ANTHROPOLOGY.
[Illustration]
ANTHROPOLOGY
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF
MAN AND CIVILIZATION.
BY
EDWARD B. TYLOR, D.C.L., F.R.S.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS._
London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1881.
_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved._
London:
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.
PREFACE.
In times when subjects of education have multiplied, it may seem at first
sight a hardship to lay on the already heavily-pressed student a new
science. But it will be found that the real effect of Anthropology is
rather to lighten than increase the strain of learning. In the mountains
we see the bearers of heavy burdens contentedly shoulder a carrying-frame
besides, because they find its weight more than compensated by the
convenience of holding together and balancing their load. So it is
with the science of Man and Civilization, which connects into a more
manageable whole the scattered subjects of an ordinary education. Much
of the difficulty of learning and teaching lies in the scholar’s not
seeing clearly what each science or art is for, what its place is among
the purposes of life. If he knows something of its early history, and how
it arose from the simpler wants and circumstances of mankind, he finds
himself better able to lay hold of it than when, as too often happens,
he is called on to take up an abstruse subject not at the beginning but
in the middle. When he has learnt something of man’s rudest means of
conversing by gestures and cries, and thence has been led to see how
the higher devices of articulate speech are improvements on such lower
methods, he makes a fairer start in the science of language than if he
had fallen unprepared among the subtleties of grammar, which unexplained
look like arbitrary rules framed to perplex rather than to inform. The
dislike of so many beginners to geometry as expounded by Euklid, the
fact that not one out of three ever really understands what he is doing,
is of all things due to the scholar not being shown first the practical
common-sense starting point, where the old carpenters and builders began
to make out the relations of distances and spaces in their work. So the
law-student plunges at once into the intricacies of legal systems which
have grown up through the struggles, the reforms, and even the blunders
of thousands of years; yet he might have made his way clearer by seeing
how laws begin in their simplest forms, framed to meet the needs of
savage and barbaric tribes. It is needless to make a list of all the
branches of education in knowledge and art; there is not one which may
not be the easier and better learnt for knowing its history and place in
the general science of Man.
With this aim in view, the present volume is an introduction to
Anthropology, rather than a summary of all it teaches. It does not deal
with strictly technical matter, out of the reach of readers who have
received, or are receiving, the ordinary higher English education. Thus,
except to students trained in anatomy, the minute modern researches as to
distinction of races by skull measurements and the like would be useless.
Much care has been taken to make the chapters on the various branches of
the science sound as far as they go, but the more advanced work must be
left to special students.
While the various departments of the science of Man are extremely
multifarious, ranging from body to mind, from language to music,
from fire-making to morals, they are all matters to whose nature and
history every well-informed person ought to give some thought. It is
much, however, for any single writer to venture to deal even in the
most elementary way with so immense a variety of subjects. In such a
task I have the right to ask that errors and imperfections should be
lightly judged. I could not have attempted it at all but for the help
of friends eminent in various branches of the science, whom I have been
able to consult on doubtful and difficult points. My acknowledgments
are especially due to Professor Huxley and Dr. E. A. Freeman, Sir
Henry Maine, Dr. Birch, Mr. Franks, Professor Flower, Major-General
Pitt-Rivers, Professor Sayce, Dr. Beddoe, Dr. D. H. Tuke, Professor W.
K. Douglas, Mr. Russell Martineau, Mr. R. Garnett, Mr. Henry Sweet,
Mr. Rudler, and many other friends whom I can only thank unnamed. The
illustrations of races are engraved from photographic portraits, many
of them taken by the permission of Messrs. Dammann of Huddersfield from
their valuable Albums of Ethnological Photographs.
F. B. T.
_February, 1881._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
MAN, ANCIENT AND MODERN 1
Antiquity of Man, 1—Time required for Development of Races,
1—of Languages, 7—of Civilization, 13—Traces of Man in
the Stone Age, 25—Later Period, 26—Earlier Quaternary or
Drift-Period, 29.
CHAPTER II.
MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS 35
Vertebrate Animals, 35—Succession and Descent of Species,
37—Apes and Man, comparison of Structure, 38—Hands and Feet,
42—Hair, 44—Features, 44—Brain, 45—Mind in Lower Animals and
Man, 47.
CHAPTER III.
