'/. ?. 2.5, ■0? tip ©IMosiraj ^ PRINCETON, N. T '"i Purchased by the Mary Cheves Dulles Fund. Division .MM Section-*- nv o v ANTHROPOLOGY % By KROEBER /^iV( Cl / \v . ! * M0\/ \ a. NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC PRINTED IN THE U S. A. BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY PREFACE In the preparation of Chapters II, III, and VI of this book I have drawn on a University of California syllabus, “ Three Es¬ says on the Antiquity and Races of Man”; for Chapter VII, on an article “ Heredity, Environment, and Civilization” in the American Museum Journal for 1918; and Chapter V makes use of some passages of “The Languages of the American Indians” from the Popular Science Monthly of 1911. In each case there has been revision and for the most part rewriting. Whatever quality of lucidity the volume may have is due to several thousand young men and women with whom I have been associated during many years at the University of Cali¬ fornia. Without their unwitting but real co-authorship the book might never have been written, or would certainly have been written less simply. Berkeley, California, January 22, 1923. A. L. K. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/anthropology00kroe_0 CONTENTS CHAPTER I. Scope and Character of Anthropology . 1. Anthropology, biology, history. — 2. Organic and social elements. — 3. Physical anthropology. — 4. Cultural anthro¬ pology. — 5. Evolutionary processes and evolutionistic fancies. — 6. Age of anthropological science. II. Fossil Man . 7. The “Missing Link.” — 8. Family tree of the Primates. — 9. Geological and glacial time. — 10. Place of man’s origin and development. — 11. Pithecanthropus. — 12. Heidelberg man. — 13. The Piltdown form. — 14. Neandertal man. — 15. Rho¬ desian man. — 16. The Cro-Magnon race. — 17. The Brtinn race. — 18. The Grimaldi race: Neolithic races. — 19. The metric expression of human evolution. III. Living Races . 20. Race origins. — 21. Race classification. — 22. Traits on which classification rests. — 23. The grand divisions or pri¬ mary stocks. — 24. Caucasian races. — 25. Mongoloid races. — 26. Negroid races. — 27. Peoples of doubtful position. — 28. Continents and oceans. — 29. The history of race classifica¬ tions. — 30. Emergence of the three-fold classification. — 31. Other classifications. — 32. Principles and conclusions com¬ mon to all classifications. — 33. Race, nationality, and lan¬ guage. IV. Problems of Race . 34. Questions of endowment and their validity. — 35. Plan of inquiry. — 36. Anatomical evidence on evolutionary rank. — 37. Comparative physiological data. — 38. Disease. — 39. Causes of cancer incidence. — 40. Mental achievement and social environment. — 41. Psychological tests on the sense faculties. — 42. Intelligence tests. — 43. Status of hybrids. — 44. Evidence from the cultural record of races. — 45. Emo¬ tional bias. — 46. Summary. V. Language . 47. Linguistic relationship: the speech family. — 48. Cri¬ teria of relationship. — 49. Sound equivalences and phonetic laws. — 50. The principal speech families. — 51. Classification of language by types. — 52. Permanence of language and race. — 53. The biological and historical nature of lan¬ guage. — 54. Problems of the relation of language and VI CHAPTER CONTENTS FAGE culture. — 55. Period of the origin of language. — 56. Cul¬ ture, speech, and nationality. — 57. Relative worth of lan¬ guages. — 58. Size of vocabulary. — 59. Quality of speech sounds. — 60. Diffusion and parallelism in language and cul¬ ture. — 61. Convergent languages.— 62. Unconscious factors in language and culture. — 63. Linguistic and cultural stand¬ ards. — 64. Rapidity of linguistic change. VI. The Beginnings of Human Civilization . 137 65. Fossils of the body and of the mind. — 66. Stone and metals. — 67. The old and the new stone ages. — 68. The Eolitliie Age. — 69. The Palaeolithic Age: duration, climate, animals. — 70. Subdivisions of the Palaeolithic. — 71. Human racial types in the Palaeolithic. — 72. Palaeolithic flint imple¬ ments. — 73. Other materials: bone and horn. — 74. Dress. — 75. Harpoons and weapons. — 76. Wooden implements. — 77. Fire. — 78. Houses. — 79. Religion. — 80. Palaeolithic art. — 81. Summary of advance in the Palaeolithic. VII. Heredity, Climate, and Civilization . 180 82. Heredity. — 83. Geographical environment. — 84. Diet. — 85. Agriculture. — 86. Cultural factors. — 87. Cultural dis¬ tribution. — 88. Historical induction. VIII. Diffusion . 194 89. The couvade. — 90. Proverbs. — 91. Geographic distribu¬ tion. — 92. The magic flight. — 93. Flood legends. — 94. The double-headed eagle. — 95. The Zodiac. — 96. Measures. — 97. Divination. — 98. Tobacco. — 99. Migrations. IX. Parallels . 216 100. General observations. — 101. Cultural context. — 102. Universal elements. — 103. Secondary parallelism in the Indo- European languages. — 104. Textile patterns and processes. — 105. Primary parallelism: the beginnings of writing. — 106. Time reckoning. — 107. Scale and pitch of Pan’s pipes. — 108. Bronze. — 109. Zero. — 110. Exogamic institutions. — 111. Par¬ allels and psychology. — 112. Limitations on the parallelistic principle. X. The Arch and the Week . 241 113. House building and architecture. — 114. The problem of spanning. — 115 The column and beam. — 116. The corbelled arch. — 117. The true arch. — 118. Babylonian and Etruscan beginnings. — 119. The Roman arch and dome. — 120. Mediae¬ val cathedrals. — 121. The Arabs: India: modern architecture. — 122. The week: holy numbers. — 123. Babylonian discovery of the planets. — 124. Greek and Egyptian contributions: the astrological combination. — 125. The names of the days and the Sabbath. — 126. The week in Christianity, Islam, and eastern Asia. — 127. Summary of the diffusion. — 128. Month- thirds and market weeks. — 129. Leap days as parallels. CONTENTS vii CHAPTER PAGE XI. The Spread of the Alphabet . 263 130. Kinds of writing: pictographic and mixed phonetic. — 131. Deficiencies of transitional systems. — 132. Abbreviation and conventionalization. — 133 Presumptive origins of tran¬ sitional systems. — 134. Phonetic writing: the primitive Semitic alphabet. — 135. The Greek alphabet: invention of the vowels. — 136. Slowness of the invention. — 137. The Roman alphabet. — 138. Letters as numeral signs. — 139. Reform in institutions. — 140. The sixth and seventh letters. — 141. The tail of the alphabet. — 142. Capitals and minuscules. — 143. Conservatism and rationalization. — 144. Gothic. — 145. He¬ brew and Arabic. — 146. The spread eastward: the writing of India. — 147. Syllabic tendencies. — 148. The East Indies: Philippine alphabets. — 149. Northern Asia: the conflict of systems in Korea. XII. The Growth of a Primitive Religion . 293 150. Regional variation of culture. — 151. Plains, South¬ west, Northwest areas. — 152. California and its sub-areas. — 153. The shaping of a problem. — 154. Girls’ Adolescence Rite. — 155. The First Period. — 156. The Second Period: Mourning Anniversary and First-salmon rite. — 157. Era of regional differentiation. — 158. Third and Fourth Periods in Central California: Kuksu and Hesi. — 159. Third and Fourth Periods in Southern California: Jimsonweed and Chungich- nish. — 160. Third and Fourth Periods on the Lower Colo¬ rado: Dream Singing. — 161. Northwestern California: world- renewal and wealth display. — 162. Summary of religious de¬ velopment. — 163. Other phases of culture. — 164. Outline of the culture history of California. — 165. The question of dat¬ ing. — 166. The evidence of archaeology. — 167. Age of the shell mounds. — 168. General serviceability of the method. XIII. The History of Civilization in Native America . . . 326 169. Review of the method of culture examination. — 170. Limitations on the diffusion principle. — 171. Cultural rank¬ ing. — 172. Cultural abnormalities. — 173. Environmental con¬ siderations. — 174. Culture areas. — 175. Diagrammatic repre¬ sentation of accumulation and diffusion of culture traits. — 176. Representation showing contemporaneity and narrative representation. — 177. Racial origin of the American Indians. 178. The time of the peopling of America. — 179. Linguistic diversification. — 180. The primitive culture of the immi¬ grants. — 181. The route of entry into the western hemi¬ sphere. — 182. The spread over two continents. — 183. Emer¬ gence of middle American culture: maize. — 184. Tobacco. — 185. The sequence of social institutions. — 186. Rise of po¬ litical institutions: confederacy and empire. — 187. Develop¬ ments in weaving. — 188. Progress in spinning: cotton. — 189. Textile clothing. — 190. Cults: Shamanism. — 191. Crisis rites and initiations. — 192. — Secret societies and masks. — 193. Priesthood. — 194. Temples and sacrifice. — 195. Archi¬ tecture, sculpture, towns. — 196. Metallurgy. — 197. Calen- Vlll CHAPTER CONTENTS PAGE dars and astronomy. — 198. Writing. — 199. The several provincial developments: Mexico. — 200. The Andean area. — 201. Colombia. — 202. The Tropical Forest. — 203. Patagonia. — 204. North America: the Southwest. — 205. The South¬ east. — 206. The Northern Woodland. — 207. Plains area. — 208. The Northwest Coast. — 209. Northern marginal areas. 210. Later Asiatic influences. XIV. The Growth of Civilization: Old World Prehistory and Archaeology . 393 211. Sources of knowledge. — 212. Chronology of the grand divisions of culture history. — 213. The Lower and Upper Palaeolithic. — 214. Race influence and regional differentiation in the Lower Palaeolithic. — 215. Upper Palaeolithic culture growths and races. — 216. The Palaeolithic aftermath : Azilian. 217. The Neolithic: its early phase. — 218. pottery and the bow. — 219. Bone tools. — 220. The dog. — 221. The hewn ax. — 222. The Full Neolithic. — 223. Origin of domesticated animals and plants.^ — 224. Other traits of the Full Neolithic. — 225. The Bronze Age: Copper and Bronze phases. — 226. Traits as¬ sociated with bronze. — 227. Iron. — 228. First use and spread of iron. — 229. The Hallstadt and La Tene Periods. — 230. Summary of Development: Regional differentiation. — 231. The Scandinavian area as an example. — 232. The late Palaeo¬ lithic Ancylus or Maglemose Period. — 233. The Early Neo¬ lithic Litorina or Kitchenmidden Period. — 234. The Full Neolithic and its subdivisions in Scandinavia. — 235. The Bronze Age and its periods in Scandinavia. — 236. Problems of chronology. — 237. Principles of the prehistoric spread of culture. XV. The Growth of Civilization: Old World History and Eth¬ nology . 440 238. The early focal area. — 239. Egypt and Sumer and their background. — 240. Predynastic Egypt. — 241. Culture growth in dynastic Egypt. — 242. The Sumerian development. - — 243. The Sumerian hinterland: — 244. Entry of Semites and Indo-Europeans. — 245. Iranian peoples and cultures. — 246. The composite culture of the Near East. — 247. Phoenicians, Aramaeans, Hebrews. — 248. Other contributing nationalities. — 249. iEgean civilization. — 250. Europe. — 251. China. — 252. Growth and spread of Chinese civilization. — 253. The Lolos. — 254. Korea. — 255. Japan. — 256. Central and northern Asia. — 257. India. — 258. Indian caste and religion. — 259. Relations between India and the outer world. — 260. Indo-China. — 261. Oceania. — 262. The East Indies. — 263. Melanesia and Poly¬ nesia. — 264. Australia. — 265. Tasmania. — 266. Africa. — 267. Egyptian radiations. — 268. The influence of other cultures. — 269. The Bushmen. — 270. The West African culture-area and its meaning. — 271. Civilization, race, and the future. Index 507 LIST OF ILLUSTBATIONS FIGURE PAGE 1. The descent of man: diagram . 12 2. The descent of man, elaborated . 14 3. The descent of man in detail, according to Gregory .... 16 4. The descent of man in detail, according to Keith . . . . 17 5. Antiquity of man: diagram . 20 6. Fossil and modern skull outlines superposed . 25 7. Measurements made on fossil skulls . 31 8. Relationship of the races: diagram . 47 9. Family tree of the human races . 48 10. Map: distribution of primary racial stocks . 50 11. Map: circumpolar distribution of the races . 51 12. Map: linguistic families of Asia and Europe . . . ( facing ) 94 13. Map: linguistic families of Africa . 97 14. Map: principal linguistic families of North America ... 99 15. Map: principal linguistic families of South America . . . 101 16. Map: type stations of the Palaeolithic periods . 153 17. Earliest prehistory of Europe: diagram . 156 18. Palaeolithic flint implements, illustrating the principal techniques 159 19. Flint core with reassembled flakes . 163 20. Aurignacian sculpture: human figure . 173 21. Magdalenian sculpture: horse . 174 22. Magdalenian engraving of a mammoth . . . . , .175 23. Magdalenian engraving of a herd . 176 24. Magdalenian engraving of a browsing reindeer . . . .177 25. Growth of civilization during the Palaeolithic: diagram . . 178 26. Culture distribution and history in the Southwest: diagram . 191 27. Map: diffusion of the Magic Flight tale . 201 28. Maya symbols for zero . 230 29. Map: types of exogamic institutions in Australia .... 233 30. Map: the spread of alphabetic writing .... ( facing ) 284 31. Map: culture-areas of native California . 297 32. Map: the growth of rituals in native California .... 308 ix \ X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURE 33. Distribution of culture elements indicative of their history: diagram . 34. Map: culture-areas of America . 35. Occurrence of elements in the culture-areas of America : dia¬ gram . ( facing ) 36. Development of American civilization in time, according to Spinden: diagram . ( facing ) 37. Map: Europe in the early Lower Palaeolithic . 38. Map: Europe in the Aurignacian and Lower Capsian . 39. Map: Europe in the Solutrean, Magdalenian, and Upper Capsian 40. Map : Europe in the Azilian and Terminal Capsian 41. Prehistoric corbelled domes in Greece, Portugal, and Ireland 42. Growth and spread of prehistoric civilization in Europe, accord¬ ing to Muller: diagram . PAGE 328 337 340 342 399 401 403 409 420 436 ANTHROPOLOGY CHAPTER I SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF ANTHROPOLOGY 1. Anthropology, biology, history. — 2. Organic and social elements — 3. Physical anthropology. — 4. Cultural anthropology. — 5. Evolutionary processes and evolutionistic fancies. — 6. Age of anthropological science. 1. Anthropology, Biology, History Anthropology is the science of man. This broad and literal definition takes on more meaning when it is expanded to “the science of man and his works. ’ ’ Even then it may seem heterogeneous and too inclusive. The products of the human mind are something different from the body. And these prod¬ ucts, as well as the human body, are the subjects of firmly established sciences, which would seem to leave little room for anthropology except as a less organized duplication. Ordinary political history, economics, literary criticism, and the history of art all deal with the works and doings of man; biology and medicine study his body. It is evident that these various branches of learning cannot be relegated to the position of mere subdivisions of anthropology and this be exalted to the rank of a sort of holding corporation for them. There must be some definite and workable relation. One way in which this relation can be pictured follows to some extent the course of anthropology as it grew into self- consciousness and recognition. Biology, medicine, history, eco¬ nomics were all tilling their fields of knowledge in the nine¬ teenth century, some with long occupancy, when anthropology shyly entered the scene and began to cultivate a corner here and a patch there. It examined some of the most special and l 2 ANTHROPOLOGY non-utilitarian aspects of the human body : the shape of the head, the complexion, the texture of the hair, the differences between one variety of man and another, points of negligible import in medicine and of quite narrow interest as against the broad principles which biology was trying to found and fortify as the science of all life. So too the historical sciences had pre¬ empted the most convenient and fruitful subjects within reach. Anthropology modestly turned its attention to nations without records, to histories without notable events, to institutions strange in flavor and inventions hanging in their infancy, to languages that had never been written. Yet obviously the heterogeneous leavings of several sciences will never weld into an organized and useful body of knowledge. The dilettante, the collector of oddities who loves incoherence, may be content to observe to-day the flare of the negro ’s nostrils, to-morrow the intricacy of prefixes that bind his words into sentences, the day after, his attempts to destroy a foe by driving nails into a wooden idol. A science becomes such only when it learns to discover relations and a meaning in facts. If anthro¬ pology were to remain content with an interest in the Mongolian eye, the dwarfishness of the Negrito, the former home of the Polynesian race, taboos against speaking to one’s mother-in-law, rituals to make rain, and other such exotic and superseded super¬ stitions, it would earn no more dignity than an antiquarian’s attic. As a co-laborer on the edifice of fuller understanding, anthropology must find more of a task than filling with rubble the temporarily vacant spaces in the masonry that the sciences are rearing. The other manner in which the subject of anthropology can be conceived is that this is neither so vast as to include every¬ thing human, nor is it the unappropriated odds and ends of other sciences, but rather some particular aspect of human phenomena. If such an aspect exists, anthropology vindicates its unity and attains to integrity of aim. 2. Organic and Social Elements To the question why a Louisiana negro is black and thick lipped, the answer is ready. He was born so. As dogs produce SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGY 3 pups, and lions cubs, so negro springs from negro and Cau¬ casian from Caucasian. We call the force at work, heredity. The same negro is lazy by repute, easy going at his labor. Is this too an innate quality ? Off-hand, most of us would reply : Yes. He sings at his corn-hoeing more frequently than the white man across the fence. Is this also because of his heredity ? ‘ ‘ Of course : he is made so, ’ ’ might be a common answer ; ‘ ‘ Probably : why not ? ’ ’ a more cautious one. But now our negro is singing Suwanee River, which his great-grandfather in Africa assuredly did not sing. As regards the specific song, heredity is obviously no longer the cause. Our negro may have learned it from an uncle, perhaps from his schoolmates; he can have acquired it from human beings not his ancestors, acquired it as part of his customs, like being a member of the Baptist church and wearing overalls, and the thousand other things that come to him from without instead of from within. At these points heredity is dis¬ placed by tradition, nature by nurture, to use a familiar jingle. The efficient forces now are quite different from those that made his skin black and his lips thick. They are causes of another order. The particular song of the negro and his complexion represent the clear-cut extremes of the matter. Between them lie the sloth and the inclination to melody. Obviously these traits may also be the result of human example, of social environment, of contemporary tradition. There are those that so believe, as well as those who see in them only the effects of inborn biological impulse. Perhaps these intermediate dubious traits are the re¬ sults of a blending of nature and nurture, the strength of each factor varying according to each trait or individual examined. Clearly, at any rate, there is room here for debate and evidence. A genuine problem exists. This problem cannot be solved by the historical sciences alone because they do not concern them¬ selves with heredity. Nor can it be solved by biology which deals with heredity and allied factors but does not go on to operate with the non-biological principle of tradition. Here, then, is a specific task and place in the sun for anthro¬ pology: the interpretation of those phenomena into which both organic and social causes enter. The untangling and determina¬ tion and reconciling of these two sets of forces are anthropology’s 4 ANTHROPOLOGY own. They constitute, whatever else it may undertake, the focus of its attention and an ultimate goal. No other science has grappled with this set of problems as its primary end. Nor has anthropology as yet much of a solution to offer. It may be said to have cleared the ground of brush, rather than begun the felling of its tree. But, in the terminology of science, it has at least defined its problem. To deal with this interplay of what is natural and nurtural, organic and social, anthropology must know something of the organic, as such, and of the social, as such. It must be able to recognize them with surety before it endeavors to analyze and resynthesize them. It must therefore effect close contact with the organic and the social sciences respectively, with “biology” and “history,” and derive all possible aid from their contribu¬ tions to knowledge. Up to the present time, a large part of the work of anthropology has consisted in acquiring the fruits of the activity of these sister sciences and applying them for its own ends; or, where the needed biological and historical data were not available, securing them. 3. Physical Anthropology The organic sciences underlie the social ones. They are more directly “natural.” Anthropology has therefore found valuable general principles in biology: laws of heredity, the doctrines of cell development and evolution, for instance, based on facts from the whole range of life. Its business has been to ascertain how far these principles apply to man, what forms they take in his particular case. This has meant a concentration of attention, the devising of special methods of inquiry. Many biological problems, including most physiological and hereditary ones, can be most profitably attacked in the laboratory, or at least under experimental conditions. This method, however, is but rarely open as regards human beings, who must ordinarily be observed as they are. The phenomena concerning man have to be taken as they come and laboriously sifted and re-sifted afterward, instead of being artificially simplified in advance, as by the experimental method. Then, too, since anthropology was operat¬ ing within the narrow limits of one species, it was driven to SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGY 5 concern itself with minute traits, such as the zoologist is rarely troubled with : the proportions of the length and breadth of the skull — the famous cephalic index — for instance ; the number of degrees the arm bones are twisted, and the like. Also, as these data had to be used in the gross, unmodifiable by artificially varied conditions, it lias been necessary to secure them from all possible varieties of men, different races, sexes, ages, and their nearest brute analogues. The result is that biological or physical anthropology — “Somatology” it is sometimes called in Anglo-Saxon countries, and simply “anthropology” in conti¬ nental Europe — has in part constituted a sort of specialization or sharpening of general biology, and has become absorbed to a considerable degree in certain particular phenomena and methods of studying them about which general biologists, physi¬ ologists, paleontologists, and students of medicine are usually but vaguely informed. 4. Cultural Anthropology The historical or social sciences overlie the organic ones. Men’s bodies and natural equipment are back of their deeds and accomplishments as transmitted by tradition, primary to their culture or civilization. The relation oi anthropology to his¬ torical science has therefore been in a sense the opposite of its relation to biological science. Instead of specializing, anthro¬ pology has been occupied with trying to generalize the findings of history. Historians cannot experiment. They deal with the concrete, with the unique ; for in a degree every historical event has something unparalleled about it. They may paint with a broad sweep, but they do not lay down exact laws. Moreover, history inevitably begins with an interest in the present and in ourselves. In proportion as it reaches back in time and to wholly foreign peoples, its interest tends to flag and its materials become scant and unreliable. It is commonly con¬ sidered useful for a man to know that Napoleon was a Corsican and was defeated at Waterloo in 1815, but a rather pedantic piece of knowledge that Shi Hwang-ti was born in northwestern China and unified the rule of China in 221 B.C. From a theo¬ retical or general point of view, however, one of these facts is 6 ANTHROPOLOGY presumably as important as the other, for if we wish to know the principles that go into the shaping of human social life or civilization, China counts for as much as France, and the ancient past for as much as the nearby present. In fact, the foreign and the old are likely to be inquired into with even more assiduity by the theoretically minded, since they may furnish wholly new clues to insight, whereas the subjects of conventional history have been so familiarized as to hold out less hope of novel con¬ clusions still to be extricated from them. Here, then, is the cause of the seeming preoccupation of social or cultural anthropology with ancient and savage and exotic and extinct peoples: the desire to understand better all civilizations, irrespective of time and place, in the abstract or in form of generalized principle if possible. It is not that cave men are more illuminating than Romans, or flint knives more interesting than fine porcelains or the art of printing, that has led anthropology to bear so heavily on the former, but the fact that it wanted to know about cave men and flint knives as well as about Romans and printing presses. It would be irrational to prefer the former to the latter, and anthropology has never accepted the adjudication sometimes tacitly rendered that its proper field is the primitive, as such. As well might zoology confine its interest to eggs or protozoans. It is probably true that many researches into early and savage history have sprung from an emotional predilection for the forgotten or neglected, the obscure and strange, the unwonted and mysterious. But such occasional personal aesthetic trends can not delimit the range of a science or determine its aims and methods. In¬ numerable historians have been inveterate gossips. One does not therefore insist that the only proper subject of history is backstairs intimacies. This, then, is the reason for the special development of those subdivisions of anthropology known as Archaeology, ‘ ‘ the science of what is old’’ in the career of humanity, especially as revealed by excavations of the sites of prehistoric occupation ; and Eth¬ nology, ‘‘the science of peoples,” irrespective of their degree of advancement.1 i Ethnography is sometimes separated, as more descriptive, from Eth¬ nology as more theoretically inclined. SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGY 7 5. Evolutionary Processes and Evolutionistic Fancies In their more elementary aspects the two strands of the organic and the social, or the hereditary and environmental, as they are generally called with reference to individuals, run through all human life and are distinguishable as mechanisms, as well as in their results. Thus a comparison of the acquisition of the power of flight respectively by birds in their organic development out of the ancestral reptile stem some millions of years ago, and by men as a result of cultural progress in the field of invention during the past generation, reveals at once the profound differences of process that inhere in the ambiguous concept of ‘ ‘evolution.” The bird gave up a pair of walking limbs to acquire wings. He added a new faculty by transform¬ ing part of an old one. The sum total of his parts or organs was not greater than before. The change was transmitted only to the blood descendants of the altered individuals. The reptile line went on as it had been before, or if it altered, did so for causes unconnected with the evolution of the birds. The aeroplane, on the contrary, gave men a new faculty without im¬ pairing any of those they had previously possessed. It led to no visible bodily changes, nor alterations of mental capacity. The invention has been transmitted to individuals and groups not derived by descent from the inventors ; in fact, has already influenced their careers. Theoretically, it is transmissible to ancestors if they happen to be still living. In sum, it represents an accretion to the stock of existing culture rather than a trans¬ formation. Once the broad implications of the distinction which this example illustrates have been grasped, many common errors are guarded against. The program of eugenics, for instance, loses much of its force. There is certainly much to be said in favor of intelligence and discrimination in mating, as in every¬ thing else. There is need for the acquisition of exacter knowl¬ edge on human heredity. But, in the main, the claims some¬ times made that eugenics is necessary to preserve civilization from dissolution, or to maintain the flourishing of this or that nationality, rest on the fallacy of recognizing only organic causes as operative, when social as well as organic ones are active — 8 ANTHROPOLOGY when indeed the social factors may be much the more powerful ones. So, in what are miscalled race problems, the average thought of the day still reasons largely from social effects to organic causes and perhaps vice versa. Anthropology is by no means yet in a position to state just where the boundary between the contributing organic and social causes of such phenomena lies. But it does hold to their fundamental distinctness and to the importance of this distinctness, if true understanding is the aim. Without sure grasp of this principle, many of the arguments and conclusions in the present volume will lose their significance. Accordingly, the designation of anthropology as “the child of Darwin” is most misleading. Darwin’s essential achievement was that he imagined, and substantiated by much indirect evi¬ dence, a mechanism through which organic evolution appeared to be taking place. The whole history of man however being much more than an organic matter, a pure Darwinian anthro¬ pology would be largely misapplied biology. One might almost as justly speak of a Copernican or Newtonian anthropology. What has greatly influenced anthropology, mainly to its damage, has been not Darwinism, but the vague idea of evolu¬ tion, to the organic aspect of which Darwin gave such substance that the whole group of evolutionistic ideas has luxuriated rankly ever since. It became common practice in social anthro¬ pology to “explain” any part of human civilization by arrang¬ ing its several forms in an evolutionary sequence from lowest to highest and allowing each successive stage to flow spontane¬ ously from the preceding — in other words, without specific cause. At bottom this logical procedure was astonishingly naive. We of our land and day stood at the summit of the ascent, in these schemes. Whatever seemed most different from our customs was therefore reckoned as earliest, and other phenomena dis¬ posed wherever they would best contribute to the straight even¬ ness of the climb upward. The relative occurrence of phe¬ nomena in time and space was disregarded in favor of their logical fitting into a plan. It was argued that since we hold to definitely monogamous marriage, the beginnings of human sexual union probably lay in indiscriminate promiscuity. Since we accord precedence to descent from the father, and generally SCOPE OF ANTHROPOLOGY 9 know him, early society must have reckoned descent from the mother and no one knew his father. We abhor incest; therefore the most primitive men normally married their sisters. These are fair samples of the conclusions or assumptions of the classic evolutionistic school of anthropology, whose roster was graced by some of the most illustrious names in the science. Needless to say, these men tempered the basic crudity of their opinions by wide knowledge, acuity or charm of presentation, and fre¬ quent insight and sound sense in concrete particulars. In their day, a generation or two ago, under the spell of the concept of evolution in its first flush, such methods of reasoning were almost inevitable. To-day they are long threadbare, descended to material for newspaper science or idle speculation, and evi¬ dence of a tendency toward the easy smugness of feeling one¬ self superior to all the past. These ways of thought are men¬ tioned here only as an example of the beclouding that results from baldly transferring biologically legitimate concepts into the realm of history, or viewing this as unfolding according to a simple plan of progress. 6. Age of Anthropologic2Vl Science The foregoing exposition will make clear why anthropology is generally regarded as one of the newer sciences — why its chairs are few, its places in curricula of education scattered. As an organized science, with a program and a method of its own, it is necessarily recent because it could not arise until the biological and social sciences had both attained enough organized develop¬ ment to come into serious contact. On the other hand, as an unmethodical body of knowledge, as an interest, anthropology is plainly one of the oldest of the sisterhood of sciences. How could it well be otherwise than that men were at least as much interested in each other as in the stars and mountains and plants and animals? Every savage is a bit of an ethnologist about neighboring tribes and knows a legend of the origin of mankind. Herodotus, the “father of history,” devoted half of his nine books to pure ethnology, and Lucretius, a few centuries later, tried to solve by philosophical deduction and poetical imagination many of the same problems 10 ANTHROPOLOGY that modern anthropology is more cautiously attacking with the methods of science. In neither chemistry nor geology nor biology was so serious an interest developed as in anthropology, until nearly two thousand years after these ancients. In the pages that follow, the central anthropological problems that concern the relations of the organic and cultural factors in man will be defined and solutions offered to the degree that they seem to have been validly determined. On each side of this goal, however, stretches an array of more or less authenticated formulations, of which some of the more important will be re¬ viewed. On the side of the organic, consideration will tend largely to matters of fact ; in the sphere of culture, processes can here and there be illustrated; in accord with the fact that anthropology rests upon biological and underlies purely his¬ torical science. CHAPTER II FOSSIL MAN 7. The “Missing Link.” — 8 Family tree of the Primates. — 9. Geo¬ logical and glacial time. — 10. Place of man’s origin and development. — 11. Pithecanthropus. — 12. Heidelberg man. — 13. The Piltdown form. — 14. Neandertal man. — 15. Rhodesian man. — 16. The Cro-Magnon race. — 17. The Briinn race. — 18. The Grimaldi race: Neolithic races. — 19. The metric expression of human evolution. 7. The “Missing Link” No modern zoologist has the least doubt as to the general fact of organic evolution. Consequently anthropologists take as their starting point the belief in the derivation of man from some other animal form. There is also no question as to where in a general way man’s ancestry is to be sought. He is a mammal closely allied to the other mammals, and therefore has sprung from some mammalian type. His origin can be specified even more accurately. The mammals fall into a number of fairly distinct groups, such as the Carnivores or flesh-eating animals, the Ungulates or hoofed animals, the Rodents or gnawing ani- t mals, the Cetaceans or whales, and several others. The highest of these mammalian groups, as usually reckoned, is*the Primate or “first” order of the animal kingdom. This Primate group includes the various monkeys and apes and man. The ancestors of the human race are therefore to be sought somewhere in the order of Primates, past or present. The popular but inaccurate expression of this scientific con¬ viction is that “man is descended from the monkeys,” but that a link has been lost in the chain of descent : the famous 4 ‘ missing link.” In a loose way this statement reflects modern scientific opinion; but it certainly is partly erroneous. Probably not a single authority maintains to-day that man is descended from any species of monkey now living. What students during the past sixty years have more and more come to be convinced of, was already foreshadowed by Darwin : namely that man and the II 12 ANTHROPOLOGY apes are both descended from a common ancestor. This common ancestor may be described as a primitive Primate, who differed in a good many details both from the monkeys and from man, and who has probably long since become extinct. The situation may be clarified by two diagrams (Fig. 1). The first diagram represents the inaccurate view which puts the monkey at the bottom of the line of descent, man at the top, and the missing link in the middle of the straight line. The illogi¬ cality of believing that our origin occurred in this manner is Fig. 1. Erroneous (left) and more valid (right) the descent of man. representation of apparent as soon as one reflects that according to this scheme the monkey at the beginning and man at the end of the line still survive, whereas the “missing link,” which is supposed to have connected them, has become extinct. Clearly the relation must be different. Whatever the missing link may have been, the mere fact that he is not now alive on earth means that we must construct our diagram so that it will indicate his past existence as compared with the survival of man and the apes. This means that the missing link must be put lower in the figure than man and the apes, and our illustration therefore takes on the form shown in the right half of figure 1, which may be described as Y-shaped. The stem of the Y de- l FOSSIL MAN 13 notes the pre-ancestral forms leading back into other mammalian groups and through them — if carried far enough down — to the amphibians and invertebrates. The missing link comes at the fork of the Y. He represents the last point at which man and the monkeys were still one, and beyond which they separated and became different. It is just because the missing link rep¬ resented the last common form that he was the link between man and the monkeys. From him onwards, the monkeys followed their own course, as indicated by the left-hand branch of the Y, and man went his separate way along the right-hand branch. 8. Family Tree of the Primates While this second diagram illustrates the most essential ele¬ ments in modern belief as to man’s origin, it does not of course pretend to give the details. To make the diagram at all precise, the left fork of the Y, which here stands for the monkeys as a group — in other words, represents all the living Primates other than man — would have to be denoted by a number of branching and subdividing lines. Each of the main branches would rep¬ resent one of the four or five subdivisions or 4 ‘families” of the Primates, such as the Anthropoid or manlike apes, and the Cebidae or South American monkeys. The finer branches would stand for the several genera and species in each of these families. For instance, the Anthropoid line would split into four, standing respectively for the Gibbon, Orang-utan, Chimpanzee, and Gorilla. The fork of the Y representing man would not branch and rebranch so intricately as the fork representing the monkeys. Many zoologists regard all the living varieties of man as con¬ stituting a single species, while even those who are inclined to recognize several species limit the number of these species to three or four. Then too the known extinct varieties of man are comparatively few. There is some doubt whether these human fossil types are to be reckoned as direct ancestors of modern man, and therefore as mere points in the main human line of our diagram; or whether they are to be considered as having been ancient collateral relatives who split off from the main line of human development. In the latter event, their designation 14 ANTHROPOLOGY in the diagram would have to be by shorter lines branching out of the human fork of the Y. This subject quickly becomes a technical problem requiring rather refined evidence to answer. In general, prevailing opinion looks upon the later fossil ancestors of man as probably direct or true ancestors, but tends to regard the earlier of these extinct forms as more likely to have been collateral ones. This verdict applies with particular force to the earliest of all, the very one which comes nearest to fulfilling the popular idea of the missing APES MAN i I Fig. 2. The descent of man, elaborated over Figure 1. For further ramifications, see Figures 3, 4, 9. link : the so-called Pithecanthropus erectus. If the Pithecan¬ thropus were truly the missing link, he would have to be put at the exact crotch of the Y. Since he is recognized, however, as a form more or less ancestral to man, and somewhat less ancestral to the apes, he should probably be placed a short dis¬ tance up on the human stem of the Y, or close alongside it. On the other hand, inasmuch as most palaeontologists and compara¬ tive anatomists believe that Pithecanthropus was not directly ancestral to us, in the sense that no living men have Pithecan¬ thropus blood flowing in their veins, he would therefore be an ancient collateral relative of humanity — a sort of great-great- FOSSIL MAN 15 granduncle — and would be best represented by a short stub coming out of the human line a little above its beginning (Fig. 2). Even this figure is not complete, since it is possible that some of the fossil types which succeeded Pithecanthropus in point of time, such as the Heidelberg and Piltdown men, were also col¬ lateral rather than direct ancestors. Some place even the later Neandertal man in the collateral class. It is only when the last of the fossil types, the Cro-Magnon race, is reached, that opinion becomes comparatively unanimous that this is a form directly ancestral to us. For accuracy, therefore, figure 2 might be re¬ vised by the addition of other short lines to represent the several earlier fossil types: these would successively spring from the main human line at higher and higher levels. In order not to complicate unnecessarily the fundamental facts of the case — especially since many data are still interpreted somewhat variously — no attempt will be made here to construct such a complete diagram as authoritative. Instead, there are added reproductions of the family tree of man and the apes as the lineages have been worked out independently by two authorities (Figs. 3, 4). It is clear that these two family trees are in substantial accord as regards their main conclusions, but that they show some variability in details. This condition reflects the present state of knowledge. All experts are in accord as to certain basic principles; but it is impassible to find two authors who agree exactly in their understanding of the less important data. 9. Geological and Glacial Time A remark should be made here as to the age of these ancestral forms. The record of life on earth, as known from the fossils in stratified rocks, is divided into four great periods. The earliest, the Primary or Palaeozoic , comprises about two-thirds of the total lapse of geologic time. During the Palaeozoic all the principal divisions of invertebrate animals came into exist¬ ence, but of the vertebrates only the fishes. In the Secondary or Mesozoic period, evolution progressed to the point where reptiles were the highest and dominant type, and the first feeble Fig. 3. The descent of man in detail, according to Gregory (some¬ what simplified). Extinct forms: 1, Parapithecus ; 2, Propliopithecus ; 3, Palaeosimia; 4, Sivapithecus ; 5, Dryopithecus ; 6, Pakeopithecus ; 7, Pliopithecus ; P, Pithecanthropus erectus; H, Homo Heidelbergensis ; N, Homo Neandertalensis. Fig. 4. The descent of man in detail, according to Keith (somewhat simplified). Extinct forms: 2, 5, 6, 7 as in Figure 3; Pithecan¬ thropus), Pilt(down), Neand(ertal). Living forms: Gb, Or, Ch, Go, the anthropoid apes as in Figure 3, 18 ANTHROPOLOGY bird and mammal forms appeared. The Mesozoic embraces most of the remaining third or so of the duration of life on the earth, leaving only something like five million years for the last two periods combined, as against thirty, fifty, ninety, or four hun¬ dred million years that the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic are variously estimated to have lasted. These last five million years or so of the earth’s history are divided unequally between the Tertiary or Age of Mammals, and the Quaternary or Age of Man. About four million years are usually assigned to the Tertiary with its subdivisions, the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene. The Quaternary was formerly reckoned by geologists to have lasted only about a hun¬ dred thousand years. Later this estimate was raised to four or five hundred thousand, and at present the prevailing opinion tends to put it at about a million years. There are to be recog¬ nized, then, a four million year Age of Mammals before man, or even any definitely pre-human form, had appeared ; and a final period of about a million years during which man gradually assumed his present bodily and mental type. In this Quaternary period fall all the forms which are treated in the following pages. The Quaternary is usually subdivided into two periods, the Pleistocene and the Recent. The Recent is very short, perhaps not more than ten thousand years. It represents, geologically speaking, the mere instant which has elapsed since the final dis¬ appearance of the great glaciers. It is but little longer than historic time; and throughout the Recent there are encountered only modern forms of man. Back of it, the much longer Pleistocene is often described as the Ice Age or Glacial Epoch ; and both in Europe and North America careful research has succeeded in demonstrating four successive periods of increase of the ice. In Europe these are generally known as the Gunz, Mindel, Riss, and Wurrn glaciations. The probable American equivalents are the Nebraskan, Kansan, Illinoian, and Wisconsin periods of ice spread. Between each of these four came a warmer period when the ice melted and its sheets receded. These are the “interglacial periods” and are designated as the first, second, and third. These glacial and interglacial periods are of importance because they offer a natural chronology or time scale FOSSIL MAN 19 for the Pleistocene, and usually provide the best means of dating the fossil human types that have been or may hereafter be discovered (Fig. 5). 