, the opportunities for experiment and observation were far greater, but at that time savages were not seriously studied. There could, indeed, be no “science of man” before the evolutionary theory of Darwin, Wallace and Huxley had been generally accepted. Throughout this Guide we see how this theory has affected all our modern thought, modified our sciences, and even created new sciences. The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica may, indeed, be described as the authoritative and interesting story of the human activities, critically studied from the point of view of evolution. The trustworthy material is chiefly derived from observations in Australia, in the South Seas, among the North American Indians and among the still savage tribes of Africa, and from studies of the tools and other remains of early peoples. All broad conclusions must be based upon the similarity of customs among races widely separated by time and place, and upon the fact that some traces of such customs are still found among more highly civilized peoples.
The first article in a course of reading on the “science of man” in the Britannica isAnthropology(Vol. 2, p. 108), equivalent to 40 pages in this Guide, illustrated, by Prof. Tylor, of Oxford University, one of the founders of the science, and author ofResearches into the Early History of Mankind,Primitive Culture, etc.
Man’s Origin
This great article deals first with “man’s place in Nature,” the most interesting branch of the theory of evolution. Prof. Tylor traces back the recognition of man’s structural similarity to the higher apes to Linnaeus (1735) and to the less scientific Lord Monboddo (1774 and 1778), whose simple literary style as well as his theory ofthe descent of man aroused the amusement and scorn of Dr. Samuel Johnson, who said that Monboddo was “as jealous of his tail as a squirrel.”
Dr. Tylor remarks that:
There are few ideas more ingrained in ancient and low civilization than that of relationship by descent between the lower animals and man. Savage and barbaric religions recognize it, and the mythology of the world has hardly a more universal theme. But in educated Europe such ideas had long been superseded by the influence of theology and philosophy, with which they seemed too incompatible.
But in 1843 Dr. J. C. Prichard, to whom Tylor gives the title that many would give to Tylor himself, “founder of modern anthropology,” insisted that
man is but an animal ... composed of the same materials, and framed on the same principles, as the creatures which he has tamed to be the servile instruments of his will, or slays for his daily food.
Dr. Tylor shows how Wallace and Darwin established a theory of human descent, and sums up the similarities and dissimilarities in anatomical construction between man and the man-like apes. Even more interesting is what the article says (p. 110) about “assigning to man his place in nature on psychological grounds.”
Huxley acknowledged an immeasurable and practically infinite divergence, ending in the present enormous psychological gulf between ape and man. It is difficult to account for this intellectual chasm as due to some minor structural difference.... Beyond a doubt, man possesses, and in some way possesses by virtue of his superior brain, a power of co-ordinating the impressions of his senses, which enables him to understand the world he lives in, and by understanding to use, resist, and even in a measure rule it. No human art shows the nature of this human attribute more clearly than does language
—although other animals have a sort of language. The article quotes Dr. A. Russel Wallace’s conclusion that man stands “apart, as not only the head and culminating point of the grand series of organic nature, but as in some degree a new and distinct order of being.” And another great anatomist, Prof. St. George Mivart, says “Man’s animal body must have had a different source from that of the spiritual soul which informs it, owing to the distinctness of the two orders to which these existences severally belong.” Dr. Tylor, in citing these authorities, adds that “man embodies an immaterial and immortal, spiritual principle which no lower creature possesses, and which makes the resemblance of the apes to him but a mocking simulance.”
The answer to the question “How did man originate?” depends on the answer to the question “How did species originate?” The main points are summed up in the articleAnthropology(on p. 112), which also deals with the fossil remains of man, especially skulls, and their bearing on the question. A more detailed discussion will be found in the articlesEvolution(Vol. 10, p. 22) andSpecies(Vol. 25, p. 616).
