ETHNOLOGY: ITS SCOPE AND SOURCES
[Sidenote: =Definition.=]
“ETHNOLOGY” is a term which is often loosely used as synonymous with
“Anthropology,” to cover the whole field of the science of man. It was
in this sense that it first came into prominence, being chosen by M. W.
F. Edwards as the title for the _Société ethnologique de Paris_, in
1839. The society was concerned with what we should now call
Anthropology; but it was more especially interested in the origins and
relationships of the historical races of Europe, which was the
etymological justification for its name. The English Ethnological
Society, established in 1843, imitated the French title, and did much to
fix the vague and general interpretation of the word. Unfortunately,
Professor Tylor, first and foremost of English ethnologists, seems
purposely to avoid the use of the word in his _Primitive Culture_, which
he refers to as “rational ethnography.” But, with the development of the
subject, its scope became gradually more defined, until it is now
generally restricted to the comparative and genetic study of human
culture and of man as a social animal.
The materials for the study of ethnology have been always with us, but
the study itself is of very recent development, and almost alone among
the sciences can reckon its founders among the living. Professor J. L.
Myres gives excellent reasons for this “late adolescence” in his opening
address at the meeting of the British Association at Winnipeg, 1909:—
Anthropology ... gathers its data from all longitudes, and
almost all latitudes, on this earth. It was necessary,
therefore, that the study of man should lag behind the rest of
the sciences, so long as any large masses of mankind remained
withdrawn from its view; and we have only to remember that
Australia and Africa were not even crossed at all—much less
explored—by white men, until within living memory, to realise
what this limitation means. In addition to this, modern Western
civilisation, when it did at last come into contact with
aboriginal peoples in new continents, too often came, like the
religion which it professed, bringing “not peace, but a sword.”
The customs and institutions of alien people have been viewed
too often, even by reasonable and good men, simply as “y^e
beastlie devices of y^e heathen,” and the pioneers of our
culture, perversely mindful only of the narrower creed, that “he
that is not with us is against us,” have set out to civilise
savages by wrecking the civilisation which they had (pp.
589-590).
[Sidenote: =Sources.=]
There are, as Professor Myres points out, two kinds of anthropologists:—
There is an anthropologist to whom we go for our facts: the
painful accurate observer of data, the storehouse of infinite
detail; sometimes himself the traveller and explorer, by cunning
speech or wiser silence opening the secrets of aboriginal
hearts; sometimes the middleman, the broker of traveller’s
winnings, insatiate after some new thing, unerring by instinct
rather than by experience, to detect false coin, to disinter the
pearl of great price.... To him we go for our facts....
And there is an anthropologist to whom we look for our light.
His learning may be fragmentary, as some men count learning; his
memory faulty; his inaccuracy beyond dispute; his inconsistency
the one consistent thing about him. But with shattered and
ricketty instruments he attains results; heedless of epicycles,
disrespectful to the equator, he bequeaths his paradoxes to be
demonstrated by another generation of men. He may not know, or
reason, perhaps; but he has learnt to see; and what he sees he
says (1908, p. 124).
[Sidenote: =Herodotus.=]
In the earliest times Herodotus may be cited as one of the most
distinguished names in the former of the two groups, and Lucretius in
the latter. The writings of Herodotus (_circa_ 480-425 B.C.) are a
veritable storehouse of information, from the highest civilisations down
to the veriest savagery, and his work has lost none of its freshness or
value through lapse of time. As a matter of fact, modern investigations
carried out in the areas treated of by him more frequently confirm and
exemplify than refute his statements.
[Sidenote: =Lucretius.=]
Lucretius (99 or 98-55 B.C.), the poet, teacher, and reformer, boldly
declared that there was no Golden Age from which man has degenerated,
but that his progress has continually been slowly upward from a
condition of pure savagery:—
Arms of old were hands nails and teeth and stones and boughs
broken off from the forests, and flame and fire, as soon as they
had become known. Afterwards the force of iron and copper was
discovered; and the use of copper was known before that of iron,
as its nature is easier to work and it is found in greater
quantity. With copper they would labour the soil of the earth,
with copper stir up the billows of war.... Then by slow steps
the sword of iron gained ground and the make of the copper
sickle became a byword; and with iron they began to plough
through the earth’s soil, and the struggles of wavering war were
rendered equal.[81]
Footnote 81:
Lucretius, _On the Nature of Things_. Translated by H. A. J. Munro.
Bohn’s edition, 1908, p. 214.
It is evident from his poems that Lucretius was a keen observer and a
philosopher, who summed up existing Epicurean knowledge; and we are
justified in believing that these particular generalisations were based
upon tales told by travellers in distant lands, and upon traditional
lore, which, with the exception of the recently acquired archæological
evidence, is practically all upon which we have to rely. The philosophic
poet apprehended the significance of various facts, and welded them into
a consistent theory of the development of culture, and thereby earned
the honour of being the first evolutionary anthropologist.