RACES OF MANKIND 56
Differences of Race, 56—Stature and Proportions, 56—Skull,
60—Features, 62—Colour, 66—Hair, 71—Constitution,
73—Temperament, 74—Types of Races, 75—Permanence, 80—Mixture,
80—Variation, 84—Races of Mankind classified, 87.
CHAPTER IV.
LANGUAGE 114
Sign-making, 114—Gesture-language, 114—Sound-gestures,
120—Natural Language, 122—Utterances of Animals, 122—Emotional
and Imitative Sounds in Language, 124—Change of Sound and
Sense, 127—Other expression of Sense by Sound, 128—Children’s
Words, 128—Articulate Language, its relation to Natural
Language, 129—Origin of Language, 130.
CHAPTER V.
LANGUAGE (_continued_) 132
Articulate Speech, 132—Growth of Meanings, 133—Abstract
Words, 135—Real and Grammatical Words, 136—Parts of Speech,
138—Sentences, 139—Analytic Language, 139—Word Combination,
140—Synthetic Language, 141—Affixes, 142—Sound-change,
143—Roots, 144—Syntax, 146—Government and Concord, 147—Gender,
149—Development of Language, 150.
CHAPTER VI.
LANGUAGE AND RACE 152
Adoption and loss of Language, 152—Ancestral Language,
153—Families of Language, 155—Aryan, 156—Semitic, 159—Egyptian,
Berber, &c., 160—Tatar or Turanian, 161—South-East Asian,
162—Malayo-Polynesian, 163—Dravidian, 164—African, Bantu,
Hottentot, 164—American, 165—Early Languages and Races, 165.
CHAPTER VII.
WRITING 167
Picture-writing, 168—Sound-pictures, 169—Chinese Writing,
170—Cuneiform Writing, 172—Egyptian Writing, 173—Alphabetic
Writing, 175—Spelling, 178—Printing, 180.
CHAPTER VIII.
ARTS OF LIFE 182
Development of Instruments, 183—Club, Hammer, 184—Stone-flake,
185—Hatchet, 188—Sabre, Knife, 189—Spear, Dagger, Sword,
190—Carpenter’s Tools, 192—Missiles, Javelin, 193—Sling,
Spear-thrower, 194—Pew and Arrow, 195—Blow tube, Gun,
196—Mechanical Power, 197—Wheel-Carriage, 198—Hand-mill,
200—Drill, Lathe, 202—Screw, 203—Water-mill, Wind-mill, 204.
CHAPTER IX.
ARTS OF LIFE (_continued_) 206
Quest of wild food, 206—Hunting, 207—Trapping, 211—Fishing,
212—Agriculture, 214—Implements, 216—Fields, 218—Cattle,
pasturage, 219—War, 221—Weapons, 221—Armour, 222—Warfare of
lower tribes, 223—of higher nations, 225.
CHAPTER X.
ARTS OF LIFE (_continued_) 229
Dwellings:—Caves, 229—Huts, 230—Tents, 231—Houses, 231—Stone
and Brick Building, 232—Arch, 235—Development of Architecture,
235—Dress:—Painting skin, 236—Tattooing, 237—Deformation of
Skull, &c., 240—Ornaments, 241—Clothing of Bark, Skin, &c.,
244—Mats, 246—Spinning, Weaving, 246—Sewing 249—Garments,
249—Navigation:—Floats, 252—Boats, 253—Rafts, 255—Outriggers,
255—Paddles and Oars, 256—Sails, 256—Galleys and Ships, 257.
CHAPTER XI.
ARTS OF LIFE (_concluded_) 260
Fire, 260—Cookery, 264—Bread, &c., 266—Liquors, 268—Fuel,
270—Lighting, 272—Vessels, 274—Pottery, 274—Glass, 276—Metals,
277—Bronze and Iron Ages, 278—Barter, 281—Money, 282—Commerce,
285.
CHAPTER XII.
ARTS OF PLEASURE 287
Poetry, 287—Verse and Metre, 288—Alliteration and Rhyme,
289—Poetic Metaphor, 289—Speech, Melody, Harmony, 290—Musical
Instruments, 293—Dancing, 296—Drama, 298—Sculpture and
Painting, 300—Ancient and Modern Art, 301—Games, 305.
CHAPTER XIII.