Races of Man
The classification of man into different races is the topic next taken up by Dr. Tylor in the articleAnthropology, and he deals particularly with classification by the “facial angle” (on which see also the articleCraniometry, Vol. 7, p. 372). Different classifications are criticized and the article decides that “Huxley’s division probably approaches more nearly than any other to such a tentative classification as may be accepted.... He distinguishes four principal types of mankind, the Australioid, Negroid, Mongoloid and Xanthochroic (fair whites), adding a fifth variety, the Melanchroic (dark whites).” That races are not species, zoologically, is made plain by the fact that the offspring of parents of different races are fertile—those of different species being infertile.
Antiquity of Man
One of the questions connected with the origin of man is his antiquity. The Biblical chronology, as commonly reckoned and interpreted, allowed a time since the appearance of the original stockwhich seemed far too short for the apparent variation from the original species (seeChronology, Vol. 6, p. 305). The natural sciences, notably geology, have “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 is supported by the evidence of prehistoric archaeology (see the articleArchaeology, Vol. 2, p. 344). In the caves of France and Belgium human bones have been found with the remains of fossil species of elephant, rhinoceros, hyena, bear, etc., and “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.” See Fig. 7, Plate facing p. 118, Vol. 2; the figures of the reindeer and mammoth, hairy and with upturned tusks, in Plate II, articleArchaeology(following p. 348, Vol. 2); and of the reindeer in Plate I (Vol. 19, p. 462), and the old cave paintings of wild boars and bison from Altamira, reproduced in colour on Plate II, the next page. These paintings, marking by their technical excellence a high stage of art if not of civilization, are said by geologists to date back 50,000 years. The student will be repaid for turning a moment from the articleAnthropologyand the question of the antiquity of man to the article|Cave-Dwellers|Cave(Vol. 5, p. 573), by the eminent archaeologist, W. Boyd Dawkins, and the author ofCave-huntingandEarly Man in Britain. He reconstructs the civilization of the inhabitants of the pleistocene caves of the European continent (p. 576), describes the carvings and drawings of which we have just spoken, and says of the cave-dwellers:
If these remains be compared with those of existing races, it will be found that the cave-men were in the same hunter stage of civilization as the Eskimos, and that they are unlike any other races of hunters. If they were not allied to the Eskimos by blood, there can be no doubt that they handed down to the latter their art and their manner of life. The bone needles, and many of the harpoons, as well as the flint spearheads, arrowheads and scrapers, are of precisely the same form as those now in use amongst the Eskimos. The artistic designs from the caves of France, Belgium and Switzerland, are identical in plan and workmanship with those of the Eskimos.... The reindeer, which they both knew, is represented in the same way by both. The practice of accumulating large quantities of the bones of animals round their dwelling-places, and the habit of splitting the bones for the sake of the marrow, are the same in both. The hides were prepared with the same sort of instruments, and the needles with which they were sewn together are of the same pattern. The stone lamps were used by both. In both there was the same disregard for sepulture. All these facts can hardly be mere coincidences caused by both peoples leading a savage life under similar conditions. The conclusion, therefore, seems inevitable that, so far as we have any evidence of the race to which the cave-dwellers belong, that evidence points only in the direction of the Eskimos. It is to a considerable extent confirmed by a consideration of the animals found in the caves. The reindeer and musk sheep afford food to the Eskimos now in the Arctic Circle, just as they afforded it to the cave-men in Europe; and both these animals have been traced by their remains from the Pyrenees to the north-east through Europe and Asia as far as the very regions in which they now live. The mammoth and bison also have been tracked by their remains in the frozen river gravels and morasses through Siberia as far as the American side of Bering Strait. Palaeolithic man appeared in Europe with the arctic mammalia, lived in Europe with them, and in all human probability retreated to the north-east along with them.