10. Place of Man’s Origin and Development Before we proceed to the fossil finds themselves, we must note that the greater part of the surface of the earth has been very imperfectly explored. Africa, Asia, and Australia may quite conceivably contain untold scientific treasures which have not yet been excavated. One cannot assert that they are lying in the soil or rocks of these continents ; but one also cannot affirm that they are not there. North and South America have been somewhat more carefully examined, at least in certain of their areas, but with such regularly negative results that the pre¬ vailing opinion now is that these two continents — possibly through being shut off by oceans or ice masses from the eastern hemisphere — were not inhabited by man during the Pleistocene. The origin of the human species cannot then be sought in the western hemisphere. This substantially leaves Europe as the one continent in which excavations have been carried on with prospects of success; and it is in the more thoroughly explored western half of Europe that all but two of the unquestioned discoveries of ancient man have been made. One of these excep¬ tional finds is from Africa. The other happens to be the one that dates earliest of all — the same Pithecanthropus already mentioned as being the closest known approach to the “missing link.” Pithecanthropus was found in Java. Now it might conceivably prove true that man originated in Europe and that this is the reason that the discoveries of his most ancient remains have to date been so largely confined to that continent. On the other hand, it does seem much more reasonable to believe that this smallest of the continents, with its temperate or cold climate, and its poverty of ancient and modern species of monkeys, is likely not to have been the true home, or at any rate not the only home, of the human family. The safest statement of the case would be that it is not known in what part of the earth man originated; that next to nothing is known of the history of his development on most of the con- ANT/QU/TY Or MAH GEOLOGY MAR CUL TORE YEARS ! Rsc^rrr 1 § I I ! Q~ ■ kl •si ig 5j a 5! |g I *t! WURM RI55 J1H1DEL Gunz t-ns/ma ^c£s> CRO-MAGnOn tlEAHDERTAL LOWER PALAEOLITHIC P/LTDOWn? HEIDELBERG PJTHECA/iTHPOPUS nEOL (TfifC, H/S TQR/C UPPER PALAEOL / TH/C EOLITH !C? . /OtOOO - 25,000 50,000 100,000 500,000 1000,000 Fig. 5. Antiquity of man. This diagram is drawn to scale, propor¬ tionate to the number of years estimated to have elapsed, as far down as 100,000. Beyond, the scale is one-half, to bring the diagram within the limits of the page. FOSSIL MAN 21 tinents; and that that portion of his history which chiefly is known is the fragment which happened to take place in Europe. 11. Pithecanthropus Pithecanthropus erectus, the “ erect ape-man,” was determined from the top part of a skull, a thigh bone, and two molar teeth found in 1891 under fifty feet of strata by Dubois, a Dutch surgeon, near Trinil, in the East Indian island of Java. The skull and the thigh lay some distance apart but at the same level and probably are from the same individual. The period of the stratum is generally considered early Pleistocene, pos¬ sibly approximately contemporary with the first or Giinz glacia¬ tion of Europe — nearly a million years ago, by the time scale here followed. Java was then a part of the mainland of Asia. The skull is low, with narrow receding forehead and heavy ridges of bone above the eye sockets — “supraorbital ridges.” The capacity is estimated at 850 or 900 cubic centimeters — half as much again as that of a large gorilla, but nearly one-lialf less than the average for modern man. The skull is dolichocephalic — long for its breadth — like the skulls of all early fossil men; whereas the anthropoid apes are more broad-headed. The jaws are believed to have projected almost like a snout; but as they remain undiscovered, this part of the reconstruction is con¬ jectural. The thigh bone is remarkably straight, indicating habitual upright posture ; its length suggests that the total body stature was about 5 feet 7 inches, or as much as the height of most Europeans. Pithecanthropus was a terrestrial and not an arboreal form. He seems to have been slightly more similar to modern man than to any ape, and is the most primitive manlike type yet discov¬ ered. But he is very different from both man and the apes, as his name indicates: Pithecanthropus is a distinct genus, not included in Homo , or man. 12. Heidelberg Man Knowledge of Heidelberg man rests on a single piece of bone — a lower jaw found in 1907 by Schoetensack at a depth of 22 ANTHROPOLOGY nearly eighty feet in the Mauer sands not far from Heidelberg, Germany. Like the Pithecanthropus remains, the Heidelberg specimen lay in association with fossils of extinct mammals, a fact which makes possible its dating. It probably belongs to the second interglacial period, so that its antiquity is only about half as great as that of Pithecanthropus (Fig. 5). The jaw is larger and heavier than any modern human jaw. The ramus, or upright part toward the socket, is enormously broad, as in the anthropoid apes. The chin is completely lack¬ ing ; but this area does not recede so much as in the apes. Heidelberg man’s mouth region must have projected consider¬ ably more than that of modern man, but much less than that of a gorilla or a chimpanzee. The contour of the jaw as seen from above is human (oval), not simian (narrow and oblong). The teeth, although large, are essentially human. They are set close together, with their tops flush, as in man ; the canines lack the tusk-like character which they retain in the apes. Since the skull and the limb bones of this form are wholly unknown, it is somewhat difficult to picture the type as it ap¬ peared in life. But the jaw being as manlike as it is apelike, and the teeth distinctly human, the Heidelberg type is to be regarded as very much nearer to modern man than to the ape, or as farther along the line of evolutionary development than Pithecanthropus ; as might be expected from its greater recency. This relationship is expressed by the name, Homo Heidelberg- ensis, which recognizes the type as belonging to the genus man. 13. The Piltdown Form This form is reconstructed from several fragments of a female brain case, some small portions of the face, nearly half the lower jaw, and a number of teeth, found in 1911-13 by Dawson and Woodward in a gravel layer at Piltdown in Sussex, Eng¬ land. Great importance has been ascribed to this skull, but too many of its features remain uncertain to render it safe to build large conclusions upon the discovery. The age cannot be fixed with positiveness ; the deposit is only a few feet below the sur¬ face, and in the open ; the associated fossils have been washed $r rolled into the layer ; some of them are certainly much older FOSSIL MAN 23 than the skull, belonging to animals characteristic of the Plio¬ cene, that is, the Tertiary. If the age of the skull was the third interglacial period, as on the whole seems most likely, its antiquity might be less than a fourth that of Pithecan¬ thropus and half that of Heidelberg man. The skull capacity has been variously estimated at 1,170, nearly 1,300, and nearly 1,500 c.c. ; the pieces do not join, so that no certain proof can be given for any figure. Except for unusual thickness of the bone, the skull is not particularly primitive. The jaw and the teeth, on the other hand, are scarcely distinguishable from those of a chimpanzee. They are certainly far less human than the Heidelberg jaw and teeth, which are presumably earlier. This human skull and simian jaw are an almost incompatible combination. More than one expert has got over the difficulty by assuming that the skull of a contemporary human being and the jaw of a chimpanzee hap¬ pened to be deposited in the same gravel. In view of these doubts and discrepancies, the claim that the Piltdown form belongs to a genus Eoanthropus distinct from that of man is to be viewed with reserve. This interpretation would make the Piltdown type more primitive than the probably antecedent Heidelberg man. Some authorities do regard it as both more primitive and earlier. 14. Neandertal Man The preceding forms are each known only from partial frag¬ ments of the bones of a single individual. The Neandertal race is substantiated by some dozens of different finds, including half a dozen nearly complete skulls, and several skeletons of which the greater portions have been preserved. These fossils come from Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, and what was Austro- Hungary, or, roughly, from the whole western half of Europe. They are all of similar type and from the Mousterian period of the Palaeolithic or Old Stone Age (§ 70-72, Fig. 17) ; whereas Pithecanthropus, Heidelberg, and perhaps Piltdown are earlier than the Stone Age. The Mousterian period may be dated as coincident with the peak of the last or Wiirm glaciation, that is, about 50,000 to 25,000 years ago. Its race — the Neandertal type 24 ANTHROPOLOGY — was clearly though primitively human ; which fact is reflected in the various systematic names that have been given it : Homo N eandertalensis, Homo Mousteriensis, or Homo primigenius. The Most Important Neandertal Discoveries 1856 Neandertal Near Diisseldorf, Germany Skull cap and parts of skel¬ eton 1848 Gibraltar Spain Greater part of skull 1887 Spy I Belgium Skull and parts of skeleton 1887 Spy II Belgium Skull and parts of skeleton 1889-1905 Krapina Moravia Parts of ten or more skulls and skeletons 1908 La-Chapelle- aux-Saints Correze, France Skeleton including skull 1908 Le Moustier Dordogne, France Skeleton, including skull, of youth 1909 La Ferrassie I Dordogne, France Partial skeleton 1910 La Ferrassie II Dordogne, France Skeleton 1911 La Quina Charente, France Skull and parts of skeleton 1911 Jersey Island in English Channel Teeth Neandertal man was short: around 5 feet 3 inches for men, 4 feet 10 inches for women, or about the same as the modern Japanese. A definite curvature of his thigh bone indicates a knee habitually somewhat bent, and probably a slightly stoop¬ ing or slouching attitude. All his bones are thickset: his mus¬ culature must have been powerful. The chest was large, the neck bull-like, the head hung forward upon it. This head was massive: its capacity averaged around 1,550 c.c., or equal to that of European whites and greater than the mean of all living races of mankind (Fig. 6). The head was rather low and the forehead sloped back. The supraorbital ridges were heavy: the eyes peered out from under beetling brows. The jaws were prognathous, though not more than in many Australians and Negroes; the chin receded but existed. Some Neandertal Measurements Fossil Skull Capacity Neandertal . 1400 c.c. Spy I . 1550 c.c. Spy II . 1700 c.c. La Chapelle-aux-Saints . 1600 c.c. La Ferrassie I . Average of male Neandertals . 1550 c.c. Average of modern European males . 1550 c.c. Average — modern mankind . 1450 c.c. Gibraltar . 1300 c.c. La Quina . 1350 c.c. La Ferrassie II . Average of modern European females .... 1400 c.c. Stature 5 ft. 4 (or 1) in. 5 ft. 4 in. 5 ft. 3 (or 2) in. 5 ft. 5 in. 5 ft. 4 (or 3) in. 5 ft. 5 to 8 in. 5 ft. 5 in. 4 ft. 10 in. 5 ft. 1 to 3 in. FOSSIL MAN 25 The artifacts found in Mousterian deposits show that Nean- dertal man chipped flint tools in several ways, knew fire, and buried his dead. It may be assumed as almost certain that he spoke some sort of language. 4 Fig. 6. Skulls of 1, Pithecanthropus; 2, Neandertal man (Chapelle- aux-Saints) ; 3, Sixth Dynasty Egyptian; 4, Old Man of Cro-Magnon. Combined from Keith. The relatively close approximation of Nean¬ dertal man to recent man, and the full frontal development of the Cro- Magnon race, are evident. 15. Rhodesian Man Quite recent is the discovery of an African fossil man. This occurred in 1921 at Broken Hill Bone Cave in northern Rho¬ desia. A nearly complete skull was found, though without 26 ANTHROPOLOGY lower jaw; a small piece of the upper jaw of a second indi¬ vidual ; and several other bones, including a tibia. The remains were ninety feet deep in a cave, associated with vast quantities of mineralized animal bones. Their age however is unknown. The associated fauna is one of living species only ; but this does not imply the same recency as in Europe, since the animal life of Africa has altered relatively little since well back in the Pleistocene. Measurements of Rhodesian man have not yet been published. The available descriptions point to a small brain case with low vault in the frontal region ; more extremely developed eyebrow ridges than in any living or fossil race of man, including Pithecanthropus; a large gorilla-like face, with marked prog¬ nathism and a long stretch between nose and teeth — the area covered by the upper lip ; a flaring but probably fairly promi¬ nent nose; an enormous palate and dental arch — too large to accommodate even the massive Heidelberg jaw; large teeth, but without the projecting canines of the apes and of the lower jaw attributed to Piltdown man ; and a forward position of the foramen magnum — the aperture by which the spinal cord enters the brain — which suggests a fully upright position. The same inference is derivable from the long, straight shin-bone. On the whole, this seems to be a form most closely allied to Neandertal man, though differing from him in numerous re¬ spects, and especially in the more primitive type of face. It is well to remember, however, that of none of the forms anterior to Neandertal man — Pithecanthropus, Heidelberg, Piltdown — has the face been recovered. If these were known, the Rhodesian face might seem less impressively ape-like. It is also important to observe that relatively primitive and advanced features exist side by side in Rhodesian man; the face and eyebrow ridges are somewhat off-set by the prominent nose, erect posture, and long clean limb bones. It is therefore likely that this form was a collateral relative of Neandertal man rather than his ancestor or descendant. Its place in the history of the human species can probably be fixed only after the age of the bones is deter¬ mined. Yet it is already clear that the discovery is important in at least three respects. It reveals the most ape-like face yet found in a human variety; it extends the record of fossil man FOSSIL MAN 27 to a new continent; and that continent is the home of the two living apes — the gorilla and chimpanzee — recognized as most similar to man. 16. The Cro-Magnon Race The Cro-Magnon race is not only within the human species, but possibly among the ancestors of modern Europeans. While Neandertal man is still Homo N eandertalensis — the genus of living man, but a different species — the Cro-Magnon type is Homo sapiens — that is, a variety of ourselves. The age is that of the gradual, fluctuating retreat of the glaciers — the later Cave period of the Old Stone Age : the Upper Palaeolithic, in technical language, comprising the Aurignacian, the Solutrean, and the Magdalenian (§ 70). In years, this was the time from 25,000 to 10,000 B.C. Some Important Kemains of Cro-Magnon Type 1868 Cro-Magnon 1872-74 Grimaldi 1909 Laugerie Haute 1909 Combe-Capelle 1872 Laugerie Basse 1888 Chancelade 1914 Obercassel Aurignacian Dordogne, France Mentone, N.W. Italy Dordogne, France Perigord, France Magdalenian Dordogne, France Dordogne, France Near Bonn, Germany 5 incomplete skeletons 12 skeletons Skeleton Skeleton Skeleton Skeleton, nearly complete 2 skeletons The Cro-Magnon race of Aurignacian times, as represented by the finds at Cro-Magnon and Grimaldi,1 was excessively tall and large-brained, surpassing any living race of man in both respects. The adult male buried at Cro-Magnon measured 5 feet 11 inches in life ; five men at Grimaldi measured from 5 feet IOV2 inches to 6 feet 4% inches, averaging 6 feet l1/^ inches. The 1 The place or “station” Grimaldi must not be confused with the Grimaldi race mentioned below. The grottos at Grimaldi contained two skeletons of Grimaldi racial type and a larger number of Cro-Magnon type. The Grimaldi race is therefore really not the most representative one of the locality Grimaldi; but as it has not yet been discovered elsewhere, there seems no choice but to call it by that name. 28 ANTHROPOLOGY tallest men now on earth, certain Scots and Negroes, average less than 5 feet 11 inches. A girl at Grimaldi measured 5 feet 5 inches. This race was not only tall, but clean-limbed, lithe, and swift. Their brains were equally large. Those of the five male skulls from Grimaldi contain from over 1,700 to nearly 1,900 c.c. — an average of 1,800 c.c. ; that of the old man of Cro-Magnon, nearly 1,600 c.c. ; of a woman there, 1,550 c.c. If these indi¬ viduals were not exceptional, the figures mean that the size and weight of the brain of the early Cro-Magnon people was some fifteen or twenty per cent greater than that of modern Eu¬ ropeans. The cephalic index is low — that is, the skull was long and narrow, as in all the types here considered; but the face was particularly broad. The forehead rose well domed; the supra¬ orbital development was moderate, as in recent men; the fea¬ tures must have been attractive even by our standards. Three of the best preserved skeletons of the Magdalenian period are those of women. Their statures run 4 feet 7 inches, 5 feet 1 inch, 5 feet 1 inch, which would indicate a correspond¬ ing normal height for men not far from that of the average European of to-day. The male from Obercassel attained a sta¬ ture of about 5 feet 3 inches, a cranial capacity of 1,500 c.c., and combined a long skull with a wide face. The general type of the Magdalenian period might be described as a reduced Cro- Magnon one. The Cro-Magnon peoples used skilfully made harpoons, origi¬ nated a remarkable art, and in general attained a development of industries parallel to their high degree of bodily progress. 17. The Brunn Race Several remains have been found in central Europe which have sometimes been considered as belonging to the Neandertal race and sometimes to the subsequent Cro-Magnon race, but do not belong clearly with either, and may perhaps be regarded as dis¬ tinct from both and possibly bridging them. The type is gen¬ erally known as the Brunn race. Its habitat was Czecho¬ slovakia and perhaps adjacent districts; its epoch, postglacial, FOSSIL MAN 29 in the Solntrean period of the Upper Palaeolithic (§70). The Briinn race, so far as present knowledge of it goes, was there¬ fore both preceded and succeeded by Cro-Magnon man. Bohemia Moravia Moravia Skull cap Parts of 20 skeletons Skeleton, 2 skulls 1871 Briix 1880 Predmost 1891 Briinn The Briinn race belongs with modern man: its species is no longer Homo Neandertalensis, but Homo sapiens , to which we also belong. The heavy supraorbital ridges of the earlier type are now divided by a depression over the nose instead of stretch¬ ing continuously across the forehead; the chin is becoming pro¬ nounced, the jaws protrude less than in Neandertal man. The skull is somewhat higher and better vaulted. In all these re¬ spects there is an approach to the Cro-Magnon race. But the distinctively broad face of the Cro-Magnon people is not in evidence. A skull of uncertain geologic age, found in 1888 at Galley Hill, near London, is by some linked with the Briinn race. The same is true of an unusually well preserved skeleton found in 1909 at Combe-Capelle, in Perigord, southern France. The period of the Combe-Capelle skeleton is Upper Palaeolithic Aurignacian. This was part of the era of the Cro-Magnon race in western Europe; and as the Combe-Capelle remains do not differ much from the Cro-Magnon type, they are best considered as belonging to it. 18. The Grimaldi Race: Neolithic Races The Grimaldi race is to date represented by only two skele¬ tons, those of a woman and a youth — possibly mother and son — found in 1906 in a grotto at Grimaldi near Mentone, in Italy, close to the French border. They reposed in lower layers, above which subsequent Cro-Magnon burials of Aurignacian date had been made. Their age is therefore early Aurignacian : the be¬ ginning of the Upper Palaeolithic or later Cave period of the Old Stone Age. The statures are 5 feet 2 inches and 5 feet 1 inch — the youth was not fully grown; the skull capacities 1,375 and nearly 1,600 c.c. 30 ANTHROPOLOGY The outstanding feature of both skeletons is that they bear a number of Negroid characteristics. The forearm and lower leg are long as compared with the upper arm and thigh; the pelvis high and small ; the jaws prognathous, the nose flat, the eye orbits narrow. All these are Negro traits. This is impor¬ tant, in view of the fact that all the other ancient fossils of men are either more primitive than the living races or, like Cro- Magnon, perhaps ancestral to the Caucasian race. No fossil remains of any ancestral Mongolian type have yet been discovered. The New Stone Age, beginning about 10,000 or 8,000 B.C., brings the Grenelle and other types of man; but these are so essentially modern that they need not be considered here. .In the Neolithic period, broad heads are for the first time encoun¬ tered, as they occur at present in Europe and other continents, alongside of narrow ones. The virtual fixity of the human type for these last ten thousand years is by no means incredible. Egyptian mummies and skeletons prove that the type of that country has changed little in five thousand years except as the result of invasions and admixture. 19. The Metric Expression of Human Evolution The relations of the several fossil types of man and their gradual progression are most accurately expressed by certain skull angles and proportions, or indexes, which have been spe¬ cially devised for the purpose.. The anthropometric criteria that are of most importance in the study of living races, more or less fail in regard to prehistoric man. The hair, complexion, and eye-color are not preserved. The head breadth, as indi¬ cated by the cephalic index, is substantially the same from Pithecanthropus to the last Cro-Magnons. Stature on the other hand varies from one to another ancient race without evincing much tendency, to grow or to diminish consistently. Often, too, there is only part of a skull preserved. The following propor¬ tions of the top or vault of the skull — the calvarium — are there¬ fore useful for expressing quantitatively the gradual phj7sical progress of humanity from its beginning. Three anatomical points on the surface of the skull are the FOSSIL MAN 31 pivots on which these special indexes and angles rest. One is the Glabella (G in figure 7), the slight swelling situated be¬ tween the eyebrows and above the root of the nose. The second is the Inion (I), the most rearward point on the skull. The third is the Bregma (B) or point of intersection of the sutures which divide the frontal from the parietal bones. The bregma falls at or very near the highest point of the skull. If now we see a skull lengthwise, or draw a projection of it, and connect the glabella and the inion by a line GI, and the glabella and the bregma by a line GB, an acute angle, BGI, is 5 Fig. 7. Indices and angles of special significance in the change from fossil to living man. Calvarial height index, BX: GI. Bregma posi¬ tion index, GX: GI. Bregma angle, BGI. Frontal angle, FGI. formed. This is the “bregma angle.” Obviously a high vaulted skull or one that has the superior point B well forward will show a greater angle than a low flat skull or one with its summit lying far back. Next, let us drop a vertical from the bregma to the line GI, cutting it at X. Obviously the proportion which the vertical line BX bears to the horizontal line GI will be greater or less as the arch or vault of the brain case is higher or lower. This proportion BX:GI, expressed in percentages, is the “calvarial height index.” If now we compute the proportion of the GX part of the line GI to the whole of this line, we have the “bregma position index ”j that is, a numerical indication of how far forward on 32 ANTHROPOLOGY The Skull of Modern and Fossil Man Calvarial Bregma Bregma Frontal Height Angle Position Angle Index Index Maximum for modern man . .... 68 66 Average for modern man . .... 59 58 30.5 90 90 Central Europeans . . . . . 60 61 31 28 Bantu Negroes . . . . . 59 59 31 7 Greenland EsEimos . . . . . 56 58 30 43 Australian natives . . . . . 56 57.5 (33) 8 Tasmanian natives . .... 56 57 # # Minimum for modern man . _ 47.5 46 37 72 Chancel ade . .... 57 60 • • • • Combe-Capelle . _ 54.5 58 • • • • Aurignac . _ 54.5 # # . # • • Cro-Magnon I . . ... 50 54 33 • • Briinn I . .... 51 52 • • 75 Galley Hill . . . . . 48 52 • • 82 Briix . .... 48 51 ? • • 75 ? Le Moustier . .... 47 • • • • Krapina C . . . . . 46 52 • • 70 Spy II . . . . . 44 50 35 67 Krapina D . . . . . 42 50 32 66 Chapelle-aux-Saints . .... 40.5 45.5 36.5 65 Spy I . . . . . 41 45 35 57.5 Gibraltar . . . . . 40 50 # . 73 ? Neandertal . .... 40 44 38 62 Pithecanthropus . .... 34 38 42 52.5 Maximum for any Anthropoid ape .... 38 39.5 63 .. Chimpanzee . .... 32 34 47 56 Gorilla . .... 20 22 42 • • Orang-utan . .... 27 32 45 • • Summarized Averages Modern races . .... 59 58 31 90 Cro-Magnon race . . . . . 54 57 33 # # Briinn race . .... 49 52 # # 77 Neandertal man . . . . . 42 48 35 66 Pithecanthropus . .... 34 38 42 52 Anthropoid apes . 30 45 • • FOSSIL MAN 33 the skull the highest point B lies. A sloping or retreating fore¬ head naturally tends to have the bregma rearward; whereas if the frontal bone is nearly vertical, resulting in a high, domed expanse of forehead, the bregma tends to be situated farther forward, the point X shifts in the same direction, the distance GX becomes shorter in comparison to the whole line GI, and the “bregma position index” falls numerically. The “frontal angle,” finally, is determined by drawing a line GF from the glabella tangent to the most protruding part of the frontal bone and measuring the angle between this and the horizontal GI. A small frontal angle obviously means a reced¬ ing forehead. All these data can be obtained from the mere upper fragment of a skull ; they relate to that feature which is probably of the greatest importance in the evolution of man from the lower animals — the development of the brain case and therefore of the brain, especially of the cerebrum or fore-brain ; and they define this evolution rather convincingly. The table, which compiles some of the most important findings, shows that progress has been fairly steadily continuous in the direction of greater cerebral development. I \ CHAPTER III LIVING RACES 20. Race origins. — 21. Race classification. — 22. Traits on which classi¬ fication rests. — 23. The grand divisions or primary stocks. — 24. Caucasian races. — 25. Mongoloid races. — 26. Negroid races. — 27. Peoples of doubtful position. — 28. Continents and oceans. — 29. The history of race classifica¬ tions. — 30. Emergence of the threefold classification. — 31. Other classi¬ fications. — 32. Principles and conclusions common to all classifications.— 33. Race, nationality, and language. 20. Race Origins Almost every one sooner or later becomes interested in the problem of the origin of the human races and the history of their development. We see mankind divided into a number of varieties that differ strikingly in appearance. If these varieties are modifications of a single ancestral form, what caused them to alter, and what has been the history of the change? In the present state of science, we cannot wholly answer these important questions. We know very little about the causes that change human types ; and we possess only incomplete informa¬ tion as to the history of races. Stray bits of evidence here and there are too scattered to afford many helpful clues. The very earliest men, as we know them from fossils, are too far removed from any of the living varieties, are too primitive, to link very definitely with the existing races, which can all be regarded as intergrading varieties of a single species, Homo sapiens. In the latter half of the Old Stone Age, in the Aurignacian period, at a time estimated to have been from twenty to twenty-five thou¬ sand years ago, we commence to encounter fossils which seem to foreshadow the modern races. The so-called Grimaldi type of man from this period possesses Negroid affinities, the con¬ temporary Cro-Magnon and perhaps Briinn types evince Cau¬ casian ones. But we know neither the origin nor the precise 34 LIVING RACES 35 descendants of these fossil races.1 They appear and then vanish from the scene. About all that we can conclude from this frag¬ ment of evidence is that the races of man as they are spread over the earth to-day must have been at least some tens of thou¬ sands of years in forming. What caused them to differentiate, on which part of the earth’s surface each took on its peculiar¬ ities, how they further subdivided, what were the connecting links between them, and what happened to these lost links — on all these points the answer of anthropology is as yet incomplete. It is no different in other fields of biology. As long as the zoologist or botanist reviews his grand classifications or the wide sweep of organic evolution for fifty million years back, he seems to obtain striking and simple results. When he turns his atten¬ tion to a small group, attempting to trace in detail its sub- varieties, and the relations and history of these, the task is seen to be intricate and the accumulated knowledge is usually in¬ sufficient to solve more than a fraction of the problems that arise. There is, then, nothing unusual in the situation of partial bafflement in which anthropology still finds itself as regards the human races. 21. Race Classification What remains is the possibility of making an accurate survey of the living races in the hope that the relationships which a classification brings out may indicate something as to the former development of the races. If for instance it could be estab¬ lished that the Ainu or aborigines of Japan are closely similar in their bodies to the peoples of Europe, we would then infer that they are a branch of the Caucasian stock, that their origin took place far to the west of their present habitat, and that they have no connection with the Mongolian Japanese among whom they now live. This is working by indirect evidence, it is true ; but sooner or later that is the method to which science always finds itself reduced. The desirability of a trustworthy classification of the human i It has been maintained that individuals of Cro-Magnon type can still be found in southern France and reckoned as a distinct element in the population of certain districts; but the Cro-Magnon race as such has dis¬ appeared. 36 ANTHROPOLOGY races will therefore be generally accepted without further argu¬ ment. But the making of such a classification proves to be more difficult than might be imagined. To begin with, a race is only a sort of average of a large number of individuals ; and averages differ from one another much less than individuals. Popular impression exaggerates the differences, accurate measurements reduce them. It is true that, a Negro and a north European cannot possibly be confused: they happen to represent extreme types. Yet as soon as we operate with less divergent races we find that variations between individuals of the same race are often greater than differences between the races. The tallest individuals of a short race are taller than the shortest indi¬ viduals of a tall race. This is called overlapping ; and it occurs to such an extent as to make it frequently difficult for the physical anthropologist to establish clear-cut types. In addition, the lines of demarcation between races have time and again been obliterated by interbreeding. Adjacent peoples, even hostile ones, intermarry. The number of marriages in one generation may be small; but the cumulative effect of a thou¬ sand years is often quite disconcerting. The half-breeds or hybrids are also as fertile as each of the original types. There is no question but that some populations are nothing but the product of such race crossing. Thus there is a belt extending across the entire breadth of Africa of which it is difficult to say whether the inhabitants belong to the Negro or to the Caucasian type. If we construct a racial map and represent the demarca¬ tion between Negro and Caucasian by a line, we are really mis¬ representing the situation. The truth could be expressed only by inserting a transition zone of mixed color. Yet as soon as we allow such transitions, the definiteness of our classification begins to crumble. In spite of these difficulties, some general truths can be dis¬ covered from a careful race classification, and certain constant principles of importance emerge from all the diversity. 22. Traits on Which Classification Rests Since every human being obviously possesses a large number of physical features or traits, the first thing that the prospective LIVING RACES 37 classifier of race must do is to determine how much weight he will attach to each of these features. The most striking of all traits probably is stature or bodily height. Yet this is a trait which experience has shown to be of relatively limited value for classifactory purposes. The imagination is easily impressed by a few inches when they show at the top of a man and make him half a head taller or shorter than oneself. Except for a few groups which numerically are rather insignificant, there is no human race that averages less than 5 feet in height. There is none at all that averages taller than 5 feet 10 inches. This means that practically the whole range of human variability in height, from the race standpoint, falls within less than a foot. The majority of averages of populations do not differ more than 2 inches from the general human average of 5 feet 5 inches. Then, too, stature lias been proved to be rather readily influ¬ enced by environment. Each of us is a fraction of an inch taller when he gets up in the morning than when he goes to bed at night. Two races might differ by as much as a couple of inches in their heredity, and yet if all the individuals of the shorter race were well nourished in a favorable environ¬ ment, and all those of the taller group were underfed and over¬ worked, the naturally shorter race might well be actually the taller one. The cephalic index , which expresses in percentage form the ratio of the length and the breadth of the head, is perhaps the most commonly used anthropological measurement.1 It has cer¬ tain definite advantages. The head measurements are easily made with accuracy. The index is nearly the same on the living head and on the dead skull; or one is easily converted into the 1 The usual nomenclature for cephalic index is on the basis of round numbers : broad or round headed or brachycephalic above SO ; medium headed or mesocephalic between 75 and 80; narrow or long headed or dolichocephalic below 75. Yet, as the average for mankind is in the neigh¬ borhood of 79, this terminology makes far more brachycephalic than dolichocephalic peoples. Groups frequently spoken of as long headed are often really mesocephalic by the accepted definition: a large proportion of Europeans, for instance. It would result in both more accuracy and a better balancing of the limits if the three types of head form were set, as has been suggested, at 81 and 77 in place of 80 and 75. — The index of the skull (strictly, the cranial index) is two units less than that taken on the living head. 38 ANTHROPOLOGY other. This enables present and past generations to be compared. The index is also virtually the same for men and for women, for children and for adults. Finally, it seems to be little affected by environment. The consequence is that head form has been widely investigated. There are few groups of people of consequence whose average cephalic index we do not know fairly accurately. The difficulty about the cephalic index from the point of view of race classification is that it does not yield broad enough results. This index is often useful in distin¬ guishing subtypes, nation from nation, or tribe from tribe ; but the primary races are not uniform. There is, for instance, no typical head form for the Caucasian race. There are narrow headed, medium headed, and broad headed Caucasians. The same is true of the American Indians, who are on the whole rather uniform, yet vary much in head form. The nasal index, which expresses the relation of length and breadth of nose, runs much more constant in the great races. Practically all Negroids are broad-nosed, practically all Cau¬ casians narrow-nosed, and the majority of peoples of Mongolian affinities medium-nosed. But the nasal index varies according to the age of the person ; it is utterly different in a living indi¬ vidual and a skull ; 1 it seems to reflect heredity less directly than the cephalic index ; and finally it tells us nothing about the elevation or profile or general formation of the nose. Prognathism, or the degree of the protrusion of the jaws, is a conspicuous feature of the profile, and would seem to be of some historic importance as a sign of primitiveness, because all other mammals are more prognathous than man. The trait also has a general correlation with the fundamental racial types. Negroes are almost all prognathous, people of Mongolian type moderately so, Caucasians very slightly. Prognathism is how¬ ever difficult to measure or to denote in figures. Various ap¬ paratuses have been devised without wholly satisfactory results. The capacity of the skull is measured by filling it with shot or millet seed. The latter yields figures that are lower by 50 or 100 c.c. The average, by shot measure, for males the world 1 On the living, platyrhine noses have an index of breadth compared with length above 85, mesorhine between 70 and 85, leptorhine below 70; skeletally, the same three terms denote proportions above 53, between 48 and 53, and below 48. LIVING RACES 39 over is about 1,450 to 1,500 c.c., for females about 10 per cent lower. European males range from 1,500 to 1,600, Asiatic Mon¬ goloids but little less, American Indians and Polynesians from 1,400 to 1,500, Bushmen, Australians, Tasmanians, Negritos, Veddas from 1,300 to 1,400. These last groups are all small bodied. It appears that cranial capacity is considerably de¬ pendent on bodily size. Slender as well as short races run to small capacities. The heavy Bantu surpass the slighter framed Sudanese, and Hindus stand well below European Caucasians; just as the shorter Japanese average less than the Chinese. Broad headed populations show greater cranial capacity than narrow headed ones: Alpine Europeans (§24) generally sur¬ pass Nordics in spite of their shorter stature. Individual variability is also unusually great in this measurement. The largest and smallest skulled healthy individuals of the same sex in one population differ sometimes by 500, 600, or 700 c.c., or more than one-third of the racial average. Overlapping between races is accordingly particularly marked in cranial capacity. Furthermore, the measurement obviously cannot be taken on the living. In spite of its interest as an alleged and perhaps par¬ tially valid index of mental faculty, cranial capacity is thus of restricted value in distinguishing races. The texture of the hair is now universally regarded as one of the most valuable criteria for classifying races, possibly the most significant of all. Hair is distinguished as woolly in the Negro, straight in the Mongolian, and wavy or intermediate in the Caucasian. This texture depends principally on the diam¬ eters of each individual hair, as they are revealed in cross- section under the microscope ; in part also on the degree of straightness or curvature of the root sacs of the hair in the skin. Hair texture seems to run rather rigidly along hereditary racial lines, and to be uninfluenced by factors of age, sex, cli¬ mate, or nourishment. Hairiness of the body as a whole is another trait to which more and more attention is coming to be paid. The fullness or scantiness of the beard, and the degree of development of the down which covers the body, are its most conspicuous manifes¬ tations. Caucasians are definitely a hairy race, Mongoloids and most Negroids glabrous or smooth-skinned. It is largely on the 40 ANTHROPOLOGY basis of their hairiness that races like the Australians have been separated from the Negroids, and the Ainus from the Japanese. Except possibly for stature, color is probably the most con¬ spicuous trait of any race. Under color must be included the complexion of the skin, the color of the hair, and the color of the eyes. All of these however present difficulties to the anthro- pometrist. The pigment in every human skin is the same: it differs only in amount. We have therefore a complete series of transition shades, and it is difficult to express these differ¬ ences of shade quantitatively. They readily impress the eye, but it is far from easy to denote them accurately in numbers. Environment also affects skin color markedly. A day’s expo¬ sure to the sun will darken an individual’s complexion by sev¬ eral shades. In spite of these drawbacks, however, complexion remains sufficiently important to have to be considered in every classification. Hair color and eye color are practically immune against direct change by environment. They unquestionably are excellent hereditary criteria, although they offer much the same resistance to measurement as does complexion. The utility of these two traits is however limited by another factor: their narrow dis¬ tribution. Blue eyes and blond hair are racially characteristic of only a single subrace, that of northern Europe. In central Europe they are already much toned down : the prevailing type here is brunet. In southern Europe, blue eyes and blondness scarcely occur at all except where admixture with northern peoples can be traced. Outside of the Caucasian stock, black hair and black eyes are the universal rule for the human family. Obviously it would be easiest to arrive at a clear-cut classi¬ fication by grouping all the peoples of the earth according to a single trait, such as the shape of the nose, or color. But any such classification must be artificial and largely unsound, just because it disregards the majority of traits. The only classi¬ fication that can claim to rest upon a true or natural basis is one which takes into consideration as many traits as possible, and weights the important more heavily than the unimportant features. If the outcome of such a grouping is to leave some peoples intermediate or of doubtful place in the classification, this result is unfortunate but must be accepted. Racial Classification of Mankind C5 rH S: to a -M £ aS ? $2 to ® g> >» •• a" a > a £ o P r-H rH U U •rH »rH cd cd HH HH ^ hU M a t3 a a •rH o £_i • £aa CO -t-> a a as _ 3.S £g o a a & o p as to ■ ■< a +-* CD ►> P 23 -a a « o+3 a o a .1-1 rp o«.a vh a o to a tc a a> to o c ^ a to,-. a a a p o to to to 9 PH a a^ ’Eoa a -a g o a be O a o a ^ CO © ■*» V. Rh p to !> _ > a g a to a to qo^o aaga H <1 Ha ^ to a> as -a > |fl - ^ a >»£}*! ^ p ,q 2 o toC: a p J>^CCQ to +j a a bc- •■ — < - 55 to 'a o to t> a £ o r— < to cq a £ o P a +j a be a a to a> as to a o a H a £ O; fc< qq a +> u o a r- CQ — a ^ a ^ 3 a CD C+ « M bC a to 4-> a to a s-i - o +-> fc-i cc ^ tl to > a to © a < *4 to a 3 be a o %A +J m o a m a o u a a a Q a a •rH a a pH a £ o s-, cq a a •r-H a to a o u a +> a be © oo © £ O Sh h- a- to a a •rH S-i a t> a a • rH a to a a o: 3 (H cq a a o Pi PC a a • rH a to a a © tel © S-- © © ~> © •?o ecq’® to s a © o a o ^H r-H u r! &h v © S •r«i S. Rh a H 5 £ a a ?-s a © S^3 a to a 2 WH j i<> fa> be •rH ai 2 - cd ^ ^ t-< - - o. > o- - >■ a 4-> m o H H O t-4 fa P to to •H a O £ 3 fa .p h a a g fap o 02 fa*51 o 02 4-> ci C-H to a o gS P CD 03 •rH •* p a ^ a o o WH a -g 'B 9 p to t-H m «*S to to a a K" a a •p a to a rP o CH o p rH a +-> a a a a a at <1 a a Hair and eyes are “black” unless otherwise stated in Remarks. 42 ANTHROPOLOGY 23. The Grand Divisions or Primary Stocks If now we follow this plan and review the peoples of the earth, each with reference to all its physical traits, we obtain an arrangement something like that which is given in the table on the previous page. It will be seen that there are three grand divisions, of which the European, the Negro, and the Chinaman may be taken as representative. These three primary classes are generally called Caucasian, Negroid, and Mongoloid. The color terms, White, Black, and Yellow, are also often used, but it is necessary to remember that they are employed merely as brief convenient labels, and that they have no descriptive value. There are millions of Caucasians who are darker in complexion than millions of Mongoloids. These three main groups account for more than nine-tenths of all the nations and tribes of the world. As to the number of individuals, they comprise probably 99 per cent of all human beings. The aberrant forms are best kept separate. Some of them, like the before-mentioned Ainu and Australians, appear to affiliate preponderantly with one of the three great classes, but still differ sufficiently in one or more particulars to prevent their being included with them outright. Other groups, such as the Polynesians, seem to be, at least in part, the result of a mixture of races. Their constituent elements are so blended, and perhaps so far modified after the blending, as to be difficult to disentangle. Each of the three great primary stocks falls into several natural subdivisions. 