to make no greater claims for an argument than the facts absolutely
warrant. Accordingly, I hasten to explain what has really been shown and
what I have failed to show hitherto. It is, I think, fair to say that
culture cannot be adequately explained by race, and that the same race
varies extraordinarily in culture even within a very narrow space of
time. But we have not furnished proof that, say, the Central African
Pygmies, the Tasmanians, or the aborigines of Australia would have been
capable of attaining unaided to the level of our civilization. What we
can say, however, is this: The Chinese and some of our American Indians,
such as the ancient Central Americans and Peruvians, did attain a very
high level, which may be equated with that of Europe at a relatively
recent period. The difference between European culture then and now
cannot be due to hereditary causes, and it would, therefore, be
unjustifiable to allege that such causes account for the difference
between Europe of today and China or ancient Central America. Quite
generally it is true that the so-called primitive tribes are anything
but primitive in the strict sense of the term. Ingenious contrivances,
such as the boomerang, occur among the Australians, usually regarded as
one of the lowliest of races, and here we also find a remarkable
complexity of social organization. The Negroes of Africa are not only
conversant with the art of metallurgy, which is possibly their own
invention, but are conspicuous for their ability to form large and
powerful political states and have shown at least the ability of
assimilating the culture of Islam. If we contrast Negro culture on the
average not with the highest products of Dutch, Danish, or Swiss
culture, but with the status of the illiterate peasant communities in
not a few regions of Europe, the difference will hardly be so great as
to suggest any far-reaching hereditary causes. As the highly civilized
Manchu of today have for their next racial kin very crude Siberian
populations, so the white race, even today, embraces very primitive as
well as highly advanced constituent groups. We cannot wholly isolate the
racial factor from others, and we cannot give an ocular demonstration of
what the several inferior races, so-called, are capable of achieving
under the most favorable conditions. But with great confidence we can
say that since the same race at different times or in different
subdivisions at the same time represents vastly different cultural
stages, there is obviously no direct _proportional_ relation between
culture and race. And if great changes of culture can occur without any
change of race whatsoever, we are justified in considering it probable
that a relatively minute change of hereditary ability might produce
enormous differences. An analogy may render the matter clearer. Suppose
that it is of vital importance to lift a heavy weight, say 400 pounds,
to which only a single individual has access at the same time. Then a
very slight difference in muscular power will either accomplish or fail
in producing the desired effect, and the ultimate effect (say in
repelling an attack on a fortress under relatively primitive conditions)
will be entirely incommensurate with the additional strength required to
produce it. So we may readily understand how a slightly greater
mechanical aptitude might render one race able to launch a remarkable
series of inventions for which another, by barely missing the required
degree of development, would be forever debarred. This is only a special
form of the Darwinian doctrine of the survival value of small
variations, applied not to the question of the struggle for existence
(with which, nevertheless, it may be most intimately related), but to
the creation of new cultural values.
This aspect of the subject naturally leads to another that is closely
connected with it and is essential to an understanding of the entire
question. Mental endowment is a variable phenomenon within any
particular people or tribe. However democratic may be our ideals, the
doctrine that all individuals are born equal in point of ability can no
longer be seriously maintained. Every race must, therefore, be regarded
not as representing a single point of mental development, but as a
continuum of mental values with a certain range of variation. In
comparing the different races we must, accordingly, apply the canons
used by statisticians in comparing series of variable measurements. Here
a matter of vital importance challenges our attention. Two series may
have the same average value and yet differ considerably in range. Now it
is obvious that, where the number of individuals considered is small,
excessive values are less likely to occur than in a larger series. In a
gathering of a hundred men, we are not likely to find a man above 6 feet
6 inches in height; the average stature of all New Yorkers will probably
not be any greater than that of one hundred men selected at random, yet
in the entire city we shall find a number of individuals of gigantic
stature. When we apply this fact to our special problem we see at once
that extraordinary deviations from the norm cannot be expected to occur
in a tribe of 500 or even 5,000, while among the vast populations of
India, China or the Caucasian countries of America and Europe such
favorable variants are likely to occur with considerable absolute
frequency. These variations, as has already been suggested, need not
even be excessive to produce significant cultural results. Again, we may
urge the principle of minimal variations. A _little_ greater energy or
administrative talent may be just sufficient to found a powerful state;
a _slightly_ greater amount of logical consistency may lead to the
foundation of geometrical reasoning or of a philosophical system; a
_somewhat_ keener interest, above the purely utilitarian one, in
surrounding nature may give a remarkable impetus to the development of
science.
