a neighboring culture, so it may vanish into nothingness in the face of
what we may call cultural inertia--the tendency of a preëxisting
cultural trait of indigenous growth to assert itself. A familiar example
of this tendency is the exact imitation of forms of implements in quite
different and often refractory material. Thus, the Central Eskimo
generally make lamps and pots out of soapstone. In Southampton Island,
where this material is lacking, they have not devised a new form but
have at the expenditure of much ingenuity and labor cemented together
slabs of limestone so as to produce the traditional shape.[7] The same
phenomenon appears in other fields. Grooved copper axes have been found
in parts of the United States; their shape is patterned exactly on the
stone axes characteristic of the same localities. The beginnings of the
copper and bronze ages in Europe are equally suggestive in this regard.
The incipient metallurgist does not automatically make the most of his
material but slavishly follows his stone or bone models. His copper
ornaments imitate bear’s teeth or bone beads, his implements resemble
the stone celts and hammers of an earlier era.[8] As Professor Boas
points out on the basis of Bogoras’ descriptions, an equivalent
development may be traced in the history of the Chukchee tent. This type
of habitation is extremely clumsy and not at all well adapted to the
roving life of the Reindeer division of the tribe, considerably
hampering their progress. It represents, however, a variety of the older
form of stationary house used when the Chukchee were a purely maritime
people.[9]
It might be objected that maladjustments of this sort are transitional,
that just as the copper and bronze workers ultimately freed themselves
from the influence of the preëxisting stone technique so the Chukchee
would finally have abandoned their inconvenient tent and developed a new
and more readily transportable lodge. This sounds, of course, very
plausible but misses the point of the argument. Undoubtedly, a more and
more perfect adaptation to elements of the physical surroundings has
repeatedly taken place. But the very fact that culture history, on its
material side, implies this progressive adjustment also implies that the
cultural phenomena at different periods of time differ where the same
environmental stimuli persist and therefore cannot be explained by them,
which is what we have been trying to prove.
Indeed, environment is not only unable to create cultural features, in
some instances it is even incapable of perpetuating them. Thus, pottery
was once distributed over an extensive region in the New Hebrides but is
now restricted to a few isolated localities on a single island. Again,
in southeastern New Guinea ancient pottery has been found that vastly
surpasses its present representatives in point of craftsmanship.[10] A
similar phenomenon has been noted in the Southwest of the United States,
where the evolution and deterioration of glazed earthenware may be
clearly traced in the same region.[11] Dr. Rivers has pointed out an
even more instructive example of cultural degeneration. In the Torres
Islands of Melanesia the natives have no canoes for traversing the
channels which separate their islands from one another but are obliged
to use unseaworthy bamboo rafts inadequate even for fishing purposes.
Yet there is evidence that the Torres Islanders once shared the art of
canoe-making with their fellow-Oceanians and that it has died out in
recent times independently of European influence. It is difficult to
conceive of any people less likely _a priori_ to lose the art of
navigation than a South Sea Island group; yet, their maritime
environment proved inadequate to preserve so vital a feature of their
daily life.
To sum up: Environment cannot explain culture because the identical
environment is consistent with distinct cultures; because cultural
traits persist from inertia in an unfavorable environment; because they
do not develop where they would be of distinct advantage to a people;
and because they may even disappear where one would least expect it on
geographical principles.
Shall we then cavalierly banish geography from cultural considerations?