SCIENCE 309
Science, 309—Counting and Arithmetic, 310—Measuring
and Weighing, 316—Geometry, 318—Algebra, 322—Physics,
323—Chemistry, 328—Biology, 329—Astronomy, 332—Geography and
Geology, 335—Methods of Reasoning, 336—Magic, 338.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SPIRIT-WORLD 342
Religion of Lower Races, 342—Souls, 343—Burial, 347—Future
Life, 349—Transmigration, 350—Divine Ancestors, 351—Demons,
352—Nature Spirits, 357—Gods, 358—Worship, 364—Moral
Influence, 368.
CHAPTER XV.
HISTORY AND MYTHOLOGY 373
Tradition, 373—Poetry, 375—Fact in Fiction, 377—Earliest Poems
and Writings, 381—Ancient Chronicle and History, 383—Myths,
387—Interpretation of Myths, 396—Diffusion of Myths, 397.
CHAPTER XVI.
SOCIETY 401
Social Stages, 401—Family, 402—Morals of Lower Races,
405—Public Opinion and Custom, 408—Moral Progress,
410—Vengeance and Justice, 414—War, 418—Property,
419—Legal Ceremonies, 423—Family Power and Responsibility,
426—Patriarchal and Military Chiefs, 428—Nations, 432—Social
Ranks, 434—Government, 436.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FIG. PAGE
1. Later Stone Age (neolithic) implements 27
2. Earlier Stone Age (palæolithic) flint picks or hatchets 29
3. Sketch of mammoth from cave of La Madeleine (Lartet and
Christy) 31
4. Sketch of man and horse from cave (Lartet and Christy) 32
5. Skeletons of apes and man (after Huxley) 39
6. Hand and foot of chimpanzee and of man 42
7. Brain of chimpanzee and of man 46
8. Patagonian and Bushman 58
9. Top view of skulls 61
10. Side view of skulls 62
11. _a_, Swaheli; _b_, Persian 63
12. Female portraits 64
13. African negro 65
14. Section of negro skin, much magnified (after Kölliker) 66
15. Sections of hair, highly magnified (after Pruner) 73
16. Race or Population arranged by Stature (Galton’s method) 76
17. Race or Population arranged by Stature (Quetelet’s method) 77
18. Caribs 78
19. (_a_) Head of Rameses II., Ancient Egypt, (_b_) Sheikh’s son,
Modern Egypt (after Hartmann) 79
20. Malay Mother and Half-caste Daughters 81
21. Cafusa Woman 82
22. Cairene 84
23. Andaman Islanders 88
24. Aheta (Negrito) Philippine Islands 90
25. Melanesians 91
26. South Australian (man) 92
27. South Australian (woman) 92
28. Australian (Queensland) women 93
29. Dravidian hill-man (after Fryer) 94
30. Kalmuk (after Goldsmid) 95
31. Goldi (Amur) 96
32. Siamese actresses 97
33. Cochin-Chinese 98
34. Coreans 99
35. Finn (man) 100
36. Finn (woman) 100
37. Malays 101
38. Malays 101
39. Dayaks 103
40. Kingsmill Islander 104
41. Colorado Indian (North America) 106
42. Colorado Indian (North America) 107
43. Cauixana Indians (South America) 108
44. Georgians 110
45. Swedes 111
46. Gypsy 112
47. Picture-writing, rock near Lake Superior (after Schoolcraft) 168
48. _Pater noster_ in Mexican picture-writing (after Aubin) 169
49. Chinese ancient pictures and later cursive forms (after
Endlicher) 170
50. Chinese compound characters, pictures and sounds 171
51. Egyptian hieroglyphic and hieratic characters compared with
letters of Phœnician and later alphabets (after De Rougé) 176
52. Gunflint-maker’s core and flakes (after Evans) 185
53. Stone Flakes 186
54. Later Stone Age (neolithic) implements 187
55. Earlier Stone Age (palæolithic) flint picks or hatchets 187
56. Stone Axes, &c. 188
57. _a_, Egyptian battle-axe; _b_, Egyptian falchion; _c_,
Asiatic sabre; _d_, European sheath-knife; _e_, Roman
culter; _f_, Hindu bill-hook 189
58. _a_, Stone spear-head (Admiralty Is.); _b_, stone spear-head
or dagger-blade (England); _c_, bronze spear-head (Denmark);
_d_, bronze dagger; _e_, bronze leaf-shaped sword 191
59. Australian spear thrown with spear-thrower (after Brough
Smyth) 194
60. Bows 196
61. Ancient bullock-waggon, from the Antonine Column 199
62. Corn-crusher, Anglesey (after W. O. Stanley) 201
63. Hebrides women grinding with the quern or hand-mill (after
Pennant) 202
64. _a_, Australian digging-stick; _b_, Swedish wooden hack 216
65. Ancient Egyptian hoe and plough 217