24. Caucasian Races Three of the four Caucasian races live, in whole or part, in Europe ; the fourth consists of the Hindus.1 The three Euro¬ pean races are the Nordic, the Alpine, and the Mediterranean. Some authorities recognize a greater number, but all admit at i The distribution of the races is described as it existed before the era of exploration and colonization that began toward the end of the fifteenth century. Although for practical purposes they have been submerged by Caucasians in the greater part of the Americas, Australia, and South Africa, it is the native races whose distribution is referred to. LIVING RACES 43 least these three. They occupy horizontal belts on the map. Beginning with the Nordic and ending with the Mediterranean they may be described as successively darker skinned, darker eyed, darker haired, and shorter in stature. The Alpine race, which lies between the two others, is however more than a mere transition ; for it is broad headed, whereas the Nordic and Medi¬ terranean are both narrow or long headed. The Nordic type is essentially distributed around the Baltic and North seas. The Mediterranean race occupies the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, in Asia and Africa as well as in Europe. In ancient times it seems to have prevailed everywhere along these coasts. At present the Balkan peninsula and Asia Minor are mostly occu¬ pied by broad headed peoples of more or less close affinity to the Alpines. This Alpine race is perhaps less homogeneous than the two others. A central Frenchman, a Serb, a Russian, and an Armenian are clearly far from identical (§30). They have enough in common, however, to warrant their being put in the one larger group. It must be clearly understood that these races have nothing to do with the modern political nationalities of Europe. North¬ ern Germany is prevailingly Nordic, southern Germany, Alpine. Northern Italy is Alpine, the rest of the peninsula Mediter¬ ranean. All three races are definitely represented in France. The average north Frenchman stands racially nearer to the north German than to his countryman from central France, whereas the latter links up in physical type with the south German. Nationality is determined by speech, customs, religion, and political affiliations. Its boundary lines and those of race cut right across one another. The British Isles did not escape the process of race blending that has gone on in Europe for thousands of years. The bulk of the blood of their inhabitants during the past thousand years has been Nordic, but there is an Alpine strain, and most au¬ thorities recognize a definite “Iberian/’ that is, Mediterranean element. The first settlers in America carried this mixture across the Atlantic, and through the years immigration has increased its compositeness. Scandinavians and north Germans have added to the Nordic component in the population of the United States; south Germans, Austro-Hungarians, Russians, 44 ANTHROPOLOGY and Jews to the Alpine; the Italians have injected a definite Mediterranean element. The Negro alone has not been admitted into the make-up of our white society ; but the reverse holds : a considerable and growing percentage of the “colored” people in the United States are from one-sixteentli to fifteen-sixteenths Caucasian. The Hindu is in the main a narrow headed, dark skinned Caucasian, not very different from the Mediterranean. When he entered India he probably found there an aboriginal popu¬ lation which may have been Negroid but more likely was related to the Australians or perhaps constituted a dark proto-Caucasian or Indo-Australian race. A fairly thorough intermixture has taken place in India during the last three thousand years, with the result that the originally pure Caucasian type of the Hindu has been somewhat modified, while most of the less numerous or less vigorous aboriginal population has become submerged. The definite Caucasian type is best preserved in the north ; the traces of the dark skinned aboriginal race are strongest in southern India. 25. Mongoloid Races The Mongoloid stock divides into the Mongolian proper of eastern Asia, the Malaysian of the East Indies, and the American Indian. The differences between these three types are not very great. The Mongolian proper is the most extreme or pronounced form. It was probably the latest to develop its present char¬ acteristics. For instance, the oblique or “Mongolian” eye is a peculiarity restricted to the jjeople of eastern Asia. The original Mongoloid stock must be looked upon as having been more like present-day Malaysians or American Indians, or intermediate between them. From this generalized type peo¬ ples like the Chinese gradually diverged, adding the epicanthic fold of the oblique eye and other peculiarities, while the less civilized peoples of America and Oceania kept more nearly to the ancient type. Within the East Indies, a more and a less specifically Mon¬ goloid strain can at times be distinguished. The latter has often been called Indonesian. In certain respects, such as relatively LIVING RACES 45 short stature and broad nose, it approaches the Indo-Australian type described below. Among the American Mongoloids, the Eskimo appears to be the most particularized subvariety. 26. Negroid Races The Negroid stock falls into two large divisions, the African Negro proper, and the Oceanic Melanesian ; besides a third divi¬ sion, the Dwarf Blacks or Negritos, who are very few in num¬ bers but possess a wide and irregular distribution. The Negroes and the Melanesians, in spite of their being separated by the breadth of the Indian Ocean, are clearly close relatives. A trained observer can distinguish them at sight, but a novice would take a Papuan from New Guinea or a Melanesian from the Solomon or Fiji Islands to be an African. Perhaps the most conspicuous difference is that the broad nose of the African Negro is flat, the broad nose of the Melanesian often aquiline. How these two so similar Negroid branches came to be located on the opposite sides of a great ocean is a fact that remains unexplained. The Negrito or Dwarf Negroid race has representatives in New Guinea, in the Philippines, in the Malay Peninsula, in the Andaman Islands, and in equatorial Africa. These peoples are the true pygmies of the human species. Wherever they are racially pure the adult males are less than 5 feet in stature. They also differ from other Negroids in being relatively broad headed. Their skin color, hair texture, nose form, and most other traits are, however, the same as those of the other Ne¬ groids. Their scattered distribution is difficult to account for. It is possible that they are an ancient and primitive type which once inhabited much wider stretches of territory than now in Africa, Asia, and Oceania. On account of their inoffensiveness and backwardness, the Negritos, according to this theory, were gradually crowded to the wall by the larger, more energetic populations with which they came in contact, until only a few scattered fragments of them now remain. The Bushmen and in some degree the Hottentots of South Africa may also be provisionally included with the Negritos, although distinctive in a number of respects. They are yellowish- 46 ANTHROPOLOGY brown in complexion, long headed, short and flat eared, short legged, hollow backed, and steatopygous. On the whole Negroid characteristics prevail among them. They are, for instance, frizzy-haired. Their extremely short stature may justify their tentative inclusion among the Negritos. 27. Peoples of Doubtful Position One thing is common to the peoples who are here reckoned as of doubtful position in the classification: they all present certain Caucasian affinities without being similar enough to the recognized Caucasians to be included with them. This is true of the black, wavy-haired, prognathous, beetling-browed Aus¬ tralians, whose first appearance suggests that they are Negroids, as it is of the brown Polynesians, who appear to have Mon¬ goloid connections through the Malaysians. In India, Indo- China, and the East Indies live a scattered series of uncivilized peoples more or less alike in being dark, short, slender, wavy haired, longish headed, broad nosed. The brows are knit, the eyes deep set, the mouth large, beard development medium. Re¬ semblances are on the one hand toward the Caucasian type, on the other toward the Australian, just as the geographical position is intermediate. The name Indo-Australian is thus appropriate for this group. Typical representatives are the Yedda of Ceylon; the Irula and some of the Kolarian tribes of India; many of the Moi of several parts of Indo-China; the Senoi or Sakai of the Malay Peninsula; the Toala of Celebes. These are almost invariably hill or jungle people, who evidently represent an old stratum of population, pushed back by Caucasians or Mongoloids, or almost absorbed by them. The dark strain in India seems more probably due to these people than to any true Negroid infusion. Possibly the Indo-Australians branched off from the Caucasian stem at a very early time before the Cau¬ casian stock was as “ white’ 1 as it is now. In the lapse of ages the greater number of the Caucasians in and near Europe took on, more and more, their present characteristics, whereas this backward branch in the region of the Indian Ocean kept its primitive and undifferentiated traits. This is a tempting theory LIVING RACES 47 to pursue, but it extends so far into the realm of the hypo¬ thetical that its just appraisal must be left to the specialist. Figure 8 attempts to represent graphically the degree of resemblance and difference between the principal physical types Fig. 8. Relationship of the human races. Distances between the centers of circles are indicative of the degree of similarity. as they have been summarized in the table and preceding dis¬ cussion; the genealogical tree in figure 9 is an endeavor to sug¬ gest how these types may have diverged from one another in their development. \ Jcrcs-magmom oO / GRIMALDI X J / Y § i .QNEANDERTAL Fig. 9. Tentative family tree of the human races. LIVING RACES 49 28. Continents and Oceans One fact about the classification stands out clearly, namely, that the three grand races are not limited to particular conti¬ nents. It is true that the center of gravity of the Caucasians is in or near Europe, that the biggest block of Negroids is situated in Africa, and the largest mass of Mongoloids in Asia. It is even possible that these three types evolved on these three continents. But each of them is inter-continental in its present distribution. Western Asia and northern Africa as well as Europe are Caucasian. There are Negroids in Oceania as well as in Africa, and the Mongoloids are found over Oceania, Asia, and both Americas. In fact the distribution of the three primary races can better be described as oceanically marginal than as continental. The Caucasian parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa surround the Mediterranean Sea. The African and the Oceanic branches of the Negroid race are situated on the left and right sides of the Indian Ocean. The Mongoloid habitat in Oceania, in eastern Asia, and in North and South America almost encloses the Pacific Ocean. (Figs. 10 and 11.) 29. The History of Race Classifications Most of the early classifications of mankind tried to identify races and continents too closely. The first attempt was that of Linmeus in the middle of the eighteenth century. He distin¬ guished and described four varieties of mankind, which he called Europceus albus, Asiaticus luridus, Americanus rufus, and Afer niger ; that is, European White, Asiatic Yellow, American Red, African Black. The next classification, that of Blumenbach in 1775, is essen¬ tially the same except for adding a fifth or Oceanic variety. Blumenbach ’s five human races, the Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malayan, still survive in many of the geographies of our elementary schools, usually under the desig¬ nations of White, Yellow, Black, Red, and Brown; but they no longer receive scientific recognition. * < .'s. lo 21 d o •4-n C/2 m a d ft -M ft Pm M d d •r-s ft £> O ^ 3 d ® a ^ ft ft vn o M *i-H o d ft £ o d ft ft d O ft d O -4-n O • rH d 'g M d « ft ° d O ft ?* H-n r-j d C/2 ft d ft ft ft ft o dl -t-» in d d d ft C/2 CH O *c/3 in ft ft ft • rH C/2 CM •—e d C3 73 >> a simian. In the length of head hair, in which man differs notably from the monkeys, the relatively short-haired Negro once more ap¬ proximates most closely to the ape, but the long-haired Mon¬ goloid surpasses the intermediate Caucasian in degree of depar¬ ture. PROBLEMS OF RACE G3 Lip color reverses this order. The apes’ lips are thin and grayish; Mongoloid lips come next; then those of Caucasians; the full, vivid, red lips of the Negro are the most unapelike of all. It is unnecessary to multiply examples. If one human racial stock falls below others in certain traits, it rises above them in other features, insofar as “ below” and “ above” may be meas¬ urable in terms of degree of resemblance to the apes. The only way in which a decision could be arrived at along this line of consideration would be to count all features to see whether the Negro or the Caucasian or the Mongoloid was the most un¬ apelike in the plurality of cases. It is possible that in such a reckoning the Caucasian would emerge with a lead. But it is even more clear that whichever way the majority fell, it would be a well divided count. If the Negro were more apelike than the Caucasian in all of his features, or in eight out of ten, the fact would be heavily significant. With his simian resemblances aggregating to those of the Caucasian in a ratio of say four to three, the margin would be so close as to lose nearly all its meaning. It is apparently some such ratio as this, or an even more balanced one, that would emerge, so far as we can judge, if it were feasible to take a census of all features. It should be added that such a method of comparison as this suffers from two drawbacks. First, the most closely related forms now and then diverge sharply in certain particulars ; and second, a form which on the whole is highly specialized may yet have remained more primitive, or have reverted to greater-, primitiveness in a few of its traits, than relatively unevolved races or species. Thus, the anthropoid apes are brachycephalic, but all known types of Palaeolithic man are dolichocephalic. Matched against the apes, the long-headed Negro would therefore seem to be the most humanly specialized stock. Compared however with the fossil human forms, the Negro is the most primitive in this fea¬ ture, and the Mongoloid and Alpine Caucasian could be said to have evolved the farthest because their heads are the roundest. Yet their degree of brachycephaly is approximately that of the anthropoid apes. To which criterion shall be given precedence? It is impossible to say. Quite likely the round-lieadedness of 64 ANTHROPOLOGY the apes represents a special trait which they acquired since their divergence from the common hominid ancestral stem. If so, their round-headedness and that of the Mongoloids is simply a case of convergent evolution, of a character repeating inde¬ pendently, and therefore no evidence of Mongoloid primitive¬ ness. Yet, if so, the long-headedness common to the early human races and the modern Negroids would probably also mean nothing. It is even clearer that other traits have been acquired inde¬ pendently, have been secondarily evolved over again. Thus the supraorbital ridges. When one observes the consistency with which these are heavy in practically all Neandertal specimens ; how they are still more conspicuous in Pithecanthropus and Rhodesian man; how the male gorilla shows them enormously developed ; and that among living races they are perhaps strongest in the lowly Australian, it is tempting to look upon this bony development as a definite sign of primitiveness. Yet there is an array of contradicting facts. The youthful gorilla and adult orang are without supraorbital development. The male gorilla ha3 his powerful brows for the same reason that he lias the crest along the top of his skull: they are needed as attachments for his powerful musculature. They are evidently a secondary sex character developed within the species. So among fossil men there seem to have been two strains: one rep¬ resented by Pithecanthropus and Neandertal man and the Rho¬ desian race, which tended toward supraorbital massiveness ; and another, of which Piltdown man is representative, which was smooth of forehead. Among living races the Asiatic Mongoloids lack marked supraorbital development ; the closely related American Indians possess it rather strongly; Caucasians and Negroes show little of the feature; Australians most of all. Evidently it would be unsafe to build much conclusion on either the presence or absence of supraorbital ridges. Perhaps these instances will suffice to show that even the mere physical rating of human races is far from a simple or easy task. It is doubtful whether as yet it is valid to speak of one race as physically higher or more advanced, or more human and less brutish, than another. This is not an outright denial of the possibility of such differential ratings: it is a denial only PROBLEMS OP RACE 65 of the belief that such differentials have been established as demonstrable. 37. Comparative Physiological Data There is another angle of approach. This consists in aban¬ doning the direct attempt to rate the races in anatomical terms, and inquiring instead whether they show any physiological dif¬ ferences. If such differences can be found, they may then per¬ haps be interpretable as differences in activity, responsiveness, endurance, or similar constitutional qualities. If the bodies of two races behave differently, we should have considerable reason to believe that their minds also behaved differently. Unfortunately, we possess fewer data on comparative physi¬ ology than on comparative anatomy. The evidence is more fluctuating and intricate, and requires more patience to assemble. Unfortunately, too, for the purposes of our inquiry, the races come out almost exactly alike in the simpler physiological reac¬ tions. The normal body temperature for Caucasian adults is 37° (98.5 F.), the pulse about 70, the respiration rate around 17 or 18 per minute. If the Negro’s temperature averaged even a degree higher, one might expect him to behave, normally, a little more feverishly, to respond to stimulus with more vehe¬ mence, to move more quickly or more restlessly. Or, if the pulse rate of Mongolians were definitely lower, they might be expected to react more sluggishly, more sedately, like aging Caucasians. But such observations as are available, though they are far from as numerous as is desirable, reveal no such differences: temperature, pulse, respiration, record the same as among Cau¬ casians, or differ so slightly, or so conflictingly, as to leave no room for positive conclusions. Certainly if there existed any important racial peculiarities, they would have been noted by the physicians who at one time or another have examined mil¬ lions of Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, and thousands of Indians and Polynesians. Apparently there is only one record that even hints at any¬ thing significant. Hrdlicka, among some 700 Indians of the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico, found the pulse to average about 60 per minute, or ten beats less than 66 ANTHROPOLOGY among whites. This would seem to accord with the general im¬ pression of Indian mentality as stolid, reserved, slow, and steady. But the number of observations is after all rather small ; the part of the race represented by them is limited; and the habitat of the group of tribes is mostly a high plateau, and altitude notoriously affects heart action. Considerable corroboration will therefore be needed before any serious conclusions can be built upon this suggestive set of data. There are other physiological functions that are likely to mean more than the rather gross ones just considered: for instance, the activity of the endocrines or glands of internal secretion. An excess or deficiency of activity of the thyroid, pituitary, adrenals, and sex glands affects not only health, but the type of personality and its emotional and intellectual reactions. For example, cretinism with its accompaniment of near-idiocy is the result of thyroidal under-development or under-functioning, and is often cured by supplying the lack of thyroidal substance and secretion. But this subject is as difficult as it is interesting; to date, absolutely nothing is known about endocrine race differ¬ ences. It would be a relatively simple matter to secure first¬ hand information on the anatomy of the endocrine glands in Negroes as compared with whites ; to ascertain whether these differed normally in size, weight, shape, or structure, and how. But this knowledge has scarcely been attempted systematically, and still less is any knowledge available in the more delicate and complex field of the workings of the organs. To be sure, theories have been advanced that race differentiation itself may be mainly the result of endocrine differentiations. There is something fascinating about such conjectures, but it is well to remember that they are unmitigated guesses. 38. Disease Pathology might seem to promise more than normal physi¬ ology. So far as mortality goes, there are enormous differences * between races. And the mortality is often largely the result of particular diseases. Measles, for instance, has often been a deadly epidemic to uncivilized peoples, and smallpox has in some regions at times taken toll of a quarter of the population in a PROBLEMS OF RACE 67 year or two. Yet it is short-sighted to infer from such cases any racial predisposition or lack of resistance. The peoples in question have been free for generations, perhaps for their entire history, from these diseases, and have therefore not maintained or acquired immunity. Their difference from us is thus essen¬ tially in experience, not hereditary or racial. This is confirmed by the fact that after a generation or two the same epidemics that at first were so deadly to Polynesians or American Indians sink to almost the same level of mild virulence as they show among ourselves. Then, too, immediate environment plays a part. The savage often has no idea of contagion, and still less of guarding against it; he thinks in terms of magic instead of physiology — and suc¬ cumbs. How far heavy mortality is the result of lack of resist¬ ance or of fundamentally vicious treatment, is often hard to say. If we tried to cure smallpox by subjecting patients to a steam-bath and then having them plunge into a wintry river, we should perhaps look upon the disease as a very nearly fatal one to the Caucasian race. 39. Causes of Cancer Incidence It may be worth while to consider briefly the facts as to mor¬ tality from cancer. This dread disease appears to be not con¬ tagious, so that the factor of acquired immunity is eliminated. It is regarded as incurable, except by operation, so that differ¬ ences in treatment become relatively unimportant. If therefore significant differences in racial liability to cancer exist, they should emerge with unusual clearness and certainty. At first sight they seem to. It has been alleged that the white race is the most susceptible to this affliction. The supporting figures are as follows: cancer deaths per year per 100,000 population. 1906-10 Denmark . 137 England . 94 United States . 73 1909-11 Johannesburg, whites . 52 Negroes . . . . 14 1906-10 Natal, Europeans . 56 East Indians . 11 68 ANTHROPOLOGY 1906-10 Hongkong, Europeans . Chinese . 1912 Dutch East Indies, Europeans 1906-10 Singapore, natives . Straits Settlements, natives . Ceylon, natives . Calcutta, natives . 1908-13 Manila, whites . Filipinos . Chinese . 1910-12 United States, whites . Negroes . 1914 United States, Indians . 53 5 81 13 10 5 11 51 27 19 77 56 4 It would seem from these figures that Caucasians die more frequently of cancer than members of the darker races. In fact, this has been asserted. Let us however continue with figures. 1908-12 Large cities, latitudes 60°-50° North. . 106 50°-40° “ 92 40°-30 “ 78 30° Nortli-30o South . 38-42 30°-40° South . 90 This table would make cancer mortality largely a function of geographical latitude, instead of race. Another factor enters: occupation. The following data give the death rate per 100,000 population among males of 45-54 in England and Wales. 1890-92 1900-02 Lawyers . 199 159 Physicians . 102 121 Clergymen . 81 91 Chimneysweeps Brewers . Metal workers Gardeners 532 287 190 239 120 137 88 93 All occupations 118 145 That the relative incidence is more than a temporary accident is shown by the approximate recurrence of the frequencies after ten years. In proportion as latitude and occupation influence the occur¬ rence of cancer, race is diminished as a cause. It is reduced still PROBLEMS OP RACE 69 further by other considerations. The rate for Austria in 1906-10 was 78, for Hungary 44. Here the race is the same: the differ¬ ence must be social. Austria averaged higher in wealth, educa¬ tion, medical development. This fact would tend to have a double effect. First, among the more backward population, a certain proportion would die of internal cancers difficult to diagnose, without the cause being recognized, owing to insuffi¬ cient medical treatment. Second, the general death rate would be higher. More children and young people would die of infec¬ tious or preventable disease, leaving fewer survivors to die of cancer in middle and old age. Wherever, on the other hand, a public is medically educated, and typhoid, smallpox, diphtheria, tuberculosis claim fewer victims, the proportion of those dying of cancer, nephritis, heart diseases, increases. Such an increase is noted everywhere, and goes hand in hand with a longer average life. The alarm sometimes felt at the modern ‘ ‘ increase ’ ’ of cancer is therefore unfounded, because it is perhaps mainly apparent. If a larger percentage of the population each year died of old age, it would be a sign that sanitation and medicine were increasingly effective: evidence that more people lived to become old, not that age debility was spreading. Consequently, a high degree of modern civilization must tend to raise the cancer rate ; and any group of people will seem rela¬ tively immune from cancer in proportion as they remain re¬ moved from attaining to this civilization. In Hungary, from 1901-04, the cancer deaths were 239 among the owners of large farms, 41 among the owners of small farms ; 108 among employ¬ ing blacksmiths, 25 among their employees; 114 among employ¬ ing tailors, 32 among employed tailors. Obviously these pairs of groups differ chiefly in their economic and cultural status. Here too lies the explanation of why the South African negro shows a rate of only 14, the United States negro of 56 ; also why the Chinese rate is as low as 5 in Hongkong, rises to 19 in Manila, and 26 in Hawaii, while the closely allied Japanese average 62 for the whole of Japan — as compared with 50 for Spain, which is pure Caucasian, but one of the most backward countries in Europe. In Tokyo and Kyoto the rate soars to 73 and 90 respectively, just as in the United States it is about 10 higher for the urban than for the rural population. 70 ANTHROPOLOGY Within the United States, also, the rate rises and falls almost parallel for whites and Negroes according to locality; as, 1906-10 White Negro Memphis . . 59 34 Charleston . . 73 37 Nashville . . 74 55 New Orleans . . 86 73 If allowance is made for the facts that the negro population of the United States is poorer and less educated than the white ; that it lives mainly in lower latitudes; and that it tends to be rural rather than urban, the comparative cancer death rates for the country of negro 56 and white 77 would appear to be ac¬ counted for, without bringing race into consideration. In short, what at first glance, or to a partisan pleader, would seem to be a notable race difference in cancer liability, turns out so overwhelmingly due to environmental and social causes as to leave it doubtful whether racial heredity enters as a factor at all. This is not an assertion that race has nothing whatever to do with the disease ; it is an assertion that in the present state of knowledge an inherent or permanent connection between race and cancer incidence has not been demonstrated. If there is such a connection, it is evidently a slight one, heavily overlaid by non-racial influences; and it may be wholly lack¬ ing. The case would be still less certain for most other diseases, in which environmental factors are more directly and obviously influential. Racial medical science is not impossible; in fact it should have an important future as a study ; but its foundations are not yet laid. % 40. Mental Achievement and Social Environment One point will have become clear in the course of the fore¬ going discussion: namely, how far the difficulty of coming to positive conclusions is due to the two sets of interacting causal factors, the hereditary ones and the environmental ones that play upon heredity. The environmental factors are themselves a composite of geographical influences and of the economic, cul- PROBLEMS OF RACE 71 tural, and other social influences that human beings exert upon each other. If this intermingling of distinct kinds of causes is true of races when considered from the side of physiology and medicine, it is evident that the intermingling will be even more intricate in the mental sphere. After all, bodily functioning varies only within fairly definite limits. When external influences press too strongly upon the innate nature of the organism, the latter ceases to function and dies. The mind, on the other hand, however much its structure may be given by heredity, depends for its content wholly on experience, and this experience can be thor¬ oughly varied. Individuals of the same organic endowment may conceivably be born either in the uppermost stratum of a highly refined civilization, or among the most backward and remote savages. Whether this actually happens, and to what degree, is of course precisely the problem which we are trying to solve. But that it is theoretically and logically possible cannot be de¬ nied; and here a vicious circle of reasoning begins. One argu¬ ment says : there have been no recognized geniuses among peo¬ ples like the Hottentots, and the sum total of their group achieve¬ ment is ridiculously small ; therefore it is clear that the Hot¬ tentot mind must be inferior. The opposite argument runs: Hottentot cultural environment is so poor and limited that the finest mind in the world reared under its influence would grow up relatively sterile and atrophied ; therefore it is probable that the mind of the Hottentot is intrinsically identical with our own, or at least of equivalent capacity, and that Hottentot geniuses have actually been born but have been unable to flourish as geniuses. Evidently the same facts are before those who advocate these opposite views, but these facts are viewed from diametrically opposite sides. If one starts to travel around the logical circle in one direction, one can keep revolving indefinitely and find ever fresh supporting evidence. If, however, one begins to revolve around the same circle of opinion in the opposite direc¬ tion, it is just as easy and just as compelling to continue to think in this fashion and to find all testimony corroborative. In such a situation it is possible to realize that from the point of view of proof, or objective truth, one view is worth as much 72 ANTHROPOLOGY as the other: which is nothing. It is an emotional bias that inclines one man toward the conviction of race superiority and another to that of race equality. The proofs in either case are for the most part a mere assembling of ex parte testimony. It is easy enough to advocate impartiality. The difficulty is in being impartial; because both the hereditary and the environ¬ mental factors are in reality unknown quantities. What we have objectively before us is such and such a race or group of people, with such and such present traits and historical record. These phenomena being the product of the interaction of the two sets of causes, we could of course, if we knew the strength of one, compute the strength of the other. But as we have isolated neither, we are dealing with two indeterminate variables. Evi¬ dently the only way out of the dilemma, at any rate the only scientific way, is to find situations in which one of the factors is, for the time being, fixed. In that case the strength of the other factor will of course be proportionate to the attainments of the- groups. Actually, such instances are excessively difficult to find. There are occasional individuals with identical heredity, namely, twins produced from the division of a single ovum. In such twins, the strength of environmental influences can be gauged by the difference in their careers and achievements. Yet such twins are only individuals, and it is illegitimate to make far-reaching inferences from them to larger groups, such as the races. It is conceivable that heredity might on the whole be a more powerful cause than environment, and racial groups still average substan¬ tially alike in their heredity. Because a natively gifted and a natively stunted individual within the group vary conspicuously in achievement, even under similar environment, it does not fol¬ low that races differ in germ-plasm because they differ in achievements. If, on the other hand, one sets out to discover cases of iden¬ tical environment for distinct racial strains, the task quickly becomes even more difficult. Very little analysis usually suffices to show that the environment is identical only up to a certain point, and that beyond this point important social divergences begin. Thus, so far as geographical environment goes, the Negro and the white in the southern United States are under the same PROBLEMS OF RACE 73 conditions. There is also uniformity of some of the gross ex¬ ternals of cultural environment. Both Negroes and whites speak English ; are Christians ; plant corn ; go to the circus ; and so on. But, just as obviously, there are aspects in which their social environment differs profoundly. Educational opportuni¬ ties are widely different. The opportunity of attaining leader¬ ship or otherwise satisfying ambition is wide open to the white, and practically closed to the Negro. The ‘ ‘ color-line ’ ’ inevitably cuts across the social environment and makes of it two different environments. It might be said that the southern United States furnish an extreme case of a sharply drawn color-line. This is true. But on the other hand there is no place on earth where something corresponding to a color-line is not drawn between two races occupying the same territory. It sometimes happens that dis¬ tinctions are diminished and faintly or subtly enforced, as in modern Hawaii, where to outward appearances many races dwell together without discrimination. Yet examination reveals that the absence of discrimination is only legal and perhaps economic. As regards the relations and associations of human beings, the welcome which they extend or the aloofness which they show to one another, there is always a color-line. This means not only difference in opportunity, but difference in experience, habit formation, practices, and interests. 41. Psychological Tests on the Sense Faculties This factor of experience enters even into what appear to be the simplest mental operations, the sensory ones. The scant data available from experimental tests indicate that a variety of dark skinned or uncivilized peoples, including Oceanic and African Negroids, Negritos, Ainus, and American Indians, on the whole slightly surpass civilized whites in keenness of vision and fineness of touch discrimination, whereas the whites are somewhat superior in acuity of hearing and sensitiveness to pain. Yet what do these these results of measurements mean? Vision is tested for its distance ability. The farther off one can distinguish objects or marks, the higher one’s rating. Civilized man reads — normally — at 14 inches. He works with 74 ANTHROPOLOGY sharp knives, with machines that are exact ; he is surrounded by things made with such exact machines ; he handles thin paper and filmy fabrics. His women sew and embroider with the sharpest of needles, the finest of thread. Everything about us tends toward close accuracy and away from the haziness of dis¬ tant observation. The savage, on the other hand, the half- civilized person even, inspects the horizon, watches for game or its dim tracks, tries to peer to the bottom of streams for fish. He does not read, his needles are blunt, his thread is cord, his carving without precision even though decorative, the lines he makes are free-hand and far-apart. He is trained, as it were, for the usual vision tests. If the psychologist reversed his ex¬ periment and sought the degree of power to see fine differences at close range, it is possible that the savage miglit prove inferior because untrained by his experience. Such tests seem not to have been made. Until they are, and again show uncivilized man superior, there is no real proof that innate racial differences of serious moment exist. The whole act of vision in fact involves more than we ordi¬ narily think. After all, seeing is done with the mind as well as with the eye. There is the retinal image, but there is also the interpretation of this image. A sailor descries the distant shore, whereas the landsman sees only a haze on the horizon. To the city dweller a horse and a cow a mile off are indistin¬ guishable. Not so to the rancher. There is something almost imperceptible about the profile of the feeding end of the animal, about its movement, that promptly and surely classes it. At still longer ranges, where the individual animals have wholly faded from sight, a herd of cattle may perhaps be told from one of horses, by the plainsman, through the different clouds of dust which they kick up, or the rate of motion of the cloud. An hour later when the herd is reached and proves to be as said, the astonished traveler from the metropolis is likely to credit his guide’s eyes with an intrinsic power greater than his field glasses — forgetting the influence of experience and training. In keenness of hearing, on the contrary, one should expect the civilized white to come out ahead, as in fact he does ; not because he is Caucasian but because he is civilized and because the in¬ struments of experimentation, be they tuning forks or ticking PROBLEMS OF RACE 75 watches or balls dropped on metal plates, are implements of civilization. Make the test the howl of a distant wolf, or the snapping of a twig as the boughs bend in the wind, and the college student’s hearing might prove duller than that of the Indian or Ainu. There is a story of a woodsman on a busy thoroughfare, amid the roar of traffic and multifarious noise of a great city, hearing a cricket chirp, which was actually dis¬ covered in a near-by open cellar. Extolled for his miraculous keenness of audition, the man in the fur cap dropped a small coin on the pavement: at the clink, passers-by across the street stopped and looked around. As to the pain sense, an introspective, interpretative element necessarily enters into experiments. What constitutes pain? When the trial* becomes disagreeable? When it hurts? When it is excruciating? The savage may physiologically feel with his nerve ends precisely as we do. But being reared to a life of chronic slight discomforts, he is likely to think nothing of the sensation until it hurts sharply; whereas we signal as soon as we are sure that the experience is becoming perceptibly un¬ pleasant. In short, until there shall have been more numerous, balanced, and searching tests made, it must be considered that nothing positive has been established as to the respective sensory facul¬ ties of the several human races. The experiments performed are tests not so much of race as of the average experience and habits of groups of different culture. 42. Intelligence Tests If this is true as regards the sense faculties, it might be ex¬ pected to hold to a greater degree of those higher mental faculties which we call intelligence; and such is the case. Intelligence tests have been gradually evolved and improved, the best known being the Binet-Simon series. These are arranged to determine the mental age of the subject. Their most important function accordingly has been the detection of defective adults or back¬ ward children. During the World War, psychological examina¬ tions were introduced on a scale unheard of before. The pur¬ pose of these examinations was to assign men to the tasks best 76 ANTHROPOLOGY commensurate with their true abilities ; especially to prevent the unfit from being entrusted with responsibility under which they would break down and bring failure on larger undertakings. Men subject to dizziness were to be kept from flying; those unable to understand orders, out of active line service. The tests throughout were practical. They tried to decide whether a given man was fit or unfit. They did not pretend to go into the causes of his fitness or unfitness. This is an important point. Whatever illumination the army intelligence tests shed on the problem of race intelligence is therefore indirect. Different racial or national groups represented in the examinations attain different capacity ratings, but there is nothing in the results themselves to show whether they are due to racial or environ¬ mental factors. Evidence on this point, if it can be derived at all from the tests, has to be “analyzed out.” In general, examinees in the United States were rated by being assigned, on the basis of their scores, to grades which were lettered from A to E, with plus and minus subgrades. The most comprehensive presentation of results is to express the percen¬ tage of individuals in each group that made the middle grade C, better than C, and worse than C. On this basis we find : Group and Number of Individuals Below C C Above G Englishmen, 411 . . 9 71 20 White draft generally, 93,973 . . 24 64 12 Italians, 4,007 . . 63 36 1 Poles, 382 . . 70 30 (.6) Negroes generally, 18,891 . . 79 20 1 These figures at face value seem to show deep group differ¬ ences in intelligence; and these face values have been widely accepted. The reason is that they flatter national and race egotism. To be sure, the Englishmen in the American draft make a better showing than the drafted men at large; but this has been complacently explained by saying that the English represent in comparative purity the Anglo-Saxon or Nordic stock which is also the dominant strain among Americans, but which has been somewhat contaminated in their case by the immigration of Latins and Slavs, who rate much lower, as shown by the Italians and Poles tested. Lowest of all, as might be expected, is the Negro. So runs the superficial but satisfying PROBLEMS OF RACE 77 interpretation of the figures — satisfying if one happens to be of North European ancestry. But there is one feature that raises suspicion. The Italians and the Poles are too close to the Negroes. They stand much nearer to them in intelligence, according to these figures, than they do to the white Americans. Can this be so — at least, can it have racial significance? Are these Mediterraneans, de¬ scendants of the Romans, and these Alpines, so large a strain of whose blood flows in the veins of many white Americans, only ■ a shade superior to the Negro? Scarcely. “Something must be wrong ’ ’ with the figures : that is, they contain another factor besides race. A little dissection of the lump results reveals this factor. The northern Negro far surpasses the southern in his showing. He gets ten times as high, a proportion of individuals into the above-average grades, only half as many into the below-average. Evidently the difference is due to increased schooling, improved earning capacity, larger opportunity and incentive : social en¬ vironment, in short. So strong is the influence of the environ¬ ment that the northern Negro easily surpasses the Italian in America. Negroes, 5 northern states, 4,705 .... .... 46 51 3 Italians, 4,007 . .... 63 36 1 Negroes, 4 southern states, 6,846 . . . . .... 86 14 (.3) Evidently the psychological tests are more a gauge of educa¬ tional and social opportunity than of race, since the Italian, although brunet, is of course a pure Caucasian. This conclusion is reinforced by another consideration. The type of test first used in the army had been built up for rea¬ sonably literate people, speaking English. Among such people it discriminated successfully between the more and the less fit. But the illiterate and the foreigner knowing no English failed completely — not because their intelligence was zero, but because the test involved the use of non-congenital abilities which they had not acquired. A second set of tests, known as Beta, was evolved for those who were obviously ineligible, or proved themselves so, for the old style of test, which was designated as Alpha. The illiteracy of the subjects given the Beta test wras in 78 ANTHROPOLOGY most cases not an absolute one. Men who could not write an intelligible letter or read the newspaper or who had had only half or less of the ordinary grammar school education, together with aliens whose comprehension of English remained imperfect, were put in the group of “illiterates” or badly educated. Sep¬ arating now the literates from the illiterates among a number of racial, national, or sectional groups, we find : Alpha Test: Literates Englishmen, 374 . . 5 74 21 White draft generally, 72,618 . . . . 16 69 15 Alabama whites, 697 . . 19 72 9 New York negroes, 1,021 . . 21 72 7 Italians, 575 . . 33 64 3 Negroes generally, 5,681 . . 54 44 2 Alabama negroes, 262 . . 56 44 (-4) Beta Test: Illiterates White draft generally, 26,012 . . . . 58 41 1 Italians, 2,888 . . 64 35 1 New York negroes, 440 . . 72 28 0 Poles, 263 . . 76 24 (-4) Alabama whites, 384 . . 80 20 0 Negroes generally, 11,633 . . 91 9 (•2) Alabama Negroes, 1,043 . . 97 3 (.1) It must be borne in mind that the two groups were not set apart as the result of tests, but that the two tests were devised to meet the problem of treating the two groups with reasonable uniformity. The point was to find the excellent man, and the unfit man, with the same degree of accuracy whether he was literate or illiterate. When found, he was assigned to the same grade, such as A, or D — , whether his examination had been Alpha or Beta. Now let us observe some of the figures. The New York negro is nearly on a par with the Alabama white, among literates, and a bit ahead of him among illiterates. Approximately the two groups come out the same; which means that bringing up in a certain part of the country has as much to do with intelligence, even in the rough, as has Caucasian or colored parentage. The literate negroes of the draft, irrespective of section, slightly surpass the illiterate whites. In every case the literate members of a race or nationality make a far better showing than the illiterate. PROBLEMS OF RACE 79 It is now clear also that the important factor of education enters so heavily into the first figures cited that they can mean little if anything as to inherent capacity. Of the Englishmen tested, nine-tenths fell in the literate group ; of the Poles, a fifth ; of the Italians, a seventh. In the draft generally, nearly three- fourths of the whites were literate ; of the negroes, less than a third. In short, in spite of the fact that the Beta test was intended to equalize conditions for the illiterate and semi-illiterate, the outstanding conclusion of the army examinations seems to be that education — cultural advantage — enormously develops faculty. Is there anything left that can positively be assigned to race causation? It may be alleged that within the same section the white recruits regularly surpass the colored. Alabama whites may rate disappointingly, but they do better than Alabama negroes; New York negroes show surprisingly well, but they are inferior to New York whites; illiterate whites from the whole country definitely surpass illiterate negroes; and still more so among literates. But is this residuum of difference surely racial? As long as the color-line remains drawn, a differential factor of cultural advantage is included ; and how strong this is there is no present means of knowing. It is possible that some of the difference between sectionally and educationally equalized groups of whites and negroes is really innate and racial. But it is also possible that most or all of it is environmental. Neither possibility can be demonstrated from the unrefined data at present available. 