This would be manifestly going beyond the mark. Geographical phenomena
can no more be discarded than can psychological phenomena. They
represent in the first place a limiting condition. As cultures cannot
contravene psychological principles so they cannot, except in a limited
measure, override geographical factors. To use some drastically clear if
somewhat hackneyed examples, the Eskimo do not eat coconuts nor do the
Oceanians build snow-houses; where the horse does not occur it cannot be
domesticated; in the Hopi country where watercourses are lacking
navigation naturally did not develop. As Jochelson points out, the
Koryak of northeastern Siberia cannot cultivate cereals because of the
low temperature and they cannot succeed as cattle-breeders because of
the poor quality of the grasses.[12] This minimum recognition of
environment as a purely negative factor, however, does not do full
justice to it. Take the bison out of the Plains Indian’s life and his
cultural atmosphere certainly changes. Nevertheless, we have seen that
the presence of the bison by no means fully determined the cultural
employment possible. Instead of hunting it as the Solutrean Europeans
did the wild horse, the Indian might have domesticated it as his
namesake by misnomer in Asia domesticated the buffalo. The environment,
then, enters into culture, not as a formative but rather as an inert
element ready to be selected from and molded. It is, of course, a matter
of biological necessity for a people to establish some sort of
adaptation to surrounding conditions, but such adaptation is no more
spontaneously generated by the environment than are strictly biological
adaptations. There are alternatives to adaptation--migration and
destruction.
It is true, as Dr. Wissler has forcibly pointed out, that when some kind
of adjustment has once been established it will tend to persist in the
region of its origin.[13] This, however, illustrates not so much the
active influence of environment as rather the tremendous force of
cultural inertia which tends to perpetuate an old muddling-along
adjustment, however imperfect, provided only it has bare survival value.
Altogether we may illustrate the relations of culture to environment by
an analogy used by Dr. Wissler in another connection, which also brings
us back to my initial analogy of the environmental theory with the
associationist system in psychology. The environment furnishes the
builders of cultural structures with brick and mortar but it does not
furnish the architect’s plan. As the illustrations cited clearly prove,
there is a variety of ways in which the same materials can be put
together, nay, there is always a range of choice as regards the
materials themselves. The development of a particular architectural
style and the selection of a special material from among an indefinite
number of possible styles and materials are what characterize a given
culture. Since geography permits more than a single adjustment to the
same conditions, it cannot give the interpretation sought by the student
of culture. Culture can no more be built up of environmental blocks than
can consciousness out of isolated ideas; and as the association of ideas
already implies the synthetizing faculty of consciousness, so the
assemblage and use of environmental factors after a definite plan
already implies the selective and synthetic agency of a preëxisting or
nascent culture.
IV. THE DETERMINANTS OF CULTURE
Psychology, racial differences, geographical environment, have all
proved inadequate for the interpretation of cultural phenomena. The
inference is obvious. Culture is a thing _sui generis_ which can be
explained only in terms of itself. This is not mysticism but sound
scientific method. The biologist, whatever metaphysical speculations he
may indulge in as to the ultimate origin of life, does not depart in his
workaday mood from the principle that every cell is derived from some
other cell. So the ethnologist will do well to postulate the principle,
_Omnis cultura ex cultura_.[1] This means that he will account for a
given cultural fact by merging it in a group of cultural facts or by
demonstrating some other cultural fact out of which it has developed.
The cultural phenomenon to be explained may either have an antecedent
within the culture of the tribe where it is found or it may have been
imported from without. Both groups of determinants must be considered.
The extraneous determinants of culture summed up under the heading of
‘diffusion’ or ‘contact of peoples’ have been repeatedly referred to in
the preceding pages. A somewhat detailed examination seems desirable,
for it is difficult to exaggerate their importance.