66. Natives of Lepers’ Island (New Hebrides) 239
67. Hand of Chinese ascetic 241
68. Botocudo woman with lip- and ear-ornaments 242
69. _a_, Australian winder for hand-twisted cord; _b_, Egyptian
woman spinning with the spindle 247
70. Girl weaving. From an Aztec picture 248
71. Ancient Nile-boat, from wall-painting, Thebes 258
72. Bushman drilling fire (after Chapman) 262
73. Ancient Egyptian Potter’s Wheel (Beni Hassan) 275
74. Ancient Egyptian Glass-blowing (Beni Hassan) 277
75. Development of the Harp 295
76. Ancient Egyptian and Assyrian numeration 313
77. Mode of calculation by counters and by figures on Abacus 315
78. Rudimentary practical Geometry 318
ANTHROPOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
MAN, ANCIENT AND MODERN.
Antiquity of Man, 1—Time required for Development of Races,
1—of Languages, 7—of Civilization, 13—Traces of Man in
the Stone Age, 25—Later Period, 26—Earlier Quaternary or
Drift-Period, 29.
The student who seeks to understand how mankind came to be as they are,
and to live as they do, ought first to know clearly whether men are
new-comers on the earth, or old inhabitants. Did they appear with their
various races and ways of life ready-made, or were these shaped by the
long, slow growth of ages? In order to answer this question, our first
business will be to take a rapid survey of the varieties of men, their
languages, their civilization, and their ancient relics, to see what
proofs may thus be had of man’s age in the world. The outline sketch thus
drawn will also be useful as an introduction to the fuller examination of
man and his ways of life in the chapters which follow.
First, as to the varieties of mankind. Let us suppose ourselves standing
at the docks in Liverpool or London, looking at groups of men of races
most different from our own. There is the familiar figure of the African
negro, with skin so dark-brown as to be popularly called black, and
black hair so naturally frizzed as to be called woolly. Nor are these
the only points in which he is unlike us. Indeed, the white men who
blacken their faces and friz their hair to look like negros make a very
poor imitation, for the negro features are quite distinct; we well know
the flat nose, wide nostrils, thick protruding lips, and, when the face
is seen in profile, the remarkable projecting jaws. A hatter would at
once notice that the negro’s head is narrower in proportion than the
usual oval of the hats made for Englishmen. It would be possible to
tell a negro from a white man even in the dark by the peculiar satiny
feel of his skin, and the yet more peculiar smell which no one who has
noticed it is ever likely to mistake. In the same docks, among the
crews of Eastern steamers, we observe other well-marked types of man.
The Coolie of South India (who is not of Hindu race, but belongs to the
so-called hill-tribes,) is dark-brown of skin, with black, silky, wavy
hair, and a face wide-nosed, heavy-jawed, fleshy-lipped. More familiar
is the Chinese, whom the observer marks down by his less than European
stature, his jaundice-yellow skin, and coarse, straight black hair;
the special character of his features is neatly touched off on his
native china-plates and paper-screens which show the snub nose, high
cheek-bones, and that curious slanting set of the eyes which we can
imitate by putting a finger near the outer corners of our own eyes and
pushing upward. By comparing such a set of races with our own countrymen,
we are able to make out the utmost differences of complexion and feature
among mankind. While doing so, it is plain that white men, as we agree
to call ourselves, show at least two main race-types. Going on board a
merchant-ship from Copenhagen, we find the crew mostly blue-eyed men of
fair complexion and hair, a remarkable contrast to the Genoese vessel
moored alongside, whose sailors show almost to a man swarthy complexions
and lustrous black eyes and hair. These two types of man have been well
described as the fair-whites and the dark-whites.