43. Status of Hybrids In nearly all tests of the American Negro, full bloods and mixed bloods are not discriminated. Evidently if races have distinctive endowments, the nature of these endowments is not cleared up so long as individuals who biologically are seven- eighths Caucasian are included with pure Negroes merely because in this country we have the social habitude of reckoning them all as ‘ ‘ colored. ’ ’ On the other hand, an excellent opportunity to probe deeper is being lost through the failure to classify tested colored people 80 ANTHROPOLOGY according to the approximate proportion of Negro blood. Sup¬ pose for instance that on a given examination whites scored an average of 100 and Negroes of 60. Then, if this difference were really due to race, if it were wholly a matter of superior or inferior blood, mulattos should average 80 and quadroons 90 ; unless intelligence were due to simple Mendelian factors, in which case its inheritance would tend to segregate, and of this there is no evidence. Suppose, however, that instead of the theoretically expectable 80 and 90, the mulattos and quadroons scored 65 and 68. In that event it would be clear that the major part of the Negro’s inferiority of record was due to environ¬ ment; that the white man’s points from about 70 up to 100 were clearly the result of his superior social opportunities, whereas the range between 60 and 70 approximately represented the innate difference between Negro and Caucasian. This is a hypo¬ thetical example, but it may serve to illustrate a possible method of attacking the problem. There are however almost no data of this kind ; and when they are obtained, they will be subject to certain cautions upon inter¬ pretation. For instance, in the army examinations one attempt was made to separate a small group of colored recruits into a % darker-skinned group, comprising full blooded Negroes and those appearing to be preponderantly of Negro blood; and a lighter complexioned group, estimated to contain the mulattos and indi¬ viduals in whom white ancestry was in excess. The light group made the better scores. In the Alpha test for literates it at¬ tained a median score of 50, the dark Negroes only 30; in the Beta tests for illiterates, the respective figures were 36 and 29. The caution is this. Is the mulatto subject to any more advan¬ tageous environment than the full blooded Negro? So far as voting and office-holding, riding in Pullman cars and occupying orchestra seats in theatre are concerned, there is no difference: both are colored, and therefore beyond the barrier. But the mulattos of slavery days were likely to be house servants, brought up with the master’s family, absorbing manners, in¬ formation, perhaps education ; their black half-brothers and half- sisters stayed out in the plantation shacks. Several generations have elapsed since those days, but it is possible, even probable, that the descendants of mulattos have kept a step or two ahead PROBLEMS OF RACE 81 of the descendants of the blacks in literacy, range of experience, and the like. It is impossible to predict what the social effect of miscegena¬ tion will be. The effect undoubtedly varies and must be exam¬ ined in each case. Thus, Indian half-breeds in one tribe may usually be the result of wholly transient or mercenary unions between inferior whites and debauched native women and may therefore grow up in an atmosphere of demoralization to which the full blooded Indian is less exposed. This demoralization would, to be sure, affect character and not intelligence as such ; but it might stand in the way of schooling, and otherwise indi¬ rectly react on measurable traits of mind. In another tribe or section of a tribe, to the contrary, the half-breed might nor¬ mally grow up in the house of a permanently settled white father, a squaw man, and in that event would learn English better, go to school earlier, and in case of a test therefore achieve a higher rating than the full blood. 4 44. Evidence from the Cultural Record of Races An entirely different method of approach to the problem of race capacity is that of examining the cultural record, the achievements in civilization, of groups. While this approach is theoretically possible, and while it is often attempted, it is sub¬ ject to little control and therefore unlikely to yield dependable conclusions. First of all, the culture history record of a people must be known for considerable periods before one may validly think of inferring therefrom anything as to the faculties of that people. The reason is that active civilization, as a productive process, is slow to grow up, slow to be acquired. Mere momentum would normally keep the more advanced of two peoples ahead of the other for a long time. In proportion as not nations but groups of nations were involved, the momentum would continue for still longer periods. Civilization flourished for some thousands of years in the Near East, and then about the Mediterranean, before it became established with equal vigor and success in northern Europe. Had Julius Caesar or one of his contem¬ poraries been asked whether by any sane stretch of phantasy 82 ANTHROPOLOGY he could imagine the Britons and Germans as inherently the equals of Romans and Greeks, he would probably have replied that if these northerners possessed the ability of the Mediter¬ raneans they would long since have given vent to it, instead of continuing to live in disorganization, poverty, ignorance, rude¬ ness, and without great men or products of the spirit. And, within limits, Cassar would have been right, since it was more than a thousand years before northern Europe began to draw abreast of Italy in degree and productivity of civilization. Two thousand years before Christ, a well informed Egyptian might reasonably have disposed in the same sweeping way of the possi¬ bility of Greeks and Italians being the equals of his own people in capacity. What had these barbarians ever done to lead one to think that they might yet do great things? To-day we brush Negroes and Indians out of the reckoning with the same off¬ handedness. In general, arguing from performance to potentiality, from accomplishment to achievement, is valid under conditions of set experiment — such as are impossible for races — or in proportion as the number and variety of observations is large. A single matched competition may decide pretty reliably as between the respective speed capacities of two runners. But it would be hazardous to form an opinion from, a casual glimpse of them in action, when one might happen to be hastening and the other dallying. Least of all would it be sound to infer that essential superiority rested with the one that was in advance at the mo¬ ment of observation, without knowledge of their starting points, the difficulty of their routes, the motive or goal of their courses. It is only as the number of circumstances grows, from which observations are available, that judgment begins to have any weight. The runner who has led for a long time and is increas¬ ing his lead, or who has repeatedly passed others, or who carries a load and yet gains ground, may lay some claim to superiority. In the same way, as between races, a long and intimate historical record, objectively analyzed, gives some legitimate basis for tentative conclusions as to their natural endowment. But how long the record must be is suggested by the example already cited of Mediterranean versus Nordic cultural preeminence. The fallacy that is most commonly committed is to argue from PROBLEMS OF RACE 83 what in the history of great groups is only an instant : this instant being that at which one’s own race or nationality is dominant. The Anglo-Saxon’s moment is the present; the Greek’s, the age of Pericles. Usually, too, the dominance holds only for certain aspects : military or economic or aesthetic su¬ periority, as the case may be ; inferiorities on other sides are merely overlooked. The Greek knew his venality, but looked down on the barbarian nevertheless. Anglo-Saxon failure in the plastic and musical arts is notorious, but does not deter most Anglo-Saxons from believing that they are the elect in quality, and from buttressing this conviction with the evidences of present industrial, economic, and political achievements — and perhaps past literary ones. 45. Emotional Bias Inference from record to potentiality where the record of one ’s own group is favorable, and failure to draw such inference where the achievement of other groups is superior, is a combina¬ tion of mental operations that is widely spread because it arises spontaneously in minds not critically trained. Here is an in¬ stance : One of the great achievements of science in the nineteenth century was Galton’s demonstration, in a series of works begin¬ ning with ‘ ‘ Hereditary Genius, ’ ’ that the laws of heredity apply to the mind in the same manner and to the same degree as to the body. On the whole this proof has failed to be recognized at its true importance, probably because it inclines adversely to current presuppositions of the independence of the soul from the body, and freedom of the will, propositions to which most men adhere emotionally. From this perfectly valid demonstration, which has been con¬ firmed by other methods, Galton went on to rate the hereditary worth of various races, according to the number of their men of genius. Here a fallacy enters : the assumption that all geniuses born are recognized as such. A great work naturally requires a great man, but it presupposes also a great culture. It may be that, historically speaking, a great genius cannot arise in a primi¬ tive degree of civilization. That is, the kind of concentrated 84 ANTHROPOLOGY accomplishment which alone we recognize as a work of genius is culturally impossible below a certain level. Biologically the individual of genius may be there; civilizationally he is not called forth, and so does not get into the record. Consequently it is unsound to argue from the historical record to biological worth. However, this Galton did ; and his method led him to the conclusion that the negro rates two grades lower than the Eng¬ lishman, on a total scale of fourteen grades, and the Englishman two lower than the fifth century Athenian. This conclusion has never been popular. Most people on becoming familiar with Galton ’s argument, resist it. Its fallacy is not easy to perceive — if it were, Galton would not have com¬ mitted it — and the average person is habitually so vague-minded upon what is organic and what is social, that the determination of the fallacy would be well beyond him. His opposition to Galton ’s conclusion is therefore emotionally and not rationally founded, and his arguments against the conclusion are presuma¬ bly also called forth by emotional stimulus. On the other hand, most individuals of this day and land do habitually infer, like Galton, from cultural status to biological worth, so far as the Negro is concerned. The same persons who eagerly accept the demonstration of a flaw in the argument in favor of Athenian superiority, generally become skeptical and resistive to the exposition of the same flaw in the current belief as to Negro inferiority. It is remarkable how frequently and how soon, in making this exposition, one becomes aware of the hearer’s feeling that one’s attitude is sophistical, unreal, insin¬ cere, or motivated by something concealed. The drift of this discussion may seem to be an unavowed argu¬ ment in favor of race equality. It is not that (§271). As a matter of fact, the bodily differences between races would ap¬ pear to render it in the highest degree likely that corresponding congenital mental differences do exist. These differences might not be profound, compared with the sum total of common human faculties, much as the physical variations of mankind fall within the limits of a single species. Yet they would preclude identity. As for the vexed question of superiority, lack of identity would involve at least some degree of greater power in certain respects in some races. These preeminences might be rather evenly dis- PROBLEMS OF RACE 85 tributed, so that no one race would notably excel the others in the sum total or average of its capacities; or they might show a tendency to cluster on one rather than on another race. In either event, however, the fact of race difference, qualitative if not quantitative, would remain. But it is one thing to admit this theoretical probability and then stop through ignorance of what the differences are, and another to construe the admission as justification of mental atti¬ tudes which may be well founded emotionally but are in con¬ siderable measure unfounded objectively. In short, it is a difficult task to establish any race as either superior or inferior to another, but relatively easy to prove that we entertain a strong prejudice in favor of our own racial superiority. 46. Summary It would seem that the subject of race problems, that is, the natural endowment of human races, can be summarized as fol¬ lows : The essential difficulty of these problems lies in the fact that the performance of groups is the product of two sets of factors, biological and cultural, both of which are variable and not always readily separable. Progress in solution of the problems will be made gradually, and will be hastened by recognition of how few positive deter¬ minations have been made. Most of the alleged existing evidence on race endowment is likely to be worthless. The remainder probably has some value, but to what degree, and what it demonstrates, cannot yet be asserted. The most definite determinations promise to eventuate from experiment. If fully controlled experiments in breeding and rearing human beings could be carried out, the problems would soon begin to solve. Experiments on animals would prove prac¬ tically nothing because animals are cultureless — uninfluenced by social environment of their own making. Progress will be aided by increasing shift of attention from the crude consideration of comparative lump rating of the races, 86 ANTHROPOLOGY that is, their gross superiority or inferiority, to a consideration of such specific qualitative differences as they may prove to show. The question of finding the race in which the greatest number of qualitative excellences are concentrated is subsequent and of much less scientific importance. Scientific inquiries into race are for the present best kept apart from so-called actual race problems. These problems inevitably involve feeling, usually of considerable strength, which tends to vitiate objective approach. On the other hand, the practical problems will no doubt continue to be met practically, that is, morally and emotionally. Whether the Japanese should be for¬ bidden to hold land and the Negro be legally disfranchised are problems of economics and of group ethics, which probably will for a long time be disposed of emotionally as at present, irre¬ spective of the possible findings of science upon the innate en¬ dowment of Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid strains. CHAPTER Y LANGUAGE 47. Linguistic relationship: the speech family. — 48. Criteria of rela¬ tionship. — 49. Sound equivalences and phonetic laws. — 50. The principal speech families. — 51. Classification of languages by types. — 52. Perma¬ nence of language and race.— 53. The biological and historical nature of language. — 54. Problems of the relation of language and culture. — 55. Period of the origin of language. — 56. Culture, speech, and nationality. — 57. Relative worth of languages. — 58. Size of vocabulary. — 59. Quality of speech sounds. — 60. Diffusion and parallelism in language and culture. — 61. Convergent languages. — 62. Unconscious factors in language and culture. — 63. Linguistic and cultural standards. — 64. Rapidity of lin¬ guistic change. 47. Linguistic Relationship: The Speech Family The question that the historian and anthropologist are likely to ask most frequently of the philologist, is whether this and that language are or are not related. Relationship in such con¬ nection means descent from a common source, as two brothers are descended from the same father, or two cousins from a common grandfather. If languages can be demonstrated to possess such common source, it is clear that the peoples who spoke them must at one time have been in close contact, or per¬ haps have constituted a single people. If, on the other hand, the languages of two peoples prove wholly dissimilar, though their racial types and cultures be virtually identical, as indeed is sometimes found to be the case — witness the Hungarians and their neighbors — it is evident that an element of discontinuous development must somewhere be reckoned with. Perhaps one part of an originally single racial group gradually modified its speech beyond recognition, or under the shock of conquest, migra¬ tion, or other historical accident entirely discarded it in favor of a new and foreign tongue. Or the opposite may be true : the two groups were originally distinct in all respects, but, being brought in contact, their cultures interpenetrated, intermarriage followed, and the two physical types became assimilated into 87 88 ANTHROPOLOGY one while the languages remained dissimilar. In short, if one wishes full understanding of a people, one must take its language into consideration. This means that it must be classified. If a historical classification is to be more than barrenly logical, it must have reference to relationship, development, origin. In a word, it must be a genetic classification. The term used to indicate that two or more languages have a common source but are unrelated to all others, or seem so in the present state of knowledge, is ‘ 'linguistic family.” “ Linguistic stock” is frequently used as a synonym. This is the fundamental concept in the classification of languages. Without a clear idea of its meaning one involves himself in confusion on attempting to use philology as an aid to other branches of human history. There is no abstract reason against referring to a group of unrelated languages as a “family” because they are all spoken in one area, nor against denominating as “families,” as has sometimes been done, the major subdivisions of a group of lan¬ guages admittedly of common origin. Again, languages that show certain similarities of type or structure, such as inflection, might conceivably be put into one 4 ‘ family. ’ 1 But there is this objection to all such usages: they do not commit themselves on the point of genetic relationship, or they contradict it, or only partially exhaust it. Yet commonness of origin is so important in many connections that it is indispensable to have one term which denotes its ascertainable presence. And for this quality there happens to be no generally understood designation other than “linguistic family,” or its synonym, “linguistic stock.” This phrase will therefore be used here strictly in the sense of the whole of a group of languages sprung from a single source, and only in that sense. Other groupings will be indicated by phrases like “languages of such and such an area,” “sub¬ family, ” “ division of a family, ” or “ languages of similar type. ’ ’ 48. Criteria of Relationship The question that first arises in regard to linguistic families is how the relationship of their constituent idioms is determined. In brief, the method is one of comparison. If a considerable proportion of the words and grammatical forms of two languages LANGUAGE 89 are reasonably similar, similar enough to indicate that the re¬ semblances cannot be due to mere accident, these similar words and forms must go back to a common source, and if this source is hot borrowing, the two tongues are related. If comparison fails to bring out any such degree of resemblance, the languages are classed in distinct families. Of course it is possible that the reason two languages seem unrelated is not that they are really so, but that they have in the lapse of ages become so much differentiated that one cannot any longer find resemblance between their forms. In that event true relationship would be obscured by its remoteness. Theo¬ retically there is high probability that many families of lan¬ guages, customarily regarded as totally distinct, do go back in the far past to a common origin, and that ignorance of their history, or inability to analyze them deeply, prevents recogni¬ tion of their relationship. From time to time it happens that groups of languages which at first seemed unrelated are shown by more intensive study to possess elements enough in common to compel the recognition of their original unity. In that case what were supposed to be several “families” become merged in one. The scope of a particular family may be thus enlarged; but the scope of the generic concept of “family” is not altered. Whether there is any hope that comparative philology may ultimately be prosecuted with sufficient success to lead all the varied forms of human speech back to a single origin, is an interesting speculation. A fair statement is that such a possi¬ bility cannot be denied, but that the science is still far from such a realization, and that progress toward it is necessarily slow. Of more immediate concern is an ordering and summariz¬ ing of the knowledge in hand with a view to such positive infer¬ ences as can be drawn. In an estimate of the similarity of languages, words that count as evidence must meet two requirements : they must be alike or traceably similar in sound; and they must be alike or similar in meaning. This double requirement holds, whether full words or separable parts of words, roots or grammatical forms, are compared. The English word eel and the French tie, meaning island, are pronounced almost exactly alike, yet their meaning is so different that no sane person would regard them as sprung 90 ANTHROPOLOGY from the same origin. As a matter of fact ile is derived from Latin insula, whereas eel has a cognate in German aal. These prototypes insula and aal being as different in sound as they are in meaning, any possibility that eel and ile might be related is easily disposed of. Yet if the Latin and German equivalents were lost, if nothing were known of the history of the English and French languages, and if ile meant not island but, say, fish or watersnake, then it might be reasonable to think of a connection. Such doubtful cases, of which a certain proportion are likely to be adjudged wrongly, are bound to come up in regard to the less investigated languages, particularly those of nations without writing, the earlier stages of whose speech have perished without trace. In proportion as more is known of a language, or as careful analysis can reconstruct more of its past stages, the number of such borderline cases obviously becomes fewer. Before genetic connection between two languages can be thought of, the number of their words similar in sound and sense must be reasonably large. An isolated handful of resem¬ blances obviously are either importations — loan words — or the result of coincidence. Thus in the native Californian language known as Yuki, ko means go, and kom means come. Yet exami¬ nation of Yuki reveals no further instances of the same kind. It would therefore be absurd to dream of a connection: one swallow does not make a summer. This lone pair of resem¬ blances means nothing except that the mathematical law of probability has operated. Among the thousands of words in one language, a number are likely to be similar in sound to words of another language ; and of this number again a small fraction, perhaps one or two or five in all, will happen to bear some re¬ semblance in meaning also. In short, the similarities upon which a verdict of genetic relationship is based must be sufficiently numerous to fall well beyond possibility of mere coincidence ; and it must also be possible to prove with reasonable certainty that they are not the result of one language borrowing words from another, as, for instance, English borrowed from French and Latin. At the same time it is not necessary that the similarities extend to the point of identity. In fact, too close a resemblance LANGUAGE 91 between part of the stock of two languages immediately raises a presumption of borrowing. For every language is continually changing, and once a mother tongue has split into several branches, each of these goes on modifying its sounds, and gradu¬ ally shifting the meaning of its words, generation after genera¬ tion. In short, where connection is real, it must be veiled by a certain degree of distortion. Take the English word foot and the Latin word of the same meaning, pes. To offhand inspection the sounds or forms of the two words do not seem similar. The resemblance becomes more definite in other forms of pes, for instance the genitive case ped-is or the accusative ped-em. Obviously the stem or elemen¬ tary portion of the Latin word is not pes but ped-; and the d is closer to the English t of foot than is the s of pes. The probability of relationship is increased by the Greek word for foot, pous, whose stem proves to be pod-, with vowel closer to that of English. Meanwhile, it would be recognized that there are English words beginning with ped-, such as pedal, pedes¬ trian, pedestal, all of which have a clear association with the idea of foot. All these words however possess almost exact equivalents in Latin. One would therefore be justified in con¬ cluding from these facts what indeed the history of the lan¬ guages proves, namely, that pedal, pedestrian, and pedestal are Latin words taken over into English; whereas foot and pes and pous, and for that matter German fuss, are derivatives from a common form which once existed in the now extinct mother tongue from which Greek and Latin and English and German are derived. 49. Sound Equivalences and Phonetic Laws The question next arises whether it is possible to account for the distortions which have modified the original word into foot, ped-, etc. What has caused the initial sound of this ancient word to become p in Latin and / in English, and its last con¬ sonant to be d in Latin and Greek, t in English, and ss in Ger¬ man ? To answer this seemingly innocent question with accuracy for this one word alone would involve a treatise on the whole group of languages in question, and even then the causes, as 92 ANTHROPOLOGY causes, could scarcely be set down with certainty. But it has proved possible to assemble a large number of instances of parallel distortion in which Latin p corresponds to English /, or d to t. Evidently philology has got hold of a generalized phenomenon here. Since father corresponds to pater , full to pl-enus, for to pro, fish to piscis, and so on in case after case, we are evidently face to face with a happening that has occurred with regularity and to which the name “law” is therefore applicable. The f of foot and p of pes are both lip sounds. They differ preeminently in that / can be prolonged indefinitely, whereas p is a momentary sound. It is produced by closure of the lips for a fraction of a second during which there is an interruption of sound production, followed by a somewhat explosive release of the breath which has been impounded in the mouth cavity. This explosion is of necessity instantaneous. Since it is preceded by occlusion, or stoppage of the breath, it is customary to speak of sounds produced by a process like p as “stops.” F, on the other hand, is a “continuant,” or more specifically a “fricative.” The English word three begins with a sound which, although conventionally represented by the two letters th, is a simple sound and in a class with / in being fricative. Th is formed by putting the tongue lightly across the teeth, just as f is made by placing the lower lip against the edge of the upper teeth. In both cases the breath is expelled with friction through a narrow passage. Now if the fricative / is represented in Latin by the stop p, then, if regularity holds good, the English fricative th ought to be represented in Latin by the stop sound in the cor¬ responding dental position, namely t. The Latin w^ord for three is in fact tros ; for thin, ten-uis ; for mother , mater ; for thou, tu, and so on. The regularity therefore extends beyond the limits of the single labial class of sounds, and applies with equal force to the dentals; and, it may be added, to the palatals or gutturals as well. As one passes from English and Latin to German, one finds the initial sound of the word meaning three, drei, to be some¬ what different from th and t but still clearly allied, since it also is made by the tongue against the teeth. D is a stop like t, but the vocal cords vibrate while it is being pronounced, whereas in LANGUAGE 93 t the vocal cords are silent. D is “voiced” or “sonant,” t “unvoiced” or “surd.” Hence the formulation: Latin, surd stop ; German, sonant stop ; English, fricative. This triple equivalence can be substantiated in other words. For instance, ten-uis, diinn, thin; tu, du, thou . If it is the English word that contains a surd stop, what will be the equivalent in Latin and German? Compare ten , Latin decern , German zehn. Again the three classes of sounds run parallel ; but the place of their appearance in the three languages has shifted. The third possible placing of the three sounds in the three languages is when English has the sonant stop, d. By exclusion it might be predicted that Latin should then show the fricative th and German the surd stop t. The word daughter confirms. The German is tochter. Latin in this case fails us, the original corresponding stem having gone out of use and been replaced by the word filia. But Greek, whose sounds align with those of Latin as opposed to English and German, provides the th as expected : thygater. Compare death, tod, thanatos. Let us bring together these results so that the eye may grasp them : Latin, Greek . surd stop sonant stop fricative German . sonant stop fricative surd stop English . fricative surd stop sonant stop Latin, Greek . tres duo thygater German . drei zwei tochter English . three two daughter \ These relations apply not only to the dentals d, t, th (z), which have been chosen for illustration, but also to the labials, p, b, f, and to the palatals k, g, li ( gh , ch). It is evident that most of the sounds occur in all three groups of languages, but not in the same words. The sound t is common to English, Latin, and German, but when it appears in a par¬ ticular word in one of these languages it is replaced by d and th in the two others. This replacing is known as a “sound shift.” The sound shifts just enumerated constitute the famous Grimm’s Law. This was the first discovered important phonetic law or system of sound substitutions. Yet it is only one of a number of shifts that have been worked out for the Indo- 94 ANTHROPOLOGY European group of languages to which English, German, and Latin belong. So far, only stopped and fricative consonants have been reviewed here, and no vowels have been considered. Other groups of languages also show shifts, but often different ones, as between l and n, or s and k, or p and k. The significance of a shift lies in the fact that its regularity cannot be explained on any other ground than that the words in which the law is operative must originally have been the same. That is, Latin duo, German zwei, English two are all only variants of a word which meant “two” in the mother tongue from which these three languages are descended. This example alone is of course insufficient evidence for the existence of such a common mother tongue. But that each of the shifts discussed is substantiated by hundreds or thousands of words in which it holds true, puts the shift beyond the possibility of mere acci¬ dent. The explanation of coincidence is ruled out. The resem¬ blances therefore are both genuine and genetic. The conclusion becomes inevitable that the languages thus linked are later modi¬ fications of a former single speech. It is in this way that linguistic relationship is determined. Where an ancient sound shift, a law of phonetic change, can be established by a sufficient number of cases, argument ceases. It is true that when most of a language has perished, or when an unwritten language has been but fragmentarily recorded or its analysis not carried far, a strong presumption of genetic unity may crowd in on the investigator who is not yet in a position to present the evidence of laws. The indications may be strong enough to warrant a tentative assumption of relationship. But the final test is always the establishment of laws of sound equiva¬ lence that hold good with predominating regularity. 50. The Principal Speech Families The number of linguistic families is not a matter of much theoretical import. From what has already been said it appears that the number can perhaps never be determined with absolute accuracy. As knowledge accumulates and dissection is carried to greater refinements, new phonetic laws will uncover and serve to unite what now seem to be separate stocks. Yet for the prac- ( i LANGUAGE 95 tical purpose of classification and tracing relationship the lin¬ guistic family will remain a valuable tool. A rapid survey of the principal families is therefore worth while. In Asia and Europe, which must be considered a unit in this connection, the number of stocks, according to conservative reck¬ oning, does not exceed twenty-five. The most important of these, in point of number of speakers, is the Indo-European or Indo- Germanic or Aryan family, whose territory for several thousand years has comprised southwestern Asia and the greater part, but by no means all, of Europe. The most populous branches of the Indo-European family are the Indie, Slavic, Germanic, and Ro¬ mance or Latin. Others are Persian or Iranic, Armenian, Greek, Albanian, Baltic or Lithuanian, and Keltic. Prom Europe various Indo-European languages, such as English, Spanish, French, Russian, have in recent centuries been carried to other continents, until in some, such as the Americas and Australia, the greater area is now inhabited by peoples speaking Indo- European. As the accompanying maps are intended to depict the historic or native distribution of languages they do not show this diffusion. It will be noted that the distribution of Indo- European has the form of a long belt stretching from western Europe to northeastern India, with an interruption only in Asia Minor (Fig. 12). Turkish peoples displaced Indo-Europeans there about a thousand years ago, thus breaking the territorial continuity. It is probable that another link between the western and eastern Indo-Europeans once stretched around the north of the Caspian sea. Here also there are Turks now. Almost equaling Indo-European in the number of its speakers is Sinitic, which is generally held to include Chinese proper with its dialects; the Tibeto-Burman branch; the T’ai or Shan- Siamese branch ; and probably some minor divisions like Lolo. In extent of territory occupied the Altaic stock rivals the Indo- European. Its three main divisions, Turkish, Mongolian, and Tungus-Manchu, cover most of northern and central Asia and some tracts in Europe. The Turks, as just noted, are the only stock that within the period of history has gained appreciable territory at Indo-European expense. The Uralic or Finno- Ugric family has eastern Europe and northwestern Asia as its home, with the Finns and Hungarian Magyars as its most 96 ANTHROPOLOGY civilized and best known representatives. This is a scattered stock. Most scholars unite the three Altaic divisions, Finno- Ugric, and Samoyed into a vast Ural-Altaic family. Of the Semitic family, Arabic is the chief living represen¬ tative, with Abyssinian in Africa as a little known half-sister. Arabic is one of the most widely diffused of all languages, and as the orthodox vehicle of Mohammedanism has served an important function as a culture carrier. Several great nations of ancient times also spoke Semitic tongues: the Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Hebrews. Southern India is Dravidian. While people of this family enter little into our customary thoughts, they number over fifty millions. Japanese and Korean also merit mention as important stock tongues. Anamese, by some regarded as an offshoot from Chinese, may constitute a separate stock. Several minor families will be found on the Asiatic map, most of them consisting of uncivilized peoples or limited in their territory or the number of their speakers. Yet, so far as can be judged from present knowledge, they form units of the same order of independence as the great Indo-European, Semitic, and Ural-Altaic stocks. Language distributions in Africa are in the main simple (Fig. 13). The whole of northern Africa beyond latitude 10°, and parts of east Africa almost to the equator, were at one time Hamitic. This is the family to which the language of ancient Egypt belonged. Hamitic and Semitic, named after sons of Noah, probably derive from a common source, although the separation of the common mother tongue into the African Hamitic and the Asiatic Semitic divisions must have occurred very anciently. In the past thousand years Hamitic has yielded ground before Semitic, due to the spread of Arabic in Moham¬ medan Africa. Africa south of the equator is the home of the great Bantu family, except in the extreme southwest of the continent. There a tract of considerable area, though of small populational density, was in the possession of the backward Bushmen and Hottentots, distinctive in their physical type as well as lan¬ guages. Between the equator and latitude ten north, in the belt known as the Sudan, there is much greater speech diversity than else- LANGUAGE 97 where in Africa. The languages of the Sudan fall into several families, perhaps into a fairly large number. Opinion conflicts or is unsettled as to their classification. They are, at least in tie main, non-Hamitic and non-Bantu; but this negative fact does not preclude their having had either a single or a dozen origins. It has usually been easier to throw them all into a 98 ANTHROPOLOGY vague group designated as non-Hamitic and non-Bantu than to compare them in detail. In Oceania conditions are similar to those of Africa, in that there are a few great, widely branching stocks and one rather small area, New Guinea, of astounding speech diversity. Indeed, superficially this variety is the outstanding linguistic feature of New Guinea. The hundreds of Papuan dialects of the island look as if they might require twenty or more families to accom¬ modate them. However, it is inconceivable that so small a popu¬ lation should time and again have evolved totally new forms of speech. It is much more likely that something in the mode of life or habits of mind of the Papuans has favored the breaking up of their speech into local dialects and an unusually rapid modification of these into markedly differentiated languages. What the circumstances were that favored this tendency to segregation and change can be only conjectured. At any rate, New Guinea ranks with the Sudan, western North America, and the Amazonian region of South America, as one of the areas of greatest linguistic multiplicity. All the remainder of Oceania is either Australian or Malayo- Polynesian in speech. The Australian idioms have been imper¬ fectly recorded. They were numerous and locally much varied, but seem to derive from a single mother tongue. All the East Indies, including part of the Malay Peninsula, and all of the island world of the Pacific — Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia — always excepting interior New Guinea — are the habitat of the closely-knit Malayo-Polynesian family, whose unity was quickly recognized by philologists. From Madagascar to Easter Island this speech stretches more than half-way around our planet. Some authorities believe that the Mon- Khmer languages of southern Indo-China and the Kolarian or Munda-Kol tongues of India are related in origin to Malayo- Polynesian, and denominate the larger whole, the Austronesian family. North and South America, according to the usual reckoning, contain more native language families than all the remainder of the world. The orthodox classification allots about seventy- five families to North America (some fifty of them represented within the borders of the United States) and another seventy- Fig. 14. Some important linguistic families of North America: 1, Eskimo; 2, Athabascan; 3, Algonkin; 4, Iroquoian; 5, Siouan; 6, Muskogean; 7, Uto-Aztecan; 8, Mayan. SA1, Arawak, No. 1 on South American map (Fig. 15). SA8, Chibcha, No. 8 on South American map. The white areas are occupied by nearly seventy smaller families, according to the classification usually accepted. e 100 ANTHROPOLOGY five to South America. They varied greatly in size at the time of discovery, some being confined to a few hundred souls, whereas others stretched through tribe after tribe over enormous areas. Their distribution is so irregular and their areas so dis¬ proportionate as to be impossible of vivid representation except on a large-scale map in colors. The most important in extent of territory, number of speakers, or the cultural importance of the nations adhering to them, are, in North America, Eskimo, Athabascan, Algonkin, Iroquoian, Muskogean, Siouan, Uto- Aztecan, Maya ; and in South America, Chibcha, Quechua, Aymara, Araucanian, Arawak, Carib, Tupi, Tapuya. It will be seen on the maps (Figs. 14, 15) that these sixteen groups held the greater part of the area of the double continent, the remain¬ ing smaller areas being crowded with about ten times as many stocks. Obviously, as in New Guinea, there cannot well have been such an original multiplicity; in fact, recent studies are tending to consolidate the hundred and fifty New World families into considerably fewer groups. But the evidence for such re¬ ductions is necessarily difficult to bring and much of it is still incomplete. The stocks mentioned above have been long deter¬ mined and generally accepted. About a third of humanity to-day speaks some form of Indo- European. A quarter talks some dialect of Sinitic stock. Semitic, Dravidian, Ural-Altaic, Japanese, Malayo-Polynesian, Bantu have each from about fifty to a hundred million speakers. The languages included in these eight families form the speech of approximately ninety per cent of living human beings. 51. Classification of Languages by Types A classification is widely prevalent which puts languages according to their structure into three types : inflective, agglu¬ tinating, and isolating. To this some add a fourth type, the polysynthetic or incorporating. While the classification is largely misrepresentative, it enters so abundantly into current thought about human speech that it is worth presenting, analyz¬ ing, and, so far as it is invalid, refuting. An inflecting language expresses relations or grammatical form by adding prefixes or suffixes which cannot stand alone, Fig. 15. Some important linguistic families of South America: 1, Arawak; 2, Carib; 3, Tapuya; 4, Tupi; 5, Araucanian; 6, Ayrnara; 7, Quechua (Inca) ; 8, Chibcha. The white areas are occupied by about seventy smaller families, according to the usually accepted classification. (Based on Chamberlain.) 