Now this puts an entirely different construction on the facts. Assume
that racial differences _are_ at the bottom of some of the observed
cultural differences. This fact would not necessarily mean, then, that
the _average_ ability of the inferior races is less, but only that
extreme variations of an advantageous character occur less frequently
among them. This, for example, is the view taken by Professor Eugen
Fischer, the physical anthropologist, a very firm believer in racial
differences, but as regards variability rather than in point of average
intellectual equipment. It is also essentially, if I understand him, the
point made by Professor Thorndike. But precisely because the population
of the several races differs so enormously, we are for many of them
without a fair standard of comparison. Statistically, any actual number
of measurements is only a small sample of an infinite series; but we
have no means of ascertaining empirically what the extreme variations
of which Veddas or Australians are organically capable, would be like.
This, necessarily, leaves the ultimate problem of racial differences
unsolved. Nevertheless, our considerations have not been in vain. They
show, for one thing, how many factors have to be weighed in arriving at
a fair estimate of racial capabilities, factors which are naively
ignored in most popular discussions of the subject. We can, farther, say
positively that whatever differences may exist have been grossly
exaggerated. In the simpler mental operations, comparative psychological
studies indicate a specific unity of mankind. Differences in culture are
certainly not proportionate to mental differences, _i.e._, relatively
slight differences in native ability may well have produced tremendous
cultural effects. Since, finally, cultural differences of enormous range
occur within the same race, and even within very much smaller
subdivisions, the ethnologist cannot solve his cultural problems by
means of the race factor. Even if an ultimate investigation should
definitely fix the cultural limits to which a given race is hereditarily
subject, such information could not solve the far more specific problem
why the same people a few hundred years earlier were a horde of
barbarians and a few hundred years later formed a highly civilized
community. The supposed explanation by racial potentialities would be
far too general to interpret the actual happenings. Racial psychology,
no less than general psychology, thus fails to solve the problems of
culture.
III. CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT[1]
The influence of geographical environment on culture seems a matter not
so much of logical inference as of direct observation. Taking our own
continent, we know that cotton is raised in the South, that our wheat
belt lies in Minnesota and the adjoining states and Canadian provinces,
that the Rocky Mountain and some of the Plateau states are the seat of
the mining industry while Florida and California form our tropical fruit
orchards. With these obvious facts are combined correlations not so
clear, perhaps, yet very convincing to the mind as yet undebauched by
ethnological learning. What seems more natural than that culture in its
highest forms should develop only in temperate regions, that the gloomy
forests of the North be reflected in a mythology of ogres and trolls,
that liberty should flourish amidst snowy mountain tops and languish in
the tepid plain, or that islanders should be expert mariners?
This geographical theory of culture bears a certain resemblance to the
classical associationist theory in psychology. According to that
doctrine, the mind is something in the nature of a wax tablet on which
the outer world produces impressions and all the higher mental
activities are, in the last instance, reducible to combinations of the
represented impressions or ‘ideas’. Modern psychology, however, regards
this system, fascinating as it appears at a first glance, as little
better than an historical curiosity. The association of ideas itself is
now conceived merely as a special manifestation of the synthetic nature
of consciousness. In short, the tables are completely turned, and
association, instead of explaining consciousness, is interpreted in
terms of consciousness. The analogy with the geographical view of
culture will become apparent in the course of our discussion.
To begin with the culture of our own country: The environmental features
of southern California, of Nevada, and the South have not changed during
the last few centuries. Yet, what do we find on considering the
aboriginal cultures of these regions? Southern California and Nevada
were unreclaimed desert wastes inhabited by a roving, non-agricultural
population, the natural mining resources of the latter state remained
untouched, no attempt was made to grow cotton in the Southern cotton
area. How can such facts be interpreted on a geographical basis? Quite
obviously, the reverse holds. The utilization of part of the
environment, instead of being an automatic response, has for an
indispensable prerequisite a certain type of culture. Granted the
existence of an agricultural technique, attempts may be made to apply it
even in a forbidding arid climate, where a more primitive culture would
not be able to develop it. The unfavorable environment may have checked
such development, and in so far forth exerted cultural influence at one
stage, but it is unable to check it at another stage, where the
preëxisting culture, instead of ‘remaining put’, molds the environment
to its own purposes.
The case I have chosen is an extreme one because I have correlated
environment with extremes of culture--one of the lowest forms of
aboriginal North American culture and our modern advanced scientific
methods of subduing nature to our will. But if we consider only the
cruder forms of civilization the same point appears with equal
clearness.
Professor Kirchhoff, by no means an extreme adherent of the geographical
school since he does not reduce man to a mere automaton in the face of
his surroundings, nevertheless believes in a far-reaching influence of
the environment and cites in particular the resemblances between
inhabitants of arid territories. Unfortunately for his argument we have
glaring instances in which desert-like conditions coexist with
disparate modes of culture not only in similar but in identical regions
of the globe.