The antiquity of man may be estimated also by the time it must have taken to deposit the soil that overlies traces of civilization,—for instance in Egypt where pottery is found 60 feet deep, while inundations from the Nile probably havenot averaged more than a few inches in a century. “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.” Similar testimony is given by examining the lake-dwellings of Switzerland and the kitchen middens of Denmark. On these see the articlesLake Dwellings(Vol. 16, p. 91), by Joseph Anderson, keeper of the National Museum of Antiquities, Edinburgh, andShell-heaps(Vol. 24, p. 832). The latter article, in a description of the middens of Denmark, says:
Among the bones were those of the wild bull or aurochs, beaver, seal and great auk, all now extinct or rare in this region. Moreover, a striking proof of the antiquity of these shell-heaps is that they contain full-sized shells of the common oyster, which cannot live at present in the brackish waters of the Baltic except near its entrance, the inference being that the shores where the oyster at that time flourished were open to the salt sea.
The article onLake Dwellingsbrings out very clearly the fact that this, like other early stages of development, is to be found at widely different periods of time: in Switzerland, thousands of years ago; in Scotland and Ireland (see also the articleCrannog, Vol. 7, p. 377) during the Christian era; and in New Guinea and Central Africa within the last few years. This is in accordance with the fact that the human race has not “matured” with equal rapidity all over the earth—that even now one race is in infancy, another in childhood, another in a transition stage like adolescence, and another in the prime of civilization.
Language
Returning to the articleAnthropology, the next topic treated is Language. The more important points on this subject are stated in another chapter of this part of the Guide, onLanguage and Writing. Dr. Tylor says:
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.... In most or all nations of mankind, crossing or intermarriage of races has 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.... 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 the French, and modern German gives way to English in the United States.
Development of Civilization
The last general topic in the articleAnthropologyis Development of Civilization. In connection with it the student should read the articleCivilization(Vol. 6, p. 403), by Dr. H. S. Williams, editor-in-chief ofThe Historian’s History of the World, and particularly the first part of it dealing with early times.
Ethnology
The comparatively brief articleEthnology and Ethnography(Vol. 9, p. 849) takes up the story of man’s progress at the point whereAnthropologystops, and deals particularly with the division of mankind into separate races. Was pleistocene man specifically one? The evidence to supply an answer to this question is of three kinds: anatomical, physiological and cultural and psychical. Human bones from this early period “show differences so slight as to admit of pathological or other explanation,” and do not prove that there were separate species. The physiological answer, that there was only one species, is given and explained in the articleAnthropology: species cannot breed with species, and hybrids are infertile. Thethird answer is also in the negative. “The works of early man everywhere present the most startling resemblance.” Dr. J. C. Prichard is quoted in the article as saying that
the same inward and mental nature is to be recognized in all races of men. When we compare this fact with the observations, fully established, as to the specific instincts and separate psychical endowments of all the distinct tribes of sentient beings in the universe we are entitled to draw confidently the conclusion that all human races are of one species and one family.
If man was specifically one, where did he originate and how did he spread over the world? “As to man’s cradle-land there have been many theories, but the weight of evidence is in favour of Indo-Malaysia.” The problem of distribution “has been met by geology, which proves that the earth’s surface has undergone great changes since man’s appearance, and that continents, long since submerged, once existed, making a complete land communication from Indo-Malaysia.... Proofs no less cogent are available of the former existence of an Eurafrican continent, while the extension of Australia in the direction of New Guinea is more than probable.... The western hemisphere was probably connected with Europe and Asia, in Tertiary times.” The articleEthnologycloses with a description of the four divisions of the human race proposed by Huxley, which have already been enumerated.
Separate articles supplementing these two main articles,AnthropologyandEthnology, especially in the field of comparative anatomy, are:Anthropometry(Vol. 2, p. 119) for physical measurements, including the Bertillon system used to identify criminals;Brachycephalic(Vol. 4, p. 366), or short-headed, a term applied to Indo-Chinese, Savoyards, Croatians, Lapps, etc.;Dolichocephalic(Vol. 8, p. 388), or long-headed, like Eskimos, negroes, etc.;Mesocephalic(Vol. 18, p. 179), for the type between the two;Prognathism(Vol. 22, p. 424), for jaw protrusion;Craniometry(Vol. 7, p. 372) andCephalic Index(Vol. 5, p. 684), for the measurement of skulls and heads;Steatopygia(Vol. 25, p. 860), for a peculiar heaviness of hips found in some negro and other savage peoples;Monogenists(Vol. 18, p. 730), on the theory that all men are descended from a common original stock; andPolygenists(Vol. 22, p. 24) on the opposite theory.