102 ANTHROPOLOGY or if they stood alone would mean nothing; or that operates by internal modifications of the stem, which also can have no inde¬ pendent existence. The -ing of killing is such an inflection; so are the vowel changes and the ending -en in the conjugation write, wrote, written. An isolating language expresses such relations or forms by separate words or isolated particles. English heart of man is isolating, where the Latin equivalent cor hominis is inflective, the per se meaningless suffix -is rendering the genitive or pos¬ sessive force of the English word of. An agglutinative language glues together into solid words ele¬ ments for which a definite meaning of their own can be traced. English does not use this mechanism for purposes that are ordi¬ narily reckoned as strictly grammatical, but does employ it for closely related purposes. TJnder-take, rest-less, are examples; and in a form like light-ly, which goes back to light-like, the force of the suffix which converts the adjective into the adverb is of a kind that in descriptions of most languages would be considered grammatical or formal. Polysynthetic languages are agglutinative ones carried to a high pitch, or those that can compound words into equivalents of fair sized sentences. St eam-b oat-prop eller-blacte might be called a polysynthetic form if we spoke or wrote it in one word as modern German and ancient Greek would. Incorporating languages embody the object noun, or the pro¬ noun representing it, into the word that contains the verb stem. This construction is totally foreign to English.1 Each of these classes evidently defines one or more distinctive linguistic processes. There are different mechanisms at work in kill-ing, of man, light-ly. The distinction is therefore both valid and valuable. Its abuse lies in trying to slap the label of one type on a whole language. The instances given show that Eng¬ lish employs most of the several distinct processes. Obviously 1 Noun incorporation is really an etymological process rather than a grammatical one. In most cases it is the result of a language permitting compounds of nouns with verbs, or verbs with verbs, to form verbs: “to rabbit-kill/' “to run-kill,” and so on. This construction, which is perfectly natural and logical, happens to be so alien to the genius of the Indo- European languages that it has been singled out as far more notable and significant than it deserves. Pronominal incorporation is discussed below (§60), LANGUAGE 103 it would be arbitrary to classify English as outright of one type. This is also the situation for most other languages. There are a few languages that tend prevailingly in one direction or the other: Sanskrit and Latin and Hebrew toward the inflective structure, Turkish toward the agglutinative, Chinese toward the isolating. But they form a small minority, and most of them contain certain processes of types other than their predominat¬ ing ones. Sanskrit, for instance, has polysynthetic traits, He¬ brew incorporating ones. Therefore, so long as these concepts are used to picture a language in detail, with balanced recogni¬ tion of the different processes employed by it, they are valuable tools to philological description. When on the other hand the concepts are degraded into catchwords designating three or four compartments into one of which every language is somehow to be stuffed, they grossly misrepresent most of the facts. The concepts, in short, apply usefully to types of linguistic processes, inadequately to types of languages. Why then has the classification of human languages into in¬ flecting, agglutinating, isolating, and polysynthetic or incorpo¬ rating ones been repeated so often? First of all, because lan¬ guages vary almost infinitely, and a true or natural classifica¬ tion, other than the genetic one into families, is intricate. The mind craves simplicity and the three or four supposedly all- embracing types are a temptation. A second reason lies deeper. As philology grew up into a systematic body of knowledge, it centered its first interests on Latin and Greek, then on Sanskrit and the other older Indo- European languages. These happened to have inflective proc¬ esses unusually well developed. They also happened to be the languages from which the native speech of the philologists was derived. What is our own seems good to us ; consequently Indo- European was elevated into the highest or inflective class of lan¬ guages. As a sort of after-thought, Semitic, which includes Hebrew, the language of part of our Scriptures, was included. Then Chinese, which follows an unusually simple plan of struc¬ ture that is the opposite in many ways of the complex structure of old Indo-European, and which was the speech of a civilized people, was set apart as a class of the second rank. This left the majority of human languages to be dumped into a third 104 ANTHROPOLOGY class, or a third and fourth class, with the pleasing implication that they were less capable of abstraction, more materialistic, cruder, and generally inferior. Philologists are customarily regarded as extreme examples of passionless, dry, objective human beings. The history of this philological classification indicates that they too are influenced by emotional and self- complacent impulses. 52. Permanence of Language and Race It is sometimes thought because a new language is readily learned, especially in youth, that language is a relatively un¬ stable factor in human history, less permanent than race. It is necessary to guard against two fallacies in this connection. The first is to argue from individuals to societies ; the second, that because change is possible, it takes place. As a matter of fact, languages often preserve their existence, and even their territory, with surprising tenacity in the face of conquest, new religions and culture, and the economic disad¬ vantages of unintelligibility. To-day, Breton, a Keltic dialect, maintains itself in Prance as the every-day language of the people in the isolated province of Brittany — a sort of philo¬ logical fossil. It has withstood the influence of two thousand years of contact, first with Latin, then with Prankish German, at last with French. Its Welsh sister-tongue flourishes in spite of the Anglo-Saxon speech of the remainder of Great Britain. The original inhabitants of Spain were mostly of non-Aryan stock. Keltic, Roman, and Gothic invasions have successively swept over them and finally left the language of the country Romance, but the original speech also survives the vicissitudes of thousands of years and is still spoken in the western Pyrenees as Basque. Ancient Egypt was conquered by the Hyksos, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Macedonian, and the Roman, but whatever the official speech of the ruling class, the people con¬ tinued to speak Egyptian. Finally, the Arab came and brought with him a new religion, which entailed use of the Arabic lan¬ guage. Egypt has at last become Arabic-speaking, but until a century or two ago the Coptic language, the daughter of the ancient Egyptian tongue of five thousand years ago, was kept LANGUAGE 105 alive by the native Christians along the Nile, and even to-day it survives in ritual. The boundary between French on the one side and German, Dutch, and Flemish on the other, has been accurately known for over six hundred years. With all the wars and conquests back and forth across the speech line, endless political changes and cultural influences, this line has scarcely anywhere shifted more than a few dozen miles, and in places has not moved by a comfortable afternoon’s stroll. While populations can learn and unlearn languages, they tend to do so with reluctance and infinite slowness, especially while they remain in their inherited territories. Speech tends to be one of the most persistent ethnic characters. In general, where two populations mingle, the speech of the more numerous prevails, even if it be the subject nationality. A wide gap in culture may overcome the influence of the ma¬ jority, yet the speech of a culturally more active and advanced population ordinarily wrests permanent territory to itself slowly except where there is an actual crowding out or numerical swamping of the natives. This explains the numerous survivals and “islands” of speech: Keltic, Albanian, Basque, Caucasian, in Europe ; Dravidian and Kolarian in India ; Nahuatl and Maya and many others in modern Mexico; Quechua in Peru; Aymara in Bolivia; Tupi in Brazil. There are cases to the contrary, like the rapid spread of Latin in most of Gaul after Csesar’s conquest, but they seem exceptional. As to the relative permanence of race and speech, everything depends on the side from which the question is approached. From the point of view of hereditary strains, race must be the more conservative, because it can change rapidly only through admixture with another race, whereas a language may be com¬ pletely exchanged in a short time. From the point of view of history, however, which regards human actions within given ter¬ ritories, speech is often more stable. Wars or trade or migra¬ tion may bring one racial element after another into an area until the type has become altered or diluted, and yet the original language, or one directly descended from it, remains. The in¬ troduction of the negro from Africa to America illustrates this distinction. From the point of view of biology, the negro has at least partially preserved his type, although he has taken on a 106 ANTHROPOLOGY wholly new language. As a matter of history, the reverse is true : English continues to be the speech of the southern United States, whereas the population now consists of two races instead of one, and the negro element has been altered by the infusion of white blood. It is a fallacy to think, because one can learn French or become a Christian and yet is powerless to change his eye color or head shape, that language and culture are alto¬ gether less stable than race. Speech and culture have an exist¬ ence of their own, whose integrity does not depend on heredi¬ tary integrity. The two may move together or separately. 53. The Biological and Historical Nature of Language It is a truism, but one important never to forget in the study of man, that the faculty of speech is innate, but every language wholly acquired. Moreover, the environment of which lan¬ guages are the product is not a natural one, that is, geographic or climatic, but social. All words and speech forms that are learned — and they constitute almost the complete mass of lan¬ guage — are imitated directly from other human beings. Those new forms that from time to time come into use rest on existing speech material, are shaped according to tendencies already operative although perhaps more or less hidden, cannot gen¬ erally be attributed, as regards origin, or at least entire origin, to single individuals; in short, present a history similar to that of inventions and new institutions. Language thus is a super- organic product ; which of course does not contradict — in fact implies — that it rests on an organic basis. The “speech” of the animals other than man has something in common with human languages. It consists of sounds pro¬ duced by the body, accompanied by certain mental activities or conditions, and capable of arousing certain definite responses in other individuals of the species. It differs from human speech in several fundamental particulars. First of all, the cries and calls and murmurs of the brutes appear to be wholly instinctive. A fowl raised alone in an incubator will peep and crow or cluck as it will scratch and peck. A dog reared by a foster cat will bark, or growl, or whine, or yelp, when it has attained the requisite age, and on application of the proper stimulus, as he LANGUAGE 107 will wag or crouch or hunt or dig, and no differently from the dog brought up in association with other dogs. By contrast, the Japanese infant turned over to American foster parents never utters or knows a single Japanese word, learns only English, and learns that as well as do his Caucasian step-brothers. Evi¬ dently then, animal speech is to all intents wholly organic and not at all “social” in the sense of being superorganic. If this summary is not absolutely exact, it departs from the truth only infinitesimally. Further, animal speech has no “meaning,” does not serve as a vehicle of “communication.” The opposite is often assumed popularly, because we anthropomorphize. If it is said that a dog’s growl “means” anger, and that his bark “communicates” suspicion or excitement to his fellows, the words are used in a sense different from their significance when we say that the term red “means” the color at one end of the spectrum, or that a message of departure “communicates” information. The ani¬ mal sounds convey knowledge only of subjective states. They “impart” the fact that the utterer feels anger, excitement, fear, pain, contentment, or some other affect. They are immediate reflex responses to a feeling. They may be “understood” in the sense that a sympathetic feeling is evoked or at any rate mo¬ bilized; and thereby they may lead or tend to lead to action by the hearers. In the same way, any man instinctively “under¬ stands” the moan of a fellow human being. But the moan does not tell whether the pain is of a second’s or a week’s duration, due to a blow or to gas in the bowel, to an ulcerated tooth or to mental anguish. There is no communication of anything objective, of ideas as distinct from feelings, as when we say red or break or up or water. Not one of these simple concepts can be communicated as such by any brute speech. One consequence is the ‘ ‘ arbitrariness ’ ’ of human speech. Why should the sound-cluster red denote that particular color rather than green? Why does the same word often designate quite distinct ideas in different languages — the approximate sound group lay meaning ‘ ‘ milk ’ ’ in French ; lass ‘ ‘ a girl ’ ’ in English, “tired” in French, “allow” in German? Such facts are physiologically arbitrary; just as it is physiologically arbi¬ trary and organically meaningless that Americans live in a 108 ANTHROPOLOGY republic and Britons under a monarchy, or that they turn re¬ spectively to the right and left on the road. Phenomena like these have other social, cultural, or superorganic phenomena as their immediate causes or antecedents. In the light of such antecedents, viewed on the level of history, these phenomena are intelligible : we know why the United States is a republic, we can trace the development of words like lay and lass. It is only from the biological plane that such facts seem insignificant or arbitrary. 54. Problems of the Relation of Language and Culture This association of language and civilization, or let us say the linguistic and non-linguistic constituents of culture, brings up the problem whether it would be possible for one to exist with¬ out the other. Actually, of course, no such case is known. Speculatively, different conclusions might be reached. It is dif¬ ficult to imagine any generalized thinking taking place without words or symbols derived from words. Religious beliefs and certain phases of social organization also seem dependent on speech : caste ranking, marriage regulations, kinship recognition, law, and the like. On the other hand, it is conceivable that a considerable series of inventions might be made, and the applied arts might be developed in a fair measure by imitation, among a speechless people. Finally there seems no reason why certain elements of culture, such as music, should not flourish as suc¬ cessfully in a society without as with language. For the converse, a cultureless species of animal might con¬ ceivably develop and use a form of true speech. Such com¬ munications as “The river is rising,” “Bite it off,” “What do you find inside?” would be within the range of thought of such a species. Why then have even the most intelligent of the brutes failed to develop a language? Possibly because such a language would lack a definite survival value for the species, in the absence of accompanying culture. On the whole, however, it would seem that language and cul¬ ture rest, in a way which is not yet fully understood, on the same set of faculties, and that these, for some reason that is still more obscure, developed in the ancestors of man, while LANGUAGE 109 remaining in abeyance in other species. Even the anthropoid apes seem virtually devoid of the impulse to communicate, in spite of freely expressing their affective states of mind by voice, facial gesture, and bodily movement. The most responsive to man of all species, the dog, learns to accept a considerable stock of culture in the sense of fitting himself to it : he develops con¬ science and manners, for example. Yet, however highly bred, he does not hand on his accomplishments to his progeny, who again depend on their human masters for what they acquire. A group of the best reared dogs left to themselves for a few years would lose all their politeness and revert to the pre¬ domestic habits of their species. In short, the culture impulse is lacking in the dog except so far as it is instilled by man ; and in most animals it can notoriously be instilled only to a very limited degree. In the same way, the impulse toward com¬ munication can be said to be wanting. A dog may understand a hundred words of command and express in his behavior fifty shades of emotion ; only rarely does he seem to try to com¬ municate information of objective fact. Very likely we are attributing to him even in these rare cases the impulse which wTe should feel. In the event of a member of the family being injured or lost, it is certain that a good dog expresses his agita¬ tion, uneasiness, disturbed attachment; but much less certain is it that he intends to summon help, as we spontaneously incline to believe because such summoning would be our own reaction to the situation. The history and causes of the development in incipient man of the group of traits that may be called the faculties for speech and civilization remain one of the darkest areas in the field of knowledge. It is plain that these faculties lie essentially in the sphere of what is ordinarily called the mind, rather than in the body, since men and the apes are far more similar in their general physiques than they are in the degree of their ability to use their physiques for non-physiological purposes. Or, if this antithesis of physical and mental seem unfortunate, it might be said that the growth of the faculties for speech and culture was connected more with special developments of the central nervous system than with those of the remainder of the body. 110 ANTHROPOLOGY 55. Period of the Origin of Language Is, then, human language as old as culture ? It is dif¬ ficult to be positive, because words perish like beliefs and insti¬ tutions, whereas stone tools endure as direct evidence. On the whole, however, it would appear that the first rudiments of what deserves to be called language are about as ancient as the first culture manifestations, not only because of the theoretically close association of the two phases, but in the light of circum¬ stantial testimony, namely the skull interiors of fossil men. In Piltdown as well as Neandertal man, those brain cortex areas in which the nervous activities connected with auditory and motor speech are most centralized in modern man, are fairly well developed, as shown by casts of the skull interiors, which con¬ form closely to the brain surface. The general frontal region, the largest area of the cortex believed to be devoted to associa¬ tive functions — in loose parlance, to thought — is also greater than in any known ape. More than one authority has therefore felt justified in attributing speech to the ancestors of man that lived well back in the Pleistocene. The lower jaws of Piltdown and in a measure of Heidelberg man, it is true, are narrow and chinless, thus leaving somewhat less free play to the tongue than living human races enjoy. But this factor is probably of less importance than the one of mental facultative development. The parrot is lipless and yet can reproduce the sounds of human speech. What he lacks is language faculty; and this, it seems, fossil man already had in some measure. 56. Culture, Speech, and Nationality This point of view raises the question whether one ought to speak of language and culture or rather of language as a part of culture. So far as the process of their transmission is con¬ cerned, and the type of mechanism of their development, it is clear that language and culture are one. For practical pur¬ poses it is generally convenient to keep them distinct. There is no doubt that two peoples can share in what is substantially the same culture and yet speak fundamentally different idioms ; for instance, the Finno-Ugric Magyars or Hungarians among LANGUAGE ill the adjacent Slavs, Germans, and Latins of central Europe, who are all Indo-Europeans. The other way around, the northern Hindus and west Europeans are certainly different culturally, yet their languages go back to a common origin. In fact it has become a commonplace that thq arguing of connection between the three factors of race, language, and culture (or nationality), the making of inferences from one to the other, is logically un¬ sound (§ 33). One can no more think correctly in terms of Aryan heads or a Semitic race, for instance, than of blond lin¬ guistic types, Catholic physiques, or inflecting social institutions. At the same time, speech and culture tend to form something of a unit as opposed to race. It is possible for a population to substitute a wholly new language and type of civilization for the old ones, as the American negro has done, and yet to remain relatively unmodified racially, or at least to carry on its former physical type unchanged in a large proportion of its members. On the other hand, a change of speech without some change of culture seems impossible. Certainly wherever Greek, Latin, Spanish, English, Arabic, Pali, Chinese have penetrated, there have been established new phases of civilization. In a lower degree, the same principle probably holds true of every gain of one language at the expense of another, even when the spread¬ ing idiom is not associated with a great or active culture. The linkage of speech and culture is further perceptible in the degree to which they both contribute, in most cases, to the idea of nationality. What chiefly marks off the French nation from the Italian, the Dutch from the German, the Swedish from the Norwegian — their respective customs and ideals, or the lan¬ guage gap? It would be difficult to say. The cultural differ¬ ences tend to crystallize around language differences, and then in turn are reinforced by language, so that the two factors interact complexly. Nationality, especially in its modern de¬ velopments, includes another factor, that of social or political segregation, which may in some degree run counter to both speech and culture. Switzerland with its German, French, and Italian speaking population, or Belgium, almost equally divided between Flemings and Walloons, are striking examples. Yet however successfully Switzerland and Belgium maintain their national unity, it is clear that this is a composite of subnational 112 ANTHROPOLOGY elements, each of which possesses a certain cultural as well as linguistic distinctness. Thus the Walloon speaks a French dia¬ lect, the Fleming a Dutch one ; and the point of view, tempera¬ ment, historic antecedents, and minor customs of the two groups are perceptibly different. Similarly, both the history and the outlook and therefore the culture of the French and German cantons of Switzerland are definitely distinguishable. 57. Relative Worth of Languages One respect in which languages differ from cultures is that they cannot, like the latter, be rated as higher and lower. Of course, even as regards culture, such rating is often a dubious procedure, meaning little more than that the person making the comparison assumes his own culture to be the highest and esti¬ mates other cultures low in proportion as they vary. Although this is a subjective and uncritical procedure, nevertheless cer¬ tain objective comparisons are possible. Some cultures surpass others in their quantitative content: they possess more different arts, abilities, and items of knowledge. Also, some culture traits may be considered intrinsically superior to others : metal tools against stone ones, for instance, since metal is adopted by all stone culture peoples who can secure it, whereas the reverse is not true. Further, in most -cases a new addition does not wholly obliterate an older element, this retaining a subsidiary place, or perhaps serving some more special function than before. In this way the culture becomes more differentiated. The old art may even attain a higher degree of perfection than it had pre¬ viously; as the finest polish was given to stone implements in northern Europe after bronze was known. In general, accre¬ tion is the process typical of culture growth. Older elements come to function in a more limited sphere as new ones are added, but are not extirpated by them. Oars and sails remain as con¬ stituent parts of the stock of civilization after it has added steam and motor boats. In the senses then that a culture has a larger content of elements, that these elements are more differentiated, and that a greater proportion of these elements are of the kind that inherently tend to supersede related elements, the culture may be considered superior. LANGUAGE 113 As regards languages, there are also quantitative differences. Some contain several times as many words as others. But vocabulary is largely a cultural matter. A people that uses more materials, manufactures more objects, possesses knowledge of a larger array of facts, and makes finer discriminations in thought, must inevitably have more words. Yet even notable increases in size of speech content appear not to be accompanied by appreciable changes in form. A larger vocabulary does not mean a different type of structure. Grammar seems to be little influenced by culture status. No clear correspondence has yet been traceable between type or degree of civilization and type of language. Neither the presence nor the absence of particular features of tense, number, case, reduplication, or the like seems ever to have been of demonstrable advantage toward the attain¬ ment of higher culture. The speech of the former and modern nations most active in the propagation of culture has been of quite diverse type. The languages of the Egyptians (Hamitic) ; Sumerians; Babylonians and Arabs (Semitic); Hindus and Greeks (ancient Indo-European) ; Anglo-Saxons (modern Indo- European) ; Chinese; and Mayas, are about as different as exist. The Sumerian type of civilization was taken over bodily and successfully by the Semitic Babylonians. The bulk of Japanese culture is Chinese; yet Japanese speech is built on wholly dif¬ ferent principles. Then, it is impossible to rate one speech trait or type as in¬ herently or objectively superior to another on any basis like that which justifies the placing of a metal culture above a stone culture. If wealth of grammatical apparatus is a criterion of superiority, Latin is a higher language than French, and Anglo- Saxon than English. But if lack of declensions and conjuga¬ tions is a virtue, then Chinese surpasses English almost as much as English surpasses Latin. There is no reason favoring one of these possible judgments rather than its opposite. Amabo is no better or worse than I shall love as a means of expressing the same idea. The one is more compact, the other more plastic. There are times when compactness is a virtue, occasions when plasticity has advantages. By the Latin or synthetic standard, the English expression is loose jointed, lacking in structure; by the English or analytic standard, the Latin form is over-con- 114 ANTHROPOLOGY densed, adhering unnecessarily to form. One cannot similarly balance the merits of a steel and a flint knife, of a medical and a shamanistic phase of society. The one cuts or cures better than the other. So, from the point of view of civilization, language does not matter. Language will always keep up with whatever pace cul¬ ture sets it. If a new object is invented or a new distinction of thought made, a word is coined or imported or modified in meaning to express the new concept. If a thousand or ten thousand new words are required, they are developed. When it desires to express abstractions like futurity or plurality, any language is capable of doing so, even if it does not habitually express them. If a language is unprovided with formal means for the purpose, such as a grammatical suffix, it falls back on content and uses a word or circumlocution. If the life of a people changes and comes to be conducted along lines that render it frequently important to express an idea like futurity to which previously little attention has been paid, the appropriate cir¬ cumlocution soon becomes standardized, conveniently brief, and unambiguous. In general, every language is capable of indefi¬ nite modification and expansion and thereby is enabled to meet cultural demands almost at once. This is shown by the fact that virtually anything spoken or written can be translated into almost every other language without serious impairment of sub¬ stance. The aesthetic charm of the original may be lost in the translation; the new forms coined in the receiving language are likely at first to seem awkward; but the meaning, the business of speech, gets expressed. 58. Size of Vocabulary The tendency is so instinctive in us to presuppose and there¬ fore to find qualities of inferiority, poverty, or incompleteness in the speech of populations of more backward culture than our own, that a widespread, though unfounded, belief has grown up that the languages of savages and barbarians are extremely limited quantitatively — in the range of their vocabulary. Similar misconceptions are current as to the number of words actually used by single individuals of civilized communities. It is true LANGUAGE 115 that no one, not even the most learned and prolific writer, uses all the words of the English language as they are found in an unabridged dictionary. All of us understand many words which we habitually encounter in reading and may even hear fre¬ quently spoken, but of which our utterance faculties for some reason have not made us master. In short, a language, being the property and product of a community, possesses more words than can ever be used by a single individual, the sum total of whose ideas is necessarily less than that of his group. Added to this are a certain mental sluggishness, which restricts most of us to a greater or less degree, and the force of habit. Having spoken a certain word a number of times, our brain becomes accustomed to it and we are likely to employ it to the exclusion of its synonyms or in place of words of related but distinguish¬ able meaning. The degree to which all this affects the speech of the normal man has, however, been greatly exaggerated. Because there are, all told, including technical terms, a hundred thousand or more words in our dictionaries, and because Shakespeare in his writ¬ ings used 24,000 different words, Milton in his poems 17,000, and the English Bible contains 7,200, it has been concluded that the average man, whose range of thought and power of expres¬ sion are so much less, must use an enormously smaller vocabu¬ lary. It has been stated that many a peasant goes through life without using more than 300 or 400 words, that the vocabulary of Italian grand opera is about 600, and that he is a person above the average who employs more than 3,000 to 4,000 words. If such were the case it would be natural that the uncivilized man, whose life is simpler, and whose knowledge more confined, should be content with an exceedingly small vocabulary. But it is certain that the figures just cited are erroneous. If any one who considers himself an average person will take the trouble to make a list of his speaking vocabulary, he will quickly discover that he knows, and on occasion uses, the names of at least one to two thousand different things. That is, his vocabu¬ lary contains so many concrete nouns. To these must be added the abstract nouns, the verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and the other parts of speech, the short and familiar words that are indispensable to communication in any language. It may thus 116 ANTHROPOLOGY be safely estimated that it is an exceptionally ignorant and stupid person in a civilized country that has not at his command a vocabulary of several thousand words. Test counts based on dictionaries show, for people of bookish tastes, a knowledge of about 30,000 to 35,000 words. Most of these would perhaps never be spoken by the individuals tested, would not be at their actual command, but it seems that at least 10,000 would be so controlled. The carefully counted vocabulary of a five and a half year old American boy comprised 1,528 understanding^ used words, besides participles and other in¬ flected forms. Two boys between two and three years used 642 and 677 different words. It is therefore likely that statements as to the paucity of the speech of unlettered peoples are equally exaggerated. He who professes to declare on the strength of his observation that a native language consists of only a few hundred terms, displays chiefly his ignorance. He has either not taken the trouble to exhaust the vocabulary or has not known how to do so. It is true that the traveler or settler can usually converse with natives to the satisfaction of his own needs with two or three hundred words. Even the missionary can do a great deal with this stock, if it is properly chosen. But it does not follow that because a civilized person has not learned more of a language, that there is no more. On this point the testimony of the student is the evidence to be considered. Dictionaries compiled by missionaries or philologists of lan¬ guages previously unwritten run to surprising figures. Thus, the number of words recorded in Klamath, the speech of a cul¬ turally rude American Indian tribe, is 7,000; in Navaho, 11,000; in Zulu, 17,000 ; in Dakota, 19,000 ; in Maya, 20,000 ; in Nahuatl, 27,000. It may safely be said that every existing lan¬ guage, no matter how backward its speakers are in their general civilization, possesses a vocabulary of at least 5,000 words. 59. Quality of Speech Sounds Another mistaken assumption that is frequently made is that the speech of non-literary peoples is harsh, its pronunciation more difficult than ours. This belief is purely subjective. When LANGUAGE 117 one has heard and uttered a language all his life, its sounds come to one ’s mouth with a minimum of effort ; but unfamiliar vowels and consonants are formed awkwardly and inaccurately. No adult reared in an Anglo-Saxon community finds th difficult. Nor does a French or German child, whose speech habits are still plastic, find long difficulty in mastering the particular tongue control necessary to the production of the th sound. But the adult Frenchman or German, whose muscular habits have settled in other lines, tries and tries and falls back on s or t. A Spaniard, however, would agree with the Anglo-Saxon as to the ease and “ naturalness 7 9 of th. Conversely, the “ rough” ch flows spontaneously out of the mouth of a German or Scotchman, whereas English, French, and Italians have to struggle long to master it, and are tempted to substitute k. German d and French u trouble us, our “short” u is equally resistant to Con¬ tinental tongues. Even a novel position can make a familiar sound strange and forbidding. Most Anglo-Saxons fail on the first try to say ngis; many give up and declare it beyond their capacity to learn. Yet it is only sing pronounced backward. English uses ng finally and medially in words, not initially. Any English speaker can quickly acquire its use in the new position if, to keep from being disconcerted, he follows some such sequence as sing, singing, stinging, ringing, inging, nging, ngis. So with surd l — Welsh ll — which is ordinary l minus the accompaniment of vocal cord vibrations. A little practice makes possible the throwing on or off of these vibrations, the “voicing” of speech, for any sound, with as much ease as one would turn a faucet on or off. Surd l thereupon flows with the same readiness as sonant l. As a matter of fact we often pro¬ nounce it unconsciously at the end of words like little. When it comes at the beginning, however, as in the tribal name usually written Tlingit, Americans tend to substitute something more habitual, such as kl, which is familiar from clip, clean, clear, close , clam, and many other words. The simple surd l has even been repeatedly described quite inappropriately as a “click”; which is about as far from picturing it with correctness as call¬ ing it a thump or a sigh ; all because it comes in an unaccus¬ tomed position. 118 ANTHROPOLOGY Combinations of sounds, especially of consonants, are indeed of variable difficulty for anatomical reasons. Some, like nd and ts and pf, have their components telescope or join naturally through being formed in the same part of the mouth. Others, like kw ( qu ), have the two elements articulated widely apart, but for that reason the elements can easily be formed simul¬ taneously. Still others, like kt and ths, are intrinsically diffi¬ cult, because the elements differ in place of production but are alike in method, and therefore come under the operation of the generic rule that similar sounds require more effort to join and yet discriminate than dissimilar ones ; for much the same reason that it is on the whole easier to acquire the pronounciation of a wholly new type of sound than of one which differs subtly from one already known. Yet in these matters too, habit rather than anatomical functioning determines the reaction. German pf comes hard to adult Anglo-Saxons, English kw and ths to Ger¬ mans. So far as degree of accumulation of consonants is con¬ cerned, English is one of the extremest of all languages. Mono¬ syllables like tract , stripped ( stripd ), sixths ( siksths ), must seem irremediably hard to most speakers of other idioms. Children’s speech in all languages shows that certain sounds are, as a rule, learned earlier than others, and are therefore pre¬ sumably somewhat easier physiologically. Sounds like p and t which are formed with the mobile lips and front of the tongue normally precede back tongue sounds like k. B, d, g, which are voiced like vowels, tend to precede voiceless p , t, k. Stops or momentary sounds, such as b , d, g, p, t , k , generally come earlier than the fricative continuants f, v, th, s, z, which require a deli¬ cate adjustment of lip or tongue — close proximity without firm contact — whereas the stops involve only a making and breaking of jerky contact. But so slight are the differences of effort or skill in all these cases, that as a rule only a few months separate the learning of the easier from that of the more difficult sounds ; and adults no longer feel the differences. The only sound or class of sounds seriously harder than others seems to be that denoted by the letter r. Not only do children usually acquire r late, but among all races there appears to be a certain percen¬ tage of individuals who never learn to form the sound right, but substitute one approaching g or w or j or l. The reason is that LANGUAGE 119 r stands alone among speech sounds. It is the only one pro¬ duced by blowing the tongue into a few gross vibrations ; which means that this organ must be held in a special condition of laxness and yet elevated so that the flow of breath may bear on it. However, even this inherent difficulty has been insuffi¬ cient to prevent many languages from changing easier sounds into r. 60. Diffusion and Parallelism in Language and Culture A phenomenon which language shows more conspicuously than culture, or which is more readily demonstrated in it, is parallel or convergent development, the repeated, independent growth of a trait (§89, 100). Thus sex gender is an old part of Indo-European structure. In English, by the way, it has wholly disappeared, so far as formal expression goes, from noun, adjective, and demonstrative and interrogative pronoun. It lingers only in the personal pro¬ noun of the third person singular — he, she , it. A grammar of living English that was genuinely practical and unbound by tradition would never mention gender except in discussing these three little words. That our grammars specify man as a mas¬ culine and woman as a feminine noun is due merely to the fact that in Latin the corresponding words vir and femina possess endings which are recognized as generally masculine and femi¬ nine, and that an associated adjective ends respectively in mas¬ culine - us or feminine -a. These are distinctions of form of which English possesses no equivalents. The survival of dis¬ tinction between he, she, and it, while this and the and which have become alike irrespective of the sex of the person or thing they denote, is therefore historically significant. It points back to the past and to surviving Indo-European languages. Besides, Indo-European, Semitic and Hamitic express sex by grammatical forms, although like French and Spanish and Italian, they know only two genders, the neuter being unrep¬ resented. These three are the only large language stocks in which sex gender finds expression. Ural-Altaic, Chinese, Japa¬ nese, Dravidian, Malayo-Polynesian, Bantu, and in general the language families of Asia, Africa, and America do without, 120 ANTHROPOLOGY although a number of languages make other gender classifica¬ tions, as of animate and inanimate, personal and impersonal, superior and inferior, intelligent and unintelligent. Sex gender however reappears in Hottentot of South Africa, and in the Chinook and Coast Salish and Porno languages of the Pacific coast of North America. How is this distribution to be accounted for ? Indo-European, Semitic, and Hamitic occupy contiguous territory, in fact sur¬ round the Mediterranean over a tract approximately co-extensive with the Caucasian area. Could they in the remote past have influenced one another? That is, could grammatical sex gender have been invented, so to speak, by one of them, and borrowed by the others, as we know that cultural inventions are constantly diffused ? Few philologists would grant this as likely : there are too few authenticated cases of formal elements or concepts having been disseminated between unrelated languages. Is it then possible that our three stocks are at bottom related? Sex gender in that case would be part of their common inheritance. For Semitic and Hamitic a number of specialists have accepted a common origin on other grounds. But for Semitic and Indo- European, philologists, who are professionally exacting, are in the main quite dubious. Positive evidence seems yet to be lacking. Still, the territorial continuity of the three speech groups showing the trait is difficult to accept as mere coinci¬ dence. In a parallel case in the realm of culture history, a common source would be accepted as highly probable. Even Hottentot has been considered a remote Semitic-Hamitic off¬ shoot, largely, it is true, because of the very fact that it ex¬ presses gender. Philologists, accordingly, may consider the case still open; but it is at least conceivable that the phenome¬ non goes back to a single origin in these four Old World stocks. Yet no stretch will account for sex gender in the three • American languages as due to contact influence or diffusion, nor relate these tongues to the Old World ones. Clearly here is a case of independent origin or parallel “invention.” Chinook and Coast Salish, indeed, are in contiguity, and one may there¬ fore have taken up the trait in imitation of the other. But Porno lies well to the south and its affiliations run still farther LANGUAGE 121 south. Here sex gender is obviously an independent, secondary, and rather recent growth in the grammar. In short, it remains doubtful whether sex gender originated three or four or five or six times among these seven language stocks ; but it evidently originated repeatedly. Other traits crop out the world over in much the same man¬ ner. A dual, for instance, is found in Indo-European, Malayo- Polynesian, Eskimo, and a number of other American languages. The distinction between inclusive and exclusive ive — you and I as opposed to lie and I — is made in Malayo-Polynesian, Hot¬ tentot, Iroquois, Uto-Aztecan. A true nominative case-ending, such as Latin and the other varieties of Indo-European evince, is an exceedingly specialized formation ; yet is found in the Maidu language of California. Articles, in regard to which Indo-European . varies, Latin for instance being without, while its Romance daughter tongues have developed them, recur in Semitic, in Polynesian, and in several groups of American languages, such as Siouan and Hokan. The growth in Romance is significant because of its historicity, and because it was surely not due to imitation of an unrelated language. That is, French developed its articles inde¬ pendently and secondarily; a fact that makes it probable that many languages in other parts of the world, whose history we do not know, developed theirs in a parallel manner, as a product of wholly internal causes — “invented” them, in short, although wholly unconsciously. A trait found in a large proportion of the American lan¬ guages is the so-called incorporation of the object pronoun (§51). The objective pronoun, or an element representing it, is prefixed or suffixed to the verb, made a part of it. The process is familiar enough to us from Indo-European so far as the sub¬ ject is concerned: in Latin ama-s, ama-t, ama-nt, the suffixes express “you, he, they” and pronouns comparable to the Eng¬ lish ones — independent words — are usually omitted. The -s in he love-s is the sole survival of the process in modern English. None of the older Indo-European tongues however showed an inclination to affix similar elements for the objects, although there are some approaches in a few recent languages of the family: Spanish diga-me, “tell me,” and ((mata-le, “kill him,” 122 ANTHROPOLOGY for instance. Semitic on the other hand, and Basque, do “ in¬ corporate ” objective elements, whereas most Asiatic and some American languages do not. Many other instances of parallel or convergent traits could be cited. This greater frequency of parallel developments in language than in culture is perhaps in part due to easier demonstrability in the field of speech. But in the main the higher frequency seems real. Two reasons for the difference suggest themselves. First, the number of possibilities is small in language, so far as structure is concerned. The categories or concepts used for classifying and for the indication of relations are rigorously limited, and so are the means of expression. The distinctions expressed by gender, for instance, may refer to sex, animateness, personality, worth, shape, position, or possibly one or two other qualities; but there they end. If a language recognizes gender at all, it must have gender of one of these few types. Conse¬ quently there is some probability of several unconnected lan¬ guages sooner or later happening upon the same type of gender. Similarly, for the kinds of number, and of case, and so on, that are denotable. These larger categories, like gender and number and case, are not numerous. Then, the means of expressing such relational and classificatory concepts are limited. There is position or relative order of words ; compounding of them ; accretions of elements to stems, namely prefixes, infixes, and suffixes; reduplication, the repetition of part or the whole of words ; internal changes by shift of vowel or accent within words ; and therewith the types of grammatical means are about exhausted. The number of possible choices is so small that the law of accidental probability must cause many languages to hit upon the same devices. A second reason for the greater frequency of parallelism in language is that structural traits appear to resist diffusion by imitation to a considerable degree. Words are borrowed, some¬ times freely, almost always to some degree, between contiguous languages ; sounds considerably less ; grammar least of all. That is, linguistic content lends itself to diffusion readily, linguistic form with difficulty. At bottom, the same holds of culture. Specific elements of culture or groups of such elements diffuse very widely at times LANGUAGE 123 and may be said to be always tending to diffuse : the wheel, for instance, smelting of metals, the crown as a symbol of royalty, the swastika, Buddhism. The relations of elements among themselves, on the other hand, change by internal growth rather than external imitation. Of this sort are the relations of the classes and members of societies, the fervor with which religion is felt, the esteem accorded to learning or wealth or tradition, the inclination toward this or that avenue of subsistence or economic development. By conquest or peaceful pressure or penetration one people may shatter the political structure or social fabric of another, may undermine its conservatism, may swerve its economic habits. But it is difficult to find cases of one people adopting such tendencies or schemes of cultural organization in mere imitation of the example of another, as it will adopt specific culture content — the wheel or crown or Bud¬ dhism, for instance — from outside, often readily. The result is that culture relations or forms develop spontaneously or from within rather than as a result of direct taking over. Also, the types of culture forms being limited in number, the same type is frequently evolved independently. Thus monarchical and democratic societies, feudal or caste-divided ones, priest-ridden and relatively irreligious ones, expansive and mercantile or self- sufficient and agricultural nations, evolve over and over again. On the whole, comparative culture history more often deals with the specific contents of civilization, perhaps because events like the spread of an invention can be traced more definitely and exactly than the rather complex evolutions of say two feudal systems can be compared. The result is that diffusions seem to outweigh parallels; as is set forth in several of the chapters that follow this one (§105, 111, 127). In comparative linguistics, on the other hand, interest in¬ clines to the side of form rather than content; hence the paral¬ lelisms or convergences are conspicuous. If as much attention were generally given to words as to grammar, and if they could be traced in their prehistoric or unrecorded wanderings as re¬ liably as many culture traits have been, it is probable that dif¬ fusion would loom larger as a principle shaping human speech. There are words that have traveled almost as far as the objects they denote : tobacco and maize, for example. And the absorp- 124 ANTHROPOLOGY tion of words of Latin origin into English was as extensive as the absorption for over a thousand years of Latin, Christian, and Mediterranean culture by the English people — went on as its accompaniment and result. 