It is only within modern times that the distinctions among races have
been worked out by scientific methods. Yet since early ages, race has
attracted notice from its connexion with the political questions of
countryman or foreigner, conqueror or conquered, freeman or slave, and
in consequence its marks have been watched with jealous accuracy. In the
Southern United States, till slavery was done away a few years ago, the
traces of negro descent were noted with the utmost nicety. Not only were
the mixed breeds regularly classed as mulattos, quadroons, and down to
octaroons, but even where the mixture was so slight that the untrained
eye noticed nothing beyond a brunette complexion, the intruder who had
ventured to sit down at a public dinner-table was called upon to show his
hands, and the African taint detected by the dark tinge at the root of
the finger-nails.
Seeing how striking the broad distinctions of race are, it was to be
expected that ancient inscriptions and figures should give some view of
the races of man as they were at the beginning of historical times. It
is so in Egypt, where the oldest writings of the world appear. More than
4,000 years ago we begin to find figures of the Egyptians themselves, in
features much the same as in later times. In the sixth dynasty, about
2,000 B.C., the celebrated inscription of Prince Una makes mention of
the _Nahsi_, or negroes, who were levied and drilled by ten thousands
for the Egyptian army. Under the twelfth dynasty, on the walls of the
tomb of Knumhetp, there is represented a procession of _Amu_, who are
seen by their features to be of the race to which Syrians and Hebrews
belonged. Especially the wall-paintings of the tombs of the kings at
Thebes, of the nineteenth dynasty, have preserved coloured portraits
of the four great races distinguished by the Egyptians. These are the
red-brown Egyptians themselves, the people of Palestine with their
aquiline profile and brownish complexion, the flat-nosed, thick-lipped
African negroes, and the fair-skinned Libyans. Thus mankind was already
divided into well-marked races, distinguished by colour and features. It
is surprising to notice how these old-world types of man are still to be
recognised. The Ethiopian of the ancient monuments can at this day be
closely matched. Notwithstanding the many foreign invasions of Egypt,
the mass of the village population is true-bred enough for men to be
easily picked out as representatives of the times of the Pharaohs. Their
portraits have only to be drawn in the stiff style of the monuments,
with the eye conventionally shown full-front in the profile face, and
we have before us the very Egyptians as they depicted themselves in the
old days when they held the Israelites in bondage. In the same way, the
ancient Egyptian portraits of captives from Palestine, whether Syrians,
Phœnicians, or Hebrews, show the strongly-marked Israelite type of
features to be seen at this day in every city of Europe. Altogether, the
evidence of ancient monuments, geography and history, goes to prove that
the great race-divisions of mankind are of no recent growth, but were
already settled before the beginning of the historical period. Since
then their changes seem to have been comparatively slight, except in the
forming of mixed races by intermarriage.
Hence it follows that the historic ages are to be looked on as but the
modern period of man’s life on earth. Behind them lies the præhistoric
period, when the chief work was done of forming and spreading over the
world the races of mankind. Though there is no scale to measure the
length of this period by, there are substantial reasons for taking it
as a long stretch of time. Looking at an ethnological map, coloured to
show what race of men inhabits each region, it is plain at a glance
that the world was not peopled by mere chance scattering of nations, a
white tribe here and a brown tribe there, with perhaps a black tribe
in between. Far from this, whole races are spread over vast regions as
though they grew there, and the peculiar type of the race seems more
or less connected with the climate it lives in. Especially it is seen
that the mass of black races belong to the equatorial regions in Africa
and the Eastern Archipelago, the yellow race to Central and Southern
Asia, the white race to temperate Asia and Europe. Some guess may even
be made from the map which district was the primitive centre where each
of these races took shape, and whence it spread far and wide. Now if,
as some have thought, the Negros, Mongolians, Whites, and other races,
were distinct species, each sprung from a separate origin in its own
region, then the peopling of the globe might require only a moderate
time, the races having only to spread each from its own birthplace. But
the opinion of modern zoologists, whose study of the species and breeds
of animals makes them the best judges, is against this view of several
origins of man, for two principal reasons. First, that all tribes of
men, from the blackest to the whitest, the most savage to the most
cultured, have such general likeness in the structure of their bodies
and the working of their minds, as is easiest and best accounted for by