Thus, the Hopi and Navajo Indians have both occupied for a long period
the same part of northeastern Arizona and on the environmental theory we
should therefore expect among them the same mode of life. In this,
however, we are thoroughly disappointed. The Hopi are intensive farmers
who succeed in raising crops where white agriculturists fail; the Navajo
also plant corn but to a distinctly lesser extent and under Spanish
influence have readily developed into a pastoral people, raising sheep
for food and wool. Though the same building material is available, the
Hopi construct the well-known terraced sandstone houses with a
rectangular cell as the architectural unit, while the Navajo dwell in
conical earth-covered huts. North American ceramic art attains one of
its highwater marks among the Hopi, while the pottery of the Navajo is
hopelessly crude in comparison. Cotton was raised by the Hopi, but there
is no trace of its use by the neighboring people. What is true of the
material aspect of native life applies equally to its less tangible
elements. There is at least one marked difference in the sexual division
of labor: with the Hopi it is the man’s business to spin and weave
while this work falls to woman’s share among the Navajo. The Hopi were
always strict monogamists, while among the Navajo polygamy was
permissible. In conjunction with their agricultural pursuits Hopi
ceremonialism centered in the magico-religious production of rain; the
Navajo applied often the identical ritualistic stock-in-trade to the
cure of sickness. A stringent regulation of the Navajo social code
forbids all conversation between son-in-law and mother-in-law; but the
Hopi merely view the taboo as a Navajo idiosyncrasy. The general cast of
Hopi psychology, as fashioned by Hopi society, is that of an eminently
peaceable population; the Navajo rather recall in their bearing the
warlike and aggressive tribes of the Plains. Where resemblances occur,
as _e.g._, in the objective phase of the native cults, we are able to
prove that the parallelism is due not to an independent response to
environmental stimuli, but to contact and borrowing. But quite apart
from such cases, the basic differences in Hopi and Navajo civilization
show that the environment alone cannot account for cultural phenomena.
If we pass from the southwestern United States to South Africa, a
corresponding situation confronts us. The same area at one time formed
the habitat of the Bushmen and the Hottentots; yet, their mode of life
varies fundamentally. The Bushmen are essentially hunters and
seed-collectors, while the Hottentots are an eminently pastoral people.
Caves and crude windbreaks form the Bushman’s original dwellings, while
the Hottentots have mat-covered portable beehive-shaped huts. The
Bushman’s principal weapons are bow and arrow, with the Hottentot these
implements are of secondary importance as compared with the spear. It is
true that not only material objects but even myths and folktales are
shared by both tribes, but in many instances of this sort we have
clearly a case not of independent response to the same external
conditions but rather the result of borrowing. Thus, some of the traits
common to Hottentot and Bushman, for example, a fair number of mythic
episodes, occur likewise among the Bantu Negroes inhabiting contiguous
but geographically different territory. One of the most interesting
traits of ancient Bushman culture is the life-like representation of
animals on rocks and the walls of caves. Oddly enough, these engravings
and mural paintings, which distinguish the Bushmen from their South
African neighbors, have their nearest parallels in the Spanish
cave-paintings of Palæolithic Europe. The picturing of the mammoth and
reindeer by these old South European artists clearly proves that they
belonged to a glacial epoch, during which geographical conditions could
hardly have resembled those of the Kalahari desert.[2]
One other illustration from the same general region of the Dark
Continent is suggestive. The Ovambo and Herero, neighbors though they
are, differ in the essential features of their economic life. While the
Ovambo depend only to a very limited extent on their herds, deriving
their sustenance mainly from the cultivation of millet and other plants,
the Herero are the only non-agricultural Bantu people, being
predominantly pastoral.
Instead of comparing the effect of environment as a whole on different
peoples, we can also isolate its single factors, such as the presence of
particular species of plants or animals. One of the strongest cases
against the creative influence of environment on culture lies in the
phenomena relating to the domestication of animals in the Old and the
New World. The one animal domesticated in both hemispheres is the dog,
which occurs in Neolithic Europe and is also found with archæological
remains in America. But while in the Old World there is in addition an
imposing series of species subjected to man for definite economic
utilization, it is only in Peru that the American natives entered into a
symbiotic arrangement with other animals, _viz._, the llama and the
alpaca. Why was not the bison of the great Plains tamed like the buffalo
of southern Asia or the various races of cattle in the Eastern
Hemisphere? No valid reason can be advanced on geographical grounds.
More striking still in this regard is the difference between the
hyperborean populations of Asia and North America. The Chukchee of
north-easternmost Siberia and the Eskimo share the same climatic
conditions and their territories are both inhabited by the reindeer
(caribou). Yet the Chukchee breed half-tamed reindeer on a large scale,
using the animals for food and draught with sledges, while no attempt in
this direction was made by the Eskimo or any of their Indian neighbors.
The same external condition fails to produce the same cultural result.