61. Convergent Languages Parallel development in speech form is not restricted to traits like sex gender and object incorporation. It may affect whole languages. Chinese a long time ago became an extremely analytical or “isolating” language. That is, it lost all affixes and internal change. Each word became an unalterable unit. Sentences are built up by putting together these atoms. Gram¬ matical relations are expressed by the order of words: the sub¬ ject precedes the predicate, for instance. Other ideas that in many languages are treated formally, such as the plural or person, are expressed by content elements, that is, by other words : many for the plural, separate pronouns instead of affixes for person, and so on. The uniformly monosyllabic words of Chinese accentuate this isolating character, which however does not depend intrinsically upon the monosyllabism. In the Indo- European family, as already mentioned, there has been a drift in the same direction during the last two thousand years. This drift toward loss of formal mechanisms and toward the expres¬ sion of grammar by material elements or their position only, has been evident in all branches of Indo-European, but has been most marked in English. The chief remnants of the older in¬ flectional processes in spoken English of to-day are four verb endings, -s, -ed, -ing, - en ; three noun endings, the possessive -s and the plurals -s and -en, the latter rare ; the case ending -m in whom, them ; a few vowel changes for plurals, as in man — men, and goose — geese; and perhaps two hundred vowel changes in verbs, like sing, sang, sung. Compared with Latin, Sanskrit, or even primitive Germanic, this brief list represents a survival of possibly a tenth of the original synthetic inflectional appa¬ ratus. That is, English has gone approximately nine tenths of the way towards attaining a grammar of the Chinese type. A third language of independent origin, Polynesian, has traveled about the same distance in the same direction. Superficially it LANGUAGE 125 is less like Chinese in that it remains prevailingly polysyllabic, but more like it in having undergone heavy phonetic attrition. This then is a clear case of entire languages converging toward a similar type. Another instance is found in the remarkable resemblances in plan of structure of Indo-European, especially in its older forms, and of the Penutian group of languages in native Cali¬ fornia. Common to these two families are an apparatus of similar cases, including accusative, genitive, locative, ablative, instrumental; plural by suffix; vowel changes in the verb ac¬ cording to tense and mode ; a passive and several participles and modal forms expressed by suffixes; pronouns either separate or expressed by endings fused with the tense-modal suffixes. Thus, the processes which make English sing , sang , sung , song , or bind, bound, band, bond, are substantially identical with those which have produced in Penutian Yokuts such forms as shokud, pierce, shukid-ji, pierced, sliokod, perforation or hole, shikid, piercer or arrow. In short, most of the traits generally cited as constituting the Indo-European languages typically inflec¬ tional, reappear in Penutian, and of course independently as regards their origin and history. These would appear to be phenomena comparable to the growth of feudalism in China more than a thousand years earlier than in Europe, or the appearance of a great centrally governed empire in Peru similar to the ancient monarchies of the Orient. 62. Unconscious Factors in Language and Culture The unceasing processes of change in language are mainly unconscious. The results of the change may rise to the recog¬ nition of the speakers; the act of change, and especially its causes, happen without awareness of those through whose minds and mouths they take place. This holds of all departments of language : the phonetics, the structural form, largely even the meaning of words. When a change has begun to creep in, it may be observed and be consciously resisted on the ground of being incorrect or vulgar or foreign. But the underlying mo¬ tives of the objectors are apparently as unknown to themselves as the impulses of the innovators. 126 ANTHROPOLOGY If this view seem extreme, it can easily be shown that the great bulk of any language as it is, apart from any question of change, is employed unconsciously. An illiterate person will use such forms as child, child's, children, children’s with the same “correctness” as a philologist, yet without being able to give an explanation of the grammatical ideas of singularity and plurality, absoluteness and possession, or to lay down rules as to the manner of expression of these ideas in English. Gram¬ mar, in short, exists before grammarians, whose legitimate busi¬ ness is to uncover such rules as are already there. It is an obviously hasty thought that because grammar happens to be taught in schools, speech can be grammatical only through such formal teaching. The Sanskrit and Greek and Latin languages had their declensions and conjugations before Hindu and Greek and Roman scholars first analyzed and described them. The languages of primitive peoples frequently abound with compli¬ cated forms and mechanisms which are used consistently and applied without suspicion of their existence. It is much as the blood went round in our bodies quite healthily before Harvey’s discovery of its circulation. The quality of unconsciousness seems not to be a trait spe¬ cifically limited to linguistic causes and processes, but to hold in principle of culture generally. It is only that the uncon¬ sciousness pervades speech farther. A custom, a belief, an art, however deep down its springs, sooner or later rises into social consciousness. It then seems deliberate, planned, willed, and is construed as arising from conscious motives and developing through conscious channels. But many social phenomena can be led back only to non-rational and obscure motives: the wear¬ ing of silk hats, for instance. The whole class of changes in dress styles spring from unconscious causes. Sleeves and skirts lengthen or shorten, trousers flare or tighten, and who can say why? It is perhaps possible to trace a new fashion to Paris or London, and to a particular stratum of society there. But what is it that in the winter of a particular year makes every woman — or man — of a certain social group wear, let us say, a high collared coat, or a shoe that does not come above the ankle, and the next year, or the tenth after, the reverse? It is insuffi¬ cient to say that this is imitation of a leader of fashion, of a LANGUAGE 127 professional creator of style. Why does the group follow him and think the innovation attractive and correct ? A year earlier the same innovation would have appeared senseless or extrava¬ gant to the same group. A year after, it appeals as belated and ridiculous, and every one wonders that style was so tasteless so short a time ago. Evidently the aesthetic emotions evoked by fashions are largely beyond the control of both individuals and groups. It is difficult to say where the creative and imitative impulses of fashion come from ; which, inasmuch as the impulses obviously reside somewhere in human minds, means that they spring from the unconscious portions of the mind. Evidently then our justi¬ fication of the dress styles we happen at any time to be follow¬ ing, our pronouncing them artistic or comfortable or sensible or what not, is secondary. A low shoe may be more convenient than a high one, a brown one more practical than a black one. That that is not the reason which determines the wearing of low brown shoes when they are customarily worn, is shown by the fact that at other times high black ones are put on by every one. The reasons that can be and are given are so changeable and inconsistent that they evidently are not the real reasons, but the false secondary reasons that are best distinguished as rationaliza¬ tions. Excuses, we should call them with reference to individual conduct. What applies to fashion holds also of manners, of morals, and of many religious observances. Why we defer to women by rising in their presence and passing through a door behind them ; why we refrain from eating fish with a knife or drinking soup out of a two handled cup, though drinking it from a single handled one is legitimate ; why we do not marry close kin ; why we remove our hats in the presence of the deity or his emblems but would feel it impious to pull off our shoes ; all the thousands of prescriptions and taboos of which these are examples, possess an unconscious motivation. Such cases are also illustrations of what is known as the relativity of morals. The Jew sets his hat on to worship, the Oriental punctiliously slips out of his shoes. Some people forbid the marriage of the most remote relatives, others en¬ courage that of first cousins, still others permit the union of 128 ANTHROPOLOGY uncle and niece. It would seem that all social phenomena which can he brought under this principle of relativity of standard are unconsciously grounded. This in turn implies the uncon¬ scious causation of the mores, those products of the social en¬ vironment in which one is reared and which one accepts as the ultimate authority of conduct. As mores are those folkways or customs to which an emotional coloring has become attached, so that adherence to the custom or departure from it arouses a feeling respectively of approval or disapproval, it is evident that the origin of folkways generally is also unconscious, since there seems no reason why the emotions or ethical affect envelop¬ ing a customary action should incline more than the custom itself to spring up unconsciously. It has become recognized that the average man’s convictions on social matters remote from him are not developed through examination of evidence and exercise of reason, but are taken over, by means of what is sometimes denominated the “herd instinct,” from the society or period in which he happens to have been born and nurtured. His belief in democracy, in monotheism, in his right to charge profit and his freedom to change residence or occupation, have such origin. In many instances it is easy to render striking proof of the proposition : as in the problems of high tariff, or the Athanasian creed, or compulsory vaccination, which are so technical or intricate as to be impossible of independent solution by evidence and argu¬ ment by the majority of men. Time alone would forbid : we should starve while making the necessary research. And the difference between the average man’s attitude on such difficult points and the highly gifted individual’s attitude toward them or even toward simpler problems, would seem to be one of degree only. Even on the material sides of culture, unconscious motiva¬ tion plays a part. In the propulsion of ships, oars and sails fluctuated as the prevalent means down almost to the period of steam vessels. It would be impossible to say that one method was logically superior to the other, that it was recognized as such and then rationally adhered to. The history of warfare shows similar changes between throwing and thrusting spears, stabbing and hewing swords, light and heavy armor. The LANGUAGE 129 Greeks and Macedonians in the days of their military supe¬ riority lengthened their lances and held them. It no doubt seemed for a time that a definite superiority had been proved for this type of weapon over the shorter, hurled javelin. Then the Romans, as part of their legionary tactics, reverted to the javelin and broke the Macedonian phalanx with their pilum. But the Middle Ages again fell back on the thrusting lance. The Greeks successfully developed heavy armor, until Athenian light armed troops overcame Spartan lioplites. The Macedonians reintroduced heavy armament, which held sway in Europe until after the prevalence of firearms. But the last few years have brought the rebirth of the helmet. These fashions in tools and practical appliances do not alter as fast as modern dress styles, and part of their causes can often be recognized. Yet there seems no essential difference, as regards consciousness, between the fluctuation of fashions in weapons — or navigation or cooking or travel or house building — and, let us say, the fluctuation of mode between soft and stiff hats or high and low shoes. It may be admitted to have been the open array of the legion that led to the pilum ; the bullet that induced the abandonment of the breast plate, shrapnel that caused the reintroduction of the helmet. But these initiat¬ ing factors were not deliberate as regards the effects that came in their train; and in their turn they were the effects of more remote causes. The whole chain of development in such cases is devious, unforeseen, mainly unforeseeable. At most there is recognition of what is happening; in general the recognition seems to become full only after the change in tool or weapon or industrial process has become completed and is perhaps already being undermined once more. Of course purely stylistic alterations — and linguistic innova¬ tions — also possess their causes. When the derby hat or the pronoun thou becomes obsolete, there is a reason, whether or not we know it or do not see it clearly. The common causal element in all these changes may be called a shift in social values. Perhaps practical chemical experience has grown, and gunpowder explodes more satisfactorily; or an economic readjustment has made it possible to equip more sol¬ diers with guns. The first result is a greater frequency of 130 ANTHROPOLOGY bullet penetrations in battle; the next, the abandonment of the breast plate. Increasing wealth or schooling or city residence makes indiscriminate familiarity of manners seem less desirable than at an earlier period: brusque thou begins to yield to in¬ direct plural you. Or again, new verbs, all of regular conjuga¬ tion like love , loved, are formed in English or imported from French until their number outweighs that of the ancient ir¬ regular ones like sing, sang. A standardizing tendency is thereby set going — “analogizing” is the technical term of the philologist — which begins to turn irregular verbs into regular ones : dived replaces dove, just as lenger becomes longer, and toon becomes toes. There is the same sort of causality in one of these phenomena as in another. The individual or community that leaves off the breast plate or stiff hat is more likely to be aware that it is performing the act than the one that leaves off saying toon or thou. But it does not seem that there is an essential difference of process. Linguistic and aesthetic changes are most fully unconscious, social ones next, material and eco¬ nomic ones perhaps least. But in all cases change or innova¬ tion is due to a shift of values that are broader than the single phenomenon in question, and that are held to impulsively in¬ stead of reasonably. That is why all social creations — institu¬ tions, beliefs, codes, styles, speech forms — prove on impartial analysis to be full of inconsistencies and irrationalities. They have sprung not from weighed or reasoned choices but from impulsive desires and emotionally colored habits. The foregoing discussion may be summarized as follows. Lin¬ guistic phenomena and processes are on the whole more deeply unconscious than cultural ones, without however differing in principle. In both language and culture, content is more readily imparted and assimilated than form and enters farther into consciousness. Organization or structure in both cases takes place according to unconscious patterns, such as grammatical categories, social standards, political or economic points of view, religious or intellectual assumptions. These patterns attain recognition only in a late stage of sophistication, and even then continue to alter and, to be influential without con¬ scious control. The number of such linguistic and social pat- LANGUAGE 131 terns being limited, they tend to be approximately repeated without historic connection. Partially similar combinations of such patterns sometimes recur, producing languages or cultures of similar type. But established patterns, and still more their combinations, replace each other with difficulty. Their spread therefore takes place through the integral substitution of one language or culture for another, rather than by piecemeal ab¬ sorption. This is in contrast to the specific elements of which language and culture consist — individual words, mechanical de¬ vices, institutional symbols, particular religious ideas or actions, and the like. These elements absorb and diffuse readily. They are therefore imitated more often than they are reinvented. But linguistic and cultural patterns or structures growing up spon¬ taneously may possess more general resemblance than historic connection. 63. Linguistic and Cultural Standards It does not follow that because social usages lack a rational basis, they are therefore unworthy of being followed, or that standards of conduct need be renounced because they are rela¬ tive, that is, unconsciously founded and changing. The natural inclination of men being to regard their standards of taste, behavior, and social arrangement as wholly reasonable, perfect, and fixed, there follows a first inclination to regard these stand¬ ards as valueless as soon as their emotionality and variability have been recognized. But such a tendency is only a negative reaction against the previous illusion when this has disappointed by crumbling. The reaction is therefore in a sense a further result of the illusion. Once the fundamental and automatic assumption of fixity and inherent value of social patterns has been given up, and it is recognized that the motive power of behavior in man as in the other animals is affective and uncon¬ scious, there is nothing in institutions and codes to quarrel with. They are neither despicable nor glorious; no more deserving in virtue of their existence to be uprooted and demolished than to be defended as absolute and eternal. In some form or other, they are inevitable; and the particular form which they take 132 ANTHROPOLOGY at this time or that place is always tolerably well founded, in the sense of being adapted with fair success, or having been but recently well adapted, to the conditions of natural and social environment of the group which holds the institution, code, or standard. That this is a sane attitude is more easily shown in the field of language than of culture, because, language being primarily a mechanism or means, whereas in culture ends or purposes tend more to obtrude, it is easier to view linguistic phenomena dis¬ passionately. Grammars and dictionaries, for instance, are evi¬ dently the result of self-consciousness arising about speech which has previously been mainly unconscious. They may be roughly compared to social formulations like law codes or written con¬ stitutions or philosophic systems or religious dogmas, which are also representations of usages or beliefs already in existence. When grammarians stigmatize expressions like ain’t or them cows or he don’t as “wrong, ” they are judging an innovation, or one of several established conflicting usages, by a standard of correctness that seems to them absolute and permanent. As a matter of actuality, the condemned form may or may not suc¬ ceed in becoming established. He don’t , for example, might attain to correctness in time, although ain’t is perhaps less likely to become legitimized, and them cows to have still smaller prospect of recognition. That a form departs from the canon of to-day of course no more proves that it will be accepted in future than that it will not. What is certain is that if it wins sufficient usage, it will also win sanction, and will become part of the standard of its time. Linguistic instances like these differ little if at all in prin¬ ciple, in their involved psychology, from the finding of the Su¬ preme Court that a certain legislative enactment is unconstitu¬ tional and therefore void ; or from the decision of a denomina¬ tion that dancing or playing golf on Sunday is wicked ; or from the widespread sentiment that breaking an unpopular law like that on liquor prohibition is morally justifiable. The chief point of divergence would seem to be that a court is a consti¬ tuted body endowed with an authority which is not paralleled on the linguistic side, at any rate in Anglo-Saxon countries; although the Latin nations possess Academies whose dicta on LANGUAGE 133 correctness of speech enjoy a moral authority approximating the verdicts of a high court. It is also of interest to remember that the power of nullifying legislation was not specifically granted the Supreme Court by the Constitution of the United States, but that the practice grew up gradually, quite like a speech innovation which becomes established. Certain elements in the American population look upon this power as undesirable and therefore take satisfaction in pointing out its unsanctioned origin. The majority on the other hand feel that the situation on the whole works out well, and that a Supreme Court with its present powers is better than the risk of a Court without power. Still, it remains curiously illogical that the preservation of the Constitution should take place partly through the extra-constitutional functioning of a constitutional body. In principle such a case is similar to that of grammarians who at the same time lay down a rule and exceptions to the rule, because the contradictory usages happen to be actually established. Codes, dogmas, and grammars are thus normally reflections rather than causes. Such influence as they have is mainly in outward crystallization. They produce a superficial appearance of permanence. In the field of speech, it is easy to recognize that it is not grammarians that make languages, but languages that make grammarians. The analogous process evidently holds for culture. Lawgivers, statesmen, religious leaders, discov¬ erers, inventors, therefore only seem to shape civilization. The deep-seated, blind, and intricate forces that shape culture, also mold the so-called creative leaders of society as essentially as they mold the mass of humanity. Progress, so far as it can objectively be considered to be such, is something that makes itself. We do not make it. Our customary conviction to the contrary is probably the result of an unconscious desire not to realize our individual impotence as regards the culture we live in. Social influence of a sort we do have as individuals. But it is a personal influence on the fortune and careers of other individual members of society, and is concerned largely with aims of personal security, relative dominance, or affection among ourselves. This obviously is a different thing from the exertion of influence on the form or content of civilization as such. 134 ANTHROPOLOGY 64. Rapidity op Linguistic Change The rate of change in language is circumscribed by the prin¬ ciples of linguistic causality that have been discussed, but it remains an obscure subject in detail. The opinion often held that unwritten languages necessarily alter faster than written ones, or that those of savages are less stable than the tongues of civilized men, is mainly a naive reflection of our sense of superiority. It contravenes the principles just referred to and is not supported by evidence. Occasional stories that a primi¬ tive tribe after a generation or two was found speaking an almost made-over language are unconscious fabrications due to ' preconception and supported by hasty accpiaintance, faulty records, misunderstanding, or perhaps change of inhabitants. Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, has probably changed less in four hundred years than Spanish; Quechua, that of the Incas, no more. English has apparently altered more than any of the three in the same period. Dozens of native tongues, some of them from wholly rude peoples, were written down in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by Spanish and other priests, and in most instances the grammars and dictionaries prove to be usable to-day. Cultural alteration would appear to work toward speech change chiefly in certain ways. New things need new names; new acts mean new thoughts and new ideas require new words. These may be imported; or they may be made out of elements already in the language; or old words may undergo a shift of meaning. In any event, the change is mainly on the side of vocabulary. The sounds of a language are generally much less affected; its plan of structure least of all. The introduction of a new religion or development of a new form of government among a people need not be accompanied by changes in the grammar of their speech, and usually are not, as abundant his¬ torical examples prove. While the causes of grammatical innovation are far from clear, contact with alien tongues is certainly a factor in some degree. An isolated off-shoot of a linguistic group is generally more specialized, and therefore presumably more altered, than the main body of dialects of the family. The reason is that the LANGUAGE 135 latter, maintaining abundant reciprocal contact, tend to steady one another, or if they swerve, to do so in the same direction. The speakers of the branch that is geographically detached, however, come to know quite different grammars so far as they learn languages other than their native one, and such knowledge seems to act as an unconscious stimulus toward the growth of new forms and uses. It is not that grammatical concepts are often imitated outright or grammatical elements borrowed. Ac¬ quaintance with a language of different type seems rather to act as a ferment which sets new processes going. It is in the nature of the case that direct specific evidence of changes of this character is hard to secure. But comparison of related languages or dialects with reference to their location frequently shows that the dialects which are geographically situated among strange languages are the most differentiated. This holds of Abyssinian in the Semitic family, of Brahui in Dravidian, of Singhalese in the Indie branch of Indo-European, of Hopi and Tiibatulabal in Shoshonean, of Arapaho and Blaekfoot in Algonkin, of Huastec in Mayan. But it is also likely that languages differ among each other in their susceptibility to change, and that the same language differs in successive periods of its history. It is rather to be anticipated that a language may be in a phase now of rapid and then of retarded metabolism, so to speak; that at one stage its tendency may be toward breaking down and absorption, at another toward a more rigid setting of its forms. Similarly, there is reason to believe that languages of certain types of structure are inherently more plastic than others. At any rate, actual differences in rate of change are known. The Indo- European languages, for instance, have perhaps without excep¬ tion altered more in the three thousand years of historic record than the Semitic ones. And so in native America, while con¬ temporary documentary record is of course wanting, the degree of differentiation within the twTo stocks suggests strongly that Athabascan is more tenaciously conservative than Siouan. There are also notable differences in the readiness to borrow words ready-made. English is distinctly more hospitable in this regard than German, which tends rather to express a new con¬ cept by a new formation of old elements. The South American 136 ANTHROPOLOGY languages appear to have borrowed more words from one an¬ other than those of North America. In this matter the type of language is probably of some influence, yet on the whole cul¬ tural factors perhaps predominate. The direction and degree of cultural absorption seem to determine the absorption of words to a considerable measure. Here writing is certainly potent. The Latin and French element in English, the Sanskrit and Arabic element in the Malaysian languages, were brought in to a large extent by writing, and would evidently have re¬ mained much smaller if the historic contacts had been wholly oral. This is perhaps the most important way in which writing exerts influence on the development of spoken language; an influence which in other respects is usually overestimated. CHAPTER VI THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 65. Fossils of the body and of the mind. — 66. Stone and metals. — 67. The Old and the New Stone Ages.-68. The Eolitliic Age. — 69. The Paleo¬ lithic Age: duration, climate, animals. — 70. Subdivisions of the Paleo¬ lithic. — 71. Human racial types in the Paleolithic. — 72. Paleolithic flint implements. — 73. Other materials: bone and horn. — 74. Dress. — 75. Harpoons and weapons. — 76. Wooden implements. — 77. Fire. — 78. Houses. — 79. Religion. — 80. Paleolithic art. — 81. Summary of advance in the Paleolithic. 65. Fossils of the Body and of the Mind The discovery of fossils has yielded some idea of the history of the human body during the past million years. The evidence is far from complete, but there is enough to prove a develop¬ ment much as might be expected under the hypothesis of evo¬ lution. To some extent fossils also afford an insight into the development of the human mind. The capacity of a skull gives the size of the brain. The interior surface of the skull cor¬ responds to the outer surface of the brain. In this way some slight knowledge has been gained of the development in ancient types of man of the convolutions and centers of the brain sur¬ face with which mental activity is associated. Even limb bones yield indirect indications. A straight thigh means an erect pos¬ ture of the body, with the arms no longer used for locomotion. Released from this service, they are freed for other purposes, such as grasping, handling, and various forms of what we call work. But a hand adapted for work would be useless without an intelligence to direct its operations. Thus the bones of our precursors provide suggestions as to the degree of development of their minds. The suggestions are sketchy and incomplete, but they are worth something. • A second line of evidence is fuller. When a human or pre¬ human hand has made any article, one can judge from that article what its purpose is likely to have been, how it was used, 137 138 ANTHROPOLOGY how much intelligence that use involved, what degree of skill was necessary to manufacture the article. All such artifacts — tools, weapons, or anything constructed — are a reflection of the degree of “ culture” or civilization, elementary or advanced, possessed by the beings who made them. On the whole the evidence to be got from artifacts as to the degree of advancement of their makers or users is greater than the information derivable from the structure of skeletons. A large brain does not always imply high intelligence. Even a much convoluted brain surface may accompany a mediocre mind. In other words, the correlation between body and mind has not been worked out with accuracy. On the other hand an advanced type of tool necessarily implies more skill in its use, and therefore a decided development of the use of intelligence. Similarly, if one finds nothing but simple tools occurring among any past or present people, we may be sure that their civiliza¬ tion and the training of their minds have remained backward. It is true that one cannot always infer from a particular manufactured object the mentality of the particular person who owned and used it. An imbecile may come into possession of a good knife and even possess some ability in using it. But he can acquire the knife only if there are other individuals in his community or time who know how to smelt iron and forge steel. In short, even a single jackknife is proof that human ingenuity has progressed to the point of making important dis¬ coveries, and that arts of relatively high order are being prac¬ tised. In this way a solitary implement, if its discovery is thoroughly authenticated, may suffice to establish a relatively high or low degree of civilization for a prehistoric period or a vanished race. An implement manufactured by human hands of the past is of course different from an actual fossil of a former human being, and it is always necessary to distinguish between the two. The one is something made by a human being and in some measure reflecting the development of his intelligence ; the other something left over or preserved from the human body itself. Nevertheless, in a metaphorical sense, the implements of the past may well be spoken of as the fossils of civilization. They are only its fragments, but they allow us to reconstruct THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 139 the mode of life of prehistoric peoples and utterly forgotten nations, in much the same way as the geologist and the palaeon¬ tologist reconstruct from true fossils the forms of life that existed on the earth or in the seas millions of years ago. There is even a further parallel. Just as the geologist knows that one fossil is older or younger than another from its posi¬ tion in the earth’s crust or the stratum in which it was laid down, so the student of the beginnings of human civilization knows that the deposit at the bottom of a cave must be more ancient than the refuse at the top. He calls in the geologist to tell him the age of a glacial deposit or of a river terrace, and thus he may learn that, of two types of implements found at different places or levels, one is so many thousands of years or geological periods older than the other. In the long run, too, the older implements prove to be the simpler. Thus archaeologists have succeeded in working out an evolution of civilization which parallels rather neatly the evolution of life forms. This evolu¬ tion of human mental operations as it is reflected in the artifacts preserved from the lowest and earliest strata of civilization is the subject of the present chapter. There is another way in which the evidence on the two lines of evolution is similar : its incompleteness. The geological record has been compared to a book from which whole chapters are missing; of others, but stray leaves remain; and only now and then have consecutive pages been preserved unmutilated. Hu¬ manity has always been so much less populous than the re¬ mainder of the animal kingdom, especially in its earlier stages, that the number of individuals whose bones have been preserved as fossils is infinitely smaller. The result is that we account ourselves fortunate in having been able to assemble six or seven not quite complete skeletons, and fragmentary portions of two or three dozen other individuals, of the Neandertal race which inhabited western Europe for thousands of years. For still earlier races or species of man the actual data are even scantier. Knowledge of so fundamental a form as Pithecanthropus, the earliest of the antecedents of man yet known, rests on two bones and two teeth, plus a third tooth discovered as the sole result of a subsequent expedition. Heidelberg man has to be recon¬ structed from a jaw. 140 ANTHROPOLOGY The remains which illustrate the development of the human mind are not so scarce. A single man might easily manufacture hundreds or even thousands of implements in the course of a lifetime. “When these are of stone they are practically imper¬ ishable; whereas it is only the exceptional skeleton, protected by favorable circumstances, of which the bones will endure for thou¬ sands of years. For every ancient true fossil trace of man that has been found, we have therefore thousands of the works of his hands. The inadequateness of the cultural record is not in the in¬ sufficient number of the specimens, but in their onesidedness. Objects of stone, even those of horn and of metal, last; clothing, fabrics, skins, basketry, and wooden articles ordinarily decay so rapidly as to have no chance of being preserved for tens of thousands of years. Tools of the most ancient times have often been found in abundance; objects manufactured with tools from softer and less enduring materials are scarce even from mod¬ erately old periods. Now and then a piece of an earthenware pot may show the imprint of a textile. Textiles and foodstuffs are occasionally preserved by charring in fire or by penetration of metallic salts. Charcoal or ashes found in pockets or beds indicate that fire was maintained in one spot for considerable periods, and must therefore have been controlled and used, pos¬ sibly even produced, by human agency. A bone needle with an eye proves that some one must have sewn, and one may there¬ fore assume that garments were worn at the time. But for every point established in this way there are dozens about which knowledge remains blank. Understanding of the social and religious life of the earliest men is naturally filled with the greatest gaps, and the farther back one goes in time, the greater is the enveloping darkness. The problem is as difficult as that of figuring accurately the degree of intelligence attained by the mailed fishes of the Devonian age some thirty or forty million years ago, or of esti¬ mating whether the complexion of Pithecanthropus was black, brown, or white. One can guess on these matters. One may by careful comparisons obtain some partial and indirect indi¬ cation of an answer. But it is clearly wisest not to try to stretch too far the conclusions which can be drawn. Imagination has THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 141 its value in science as in art and other aspects of life, yet when it becomes disproportionate to the facts, it is a danger instead of an aid. Still, now and then something has been preserved from which one may draw inferences with a reasonable prospect of cer¬ tainty even concerning the non-material side of life. If human bones are discovered charred and split open, there is good reason for believing these bones to be the remains of a cannibal feast. When prehistoric skeletons are found in the position in which death might have taken place, the presumption is that the people of that time abandoned their dead as animals would. If on the other hand a skeleton lies intact with its arms carefully folded, there is little room for doubt that the men of the time had progressed to the point where the survivors put away their dead; in other words, that human burial had been instituted, and that accordingly at least some rude form of society was in existence. When, perhaps from a still later period, a skeleton is found with red paint adhering to the bones, although these lie in their natural places, the only conclusion to be drawn is that the dead body was coated with pigment before being in¬ terred and that as the soft tissues wasted away the red ocher came to adhere to the bones. In this case the painting was evi¬ dently part of a rite performed over the dead. 66. Stone and Metals The cultural record of man’s existence is divided into two great periods. In the latter of these, in which we are still living, metals were used; in the earlier, metals were unknown and tools made of stone. Hence the terms “Age of Stone” and “Age of Metals.” The duration of these two main periods is unequal. Metals were first used in Asia and Egypt about 4,000 B.C. and in Europe about 3,000 B.C: — say five to six thousand years ago. The most conservative authorities, however, would allow forty or fifty thousand years for the Stone Age ; while others make it cover a quarter million. The assumption, which is here followed, of the intermediate figure of a hundred thou¬ sand years gives the Stone Age a duration twenty times as long as the Age of Metals. When one remembers that hand in 142 ANTHROPOLOGY hand with metals came the art of writing and an infinite variety of inventions, it is clear that larger additions have been made to human civilization in the comparatively brief period of metals than in the tremendously longer time that preceded it. Progress in the Stone Age was not only slow, but the farther back one peers into this age, the more lagging does the evolution of human culture seem to have been. One can definitely recognize a tendency toward the acceleration of evolution: the farther advancement has got the faster it moves. The Age of Metals is subdivided into the Iron Age, which begins some three thousand years ago, say about 1,500-1,000 B.C. ; and an earlier Bronze Age. In the Bronze Age one must distinguish first a period in which native copper was employed in some parts of the wrorld ; after which comes an era in which it had been learned that copper melted with a proportion of about one-tenth tin, thus producing bronze, was a superior mate¬ rial. Within the past five thousand years or so, accordingly, there are recognized successively the ages of copper, of bronze, and of iron. Broadly speaking, these five thousand years are also the his¬ toric period. Not that there exist historic records going back so far as this for every people. But the earliest preserved documents that the historian uses, the written monuments of Egypt and Babylonia, are about five thousand years old. The Age of Metals thus corresponds approximately with the period of History; the Stone Age, with Prehistory. 