their being descended from a common ancestry, however distant. Second,
that all the human races, notwithstanding their form and colour, appear
capable of freely intermarrying and forming crossed races of every
combination, such as the millions of mulattos and mestizos sprung in the
New World from the mixture of Europeans, Africans, and native Americans;
this again points to a common ancestry of all the races of man. We may
accept the theory of the unity of mankind as best agreeing with ordinary
experience and scientific research. As yet, however, the means are very
imperfect of judging what man’s progenitors were like in body and mind,
in times before the forefathers of the present Negros, and Tatars, and
Australians, had become separated into distinct stocks. Nor is it yet
clear by what causes these stocks or races passed into their different
types of skull and limbs, of complexion and hair. It cannot be at present
made out how far the peculiarities of single ancestors were inherited by
their descendants and became stronger by in-breeding; how far, when the
weak and dull-witted tribes failed in the struggle for land and life, the
stronger, braver, and abler tribes survived to leave their types stamped
on the nations sprung from them; how far whole migrating tribes underwent
bodily alteration through change of climate, food, and habits, so that
the peopling of the earth went on together with the growth of fresh races
fitted for life in its various regions. Whatever share these causes and
others yet more obscure may have had in varying the races of man, it must
not be supposed that such differences as between an Englishman and a
Gold Coast negro are due to slight variations of breed. On the contrary,
they are of such zoological importance as to have been compared with the
differences between animals which naturalists reckon distinct species,
as between the brown bear with its rounded forehead, and the polar bear
with its whitish fur and long flattened skull. If then we are to go back
in thought to a time when the ancestors of the African, the Australian,
the Mongol, and the Scandinavian, were as yet one undivided stock, the
theory of their common descent must be so framed as to allow causes
strong enough and time long enough to bring about changes far beyond any
known to have taken place during historical ages. Looked at in this way,
the black, brown, yellow, and white men whom we have supposed ourselves
examining on the quays, are living records of the remote past, every
Chinese and Negro bearing in his face evidence of the antiquity of man.
Next, what has language to tell of man’s age on the earth? It appears
that the distinct languages known number about a thousand. It is clear,
however, at the first glance that these did not all spring up separately.
There are groups of languages which show such close likeness in their
grammars and dictionaries as proves each group to be descended from one
ancestral tongue. Such a group is called a family of languages, and one
of the best known of such families may be taken as an example of their
way of growth. In ancient times Latin (using the word in a rather wide
sense) was the language of Rome and other Italian districts, and with the
spread of the Roman empire it was carried far and wide, so as to oust the
early languages of whole provinces. Undergoing in each land a different
course of change, Latin gave rise to the Romance family of languages,
of which Italian, Spanish, and French are well-known members. How these
languages have come to differ after ages of separate life, we judge by
seeing that sailors from Dieppe cannot make themselves understood in
Malagà, nor does a knowledge of French enable us to read Dante. Yet
the Romance languages keep the traces of their Roman origin plainly
enough for Italian, Spanish, and French sentences to be taken and every
word referred to something near it in classical Latin, which may be
roughly treated as the original form. Familiar proverbs are here given
as illustrations, with the warning to the reader that, for convenience’
sake, the comparisons are not all carried out in precise grammatical form.
ITALIAN.
E meglio un uovo oggi che una gallina domani.
_est melius unum ovum hodie quid una gallina de mane._
_i.e._ Better is an egg to-day than a hen to-morrow.
Chi va piano va sano, chi va sano va lontano.
_qui vadit planum vadit sanum, qui vadit sanum vadit longum._
_i.e._ He who goes gently goes safe, he who goes safe goes far.
SPANISH.
Quien canta sus males espanta.
_quem cantat suos malos expav(ere)._
_i.e._ He who sings frightens away his ills.
Por la calle de despues se va á la casa de nunca.
_per illam callem de de-ex-post se vadit ad illam casam de nunquam._
_i.e._ By the street of by and by one goes to the house of never.
FRENCH.
Un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l’auras.
_unum tene valet melius quod duos tu illum habere-habes._
_i.e._ One take-it is worth more than two thou-shalt-have-its.
Parler de la corde dans la maison d’un pendu.
_parabola de illam chordam de intus illam mansionem de unum pend(o)._
_i.e._ (Never to) talk of a rope in the house of a hanged man.