“Civilization,” says Tylor, “is a plant much oftener propagated than
developed;”[2] and the latest ethnographic memoir that comes to hand
voices the same sentiment: “It is and has always been much easier to
borrow an idea from one’s neighbors than to originate a new idea; and
transmission of cultural elements, which in all ages has taken place in
a great many different ways, is and has been one of the greatest
promoters of cultural development.”[3]
A stock illustration of cultural assimilation is that of the Japanese,
who in the nineteenth century adopted our scientific and technological
civilization ready-made, just as at an earlier period they had acquired
wholesale the culture of China. It is essential to note that it is not
always the people of lower culture who remain passive recipients in the
process of diffusion. This is strikingly shown by the spread of Indian
corn. The white colonist “did not simply borrow the maize seed and then
in conformity with his already established agricultural methods, or on
original lines, develop a maize culture of his own,” but “took over the
entire material complex of maize culture” as found among the
aborigines.[4] The history of Indian corn also illustrates the
remarkable rapidity with which cultural possessions may travel over the
globe. Unknown in the Old World prior to the discovery of America, it is
mentioned as known in Europe in 1539 and had reached China between 1540
and 1570.[5]
The question naturally arises here, whether this process of diffusion,
which in modern times is a matter of direct observation, could have been
of importance during the earlier periods of human history when means of
communication were of a more primitive order. So far as this point is
concerned, we must always remember that methods of transportation
progressed very slightly from the invention of the wheeled cart until
the most recent times. As Montelius suggests, the periods of 1700 B. C.
and 1700 A. D. differed far less in this regard than might be supposed
on superficial consideration. Yet we know the imperfection of facilities
for travel did not prevent dissemination of culture in historic times.
The great Swedish archæologist has, indeed, given us a most fascinating
picture of the commercial relations of northern Europe in earlier
periods and their effect on cultural development.[6] We learn with
astonishment that in the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, trade
was carried on with great intensity between the North of Europe and the
Mohammedan culture sphere since tens of thousands of Arabic coins have
been found on Swedish soil. But intercourse with remote countries dates
back to a far greater antiquity. One of the most powerful stimuli of
commercial relations between northern and southern Europe was the desire
of the more southern populations to secure amber, a material confined to
the Baltic region and occurring more particularly about Jutland and the
mouth of the Vistula. Amber beads have been found not only in Swiss
pile-dwellings[7] but also in Mycenæan graves of the second millennium
B. C. Innumerable finds of amber work in Italy and other parts of
southern Europe prove the importance attached to this article, which was
exchanged for copper and bronze. The composition of Scandinavian bronzes
indicates that their material was imported not from England but from the
faraway regions of central Europe. That bronze was not of indigenous
manufacture is certain because tin does not occur in Sweden at all while
the copper deposits of northern Scandinavia remained untouched until
about 1500 years after the end of the Bronze Age. Considering the high
development of the bronze technique in Scandinavia and the fact that
every pound of bronze had to be imported from without, it would be
difficult to exaggerate the extent of contact with the southern
populations. But intercourse was not limited to the South. For example,
Swedish weapons and implements have been discovered in Finland. Again,
crescent-shaped gold ornaments of Irish provenance have been found in
Denmark, while a Swedish rock-painting represents with painstaking
exactness a type of bronze shield common at a certain prehistoric period
of England.
Montelius shows that historical connections of the type so amply
attested for the Bronze Age also obtained in the preceding Neolithic
era. Swedish hammers of stone dating back to the third pre-Christian
millennium and flint daggers have been found in Finland, and earthenware
characteristic of Neolithic Scandinavia also turns up on the Baltic
coast of Russia. Stone burial cists with a peculiar oval opening at one
end occur in a limited section of southwestern Sweden and likewise in
England. Since such monuments have been discovered neither in other
parts of Sweden nor in Jutland or the Danish islands, they point to a
direct intercourse between Britain and western Sweden at about 2,000 B.
C. A still older form of burial unites Scandinavia with other parts of
the continent. Chambers built up of large stones set up edgewise and
reaching from the floor to the roof, the more recent ones with and the
older without a long covered passage, are highly characteristic of
Sweden, Denmark, the British Isles, and the coasts of Europe from the
Vistula embouchure to the coasts of France and Portugal, of Italy,
Greece, the Crimea, North Africa, Syria, and India. Specific
resemblances convince the most competent judges that some, at least, of
these widely diffused ‘dolmens’ are historically connected with their
Swedish equivalents, and since the oldest of these Northern chambers go
back 3,000 years before our era, we thus have evidence of cultural
diffusion dating back approximately five millennia.