67. The Old and the New Stone Ages The Stone Age, apart from a rather doubtful introductory era to be mentioned presently, is customarily divided into two periods, the Old Stone Age and the New Stone Age, — the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic. These words of Greek origin mean literally “old stone’ ’ and “new stone” periods. The criterion by which these two grand divisions were originally distinguished was that in the Palaeolithic artifacts were made only by chipping, that is, some process of fracturing stone, whereas Neolithic stone objects were thought to have been pecked, ground, rubbed, and polished. Indeed the two periods THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 143 have sometimes been designated as the epochs of rough stone and polished stone implements. This distinction is now known to be inaccurate. It is true that the Old Stone Age did not yet employ frictional processes in shaping stone and confined itself to the older methods of frac¬ turing by blows or pressure. But the converse is not true, that the Neolithic worked stone only by grinding, nor even that grinding was its characteristic process. Stone grinding was invented only toward the middle of the New Stone Age — in what is perhaps best designated the “Full Neolithic.” The Early Neolithic, which lasted half the total Neolithic duration, continued to work stone by fracture. What marked the begin¬ ning of the Neolithic was certain inventions having nothing to do with stone : notably pottery and the bow. With these avail¬ able, human life took on a new color, and it was not until some thousands of years later that shaping of stone by grinding came into use. In other words, the prehistorians’ idea as to what constitutes the Neolithic have changed, and they no longer put stone processes in the first place in characterizing the period. They would do well, therefore, to change its name also to one having reference to its more specific traits. Such a change of designation will perhaps become established in time. But at present the term Neolithic is so intrenched in usage, that to replace it by “Pottery Age” or “Bow Age” would be mislead¬ ing: all the literature on the subject employs “Neolithic.” The present chapter being concerned specifically with the Palaeo¬ lithic, and this being an age in which stone implements did loom large and were consistently made by fracture only, the difficul¬ ties about the concept of the Neolithic, and its subdivision into an Early and a Full period, can be reserved for discussion later (Chapter XIV). But it is well to bear in mind as the Palaeo¬ lithic is examined in the pages immediately following, that the Neolithic is neither its antithesis nor its logical complement, but rather a period signalized by the appearance of totally new directions of human culture. Another point in connection with the two processes of working stone has reference to the mental activities involved by them. A tolerable ground ax or mortar can be made without much difficulty by any one willing to take the trouble. A civilized 144 ANTHROPOLOGY person entirely inexperienced in the working of stone would be likely to produce a fairly satisfactory implement by the rubbing technique. If however he attempted to manufacture a chipped stone tool, even of simple type, he would probably fail repeat¬ edly before learning to control the method well enough to turn out an implement without first ruining a dozen. In short, the manual dexterity required to produce the best forms of chipped stone tools is greater than that needed for ground ones. Inas¬ much as the chipping process is, however, the earlier, we are confronted here with a paradox. Yet the paradox is only on the surface. It is true that so far as skill alone is concerned a good chipped tool is more difficult to make than a ground one. But it can be made in a shorter time. A rough stone tool can be manufactured in a few minutes. A good artifact may be preceded by a number of unsuccessful attempts or “ rejects,” and yet be produced in an hour or less. The processes of pecking, grinding, and pol¬ ishing, on the other hand, are laborious. They are slow even when pursued with steel tools, and when the shaping material is no better than another stone or sand, as was of course always the case in prehistoric times, the duration of the labor must have been discouraging. Weeks or at least days would be re¬ quired to manufacture a single implement. If the work was done at odd times, one may imagine that many a stone ax was months in being produced. Patience and forethought of a rather high order are thus involved in the making of implements of the Neolithic type. Dexterity is replaced by higher qualities of what might be called the moral order. By comparison, the earliest men lacked these traits. They would not sit down to-day to commence something that would not be available for use until a month later. What they wanted they wanted quickly. To think ahead, to sacrifice present convenience to future advantage, must have been foreign to their way of life. Therefore they chipped ; and although in the lapse of thousands of years they learned to do some chipping of high quality, they continued to operate with modifications of the same rough and rapid process. The uses to which their implements could be put were also correspondingly restricted. A first-class ax, a real chisel, or a mortar in which grinding can be done, can THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 145 scarcely be made by chipping alone. It was not until men had learned to restrain their childish impulse to work only for the immediate purpose, and had acquired an increased self-control and discipline, that the grinding of stone came into use. One principle must be clearly adhered to in the dating or proper arrangement of the periods of prehistoric time : the prin¬ ciple that it is always the highest types of implements which determine the age of a deposit. Lower forms often persist from the earlier periods into the later, alongside the newly invented higher types. The men of the Full Neolithic time did not wholly give up making chipped implements because they also ground stone. Just so we have not discarded the use of stone because we use metals, and we still employ copper for. a great variety of purposes although we live in an age of which iron and steel are characteristic. To reckon a people as Palaeolithic because they had chipped implements as well as ground ones, would be as misleading as to assert that we still belong to the Stone Age because we build houses of granite. In fact, stone masonry has had its principal development since metals have been in use. This caution seems elementary enough. But it has sometimes been overlooked by scholars in the pursuit of a theory that made them try to stamp some prehistoric or savage race as particu¬ larly primitive. If in a stratum of ancient remains there are discovered a thousand chipped artifacts and only ten that are ground or polished but the latter unquestionably left there at the same time as the thousand chipped ones, one is justified in reckoning the whole deposit as Full Neolithic in period. For in such a case it is clear that the art of grinding must have been already known, even though it may as yet have been practised only occasionally. It is found that all surviving peoples of primitive culture — American Indians, Australian black-fellows, Polynesians, Hot¬ tentots, and the like — except probably the Tasmanians, have attained the grinding stage of development. It is true enough that many American Indian tribes chipped arrow-points and knives more frequently than they would grind out axes. Yet without exception they also knew the process of grinding stone and applied it to some purpose. For this reason the endeavors that have been made by certain authors; who compare particular 14(3 ANTHROPOLOGY modern savage peoples to the races of prehistoric Europe on the basis of a similarity of their chipped implements, are mislead¬ ing. It is true that tools like those produced in the Mousterian period of the Old Stone Age are made by the modern Australian tribes, and that certain Magdalenian implements from near the end of the Old Stone Age find parallels among those of the Eskimo. But both the Australians and the Eskimo practise the art of rubbing and polishing of stone, which was unknown in the Palaeolithic. They therefore belong clearly to a later stage of civilization. Too great an insistence on such parallels would be likely to give rise to the implication that the Australians were a species of belated Mousterian Stone Age men, and the Eskimo only Magdalenians whom the Arctic regions had somehow per¬ petuated for ten thousand years ; whereas their civilizations con¬ sist of Mousterian and Magdalenian ingredients plus many sub¬ sequent elements. The stage of development of the art of chip¬ ping in stone may be the same ; the other arts and customs of modern Australian black-fellows and of Eskimos, and their bodily types, differ from those of the prehistoric Europeans. With the distinction of the Palaeolithic, Neolithic, and the Ages of Copper, Bronze, and Iron in mind, it is in order to examine what may have preceded them, and then to trace in outline the development which human culture underwent during the Palaeolithic in the continent in which its records are best explored — Europe. 68. The Eolithic Age The earliest of all periods of human handiwork, although a somewhat doubtful one, is the Eolithic, or age of the “dawn of stone” implements. On purely theoretical grounds it appears likely, indeed almost inevitable, that the first definitely chipped implements did not develop full-fledged, but were preceded by still cruder tools, made perhaps without clear intent, and at any rate so rough and half-shaped that they would be difficult to recognize. After the evolution of Palaeolithic implements had become pretty well known, this conjecture began to be supported by evidence, or at least by alleged evidence. Investigators, espe- THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 147 cially Rutot in Belgium, found flints of which it was difficult to say whether or not they had been used by human hands. These pieces occurred in extremely ancient deposits. On the basis of these discoveries Rutot and his followers established the Eolitliic period. Some have consistently assailed this Eolithic age as imaginary, asserting that the so-called eoliths were nothing but accidental products of nature. Others have accepted the eoliths and recognize the stage of embryonic or pre-human civilization which they imply. Still other students remain in doubt ; and their attitude is perhaps still the safest to share. The view now most prevalent is that the alleged Eolithic flints may have been used by early human hands, but that they were almost certainly not manufactured. This would make them tools only in the sense in which the limb of a tree is a tool when a man in distress seizes it to defend himself. The eoliths are more or less irregular pieces of flint or similar stone, some of them so blunt that they must have been very inefficient if used for chopping or cutting or scraping. Small nocks or chips along the edge are believed not to have been flaked off with the conscious intent of producing an edge, but to have become chipped away through usage while the stone was being manipulated as a naturally formed tool. This would be much in line with our picking up a cobblestone in default of an ax or hammer, and continuing to maul away with it until the rough handling broke off several pieces and happened acci¬ dentally to produce an edge. That the eoliths were such unin¬ tentionally made tools is the most that can safely be claimed for them. Even so some doubts remain. Stones similar to eoliths in every respect, except that their fractures show a fresher appearance, have been taken by dozens out of modern steel drums in which flint-bearing chalk was being broken for industrial purposes. Then, too, the first believers in the authenticity of the eoliths reported them as occurring from the middle and earlier layers of the Pleistocene, in which periods we know that nearly human or half -human types like Heidelberg man and Pithecanthropus were already in existence. These two species being more similar to modern man than to the apes or other animals, we must 148 ANTHROPOLOGY imagine them to have been gifted with at least some human intelligence. It would therefore have been entirely possible for them to supplement the tools with which nature endowed them — their hands and teeth — with flints which they picked up and manipulated in one useful way or another without particularly troubling to shape the stones. So far the argument is all in favor of the reality of the eolith. Before long, however, it was discovered that eoliths were not especially more abundant in the middle Pleistocene just previous to the opening of the Palaeolithic, when we should expect them to have been most numerous, than they were in the early Pleistocene, when the human species must still have been most rudimentary. Then it was found that eoliths occur in lowTer strata than the earliest Pleistocene, namely, in the Pliocene, in the Miocene, and perhaps even earlier, in the Oligocene. Yet these periods are divisions of the Tertiary, or Age of Mammals — the age before man had been evolved ! In short, the argument cuts too far. Once one begins to accept eoliths it is difficult to stop accepting them without carrying them back into a period of geological history when evolution could scarcely have pro¬ duced a form sufficiently advanced in intelligence to use them.1 Perhaps on the whole the strongest argument in favor of the authenticity of the Pleistocene eoliths is the fact that the first implements known positively to belong to the Old Stone Age are just a little too well shaped and efficient to represent the products of the very beginnings of human manual dexterity. One cannot help but look for something antecedent that was simpler and ruder ; and this need of the imagination the eoliths do go a long way to satify. 69. The Palaeolithic Age: Duration, Climate, Animals With the Eolithic period passed and the Palaeolithic entered, our history of incipient human culture is on a solid foundation, i .Recently, certain “rostro-carinate” pre-Palseolithic implements have been much discussed by British archaeologists, and in the past year or two there have been some adherents of other nationalities. The implements are referred in part to the Pliocene, that is, late Tertiary, and are said to be accompanied by hearths. The evidence to be adjudicated is technical, and some years will probably elapse before expert opinion settles into tolera¬ ble agreement on the authenticity of the objects as artifacts and their age. THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 149 especially so far as western Europe, the best explored region, is concerned. The general relation of this Old Stone Age in geological time may be defined as follows. The Quaternary, whose duration may be estimated to have been about a million years, is subdivided into the Pleistocene and the Recent. Of the two, the Recent is very much shorter than the Pleistocene. Broadly speaking, from ninety-eight to ninety-nine per cent of the total duration of the Quaternary was occupied by the Pleistocene. The small remainder which the geologist calls “Recent,” corresponds to those periods which the archaeologist and the historian name the New Stone and Metal Ages; say the past ten thousand years. The Old Stone Age therefore falls in the Pleistocene. But it occupies only the later dura¬ tion of the Pleistocene ; the earlier part of the Pleistocene is barren of tools or other records of human culture, except so far as the eoliths may be so considered. The proportion of the Pleistocene which is covered by the Old Stone Age is variously estimated. Some geologists will not allow the undisputed Palaeolithic to have extended over more than the last tenth of the Pleistocene : the rivers have not changed their beds enough to permit the assumption of a longer period. This allowance would give the Palaeolithic a duration of perhaps a hundred thousand years, which is the figure here fol¬ lowed. Those who place the beginning of the European Palaeo¬ lithic in the second instead of the third interglacial period, would have to admit a considerably longer duration. The geologist, because he deals with such enormous durations, has to operate on a broad-gauge scale, and usually disdains to commit himself to close estimates of years. To measure the lapse of time within the Pleistocene, he has found it most useful to avail himself of the evidences left by the great glaciers which repeatedly covered parts of several continents during the Pleis¬ tocene, and he has therefore given this period its popular name of “glacial epoch.” These glaciations must be imagined as having occurred on a much larger scale than one might at first infer from the shrunken remnants of the glaciers that persist in the Alps and other mountains. The Pleistocene glaciers were vast sheets, hundreds of feet in thickness, sliding uniformly over valleys, hills, and mountains except for an occasional high 150 ANTHROPOLOGY peak. Modem Greenland, which except at the edges is buried under a solid ice cap, evidently presents a pretty fair picture of what the northern parts of Europe and North America re¬ peatedly looked like during the Pleistocene. Four such glaciations, or periods of maximum extent of the continental ice, have been distinguished, and more or less cor¬ related, in Europe and North America. In Europe they have been designated as the Giinz, Mindel, Riss, and Wurm glacia¬ tions respectively (Fig. 5). Each of these is the name of a locality in the Alps at which typical moraines or erosions pro¬ duced by the ice of that period have been carefully observed. Between these four successive advances of the ice sheets there fell more temperate eras, some of them rather arid, and others moist and almost tropical even in the latitude of Europe. These mild intervals are known as the interglacial periods. That Eu¬ rope was free from ice during these interglacial periods is shown not only by facts of a purely geological nature but by the occur¬ rence in these periods of fossils of a semi-tropical fauna which included elephants, rhinoceroses, lions, and the like. Coming now to a consideration of the relation of man to these iee eras, we find that the first, second, and probably the third glaciations passed without leaving sure evidence of manufac¬ tured stone implements. In the last interglacial period, that which falls between the Riss and the Wurm glaciations, the so-called “Chellean picks” appear; and from then on the record of artifacts is a continuous one. Considerable parts of Europe remained habitable all through the fourth and last glaciation, the Wurm period, as the implements discovered prove. Gradu¬ ally, although irregularly and with three minor advances and re¬ cessions, always diminishing in rigor, however, this last predomi¬ nance of the ice died away; until, by the time its effects had wholly disappeared, and the geologically “ Recent” era was in¬ augurated, human civilization had evolved to a point where it began to enter the New Stone Age. The animals whose fossils are found in the same deposits with human skeletons and artifacts have been of the greatest assist¬ ance in the determination of the periods of such remains. The fossils are partly of extinct species until toward the very end of the Pleistocene, when exclusively living types of animals THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 151 begin wholly to supersede the earlier ones. While the identifi¬ cation of the various species, and the fixation of the age of each, is the work of the specialist in palaeontology, the results of such studies are all-important to the historian of man’s beginnings, because they help to determine chronology. If artifacts are found in association with fossil remains of an extinct animal such as the mammoth or the woolly rhinoceros, they are obvi¬ ously older than artifacts that are accompanied only by the bones of the reindeer, the dog, or other living species. For this reason, although the history of mammalian life in the past is a science in itself, it also has close relations with human pre¬ history. Some of the most characteristic animals of the later Pleistocene, and the successive stages of human cultural develop¬ ment with which they were associated, are listed on the follow¬ ing page. 70. Subdivisions of the Paleolithic The places at which the men of the Stone Age lived and where their debris accumulated are known as ‘ ‘stations.” The word was first employed in this sense in French, but has been taken over into other languages. A “station” then is simply a spot at which prehistoric remains of human occupation are found. At least a thousand of these have been discovered in western Europe. In general they divide into two classes. One kind is in the open, mostly in the gravels laid down by streams. These are therefore known as “River Drift” or simply “Drift” sta¬ tions. The other kind .is found in caves or under sheltering rocks. The majority of Drift stations have proved to be from the earlier or Lower Palaeolithic, whereas the Cave stations date mostly from the later or Upper Palaeolithic. The Drift and the Cave periods are therefore often distinguished within the Old Stone Age, especially by English archaeologists. French, Ger¬ man, and American students generally use the terms “Lower Palaeolithic” and “Upper Palaeolithic,” whose reference is to periods of cultural development rather than type of locality inhabited, and which carry more significance. French archaeolo¬ gists also speak of the Upper Palaeolithic as the Reindeer Age. The student who perhaps contributed most to the foundation 152 ANTHROPOLOGY The Later Glacial Fauna of Western Europe (Read upward) Pociglacial and Recent: Bison, Bison 'prisons. Wild cattle, Bos primigenius. Red deer or stag, Cervus elaphus. Roe-deer, Capreolus. Reindeer, Rangifer tarandus . Wild boar, Sus scrofa. Fourth Glacial and Postglacial fauna: typically Mousterian to Mag- dalenian : Woolly mammoth, Elephas primigenius. Woolly or Siberian rhinoceros, Rhinoceros antiquitatis. Cave lion, Felis leo spelaea. Cave hyaena, Hyaena crocuta spelaea. Cave bear, Ursus spelaeus. Horse, Equus caballus. Ibex. Banded lemming, Myodes torquatus. Third Interglacial fauna: typically Chellean and Acheulean: Straight-tusked elephant, Elephas antiquus. Broad-nosed rhinoceros, Rhinoceros Merckii. Lion, Felis leo antiqua. Spotted hyaena, Hyaena crocuta. Brown bear, Ursus arctos Horses, probably several varieties. Second Interglacial Fauna: typically Pre-Palceolithic, but in part sur¬ viving into the Chellean in favored localities : Southern mammoth, Elephas meridionalis. Etruscan rhinoceros, Rhinoceros etruscus. Hippopotamus major. Saber-tooth tigers, Machaerodus. Striped hyaena, Hyaena striata. Steno’s horse, Equus stenonis. Bison antiquus. Mastodon, tapir, anthropoids, and all primates but man and the macaque monkey already extinct in Western Europe. THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 153 of knowledge of the Palaeolithic period was Gabriel de Mortillet. He first recognized four distinct sub-periods of the Palaeolithic, each possessing its distinctive kinds of implements. These four periods, each named after one particular ‘ ‘ station, ” are the Chellean or earliest; the Mousterian; the Solutrean; and the Magdalenian or latest. These derived their designations from the four stations of Chelles in northern France, and of Le Fig. 16. Type stations of the Palaeolithic periods. (After Osborn.) Moustier, Solutre, and La Madeleine in southern France (Fig. 16). De Mortillet did not endeavor to relate the culture of each of these four periods wholly to the particular locality for which he named it. He chose the stations as typical and in¬ cluded others as belonging to the same eras. As more implements were found and studied, it was recog¬ nized, in part by de Mortillet himself, that while his original classification was sound, it was also incomplete. Two other periods had to be admitted. One of these, the Acheulean, falls before the Mousterian, and the second, the Aurignacian, after 154 ANTHROPOLOGY it. This makes six periods within the Old Stone Age ; and these have been adopted by all students of the prehistory of man in Europe. The first three, the Chellean, Acheulean, and Mous- terian, make up the Lower Palaeolithic ; the last three, the Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian, constitute the Upper Palaeolithic or Reindeer Age. These six divisions of the Old Stone Age are so essential to an understanding of the prehistory of man, that the serious student finds it necessary to know their names and sequence automatically. 71. Human Racial Types in the Palaeolithic t When it comes to defining the types of fossil man in the Palaeolithic, a curious situation develops. Long before there was even a true Stone Age, in the early and middle Pleistocene, there lived the half -human Pithecanthropus and the primitively human Heidelberg race (§11, 12). But for the whole first part of the Palaeolithic, throughout the Chellean and Acheulean, no undisputed find of any skeletal remains has yet been made, al¬ though thousands of implements have been discovered which are undoubtedly human products.1 In the present state of knowledge the strongest case is that for the skull found at Piltdown in southern England. This is said to have been associated with “Pre-Chellean” tools, which would seem to establish the Piltdown type as the race that lived about the beginning of the Palaeolithic (§ 13). But the deposit at Piltdown had been more or less rolled or shifted by natural agencies before its discovery, so that its age is not so certain as it might be ; and there is no unanimity of opinion as to whether the highly developed skull and the excessively ape-like jaw that were found in the deposit really belong together. With this doubt about the fossil itself, it seems most reasonable not to press too strongly its identification as the type of man that lived in Europe at the commencement of the Old Stone Age. For the end of the Lower Palaeolithic, in the Mousterian, con¬ ditions change, and skeletal remains become authentic and com¬ paratively numerous. From this period date the skeletons of 1 The Krapina bones (§14) are by some assigned to the Chellean or Acheulean. THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 155 the Neandertal species of man: a short, thickset race, powerful in bones and musculature, slightly stooping at the knee and at the shoulder, with a thick neck and a large head (§14). The brain was about as large as that of modern man, but the re¬ treating aspect of the forehead was accentuated by heavy brow ridges. In the Upper Palaeolithic the Neandertal species has disap¬ peared. The first precursors of Homo sapiens, or modern man, have come on the scene. A sort of transition from Neandertal man may be presented by the Brunn type, but the prevailing race in western Europe during the Upper Palaeolithic period is that of Cro-Magnon, a tall, lithe, well-formed people, as agile and swift as Neandertal man was stocky and strong. The head and features were well proportioned, the skull and brain re¬ markably large, the general type not inferior to modern man, and probably already proto-Caucasian (§ 16). Grimaldi man, so far known only from one spot on the Medi¬ terranean shore of Europe, was proto-Negroid, Aurignacian in period, and therefore partly contemporaneous with the Cro- Magnon race (§ 18). In summary, the types of man in Europe during the Old Stone Age have been as follows: Magdalenian Solutrean Aurignacian Mousterian Acheulean Chellean Cro-Magnon Cro-Magnon; Briinn Cro-Magnon (Caucasian) ; also, locally Grimaldi (Negroid ) Neandertal (possibly without living descendants) Unknown Unknown; Piltdown perhaps Pre-Chellean The interrelations of geology, glaciation, human types, periods of the Stone Age, and estimated time in years are brought to¬ gether in the tables “Antiquity of Man” and “Prehistory” (Figs. 5 and 17. )1 72. Paleolithic Flint Implements The most important line of evidence as to the gradual develop¬ ment of civilization through the six periods of the Old Stone i It will be noted that the second of these tables is an amplification of the upper part of the first. EARLIEST PREHISTORY OF EUROPE -L900A0 KOOOB.C 3,0003c IRorf RECERT RtODER/i RACES BFPOFtZE -&ok y^oumc GLAC/AL RETREAT (CRO-MAGRO/i j BRi)nn \CRO-MAGnon GRIMALDI MA6DALEMA/1 q. SOLUTREAR £ S AURI6HAC/AN S? WURM GLAC/AL MEAhDERTAL MOUSTER/ALt PERIOD % . & 5 £ THIRD t LITER' \ $ U ACHEULEAR | ft <3 GLACIAL PERIOD CHELLEAH i EOL/T/Z/C | i • ' P/L TDOWH? \ ■ V ' . \ M ’’ ! i 300030 /OfOOOB.C 25,00030 50,00030 too, oooac Fig. 17. Earliest Prehistory of Europe. This table is an elaboration of the upper portion of Figure 5. Equal lapses of time are indicated by equal vertical distances. The general acceleration of development is evident. THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 157 Age is the series of flint tools. Hundreds of thousands of these tools have been discovered in western, central, and southern Europe — perhaps millions. At St. Acheul were found 20,000 Chellean coups-de-poing; at Solutre, below the Solutrean layer, 35,000 Mousterian-Aurignacian worked flints besides the remains of 100,000 horses ; at Grimaldi in Italy, in the Grotte du Prince, 20,000 Mousterian pieces ; at Schweizersbild in Switzerland, 14,000 late Magdalenian implements, and at Kesslerloch, near by, 30,000 from the late Solutrean and Magdalenian ; at Hundsteig in Austria, 20,000 Aurignacian flints ; at Predmost in Czecho-Slovakia, 25,000 probably of Solutrean age. Stations of such richness are not particularly rare, and the stations are numerous. In France alone 500 Magdalenian stations have been determined. Clear stratigraphic relations have also been observed again and again. A few examples are : Castillo Cave, Santander, Spain, implement bearing layers separated by strata of sterile natural debris: 1, Aeheulean; 2, 3, 4, early, middle, and late Mousterian; 5, early Aurignacian; 6, 7, 8, late Aurignacian; 9, Solutrean; 10, 11, early and late Magdalenian; 12, Azilian; 13, Copper. At St. Acheul: 1, limestone; 2, gravel, early Chellean; 3, sand, late Chellean; 4, loam, early Aeheulean; 5, flood sand; 6, loess; 7, late Aeheulean; 8, pebbles, Mousterian; 9, loess; 10, Upper Palaeolithic. At Mas d’Azil, at the foot of the Pyrenees: 1, gravelly soil; 2, middle Magdalenian; 3, flood loam; 4, upper Magdalenian; 5, flood loam; 6, Azilian; 7, early Neolithic; 8, full Neolithic and Bronze; 9, Iron. At Ofnet cave, Bavaria : 1, rocks ; 2, sand, 65 cm. deep ; 3, 4, Aurignacian, 20 cm. ; 5, Solutrean, 20 cm. ; 6, Magdalenian, 15-20 cm. ; 7, Azilian, with two nests of skulls, 5 cm.; 8, Neolithic, 53 cm.; 9, Bronze and Iron, 32 cm. At La Ferrassie cave: 1, rocks and sand, 40 cm. deep; 2, Aeheulean, 50 cm.; 3, Mousterian, with skeleton, 50 cm.; 4, early Aurignacian, 20 cm.; 5, middle Aurignacian, 50 cm.; 6, rock fragments, 35 cm.; 7, late Aurignacian, 35 cm.; rock and soil, 120 cm. At first inspection Paheolithie relics seem scarcely distin¬ guishable. They are all of flint, chert, or similar stone ; are all chipped and therefore more or less rough, and consist of forms meant for cutting, scraping, and piercing. But a closer exami- 158 ANTHROPOLOGY nation reveals differences in their shapes and fundamental dif¬ ferences in the method of their manufacture. The technique employed in the fashioning of artifacts is more significant than their appearance, and it is by directing attention to the process that one can classify these “fossils of civilization’7 with accu¬ racy. Chellean. — In the Chellean period there was made substan¬ tially one type of implement, a sort of rude pick, almond or wedge shaped. It is often somewhat pointed, although rarely very sharp. The butt end may be rounded, some of the original surface of the cobble or nodule of flint being left for con¬ venience of the hand in grasping the implement (Fig. 18, a). This tool is known as the ‘ 1 Chellean pick. 7 7 The Germans often call it faust-keil or “fist wedge77 and the French have coined the expressive epithet coup-de-poing or “blow of the fist.77 The Chellean pick averages from four to six inches in length, some¬ what less in breadth, and weighs perhaps from a quarter to a full pound. It would have made an effective rude weapon. When firmly grasped and well directed, it could easily crush a skull. It might serve to split wood, hack limbs from trees, butcher large game, and perhaps roughly dress hides. It would not do any one of these things with neatness and accuracy, but neatness and accuracy were qualities to which early Palaeolithic men paid little attention. This universal Chellean tool may be described as a combined knife, saw, ax, scraper, and pick, per¬ forming the various functions of these implements with notable crudities but efficiently enough when wielded with muscular strength. The Chellean pick was made by striking a round or oval nodule of flint with another stone and knocking off pieces. Most of the detached flakes were large, as shown by the surfaces from which they came off; perhaps most of the chips averaged a square inch. Anything like fine work or evenness of outline was therefore out of question. One can imagine that many tools were spoiled, or broken in two, by the knocks to which they were subjected in their manufacture. The flakes struck off fell to the ground and were discarded. If the workman was suffi¬ ciently skilful, and luck stayed with him, he would before long be holding the sort of implement that has been described. Not Fig. 18. Stone implements illustrating the principal types of Palaeolithic chipping, a, Chellean pick, a roughly flaked core; b, Mousterian scraper, a flake with retouched edge; c, Solutrean blade, evened by retouching over its entire surface; d, Magdalenian knife, a flake detached at one blow. For comparison, e, an obsidian knife or razor from Mexico, made by the same process as d. 160 ANTHROPOLOGY more than a few dozen strokes of the hammer stone would be required to produce it. Some attempt has been made to distinguish variant forms of Chellean tools, such as scrapers, planers, and knives. But some of these identifications of particular types are uncertain, and at best, the differences between the types are slight. It may be said with approximate accuracy that the long Chellean period possessed only the one tool ; that this is the first definitely shaped tool known to have been made by human hands ; and that it is therefore the concrete evidence of the first stage of that long development which we call civilization.1 Acheulean. — The Acheulean period brings to light a growing specialization of forms and some new types. Rude scrapers, knives, borers, can be distinguished. The flakes struck off are finer than in the Chellean and the general workmanship averages higher; but through the whole of the Acheulean there is no new process. The Chellean methods of manufacture are improved without an invention being added to them. Mousterian. — In the Mousterian period a retrogression would at first sight seem to have occurred. Tools become smaller, less regular in outline, and are worked on one side only. The whole Mousterian period scarcely presents a single new type of im¬ plement of such all-around serviceability as the Chellean pick. Nevertheless the degeneration is only in the appearance of the implements. Actually they are made by a new process, which is more advanced than that followed in the Chellean and Acheulean. In these earlier periods flakes were struck off until the kernel of stone that remained was of the shape desired for the tool. The Mousterian technique is distinguished by using the flake instead of the core. This is the cause of Mousterian tools being generally smaller and lighter. Secondly, when the flake dulled by use, its edge was renewed by fine chipping. The pieces detached in this secondary chip¬ ping are so small that it would have been difficult to knock them off and maintain any regularity of edge, for to detach a chip by a blow means violent contact. If the blow is a bit feeble, the chip that comes off is too small. If the artifact is struck too 1 A Pre-Chellean period, without large picks, and associated with the Second Interglacial fauna (§ 69, 214), is recognized by some specialists. THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 1G1 hard, too large a chip flies off and the implement is ruined. Fine chips are better worked off by pressure than by impact. A point is laid upon the surface near the edge. When this point is pressed down at the proper angle and with proper firm¬ ness, a scale flies off. With some practice the scales can be de¬ tached almost equal in size. The point may be of softer mate¬ rial than the stone. It is in the nature of flint, and of all stones that approach glass in their structure, that they break easily under pressure in definite planes or surfaces. Modern tribes that still work flint generally employ as a pressing tool a piece of bone or horn which comes to a somewhat rounded point. This is usually attached to the end of a stick, to enable a better grip of the working tool, the butt end being clamped under the elbow. A tool of the same sort may have been employed in the Paheo- litliic. The process of detaching the scales or secondary flakes by pressure is known as 1 ‘retouching.” Retouching allows finer control than strokes delivered with a stone. The result is that Mousterian implements, when at their best, possess truer edges, and also greater variety of forms adapted to particular uses, than those of preceding ages (Fig. 18,6). In spite of their insignificant appearance, Mousterian tools accordingly show advance in two points. First, the flake is used. Secondly, two processes instead of one are followed; the knock¬ ing off of the flake followed by its retouching. Aurignacian. — With the Mousterian the Lower Palaeolithic has ended. In several activities of life, such as art and religion, the Upper Palaeolithic represents a great advance over the Lower Palaeolithic. Yet it seems that the mental energies of the Aurignacian people must have been pretty well absorbed by their new occupations and inventions, for their tools are largely the same retouched flakes as those the Mousterian had already employed. The Aurignacian carried on the stone technique of the Mousterian much as the Acheulean previously had carried on that of the Chellean. Solutrean. — The Solutrean seems to have been a relatively brief period, and to have remained localized, for implements dating from it are the scarcest of any from the six divisions of the Old Stone Age. There was a distinct advance of interest in stone work during the Solutrean. The process of retouching, 162 ANTHROPOLOGY without being fundamentally altered, was evidently much better controlled than before. The best Solutrean workers were re¬ touching both sides of their tools instead of one side only, as in the past, and working over not only the edge or point but the entire surface of their artifacts. One of the characteristic implements of their time was a laurel-leaf-shaped blade which has often been considered a spear point, but would also have been an effective knife and may often have been used as such. This has the surface of both sides, from tip to butt, finished in even retouching, and is equaled in excellence of workmanship only by the best of the spear points chipped by modern savages (Fig. 18, c). Of course this was not the only stone implement which the Solutrean people knew. They made points with a single shoulder at the butt, as if for mounting, and had crude forms which represented the types of earlier periods. This partial conserva¬ tism is in accord with the general observation already stated, that lower types tend to persist even after higher ones have been invented; and that because a period is determined by its best products it by no means follows that simpler ones are lacking. Magdalenian. — The sixth period of the Old Stone Age, the Magdalenian, resembles the Mousterian in seeming at first glance to show a retrograde development. The retouching process was carried out with less skill, perhaps because the Magdalenians were devoting themselves with more interest to bone than to stone. Magdalenian retouched implements are less completely worked out and less beautifully regular than those of Solutrean times. One reason for this decline was that another technique was coming to prevail. This technique had begun to come into use earlier, but its typical development was Magdalenian. It was a process which, on account of its simplicity, once it was mastered, was tending to make the art of retouching unnecessary. This new method was the trick of detaching, from a suitable block of flint, long straight-edged flakes, by a single blow, some¬ what on the principle by which a cake of ice can be split evenly by a well guided stroke of the pick. The typical Magdalenian implement of stone is a thin flake several inches long, triangular or polygonal in cross section ; in other words, a long narrow prism (Fig. 18, d). THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 163 To detach such a flake, flint of rather even grain is necessary, and the blow that does the work must be delivered on a precise spot, at a precise angle, and within rather narrow limits of force. This means that the hammer or striking tool cannot well come in direct contact with the flint. A short pointed piece, something like a nail or a carpenter’s punch, and probably made in the prehistoric days of horn or bone, is set on a suitable spot near the edge of the block of flint, and is then tapped smartly with the hammer stone. A single stroke slices off the desired Fig. 19. Flakes struck from a core and reassembled. Modern work¬ manship in Magdalenian technique. flake. The sharp edges left on the block where the flake has flown off can be used to start adjacent flakes, and thus all the way round the block, the workman progressing farther and far¬ ther in, until nearly the whole of his core has been split off into strips. This Magdalenian process, which was in use ten, fifteen, and perhaps twenty thousand years ago, survived, or was reinvented, in modern times. It is only a few years ago that flints were being struck off by English workmen for use on flintlock muskets exported to Africa. The modern Englishman worked with a steel hammer instead of a bone rod and cobblestone, but his technique was the same. Figure 19 shows the complete lot of flakes into which a block has been split, and which were sub- 164 ANTHROPOLOGY sequently laid together so as to reform the stone in its original shape. Similar flakes made of obsidian, a volcanic glass similar to flint in its properties, are still being produced in the Indian districts of interior Mexico for use as razors (Fig. 18, e). The Magdalenian method of flint working gives the smoothest and sharpest edge. It is not adapted for making heavy instru¬ ments, but it yields an admirable knife. The process is also expeditious. Summary. — The successive steps in the art of stone working in the Palaeolithic may be summarized thus: Chellean: Coarse flakes detached by blows from the core, which be¬ comes the implement. Acheulean : Same jDrocess applied to more varied forms. Monsterian: Flake detached by a blow is sharpened into a tool by retouching by pressure on one side only. Aurignacian : Same with improved retouching applied. Solutrean: Both surfaces of implement wholly retouched. Magdalenian : Prismatic flake, detached by a blow transmitted through a point. 73. Other Materials: Bone and Horn Stone implements must perhaps always remain in the fore¬ ground of our understanding of the Old Stone Age because they were made so much more numerously than other objects, or at any rate have been preserved so much more abundantly, that they will supply us with the bulk of our evidence. At the same time it would be an error to believe that the life of these men of long ago was filled with the making and using of stone tools to the exclusion of everything else. Gradually during the last fifty years, through unremittingly patient explorations and the piecing of one small discovery to another, there has accumulated a fair body of knowledge of other sides of the life of Palaeolithic men. There is every reason to believe that as time goes on we shall learn more and more about them, and thus be able to reconstruct a reasonably complete and vivid picture of their behavior. Implements of bone and horn are next most abundant after those of stone, but it is significant that the Lower Palaeolithic THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 165 still dispensed with these materials. In the Cliellean and Acheulean stations, although broken bones of devoured animals occur, bone was not shaped. In the Mousterian this material first came into use, but as yet only as so-called “anvils” on which to chip flint or cut, and not as true tools. One of the changes that most prominently mark the passage from the Lower to the Upper Palaeolithic is the sudden develop¬ ment in the use of bone at the beginning of the Aurignacian, and then of reindeer horn. These materials came more and more into favor as time went on. The Aurignacians had bone awls or pins, polishers, paint tubes of hollowed reindeer leg bone, and points with a grooved base for hafting, generally construed as javelin heads. In the Solutrean, eyed needles were added. The greatest development was attained in the Magdalenian. Bone javelin and spear heads were now made in a variety of forms, with bases pointed, beveled, or grooved. Hammers, chisels or wedges, and perforators were added to the list of bone tools. Whistles and perhaps flutes were blown. Reindeer antler was employed for carved and perforated lengths of horn, “rods of command” or magic, they are usually called; as well as for harpoons and throwers, to be discussed below. By the close of the Palceolithic, objects of organic substances began to approach in frequency those of flint. This may well have been a sort of preparation for the grinding and polishing of stone which is the distinctive technique of the New Stone Age. Bone cannot well be chipped or retouched. It must be cut, ground, or rubbed into shape. The Neolithic people therefore may be said to have extended to stone a process which their predecessors of the Upper Palaeolithic were familiar with but had failed to apply to the harder substance. 74. Dress The slender bone needle provided with an eye which the Solutrean and Magdalenian added to the primitive awl implies thread and sewing. It may be concluded therefore that, at least from the middle of the Upper Palaeolithic on, the people of Europe went clothed in some sort of fitted garments. It would be going too far to assert that the Neandertal men ran about 1GG ANTHROPOLOGY naked as tlie lower animals. Several inventions which they had made compel us to attribute to them enough intelligence to lead them to cover themselves with skins when they felt cold. But they may have been too improvident, or habituated to discom¬ fort, to trouble even to dress hides. At any rate there is no positive indication that they regularly clothed themselves. By contrast, the sewing of the Upper Palaeolithic Cro-Magnons marked a considerable advance. Ornament may have been earlier than clothing. The paint of the Aurignacians decorated their own bodies and those of their dead. About their necks and waists they hung rows of perforated shells and teeth. More of these have been found on the skeletons of males than of females. By the Magdalenian, there was sophistication enough to lead to the carving of arti¬ ficial shells and teeth out of ivory; and amber was beginning to be transported from the German coast to Southern Prance. 