It is plain on the face of such sentences as these, that Italian,
Spanish, and French are in fact transformed Latin, their words having
been gradually altered as they descended, generation after generation,
from the parent tongue. Now even if Latin were lost, philologists would
still be able, by comparing the set of Romance languages, to infer that
such a language must have existed to give rise to them all, though no
doubt such a reconstruction of Latin would give but a meagre notion,
either of its stock of words or its grammatical inflexions. This kind of
argument by which a lost parent-language is discovered from the likeness
among its descendants, may be well seen in another set of European
tongues. Let us suppose ourselves listening to a group of Dutch sailors;
at first their talk may seem unintelligible, but after a while a sharp
ear will catch the sound of well known words, and perhaps at last whole
sentences like these:—_Kom hier!_ _Wat zegt gij?_ _Hoe is het weder?_
_Het is een hevige storm, ik ben zeer koud._ _Is de maan op?_ _Ik weet
niet._ The spelling of these words, different from our mode, disguises
their resemblance, but as spoken they come very near corresponding
sentences in English, somewhat old-fashioned or provincial, thus:—_Come
here!_ _What say ye?_ _How is the weather?_ _It is a heavy storm, I
be sore cold._ _Is the moon up?_ _I wit not._ Now it stands to reason
that no two languages could have come to be so like, unless both were
descended from one parent tongue. The argument is really much like that
as to the origin of the people themselves. As we say, these Dutch and
English are beings so nearly alike that they must have descended from a
common stock, so we say, these languages are so like that they must have
been derived from a common language. Dutch and English are accordingly
said to be closely related to one another, and the language of Friesland
proves on examination to be another near relative. Thence it is inferred
that a parent language or group of dialects, which may be called the
original Low-Dutch, or Low-German, must once have been spoken, though it
is not actually to be found, not happening to have been written down and
so preserved.
Now it is easy to see that as ages go on, and the languages of a family
each take their separate course of change, it must become less and
less possible to show their relationship by comparing whole sentences.
Philologists have to depend on less perfect resemblances, but such
are sufficient when not only words from the dictionary correspond in
the two languages, but also these are worked up into actual speech
by corresponding forms of grammar. Thus when Sanskrit, the ancient
language of the Brahmans in India, is compared with Greek and Latin,
it appears that the Sanskrit verb _dâ_ expresses the idea to give, and
makes its present tense by reduplicating and adding a person-affix, so
becoming _dadâmi_, nearly as Greek makes _didōmi_: from the same root
Sanskrit makes a future participle _dâsyamânas_, corresponding to Greek
_dōsomenos_, while Sanskrit _dâtâr_ matches Greek _dotēr_ = giver. So
where Latin has _vox_, _vocis_, _vocem_, _voces_, _vocum_, _vocibus_,
Sanskrit has _vâk_, _vâćas_, _vâćam_, _vâćas_, _vâćâm_, _vâgbhyas_.
When such thoroughgoing analogy as this is found to run through several
languages, as Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, no other explanation is
possible but that an ancient parent language gave rise to them all, they
having only varied off from it in different directions. In this way it is
shown that not only are these particular languages related by descent,
but that groups of ancient and modern languages in Asia and Europe, the
Indian group, the Persian group, the Hellenic or Greek group, the Italic
or Latin group, the Slavonic group to which Russian belongs, the Teutonic
group which English is a member of, the Keltic group which Welsh is a
member of, are all descendants of one common ancestral language, which is
now theoretically called the Aryan, though practically its nature can
only be made out in a vague way by comparing its descendant languages.
Some of these have come down to us in forms which are extremely ancient,
as antiquity goes in our limited chronology. The sacred books of India
and Persia have preserved the Sanskrit and Zend languages, which by their
structure show to the eye of the philologist an antiquity beyond that of
the earliest Greek and Latin inscriptions and the old Persian cuneiform
rock-writing of Darius. But the Aryan languages even in their oldest
known states had already become so different that it was the greatest
feat of modern philology to demonstrate that they had a common origin at
all. The faint likeness by which Welsh still shows its relationship to
Greek and German may give some idea of the time that may have elapsed
since all three were developed off from the original Aryan tongue, which
itself probably ceased to exist long before the historical period began.