[Sidenote: =Strabo.=]
Nor should we overlook the versatile Strabo (_circa_ 63 B.C.-21 A.D.),
who was interested in many things, from climate to botany, and from
sport to Druidism and Brahmanism. Alexander von Humboldt considered that
he surpassed all other geographical labourers of antiquity by the
diversity of the subject and the grandeur of the composition. His
_Geography_ contains much information on the early history and
traditions of numerous peoples, their character, dress, dwellings, and
mode of life.
In the writings of the earlier travellers (to mention but three
names)—Marco Polo, in Cathay (1254-1323), Ibn Batuta (1304-1377), in
Asia; and Joao de Barros (1496-1570), who was considered the greatest
authority on Portuguese, African, and Asiatic travels of his time—and in
the records of travels contained in collections such as those of Hakluyt
(1552-1616), Purchas (1577-1626), and Pinkerton (1758-1826), much
ethnological information can be sifted from among the marvellous tales.
Sometimes the marvellous tales themselves can, by ethnology, be
interpreted in fact, as when the “tailed men” of the Nicobars are found
to owe their origin to the tail-like method of wearing the
loin-cloth.[82] These were followed by the travellers and explorers of
the nineteenth century, who brought back a vast amount of new
information, both physical and cultural, from the lands they visited.
Among these the names of Admiral Byron, James Bruce, L. A. Bougainville,
Sir John Barrow, Captain Cook, de Lesseps, and Pallas may be mentioned.
Footnote 82:
E. H. Man, _Journ. Anth. Inst._, xv., p. 442.
Other sources of information were the works of the Jesuit missionaries
of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, such as José d’Acosta
(1539-1600), J. F. Lafitau (1670-1740), and F. X. de Charlevoix
(1682-1761), who worked among the Canadian Indians, and M. Dobrizhoffer
(1717-1791).
Next come the missionaries of the nineteenth century, such as William
Ellis (1794-1872), who laboured in South Africa and Madagascar, but is
best known for his work in Polynesia; John Williams (1796-1839); George
Turner (1818-1891); W. Wyatt Gill (1828-1896), and others who also
worked in the Pacific. In Africa we may mention Bishop Callaway
(1817-1890) and David Livingstone (1813-1873). At the same time the
Roman Catholic missionary E. R. Huc (1813-1860) was working in China and
Tartary, while the Abbé Dubois (1770-1848) was laboriously investigating
the manners, customs, and ceremonies of the Hindus.
Besides the missionaries, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to the early
explorers and civil servants in all parts of the world, who have
provided, consciously or unconsciously, a vast amount of information
about the peoples among whom they travelled or over whom they ruled.
Scientific expeditions, even before these were undertaken in the
interests of anthropology, collected further material. Lastly come the
various anthropological expeditions, consisting of trained workers, who,
besides amassing fresh evidence, check, correct, or amplify the work of
earlier writers.
These were the data on which the science of Ethnology, in its restricted
sense, was to be built. The earliest ethnologists utilised the material
mainly with a view to elucidating ethnic relationships, and to producing
systematic classifications of the various races of mankind. Later
workers such as Ratzel and Reclus produced systematic descriptions of
races, peoples, and areas. A third method was that of Tylor, the chief
exponent of Comparative Ethnology.
[Sidenote: =Systematic Works on Ethnology.=]
The earlier attempts at race classification were based merely on
physical characters, and are dealt with elsewhere (Chap. VI.). During
the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries geographical
discovery brought a mass of new facts to light, especially in the realm
of natural history; and in no branch of that science were the effects so
marked as in that of Anthropology.
The marshalling of a vast array of new observations and deductions
required a broad mind, wide knowledge, and shrewd reasoning powers.
These, together with a sound training in anatomy, an unusual
acquaintance with philology, and some eminence in psychology, produced
the monumental work of Prichard.
[Illustration:
J. C. PRICHARD.
]
[Sidenote: =Prichard.=]
James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848) showed, when a boy, a remarkable
aptness for foreign languages. He was never sent to school, but was
taught by various tutors, from whom he learnt Latin, Greek, French,
Italian, and Spanish. His father, a merchant, and member of the Society
of Friends, lived for a time in Bristol, and there the boy began his
practical study of anthropology, spending his time by the docks,
watching the foreign sailors, and chatting with them in their own
tongues. Later on he chose medicine for his profession, less on account
of any special liking for it than because it afforded him opportunities
for indulging his anthropological tastes. His first contribution to the
science was his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the
University of Edinburgh, which was entitled _De generis humani
varietate_, published in 1813 in an expanded form as _Researches into
the Physical History of Man_. It was still further expanded in 1826, and
a five-volume edition was issued between 1836 and 1847. In 1843 appeared
another monumental work, _The Natural History of Man_, “comprising
inquiries into the modifying influence of physical and moral agencies on
the different tribes of the human family.”
Speaking of Prichard at the meeting of the British Association in
Bristol in 1875, Professor Rolleston remarked: “His works remain,
massive, impressive, enduring—much as the headlands along our southern
coast stand out in the distance in their own grand outlines, while a
close and minute inspection is necessary for the discernment of the
forts and fosses added to them—indeed, dug out of their substance in
recent times.” The services of Prichard in the field of Anthropology
have often been compared with those of his contemporary Blumenbach, by
whose fame during his lifetime he was overshadowed; but, though the
latter was unequalled on the side of physical anthropology, there is no
doubt that Prichard had a wider grasp of the subject, and his works
formed the cornerstones of Anthropology in England.