75. Harpoons and Weapons Towards the end of the Upper Pakeolithic, in the Magda¬ lenian, the harpoon came into extensive use. The shafts have of course long since decayed, but many of the reindeer antler heads have remained intact. At first these were notched with barbs along one edge only. In the later Magdalenian the barbs were cut on both sides. The harpoon differs from the simple spear or javelin in having its head detachable from the shaft. The two are fitted together by a socket. If the prey, be it fish or mammal, is not killed by the first throw, its struggles to escape shake the shaft loose, while the barbs hold the head firmly imbedded in its body. A line is attached to the head and tied to the shaft or held in the hand of the hunter. The animal is thus kept from escaping. During the Magdalenian the line was kept from slipping off the head by one or two knobs near the butt. In the subsequent Azilian period the head was perforated, as is the modern Eskimo practice. The harpoon is really a rather complicated instrument : it consists of at least three pieces — head, shaft, and line. Another device which the Magdalenians shared with the Aztecs, the Eskimo, and some other modern peoples, is the spear THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 167 thrower or atlatl. This is a sort of rod or handle, one end of which is grasped by the fingers while the other engages the butt end of the harpoon or dart. The hand only steers the shaft at the beginning of its flight : the propulsion comes from the thrower. The instrument may therefore be described as a device for artificially lengthening the human arm and thus imparting greater velocity and length of flight to the weapon. There is without doubt considerable ingenuity involved in this apparatus, both in its invention and in its successful use. A person un¬ skilled in bodily movements would never hit upon the inven¬ tion; nor could a race of high native dexterity acquire pro¬ ficiency in the art of hunting with the thrower until each indi¬ vidual was willing to practise for a considerable period. It may once more be concluded, accordingly, that by the end of the Palaeolithic, civilization had developed to a point where men were much readier to undergo protracted training and forbear¬ ance than they had been at the beginning of the period. One instrument that we are wont to associate with the begin¬ nings of civilization, because of its almost universal employment by savages of to-day, is the bow and arrow. So strong has the preconception been that the Palaeolithic peoples must have been like modern savages, that time and time again it has been as¬ sumed that they possessed the bow. There is no convincing evi¬ dence to show that this was so, and a good deal of negative evi¬ dence to establish that they were unacquainted with the weapon. All the Palaeolithic remains of flint, bone, or horn, which at times have been interpreted as arrow points, are more conserva¬ tively explained as knives or heads of darts. The prevailing opinion is that the bow was not invented until the Neolithic. This would make the weapon only about ten thousand years old — a hoary antiquity, indeed, but recent as compared with the knife, the spear, and even the harpoon. The reason for this lateness in the invention of the bow and arrow is probably to be sought in the delicacy of the instrument. It is not essentially more complex than the harpoon, certainly not more complex than the harpoon impelled by the spear thrower. But it involves much finer adjustments. A poorly made harpoon is of course inferior to a well-made one, but may be measurably effective. It may retrieve game half the time. But a bow which falls ANTHROPOLOGY ' 168 below a certain standard will not shoot at all, or will shoot so feebly as to have a zero efficiency. In fact, one of the things that students of the beginnings of culture have long been puzzled about is how the bow and arrow could have been invented. Most other inventions can be traced through a series of steps, each of which, although incomplete, achieved a certain utility of its own. But, other than toys or musical instruments, no implement has yet been found, or even satisfactorily imagined, which was not yet a bow, which would still serve a purpose, and which, by addition or improvement, could give rise to the bow. 76. Wooden Implements Wood is likely to have been used by primitive men for one purpose or another from the very earliest times. Even “half men” of the “missing link” type, it may be believed, would in case of need pick up a stick or wrench a limb from a tree to serve them as a club. But we do not know when human beings first began to fashion wood into definite implements by working it with their stone tools. Wood is too perishable a substance to have stood any chance of being preserved from so long distant a past. Our knowledge of the first employment of wood is indirect. Many of the Mousterian chipped flakes are of such size and shape that they could have been operated much more effectively had they been mounted on a handle. Possibly therefore the process of hafting or handling had come to be practised in the Mous¬ terian, although there is no specific evidence to this effect. In the Upper Palaeolithic, wood was certainly used to a considerable extent. The harpoon and dart heads, for instance, must have had wooden shafts. A true ax is not known from the Old Stone Age and seems to have been invented in the Neolithic. The distinctive factor of the instrument, upon which its utility largely depends, is the straightness and smoothness of the edge; and such an edge is best attained by the grinding process. Even the unground axes of the earliest Neolithic depended on a single stroke to provide them with the required straight cutting edge. We may believe, therefore, that the Pakeolithic peoples worked wood in the man- THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 1G9- ner familiar to us from tlie practices of many modern savage races. They split it, rubbed it, and burned it into shape, rather than trying to chop it. 77. Fire One of the most fundamental of human arts is the use of fire. It is also one of the most ancient. Its occurrence is easily traced, at any rate in deposits that have not been disturbed by nature, through the presence of charred bones, lumps of charcoal, and layers of ash. Charcoal crumbles easily, but its fragments are practically imperishable. Its presence in considerable quantities in any station, particularly if the coal is accumulated in pockets, is therefore sure proof that the people who occupied the site burned fires for warmth, or cooking, or both purposes. The use of fire has been established throughout the part of the Palaeo¬ lithic when men lived in caves and under rock shelters; that is, during the Mousterian and Upper Palaeolithic. The Chellean and Acheulean deposits are so much older and more open, and in many cases have been washed over so much by rainfall and by streams, that, if the men of these periods did use fire, as they may well have done, its evidences might have been pretty generally obliterated. Whether early Palaeolithic men knew how to make fire, or whether they only found it and kept it alive, is more difficult to say. They could easily have acquired it in the first place from trees struck by lightning or from other occasional natural agencies. Then, recognizing its value, they may well have nursed it along, lighting one hearth from another. Yet at some time in the Paheolithic the art of producing fire at will, by friction between two pieces of wood, is almost certain to have been in¬ vented. One may infer this from the general similarity of level of Magdalenian civilization to that of modern savages, all of whom practise the art of ignition. But in the nature of things it would be difficult to find evidence bearing on this point from more than ten thousand years ago. It can be assumed that man is likely to have lived first for a long period in a condition in which he knew and used and preserved fire, yet was not able to produce it. 170 ANTHROPOLOGY 78. Houses Although Palaeolithic man worked so much in stone, he did not build in it. Hence our knowledge of the kinds of shelters he made for himself is almost nil. There are Upper Palaeolithic “tectiform” paintings which look as if they might be attempts to depict houses. It is clear, moreover, that in this period the general development of the mechanical arts was sufficiently advanced to allow of the construction of some sort of rude edifices. It is conceivable that as far back as the Lower Palaeolithic simple shelters of branches were constructed, or that skins may have been hung over a few poles to keep off wind and rain. On account of the perishable nature of the materials involved, it happens that there is no proof either for or against such a sup¬ position. It is possible that in time, when patient excavations shall have revealed some particularly well preserved site, the holes may yet be found in which the posts of a Palaeolithic hut were once set. In case of a fire, the carbonized stumps might prove to have been preserved in place; or the butts of the posts might have gradually rotted away and the space once occupied by them have become filled with an earthy material of different color and consistency from the surrounding soil. In this lucky event, even the size and shape of the house might be recon¬ structed from the relative positions of the post holes. From evidence of just this sort some interesting ideas have actually been obtained as to the houses and village plan of Neolithic European peoples. Of course, the chances are much less that remains of this sort would be preserved from the Palaeolithic. But the method would be equally applicable if favorable condi¬ tions offered; and it is in some such way that we may hope in the future to learn a little about the earliest habitations that mankind constructed. In any event the example serves to illus¬ trate the indirect and delicate means of which the student of prehistory must consistently avail himself in his reconstructions of the past; and gives reason to believe that all that has been learned about early man in the last fifty years is very little in comparison with what the ensuing generation and century will bring to light. THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 171 79. Religion It has already been said that knowledge of religion, a non¬ material thing, can be preserved from the remote past only by the most roundabout means. It is conceivable that the people of the Upper Palaeolithic spent at least as much time in cere¬ monial observances as in working flint. Analogy with modern uncivilized tribes would make us think that this is quite likely. But the stone tools have remained lying in the earth, while the religious customs went out of use thousands of years ago and the beliefs were forgotten. Yet this is known : As far back as the Mousterian, thirty thousand years ago, certain practices were being observed by the Neandertal race of western Europe which modern savages observe in obedience to the dictates of their religion. When these people of the Mousterian laid away their dead, they put some of their belongings with them. When existing nations do this, it is invariably in connection with a belief in the continued existence of the soul after death. We may reasonably conclude therefore that even in this long dis¬ tant period human beings had arrived at a crude recognition of the difference between flesh and spirit; in short, religion had come into being. Even to say that Neandertal man did not know whether his dead were dead, implies his recognition of something different from life in the body, for he recognized of course that the body had become different. Whether the Nean¬ dertal race already held to the existence of spirits distinct from man or superior to him, it is impossible to say. The Upper Palaeolithic Cro-Magnon peoples laid out the bodies of their dead and sometimes folded them. They also sometimes painted the bodies, and buried flint implements and food in the graves. That is, funerary practices were becoming established. We may assume that hand in hand with this de¬ velopment of observances there went a growth of ritual and belief. 80. Palaeolithic Art The highest achievement of the men of the Old Stone Age is their art. The perfection to which they carried this art is 172 ANTHROPOLOGY simply astounding in view of the comparative meagerness of their civilization otherwise. It is also remarkable how full- fledged this achievement sprang into existence. The Lower Palaeolithic seems to have been without a trace of art. AVith the Aurignacian, simple carving and painting appear ; and while the acme of accomplishment was not reached until the Magda- lenian, the essential foundations of a graphic art of high order were laid in the late Aurignacian. The Upper Palaeolithic people carved in ivory, bone, and horn; they incised or engraved on flattened and rounded sur¬ faces of the same material ; and they carved and painted the walls of caves. They modeled at times in clay and perhaps in other soft materials, and may have drawn or painted pictures on skins and on exposed rock surfaces, for all we know; we can judge only by the remains that have actually come down to us. This art is not a child-like, struggling attempt to represent objects in the rough, nor is it a mere decorative playing with geometric figures. These first human artists set boldly to work to depict ; and while their technique was simple, it was carried to a remarkably high degree of perfection. A few bold strokes gave the outlines of an animal, but they gave it with such fidelity that the species can often be recognized at a glance. The Cro-Magnon people must have developed a high power of mental concentration to be able to observe and reproduce so closely. The most gifted individuals perhaps practised assiduously to attain their facility. Paleolithic art is very different from that of most modern savages. The latter often work out decorative patterns of some complexity, richness, and esthetic value, but when they attempt to depict nature, they usually fail conspicuously. The lines are crude and wavering. Any head, body, and tail with four legs stands for almost any animal. It is a reasonable representation of an abstraction that they accomplish, not the delineation of what is characteristic in the visible form. Both observer and painter, among most living savages, are supposed to know be¬ forehand that the drawing represents a fox and not a bear. At most, some symbols are added, such as a bushy tail for a fox or a fin for a whale. It is only in rare cases that any but ad¬ vanced nations break away from these primitive tendencies and THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 173 learn to draw things as they really appear. The ancient Egyp¬ tians developed such a faculty, and among savages the Bushmen are remarkably gifted, but, on the whole, successful realistic art is an accomplishment of high civilization. It is therefore something of a mystery how the Cro-Magnon men of the Aurig- nacian brought themselves to do so well. In sculpture their first efforts were directed upon figurines. Fig. 20. Limestone statuette from Willendorf, Austria. Character¬ istic of Aurignacian treatment of the female figure: the face and limbs are abbreviated or only indicated; the parts concerned with reproduc¬ tion are exaggerated. These mostly represent the human female. The head, hands, and feet are either absent or much abbreviated. In the body, those parts having to do with reproduction and fecundity are usually heavily exaggerated, but at the same time given with considerable skill (Fig. 20). It is likely that these statuettes served some religious cult. At any rate, the carvings in three dimensions often represent the human figure, whereas two- dimensional drawings, etchings, and paintings mostly represent animals and are much more successful than the human outlines. In the Magdalenian, miniature sculpture of animals was added to that of the human figure (Fig. 21). 174 ANTHROPOLOGY Success in seizing the salient outline was the earliest charac¬ teristic of the paintings and drawings. The first Aurignacian engravings are invariably in profile and usually show only the two legs on the immediately visible side. In time the artists also learned to suggest typical positions and movements — the motion of a reindeer lowering its head to browse, the way an angry bull switches his tail or paws the ground, the curl of the Fig. 21. Horse carved in mammoth ivory. From Lourdes, France. The spirited portrayal of the neck, ears, eyes, and mouth parts is char¬ acteristic of Magdalenian sculpture. end of an elephant’s trunk (Figs. 22, 24). In the Magdalenian, all four legs are usually depicted, and the profile, although re¬ maining most frequent, as it is most characteristic, is no longer the only aspect. There are occasional pictures of animals from before or behind, or of a reindeer with its head turned back¬ ward. There are also some devices which look like the beginnings of attempts at composition. The effect of a row of reindeer is produced by drawing out the first few in some detail, and then suggesting the others by sketching in their horns (Fig. 23). Artists were no longer content, in the Magdalenian, always to THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 175 do each animal as a solitary, static unit. They were trying, with some measure of success, to represent the animals as they moved in life and perhaps to combine several of them into one coherent picture or to suggest a setting. By this time they had also acquired considerable ability in handling colors. The Aurignacian and Solutrean artists re¬ stricted themselves to monochrome effects. They engraved or painted outlines and sometimes accentuated these by filling them in with pigment. But the best of the later painters in the Mag- dalenian — those, for instance, who left their frescoes on the walls Fig. 22. Engraving of a charging mammoth. On a fragment of ivory tusk found at La Madeleine, France. While the artist’s strokes were crude, he was able to depict the animal’s action with remarkable vigor. Note the roll of the eye, the flapping ears, the raised tail ex¬ pressive of anger. of the famous cave of Altamira in Spain — used three or four colors at once and blended these into transition tones. While animals constitute the subjects of probably four-fifths of the specimens of Palaeolithic art, and human beings most of the remainder, representations of plants and unrealistic decora¬ tive designs are known. The latter seem to have begun to be specially prevalent in the latest Magdalenian, as if in prepara¬ tion of the conventionalized, non-naturalistic art of the transi¬ tional Azilian and Neolithic. 176 ANTHROPOLOGY 81. Summary of Advance in the Palaeolithic The history of civilization has herewith been outlined from its first dim beginnings to about twelve thousand years ago — say to the neighborhood of 10,000 B.C., as the historian would put it. Progress is immensely slow at the outset, hut gradually speeds up. The tabulation in Figure 25 summarizes some of the principal features of this evolution. This diagram does not pre¬ tend to be complete ; it does try to include some of the most important and representative inventions, arts, and accomplish¬ ments of the Old Stone Age. Thus it appears that the Cliellean and Acheulean periods are characterized essentially by a single art, that of chipping imple- Fig. 23. Magdalenian engraving of a herd of reindeer, found in the grotto of La Mairie, France. The impressionistic manner enabled the artist to suggest rather effectively a large herd while drawing out only four animals. ments on a core of flint, plus perhaps the use of fire. The Mous- terian evinces progress : stone tools are now made from the flake as well as the core, possibly are sometimes liafted, bone is occa¬ sionally utilized, and there are the first indications of budding religion; four or five entries are required to represent these culture traits. The greatest advance comes from the Mousterian to the Aurignacian ; in other words, between the Lower and the Upper Pakeolithic. Three times as many accomplishments are listed as in the Mousterian, and whole series of new inventions are now first met with : body ornaments, bone implements, aesthetic products. This sudden leap in the figures goes far to signalize the importance of the division between the Upper and the Lower Pakeolithic. In the Solutrean and Magdalenian still further THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 177 inventions or refinements appear, until, when the Old Stone Age comes to a close,1 the stock of human civilization may be described as perhaps twenty times as rich as at the beginning. These figures are not to be taken too literally. The tabulation could easily have been compiled on a more elaborate basis. But even then the relative proportion of culture features in each period would remain approximately as here given. And as Fig. 24. Magdalenian engraving, perhaps a composition: browsing reindeer among grass, reeds, and water. Note the naturalistic move¬ ment suggested by the legs and position of the head. Engraved so as to encircle a piece of antler. Found at Kesslerloch, Switzerland. regards the general fact of accumulation of civilization, and its range and nature, the diagram may be accepted as substantially representative of what happened. The end of the Palaeolithic thus sees man in possession of a number of mechanical arts which enable him to produce a con¬ siderable variety of tools in several materials : sees him control- i A period known as the Azilian, dated about 10,000-8,000 B.C., usually included in the Palaeolithic, is discussed in chapter XIV in connection with a review of the Palaeolithic outside Europe and of the relations between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic. s * h ! i i t j ^ 1 i i — j { ^ • js i j K ! ^ ! FLINT IMPLEMENTS FLAKED COFfE D[TTF}l//'t-IC~r\ c~r A Is et . . . t j T ! 1 f i } • • ; • i • ; • * ■ • • ! : ! : ; J • i«i ' i ; , i • • r(L. / L/UU/IELI f L.Ar\L~ RFTOUCR/RG ALL O^FR C~rc>A l/CPIF A~/ ALYP~ _ } i _ ■ 1 III! O • oH / (jfi / / fc/t/lt ! i ! ! ! i VYUUUL/J nAJJULL O . . F/&P . - . - -H t — r - ! - 1 - ! - , ! ! l_/$ pfp _ J ! ! BONE IMPLEMENTS A \A/t _ _ _ J i • ! 1 : 1 ! i * i • i • i F-i / / A. - - - " - DART f-/F~ A n _ P4//V7* 7*{ f&F* _ ! ' • [ ' L L : FtECKLACE fDRES5) - nppd/ Fdppp s J _ | i i r ! • i i i : , i ' i / /£.£. LSL.C. ( t-vT /TV/ C,~/ . . i i i | i • 1 1 1 - 1 C/Z/Wi-L, ^ HARpnnN _ i ■ i ■ i i roc- A E? 7’HPniA/PR-- »:•!»» /Wr /^AQ\/f N/0* _ _ _ i i i i * < • • i r 1 • • • i it 1 t 1 i l l f . • Gsirt K///C7 ------ -rr H/N/Z _ j : 4-/4* ft 77 § 47 ! ■ . [f j rvH/'// ///C7 -------- £2/1/ y/~/-/ on MF- ! i J j ‘ ; ! ~LSL ./ C./7/TI//7C » — coNPosmon — REL/a/Or/WD Ct/STO/i burials w/moFFER/rta. EU RIALS WITH PA HIT—- • ■ • 1 l ! , j ■ . ! ! • » » i ! : I ; ! ! ! j j ! Fit /RIALS FLFYFR _ !- i "PROS RFFFlNFfA Till - j ! ! si v/r <*> v// // /rs//4/ mSMY/// fz/pc _ _ i i i,i V/l (/C 4 wi/rv AWZ/VS _ 1 i ii«i i i 1 • i i f /W/i/v i» vj ------ Af/f C _ _ t j , 1 * 1 • f /Tr/PAT O [ { ; i ! HOT P/SLAEQUTHIC:P0U5HED STONE, BOVE/WD ARROW, POTTERY, DOR£ST/C AMMALS, AOTJCI/Lm^ I Fig. 25. Growth of civilization during the Palaeolithic. THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 179 ling fire; cooking food; wearing clothes, and living in definite habitations; probably possessing some sort of social grouping, order, and ideas of law and justice ; clearly under the influence of some kind of religion; highly advanced in the plastic arts; and presumably already narrating legends and singing songs. In short, many fundamental elements of civilization were estab¬ lished. It is true that the sum total of knowledge and accom¬ plishments was still pitifully small. The most advanced of the Old Stone Age men perhaps knew and could do about one thing for every hundred that we know and can do. A whole array of fundamental inventions — the bow and arrow, pottery, domesti¬ cation of animals and plants — had not yet been attempted, and they do not appear on the scene until the Neolithic. But in spite of the enormous gaps remaining to be filled in the Neolithic and in the historic period, it does seem fair to say that many of the outlines of what civilization was ultimately to be had been sub¬ stantially blocked out during the Upper Palaeolithic. Most of the framework was there, even though but a small fraction of its content had yet been entered. CHAPTER VII HEREDITY, CLIMATE, AND CIVILIZATION 82. Heredity. — 83. Geographical environment.- — 84. Diet. — 85. Agricul¬ ture. — 86. Cultural factors. — 87. Cultural distribution. — 88. Historical in¬ duction. 82. Heredity The first of the several factors through which it is logically possible to explain the life and conduct and customs of any people is race or heredity : in other words, the inborn tendencies, bodily and mental, of the people that carry these customs. At first sight it may seem that this element of race might be quite influential. Since peoples differ in inherited characteristics of body — complexion, features, hair, eye color, head form, and the like — these bodily inherited peculiarities ought to be accom¬ panied by mentally inherited traits, such as greater or less incli¬ nation to courage, energy, power of abstract thought, mechanical ingenuity, musical or aesthetic proclivities, swift reactions, ability to concentrate, gift of expression. Such racial mental traits, again, might conceivably be expressed in the conduct and cul¬ ture of each people. Races born to a greater activity of the mechanical faculties would achieve more or higher inventions, those innately gifted in the direction of music would develop more subtly melodious songs, and so on. Yet in every particular case it is difficult or impossible to establish by incontrovertible evidence that heredity is the specific cause of this accomplishment, of this point of view, or of this mode of life ; that it is the determining factor to such and such degree of such and such customs. This is not a denial of the probability that inborn racial differences exist. It is an affirma¬ tion of the difficulty, discussed in Chapters I, IV, and Y, of knowing what is inborn; and more specifically, of the difficulty of tracing particular customary activities back to particular 180 HEREDITY, CLIMATE, AND CIVILIZATION 181 racial qualities. The problem of connecting specific race traits with specific phenomena of culture or group conduct, such as settled life, architecture in stone, religious symbolism, and the like, — of determining how much of this type of architecture or symbolism is instinctive in the race and how much of it is the result of traditional or social influences, — remains unsolved. For example, should one try to apply to the explanation of the mode of life or culture of the Indians of the Southwestern United States biological facts, such as their head form, one would be confronted by the difficulty that long heads are char¬ acteristic of some of the town-building tribes, or Pueblos, and also of some of the tribes living in brush huts. Broad heads are also found among both the settled and nomadic tribes. The Pueblo Taos and non-Pueblo Pima are narrow-headed, the Pueblo Zuhi and non-Pueblo Apache broad-headed. So with the pulse rate, which has been already mentioned (§70) as un¬ usually slow among the Southwestern Indians. It is the same for the. nomadic Apache who lived by fighting, and for the Hopi and Zuhi who are famous for their timidity and gentleness. Similar cases might be cited almost endlessly. It is evident that they are of a kind with the lack of correspondence between race and speech, or race and nationality, among the European peoples. 83. Geographical Environment When it comes to the second factor by which culture might theoretically be explained — physical environment or geography — similar difficulties are encountered. It is of course plain that a primitive tribe under the equator would never invent the ice box, and that the Eskimo will not keep their food and water in buckets of bamboo, although it is possible that if the Eskimo had had bamboo carried to them by ocean currents, they would have been both glad and able to use it. The materials and opportunities provided by nature may be made use of by each people, while other materials not being provided, other arts or customs can therefore not be developed. But evidently this correspondence is mainly negative. Not per¬ forming an act because one lacks the opportunity by no means 182 ANTHROPOLOGY proves that the opportunity will necessarily lead to the per: formance. Two nations will live where there is ice to store and one will invent and the other fail to invent the ice chest. Whole series of peoples possess bamboo and clay, and yet some of them draw water in bamboo joints and others in pots. Obviously, natural environment does impose certain limiting conditions on human life; but equally obviously, it does not cause inventions or institutions. The native Australians have wood and cord and flint but do not make bows and arrows. Their civilization had not advanced to the point where they were able to devise an efficient bow, and the requisite idea failed to be carried to them from elsewhere as it was to other peoples who also did not invent the weapon. The Polynesians, on the other hand, seem once to have had the weapon, as evidenced by their retaining it as a toy, but to have disused it, perhaps because they specialized on fighting with spears and clubs. Modern civilized people fight at long range, but have let bows go out of use, except for sport, because their knowledge of metallurgy and chemistry centuries ago progressed to the point where they could produce firearms. Development or lack of development or specialization of other cultural activi¬ ties — social causes — thus determine more directly than other factors whether or not a people employ the bow and arrow. Of those mentioned, the Australians are the only ones with whom a factor of natural environment might be alleged to enter: namely, their isolation, which cut them off from communications and the opportunity to learn from other races. Yet such isola¬ tion is as much a matter of inability to traverse space as it is a matter of physical distance. A developed art of navigation would have abolished the Australian isolation. Thus, this seem¬ ingly environmental cause of a cultural fact depends for its effectiveness on a co-existing cultural cause. It is the latter which is the most immediate or specific cause. In general, then, it may be concluded that the directly deter¬ mining factors of cultural phenomena are not nature which gives or withholds materials, but the general state of knowledge and technology and advancement of the group; in short, historical or cultural influences. HEREDITY, CLIMATE, AND CIVILIZATION 183 84. Diet The greater part of the Southwest is arid. Fish are scarce. The result is that most of the tribes get little opportunity to fish. Most of these Southwestern Indians will not eat fish; in fact, think them poisonous. This circumstance might lead to the following inference : nature does not furnish fish in abun¬ dance ; therefore the Indians got out of the habit of eating them, and finally came to believe them poisonous. At first blush this may seem a sufficient explanation. But it is well to note that the explanation has two parts and that only one of them has \ k \ to do with nature : the habit of not eating fish because they are too scarce to make it worth while. As soon as one proceeds to the second step, that the disuse led to aversion and then to a false belief of poisonousness, one has gone on to a different matter. Disuse, aversion, and belief lie wholly within the field of human conduct. To derive a psychological phenomenon, such as a belief, from another psychological phenomenon such as a particular disuse, because this disuse is founded on a geo¬ graphical factor, would of course be a logical fallacy. It can also be shown not to hold, since we prize caviar and oysters and venison in proportion to their rarity. Scarcity in this case thus leads to the contrary psychological attitude, and either fails to establish beliefs or establishes favorable ones. Again, either through a change in climate or through the im¬ provement of trade, a food that was scarce may become plenti¬ ful. Or a people may remove to a new habitat, different from that in which their customs of eating were formed. If environ¬ ment alone were the dominating cause of their customs, these customs should then immediately alter. As a fact, a group sometimes adheres to its old customs. The immediate cause of such conservatism is habit or inertia or inclination toward super¬ stition or fear of taboo, all of which are mental reactions ex¬ pressed in folkways or social customs. Thus environment re¬ mains at most a partial and indirectly operating cause. A case in point is that of the Jews. It is often said that the Jew’s prohibition against eating pork and oysters and lobsters originated in hygienic considerations ; that these were climatic¬ ally unsafe foods for him in Palestine. This explanation is 184 ANTHROPOLOGY more simple than true. Ancient Palestine was an arid country in which hogs could not be raised with economic profit, and so they were not raised ; and the Philistine and Phoenician kept the Jew from the coast along which he might have obtained shell¬ fish. Eating neither food, he happened to acquire a distrust of them ; having the distrust, he rationalized it by saying that it was foreign and wicked and irreligious 10 act counter to his habits — just like the Pueblo Indian ; and in the end had the Lord issue the prohibition for him. Yet this outcome is a long way from the starting point of natural environment. The environment may indeed be said to have furnished the first occasion, but the determining causes of the taboos in the Mosaic law are of an entirely different kind — distrust, custom, ration¬ alization, psychological or cultural factors. If doubt remains, it is dispelled by the orthodox Jew of to-day, whose environ¬ ment thrusts some of his forbidden foods at him as economically and hygienically satisfactory, whereas he still shudders at the thought of tasting them. If this sort of cultural crystallizing of custom and subsequent rationalizing or ritual sanctioning takes place among civilized and intelligent people, the like must occur among uncivilized tribes. 85. Agriculture Attempts have been made to derive the invention of agri¬ culture from climatic factors. The first theory was that farm¬ ing took its rise in the tropics, where agriculture came natu¬ rally, almost without effort, under a bounteous sky. Only after people had acquired the habit of farming and had moved into other less favorably endowed countries, did they take their agri¬ culture seriously in order to survive. But a second, equally plausible, and quite contradictory theory has been advanced, which looks toward the duress rather than the easy favors of nature. On the basis of conditions among the modern Papago Indians and the ancient inhabitants of the Southwest, it has been argued that it must have been the peoples of arid countries who invented agriculture, necessity driving them to it through shortage of wild supplies. HEREDITY, CLIMATE, AND CIVILIZATION 185 Between such flat opposites, the choice is merely one of un¬ scientific guessing. In this particular case of the Southwest it is certain that both guesses are wrong. Agriculture did not come to the natives of this area because nature was favorable or because it was unfavorable. It came because through increase of knowledge and change of attitude, some people in the region of Southern Mexico or Guatemala or beyond first turned agri¬ culturists, and from them the art was gradually carried, through nation after nation, to the Southwestern tribes, and finally even to the Indians of the North Atlantic coast. The reasons for acceptance of this explanation are several. First is the distribution of native agriculture, whose practice was about equally spread in the two American continents with its middle in or near Central America. If a geographical dif¬ fusion of the art from a center took place, its radiation or extension would probably be about equal to the north and south. Then, the middle portions of the new world held the greatest concentration of native population, such as would have tended to produce a pressure in the direction of the establishment of agriculture and would also normally be a consequence of the continued custom of farming, as opposed to unsettled life. Again, the Southwestern tribes planted only maize, beans, and squashes ; the Mexicans grew in addition tomatoes, chili peppers, cacao, and sweet potatoes. It looks as if they had carried their agriculture farther through having been at it longer. Then, pottery has evidently spread out from the same center, and the two arts seem to go hand in hand. Other evidence might be adduced, such as archaeological excavations and the botanical fact that the home of the nearest wild relatives of the plants cultivated in the Southwest is the central or middle American area (§ 183). In short, the Southwestern Indians did not farm because na¬ ture induced them to make the invention. They did not make the invention at all. A far away people made it, and from them it was transmitted to the Southwest through a series of suc¬ cessive tribal contacts. These contacts, which then are the specific cause of Southwestern agriculture, constitute a human social factor; a cultural or civilizational factor. Climatic or physical environment did not enter into the matter at all, except ANTHROPOLOGY 186 to render agriculture somewhat difficult in the arid Southwest, though not difficult enough to prevent it. Had the Southwest been thoroughly desert, agriculture could not have got a foot¬ hold there. But this would be only a limiting condition; the active or positive causes that brought about the Southwestern agriculture are its invention farther South, the spread of the invention to the North, and its acceptance there. Of course this conclusion sheds no light on the causes of the first invention in the middle American region. The ultimate origin of the phenomenon has not been penetrated. But the prevalence of agriculture in the aboriginal Southwest for sev¬ eral thousand years past has been pretty certainly accounted for, and by an explanation in terms of culture or civilization, or the activity of societies of human beings. 86. Cultural Factors Such cultural causes constitute the third set or kind of fac¬ tors by which civilization is explainable. If the example just discussed is representative, it is clear that cultural factors ordi¬ narily interpret more phenomena of civilization, and interpret them more fully, than factors either of racial heredity or phys¬ ical environment. It is different in zoology and botany.' The forms and be¬ havior of animals and plants are explainable in terms of heredity and environment because animals and plants have no culture. It is true that the forms and behavior are determined also by other animals and plants, their characteristics, habits, and abun¬ dance, but these factors are in a larger sense part of the environ¬ ment. They are at any rate sub-cultural. But since anthro¬ pology deals with beings whose distinctive trait in social rela¬ tions is the possession of the thing that we call culture, the factors which biology employs are insufficient. It is not that heredity and natural environment fail to apply to man, but that they apply only indirectly and remotely to his civilization. This fundamental fact has often been overlooked, especially in modern times, because the biological sciences having achieved successful increases of knowledge and understanding, the temp¬ tation was great to borrow their method outright and apply it HEREDITY, CLIMATE, AND CIVILIZATION 187 without serious modification to the human material of anthro¬ pology. This procedure simplified the situation, but yielded inadequate and illusory results. For a very long time the idea that man possessed and animals lacked a soul influenced people ’s thought to such a degree that they scarcely thought of human beings in terms of biological causality, of heredity and environ¬ ment. Then when a reaction began to set in, less than two cen¬ turies ago, and it became more generally recognized that man was an animal, the pendulum swung to the other extreme and the tendency grew of seeing in him only the animal, the cul¬ tureless being, and of either ignoring his culture or thinking that it could be explained away by resolving it into the factors familiar from biology. The just and wise course lies between. The biological aspects of man must be interpreted in terms of biological causation, his cultural aspects in terms first of all of cultural causation. After they have been thus resolved, the cultural causes may reduce to ultimate factors of heredity and natural environment. 87. Cultural Distribution The Southwest also provides an example of how cultural phe¬ nomena can be seen to be arranged geographically so as to yield a meaning or to outline their history, without reference to cli¬ mate or natural influences. Near the center of the area, in northern New Mexico and Arizona, live four groups of Pueblo or town building Indians — the ITopi, Zuni, Keres, and Tewa or Tano — who represent a sort of elite of the native culture. They farm, make pottery, accumulate wealth in turquoise, are gov¬ erned by priests, worship under a remarkably complex set of rituals, which involve altars, masks, symbols of all sorts, and a rude sort of philosophy. As one goes from the Pueblo center to the less settled tribes, one encounters first the Navaho, who are earth hut builders and farm but little, yet share much of the Pueblo elaborateness of ritual, including altars, masks, and symbols. A little farther out, among the Apache and Pima, the cults have perceptibly diminished in intricacy and symbolic value: altars and masks are lacking. 188 ANTHROPOLOGY The simplification increases among the more remote Mohave, whose cults are based on dreams instead of priestly tradition. Still farther, on the shores of the Pacific among the Luiseno and Gabrielino, some Pueblo traits can still be found ; cult altars and pottery, for instance. But agriculture, homes of stone, turquoise, priests, and the majority of Pueblo institutions are unknown. Finally, still farther away in central California, the Yokuts now and then show a culture trait reminiscent of the Pueblos : grooved arrow straighteners, perhaps, or occasional rudely made pottery vessels. These are suggestive bits; frag¬ ments that have been whittled away or toned down. Pueblo culture as a whole has vanished at this distance. In its place the Yokuts possess quite different arts and institutions and beliefs. What is the significance of this gradual fading away of one type of civilization and its replacement by others? Evidently that certain influences have radiated out from the higher Pueblo center, and that the effect of these has diminished in proportion to the number of tribes they have passed through. The Pueblos have succeeded in handing over the largest share of their civili¬ zation to the adjacent Navaho — and no doubt also received most from them. The Apache being more remote, were less affected; and so on to the farthest limits of the influences. It is also clear that a time element is involved. A people receiving an art from another obviously acquires this later than the inventors. Most traits which the central Pueblos share with peripheral tribes may be assumed to have existed longer among the Pueblos, simply because they possess more traits in their culture and the flow has prevailingly been out from them. Thus they make uncolored, two-colored, and three-colored pottery ; the tribes on the margin of the Southwest, uncolored pottery only; those beyond the range of immediate Southwestern in¬ fluence, no pottery at all. Unless therefore there should be special reasons suggestive of a degenerative loss of the art among the marginal tribes — and no such reasons are known — the conclusion is forced that Southwestern pottery was first made by the ancestors of the Pueblos or their predecessors in the central part of the area, presumably as plain ware, and that thence knowledge of the art was gradually carried outward. HEREDITY, CLIMATE, AND CIVILIZATION 189 However while simple pottery making was thus being taken up by the tribes nearest to the Pueblo district, the Pueblos were going ahead and learning to ornament vessels with painted de¬ signs. In time this added art also spread to the neighbors, but meanwhile these had passed knowledge of the first stage on to the tribes still farther out than themselves ; and meanwhile also the Pueblos had perhaps gone on to a third stage, that of com¬ bining colors in their decoration. In this way, if nothing interrupted the even regularity of the process, the focal people, with their lead in creating or in¬ venting or improving, might pass through half a dozen succes¬ sive stages of the art, or of many arts, while the outermost peoples were just beginning to receive the rudiments. The intermediate tribes would show attainment of a less or greater number of stages in proportion to their distance from the center. In this event the main facts concerning the pottery art of the Southwest could be represented by a diagram of a step pyramid, each level or step picturing a new increment to the basic art. The Pueblos would be at the peak of the pyramid, five or six steps high, the near-by tribes a step or two lower; and so on to the outermost, who remain at, or have only recently attained to, the first or lowest level; while beyond these would be the non-pottery-making tribes wholly outside the Pueblo sphere of influence. Of course on the actual map the distribution of the various forms or stages of pottery made does not work out with the perfect regularity of our schematic diagram. Here and there a tribe has migrated from its habitat and disturbed the symmetry of arrangement ; or the population of a district has been so thin that it could live on wild products without resorting to agricul¬ ture, so that it remained more or less nomadic and had no use for fragile pottery; or a third group of tribes, developed basket making to a pitch which yielded excellent vessels, with the result that they were satisfied and failed to take up pottery, or took it up half-heartedly, so that the art remained stunted among them — a stage or two more backward than their position would lead one to expect. But on the whole pottery distribution in the Southwest does follow the schematic arrangement with suf¬ ficient closeness to warrant the assumption that the history of 190 ANTHROPOLOGY its development has been, at least in outline, as just recon¬ structed. The facts conform still more closely to the step pyramid ar¬ rangement when consideration is given not to pottery alone but to the whole culture — agriculture, other arts, social forms, ritual, religious organization, and the like. In that case Pueblo culture is seen to comprise easily the greatest number of traits or com¬ ponent parts, and these to grow fewer and fewer towards the edges of the Southwest.1 88. Historical Induction The sort of conclusion here outlined is really a historical in¬ duction drawn from the facts of culture distribution among living but historyless tribes. Where documents are available, the development, the growth of the pyramid itself, as it were, can often be seen as it happened. Thus, about the year 100 A.D., Rome, Italy, France, England, Scotland, stood on succes¬ sive descending culture levels related to one another much like Pueblo, Navaho, Pima, Mohave, Gabrielino ; and also in the same placement of ever more outward geographic situation. Where written records fail, archaeological remains sometimes take their place. This is true of the Southwest, whose ancient pottery, stone edifices and implements, and evidences of agricul¬ ture remain as records of the past, telling a story only a little less complete and direct than that of the Roman historians. One of the archgeologists of the Southwest has drawn up a pair of diagrams to outline the culture history of the area as he has reconstructed it from comparison of the prehistoric remains (Fig. 26). In all this story, what has become of natural environment and heredity? They have dropped from sight. We have been able to build up a reasonable and probably reliable reconstruction i Of course this does not mean that the tribes beyond the edge are without culture. They would normally be under influences from other centers. And in a certain degree every people possesses initiative and is constantly tending to invent or produce culture, though perhaps only of a simple order. It is only from the point of view of the Southwest and its Pueblo focus that the extra-marginal tribes possess a zero culture. — For examples of other cultural step pyramids, see § 164, 175, Fig. 35, (o>. ( Hist ^ I Walapai I V »fc>/ ! Anciem Marginal Zone J or Rancheria Center \ /historic \ ! Rancheria \ l