North American Indians
One of the most elaborate ethnological articles in the Britannica is of particular interest to Americans, that onIndians, North American(Vol. 14, p. 452), by Dr. A. F. Chamberlain, professor of anthropology, Clark University, Worcester, Mass. It is equivalent to more than 100 pages of this Guide, and there are also scores of brief articles on different North American Indian tribes. A few, only, of the many interesting topics treated in it may be mentioned:
The name “American Indians”—due to the mistaken early belief that the New World was a part of Asia. “Amerind” a suggested substitute. Various uses of “Indian.” French “sauvage” the original of “Siwash.”
Popular fallacies of the origin of the Indians—Welsh, “lost Ten Tribes,” etc.
Linguistic stocks. Table of languages. General description; varied character; enormous compound words, likedeyeknonhsedehrihadasterasterahetakwafor “stove-polish.” Indian literature.
Migrations of Indian stocks. Tabular conspectus of 180 tribes—situation and population, degree of intermixture, condition and progress, and authorities on each.
Population, physical characteristics, race mixture.
Culture, arts, industries, religion, mythology and games.
Social organization, contact of Indians and whites, Indian wars, missions, Indian talent and capacity, syllabaries invented by Indians.
In addition to the articles on Indian tribes there are many on Indian notables—for example,Pontiac,Tecumseh,King Philip,Black Hawk,Brant, andSitting Bull.
Central America
Interest in the Indians of Central America, popularly called Aztecs, is rather archaeological than ethnological. See in the Britannica the articleCentral America(Vol. 5, p. 677), by Dr. Walter Lehmann, directorial assistant of the Royal Ethnological Museum, Munich; and the articleAmerica,Ethnology and Archaeology(Vol. 1, p. 810), by O. T. Mason, late curator, Department of Anthropology, National Museum, Washington, dealing with the Indians of North, Central and South America in general. The other principal articles on races or tribes of unusual ethnographic importance are:
Negro(Vol. 14, p. 344), by Thomas Athol Joyce, assistant in the Department of Ethnography, British Museum,—with a section on the negro in the United States, by Walter F. Willcox, late chief statistician, United States Census Bureau; supplemented byAfrica,Ethnology(Vol. 1, p. 325), by Mr. T. A. Joyce, with a particularly valuable classified list (p. 329) of African tribal distribution, which may be made the basis for further study by reference to articles on the separate tribes, such asBerbers,Kabyles,Mzabites,Tuareg, etc.
Polynesia(Vol. 22, p. 33) for the Polynesian race; and alsoSamoa(Vol. 24, p. 115) andHawaii(Vol. 13, p. 83)
Australia,Aborigines(Vol. 2, p. 954) andMaori. The following is a list in alphabetical order of articles on races or tribes:
Terminology
The technical terms of nearly every science are words coined from Latin and Greek roots, so that the student of these languages is at an advantage in learning any science—its terms have some meaning to him no matter how strange the science itself. But in anthropology and ethnology we come across such terms astaboo,totem,shamanandmanitou. For their comprehension Latin and Greek give no aid. Each of these terms comes into English from the language of a primitive people to convey an idea at once too primitive and too complex to be expressed by any English word or by a Greek or Latin compound. “Taboo” is a Malay word meaning both “unclean” (as that word is used in the Old Testament) and “sacred”; and the idea it conveys is characteristic of the religious and social system found among the Polynesians and nearly all other peoples in a comparatively low stage of civilization, which sets persons or things apart as sacred or accursed. “Totem” is a Chippewa (North American Indian) word denoting an animal, plant, or other object chosen as the name of a whole family or tribal division. The word “shaman” comes from the Ural-Altaic (Tungus), and means “medicine-man,” a combination of priest, magician and exorcist. “Manitou” is another North American word meaning “spirit” or “genius.”