But even among the Chukchee there is evidence that the use of reindeer
did not take place in response to an environmental stimulus. It appears
that the extraordinary development of reindeer breeding is a relatively
new thing with the Chukchee, who were formerly hunters of sea-mammals
like the Eskimo. Before the recent efflorescence of their reindeer
culture, the Chukchee waged war on their southern neighbors, the
Koryak, for the purpose of carrying off their herds; and altogether it
seems that both Chukchee and Koryak adopted the idea of taming the
reindeer from tribes of the Tungus stock living to the west and
south.[3] We are, then, dealing with another instance of acculturation
due to contact.
The facts of domestication are unusually suggestive as regards our
general problem for they show in an absolutely convincing manner that
even where the same animals have been domesticated by different peoples
the use to which they are put may differ widely and give a distinct
aspect to this phase of culture. Thus, we find that of Siberian
reindeer-breeders the Tungus and Lamut use their animals only for
transportation, not for slaughter, and that many bands, unlike other
Arctic populations, ride on their reindeer instead of harnessing them to
sledges. It is true that a rationalistic motive can be given for the
fact that the Chukchee do not ride reindeer-back since their variety
seems physically unfit for the saddle. That, however, is not the
essential point. We should like to know how the Tungus came to use the
saddle with their animals while other tribes with the same variety did
not do so, and for this _positive_ reaction to their faunal environment
geography furnishes no clue. A similar group of questions arises in
connection with the horse. Wild horses were game animals in Solutrean
times in Europe, their flesh forming in fact the staple diet.
Domestication certainly set in at a very much later period and its
economic consequences vary appreciably with different peoples and in
different times. The Kirgis, for example, milk their mares, thus
obtaining the famous kumyss, though the operation is difficult and even
dangerous.[4] The ancient Babylonians, Chinese, and East Indians used
the horse as a draught-animal harnessed to war-chariots. Its use for
riding was an invention of Central Asiatic nomads. In the most recent
period the consumption of horse flesh is a matter of course among the
poorer classes of continental Europe, revolting as the idea is not only
to the white American but to some of the Plains Indians as well,
according to the testimony of some of my informants. There is thus no
such thing as the presence of the horse determining its cultural use in
a definite sense.
Again, the ancient Chinese kept both sheep and goats, but the idea of
utilizing wool for clothing was foreign to them. We have historical
evidence for the fact that the use of wool for felt and rugs was taught
to the Chinese in more recent times by the nomadic populations of
central Asia. Most startling of all perhaps is the different attitude
assumed in different countries towards cattle. To us nothing seems more
obvious than that cattle should be kept both for meat and dairy
products. This, however, is by no means a universal practice. The Zulu
and other Bantu tribes of South Africa use milk extensively but hardly
ever slaughter their animals except on festive occasions. On the other
hand, we have the even more astonishing fact that Eastern Asiatics, such
as the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Indo-Chinese, have an inveterate
aversion to the use of milk. Though the Chinese, as Dr. Laufer points
out, have raised a variety of animals from which milk could be derived
and have been in constant contact with Turkish and Mongol nations whose
staple food consists in dairy products, they have never acquired what
seems so obvious and useful an economic practice. Accordingly, Dr.
Laufer justifiably concludes that “our consumption of animal milk cannot
be looked upon as a self-evident and spontaneous phenomenon, for which
it has long been taken, but that it is a mere matter of educated force
of habit.”[5] In other words, the use of environmental factors is not
an automatic and necessary response to them but varies with the culture
of the peoples concerned.
The creative impotence of environment and more particularly the
subordinate part it plays as compared with purely cultural determinants
of culture, such as the influence of a certain trait in a neighboring
tribe or the preëxistence of indigenous cultural features, may be
instructively illustrated by several other instances.
Thus, we find that of the Northern Athabaskans of western Canada, the
southern Carrier and the Chilcotin Indians share with the Shuswap
Indians of Salish stock the use of semi-subterranean huts which even in
winter seem like ovens. Are we to recognize in this an adaptation to the
inclemencies of the climate? Hardly, when we find that this type of
dwelling is used precisely by those Athabaskans living farthest south,
where of course the climate is much milder, while the more northern
tribes of the family get along with crude double shelters about a
central fireplace. The use of the semi-subterranean lodge by the Carrier
and Chilcotin is perfectly explained as a contact phenomenon. They have
simply adopted the idea from their Salish neighbors: the cultural
environment has proved more effective than the physical environment in
determining a cultural trait. Other members of the same family furnish
corresponding instances. Though many of the Northern Athabaskans have
long, snowy winters, only the Loucheux, who are in contact with the
Eskimo, have adopted the wooden goggles of the Eskimo, which serve as a
protection against snow-blindness. Similarly, they are the only members
of the stock to substitute for the widespread Canadian toboggan the
Eskimo sledge with runners.[6]