It is highly interesting to trace under Montelius’ guidance the
development of culture as it seems to have actually taken place in
southern Sweden. Beginning with the earliest periods, we find the
coastal regions inhabited by a population of fishermen and hunters. At a
subsequent stage coarse pottery appears with articles of bone and
antler, and there is evidence that the dog has become domesticated. In
the later Neolithic era perfectly polished stone hammers and
exquisitely chipped flint implements occur, together with indications
that cattle, horses, sheep and pigs are domesticated and that the
cultivation of the soil has begun. Roughly speaking, we may assume that
the culture of Scandinavia at the end of the Stone Age resembled in
advancement that of the agricultural North American and Polynesian
tribes as found by the first European explorers. We may assume a long
period of essentially indigenous cultural growth followed towards its
close by intimate relations with alien populations. Nevertheless, it was
the more extensive contact of the Bronze period that rapidly raised the
ancestral Swedes to a cultural position high above a primitive level,
with accentuation of agriculture, the use of woolen clothing, and a
knowledge of metallurgy. It was again foreign influence that later
brought the knowledge of iron and in the third century of our era
transformed the Scandinavians into a literary people, flooded their
country with art products of the highest then existing Roman
civilization, and ultimately introduced Christianity.
The case of Scandinavian culture is fairly typical. We have first a
long-continued course of leisurely and relatively undisturbed
development, which is superseded by a tremendously rapid assimilation
of cultural elements from without. Through contact with tribes
possessing a higher civilization the ancient Scandinavians came to
participate in its benefits and even to excel in special departments of
it, such as bronze work, which from lack of material, they would have
been physically incapable of developing unaided. Diffusion was the
determinant of Scandinavian cultural progress from savagery to
civilization.
It is obvious that this insistence on contact of peoples as a condition
of cultural evolution does not solve the ultimate problem of the origin
of culture. The question naturally obtrudes itself: If the Scandinavians
obtained their civilization from the Southeast, how did the Oriental
cultures themselves originate? Nevertheless, when we examine these
higher civilizations of the Old World, we are again met with indubitable
evidence that one of the conditions of development is the contact of
peoples and the consequent diffusion of cultural elements. This appears
clearly from a consideration of the ancient civilizations of Egypt,
Babylonia, and China.
We now have abundant evidence for a later Stone Age in Egypt with an
exceptionally high development of the art of chipping, as well as
specimens of pottery and other indications of a sedentary mode of life.
About 5,000 B. C. this undisturbed evolution began to suffer from a
series of migrations of West Asiatic tribes, bringing in their wake a
number of cultivated plants and domesticated animals, as well as various
other features which possibly included the art of smelting copper, while
the ceramic ware of the earlier period agrees so largely with that of
Elam in what is now southern Persia that a cultural connection seems
definitely established.
If from Egypt we turn to the most probable source of alien culture
elements found there, _viz._, to the region of Mesopotamia, possibly the
oldest seat of higher civilization in Asia, we find again that the
culture of Babylonia under the famous lawgiver Hammurabi (about 2,000 B.
C.) is not the product of purely indigenous growth but represents the
resultant of at least two components, that of the Sumerian civilization
of southern Babylonia and the Accadian culture of the North. It is
certain that the Accadians adopted the art of writing from the Sumerians
and were also stimulated by this contact in their artistic development.
The evolution of Sumerian civilization is lost in obscurity but on the
basis of well-established historical cases we should hesitate to assign
to them an exclusively creative, and to other populations an exclusively
receptive, rôle. We may quite safely assume that the early splendor of
Sumerian civilization was also in large part due to stimuli received
through foreign relations. That cultural elements of value may be
borrowed from an inferior as well as from a higher level, has already
been exemplified by the case of maize. It is also, among other things,
illustrated by the history of the Chinese.