[Sidenote: =Other Generalisations.=]
While Prichard was expanding his thesis, Antoine Desmoulins was writing
his _Histoire naturelle des races humaines_, which appeared
contemporaneously with Prichard’s revised _Researches_ in 1826. He
attempted to discover the origins and relations of the peoples of
north-east Europe, north and east Asia, and South Africa, by the
evidence of archæology, physiology, anatomy, and linguistics.
The work of systematising the mass of anthropological data and producing
an orderly scheme must always be regarded as an almost superhuman task,
and those who have attempted it deserve our grateful recognition.
The next Englishman after Prichard was Latham, who published his
_Natural History of the Varieties of Man_ in 1850 (the same year as
Knox’s _Races of Man_), and his _Descriptive Ethnology_ in 1859. In the
latter year appeared the first instalment of the _Anthropologie der
Naturvölker_ of Waitz, the six volumes of which were completed in 1872—a
work which largely assisted in laying a secure foundation for the new
science. In 1873 Friedrich Müller published his _Allgemeine
Ethnographie_. The following year saw the publication of Peschel’s
_Völkerkunde_. Ratzel’s great work, _Völkerkunde_, appeared in 1885-88.
In America Pickering’s _Races of Man_ was published in 1848, and Nott
and Gliddon’s _Indigenous Races of the Earth_ in 1857. Paul Topinard’s
_L’Anthropologie_ (1876) is mentioned elsewhere (p. 38).
The earlier of these generalisations were composed before the acceptance
of the theory of evolution, in the new light of which all biological
sciences had to start afresh, and all were written before the masses of
new material collected by ethnologists and archæologists, working in the
field, had brought so much fresh evidence to bear upon the whole
geographical and historical aspect of man that it was impossible “to see
the wood for the trees.” Thus the time for synthesis had arrived, and
with the hour came the man. A. H. Keane’s _Ethnology_ appeared in 1896,
to be followed by his _Man, past and present_ in 1899. J. Deniker’s _Les
races et les peuples de la terre_, together with the English
translation, appeared in the following year.
[Sidenote: =Ethnology and the Classics.=]
In summarising the sources from which the materials for the science of
ethnology are derived, stress must be laid on the contributions from
classic authors. No student can afford to neglect the histories, annals,
poems, and sacred books of the ancients, whether African, European, or
Asiatic. Professor J. L. Myres (1908) has pointed out that
anthropological investigations and speculations were already afoot in
the fifth century B.C. and before, and has outlined the ethnological
problems concerning man, his origin and relationships, and the questions
connected with his social life that interested and puzzled the ancient
Greek world. Not only Herodotus, but other writers, show that these
problems were thoroughly familiar to the Greeks. Long before Herodotus,
Hesiod refers to a standard scheme of archæology, in which Ages of Gold,
Silver, and Bronze succeed each other; primitive man is described as a
forest dweller growing no corn, but subsisting on acorns and beech mast;
Anaximander and Archelaus have suggestions to solve the mystery of man’s
origin, Anaximander taking an “almost Darwinian outlook”[83] of the
animal kingdom; Æschylus distinguishes the tribes of men by culture,
noting the differences in their dress and equipments, religious
observances and language.
Footnote 83:
This statement is criticised by E. E. Sikes in _Folk-Lore_, xx., 1909,
p. 424.
The chief value of the Greeks to the ethnologist is that they were
collectors of material. Some of their theories have been substantiated,
but they arrived at conclusions by deduction rather than by induction.
Thus in many ways anthropology owes a deep debt of gratitude to the
classics. It was not until recently that this debt began to be repaid.
Within the last twenty or thirty years there has been an increasing
recognition of the value of anthropological studies in the elucidation
of the classics; and this healthy movement is mainly associated with the
name of Professor William Ridgeway, of Cambridge, who devoted his
presidential address before the Royal Anthropological Institute, in
1909, to this subject.
In 1887 Professor Ridgeway proceeded to apply the comparative method to
Greek coins and weights in a paper called the “Homeric Talent: Its
Origin and Affinities.”[84] He there tried to show that the origin of
coined money among the Lydians, and its evolution by the Greeks and
Italians, entirely accorded with the evolution of primitive money from
the use of objects such as axes, ornaments, cattle, and so forth.
Footnote 84:
_Hellenic Journal_, VIII., p. 133; see also _The Origin of Metallic
Currency_, 1892.
One of the relations of Ethnology to other branches of the Humanities
which hitherto has received scant acknowledgment is its influence on the
course of Political Science. Professor J. L. Myres recently gave a
brilliant address on this subject at Winnipeg, in which he points out
how Bodin (1530-1596), Edward Grimstone (1615), Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), Montesquieu (1689-1755), Rousseau
(1712-1778), Voltaire (1694-1778), Herder (1744-1803), and others,
referred to or utilised the accounts of natives by travellers to
illustrate their theories of statecraft.
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