The Chinese have generally been represented as developing in complete
isolation from other peoples. This traditional conception, however,
breaks down with more intimate knowledge. Dr. Laufer has demonstrated
that Chinese civilization, too, is a complex structure due to the
conflux of distinct cultural streams. As an originally inland people
inhabiting the middle and lower course of the Yellow River, they
gradually reached the coast and acquired the art of navigation through
contact with Indo-Chinese seafarers. Acquaintance with the northern
nomads of Turkish and Tungus stock led to the use of the horse, donkey
and camel, as well as the practice of felt and rug weaving, possibly
even to the adoption of furniture and the iron technique.[8] Most
important of all, it appears that essentials of agriculture,
cattle-raising, metallurgy and pottery, as well as less tangible
features of civilization are common to ancient China and Babylonia,
which forces us to the conclusion that both the Chinese and Babylonian
cultures are ramifications from a common Asiatic sub-stratum. It would
be idle to speculate as to the relative contributions of each center to
this ancient cultural stock. The essential point is that the most
ancient Asiatic civilizations of which we have any evidence already
indicate close contact of peoples and the dispersal of cultural
elements.
Contact of peoples is thus an extraordinary promoter of cultural
development. By the free exchange of arts and ideas among a group of
formerly independent peoples, a superiority and complexity is rendered
possible which without such diffusion would never have occurred. The
part played in this process by the cruder populations must not be
underestimated. They may contribute both actively and passively;
actively, by transmitting knowledge independently acquired, as in the
case of the felt technique the Chinese learned from the northern nomads;
passively, by forming a lower caste on which the economic labors devolve
and thus liberating their conquerors for an enlarged activity in the
less utilitarian spheres of culture.
Nevertheless, before peoples can communicate their cultures to others
with whom they come into contact, they must first evolve these
cultures. The question thus remains, What determines this evolution? In
order to gain a proper perspective in this matter, we must for a moment
consider the progress of human civilization as a whole. Archæological
research shows that the modern era of steel and iron tools was preceded
by an age of bronze and copper implements, which in turn was preceded by
a stone age subdivided into a more recent period of polished, and an
earlier of merely chipped, stone tools. Now the chronological relations
of these epochs are extremely suggestive. The very lowest estimate by
any competent observer of the age of Palæolithic man in Europe sets it
at 50,000 years;[9] since this is avowedly the utmost minimum value that
can be assigned on geological grounds, we may reasonably assume twice
that figure for the age of human culture generally. Using the rough
estimate permissible in discussions of this sort, we may regard the end
of the Palæolithic era as dating back about 15,000 years ago. In short,
for more than eight-tenths of its existence, the human species remained
at a cultural level at best comparable with that of the Australian. We
may assume that it was during this immense space of time that dispersal
over the face of the globe took place and that isolation fixed the
broader diversities of language and culture, over and above what may
have been the persisting cultural sub-stratum common to the earliest
undivided human group. The following Neolithic period of different parts
of the globe terminated at different times and had not been passed at
all by most of the American aborigines and the Oceanians at the time of
their discovery. However, from the broader point of view here assumed,
it was not relieved by the age of metallurgy until an exceedingly recent
past. The earliest estimate I have seen does not put the event back
farther than 6000 B. C. even in Mesopotamia. During nine-tenths of his
existence, then, man was ignorant of the art of smelting copper from the
ore. Finally, the iron technique does not date back 4,000 years; it took
humanity ninety-six hundredths of its existence to develop this art.
We may liken the progress of mankind to that of a man a hundred years
old, who dawdles through kindergarten for eighty-five years of his life,
takes ten years to go through the primary grades, then rushes with
lightning rapidity through grammar school, high school and college.
Culture, it seems, is a matter of exceedingly slow growth until a
certain ‘threshold’ is passed, when it darts forward, gathering momentum
at an unexpected rate. For this peculiarity of culture as a whole, many
miniature parallels exist in special subdivisions of culture history.
Natural science lay dormant until Kepler, Galileo and Newton stirred it
into unexampled activity, and the same holds for applied science until
about a century ago.