Among the languages of ancient nations, another great group holds a
high place in the world’s history. This is the Semitic family which
includes the Hebrew and Phœnician, and the Assyrian deciphered from the
wedge-characters of Nineveh. Arabic, the language of the _Koran_, is
the great modern representative of the family, and the closeness with
which it matches Hebrew may be shown in familiar phrases. The Arab still
salutes the stranger with _salâm alaikum_, “peace upon you,” nearly as
the ancient Hebrew would have said _shâlôm lâchem_, that is, “peace to
you,” and the often-heard Arabic exclamation _bismillah_ may be turned
into Hebrew, as _be-shêm hâ-Elohim_, “in the name of God.” So the Hebrew
names of persons mentioned in the Bible give the interpretation of many
Arabic proper names, as where _Ebed-melech_, “servant of the king,” who
took Jeremiah out of the dungeon, bore a name nearly like that of the
khalif _Abd-el-Melik_, in Mohammedan history. But no one of these Semitic
languages has any claim to be the original of the family, standing to
the others as Latin does to Italian and French. All of them, Assyrian,
Phœnician, Hebrew, Arabic, are sister-languages, pointing back to an
earlier parent language which has long disappeared. The ancient Egyptian
language of the hieroglyphics cannot be classed as a member of the
Semitic family, though it shows points of resemblance which may indicate
some remote connexion. There are also known to have existed before 2000
B.C. two important languages not belonging to either the Aryan or Semitic
family; these were the ancient Babylonian and the ancient Chinese. As for
the languages of more outlying regions of the world, such as America,
when they come into view they are found likewise to consist of many
separate groups or families.
This slight glimpse of the earliest known state of language in the
world is enough to teach the interesting lesson that the main work of
language-making was done in the ages before history. Going back as
far as philology can take us, we find already existing a number of
language-groups, differing in words and structure, and if they ever had
any relationship with one another no longer showing it by signs clear
enough for our skill to make out. Of an original primitive language of
mankind, the most patient research has found no traces. The oldest types
of language we can reach by working back from known languages show no
signs of being primitive tongues of mankind. Indeed, it may be positively
asserted that they are not such, but that ages of growth and decay have
mostly obliterated the traces how each particular sound came to express
its particular sense. Man, since the historical period, has done little
in the way of absolute new creation of language, for the good reason that
his wants were already supplied by the words he learnt from his fathers,
and all he had to do when a new idea came to him was to work up old words
into some new shape. Thus the study of languages gives much the same
view of man’s antiquity as has been already gained from the study of
races. The philologist, asked how long he thinks mankind to have existed,
answers that it must have been long enough for human speech to have grown
from its earliest beginnings into elaborate languages, and for these in
their turn to have developed into families spread far and wide over the
world. This immense work had been already accomplished in ages before
the earliest inscriptions of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Phœnicia, Persia,
Greece, for these show the great families of human speech already in full
existence.
Next, we have to look at culture or civilization, to see whether this
also shows signs of man having lived and laboured in ages earlier than
the earliest which historical records can tell of. For this purpose
it is needful to understand what has been the general course of arts,
knowledge, and institutions. It is a good old rule to work from the known
to the unknown, and all intelligent people have much to tell from their
own experience as to how civilization develops. The account which an old
man can give of England as he remembers it in his schoolboy days, and of
the inventions and improvements he has seen come in since, is in itself
a valuable lesson. Thus, when starting from London by express train to
reach Edinburgh by dinner-time, he thinks of when it used to be fair
coach-travelling to get through in two days and nights. Catching sight
of a signal-post on the line, he remembers how such semaphores (that
is, sign-bearers) were then the best means of telegraphing, and stood
waving their arms on the hills between London and Plymouth, signalling
the Admiralty messages. Thinking of the electric telegraph which has
superseded them, reminds him that this invention arose out of a discovery
made in his youth as to the connexion between electricity and magnetism.
This again suggests other modern scientific discoveries that have opened
to us the secrets of the universe, such as the spectrum-analysis which
now makes out with such precision the materials of the stars, which is
just what our fathers were quite certain no man on earth ever could know.
Our informant can tell us, too, how knowledge has not only increased,
but is far more widely spread than formerly, when the thriving farmer’s
son could hardly get schooling practically so good as the labourer’s
son is now entitled to of right. He may then go on to explain to his
hearers how, since his time, the laws of the land have been improved and
better carried out, so that men are no longer hanged for stealing, that
more is done to reform the criminal classes instead of merely punishing
them, that life and property are safer than in old times. Last, but not
least, he can show from his own recollection that people are morally
a shade better than they were, that public opinion demands a somewhat
higher standard of conduct than in past generations, as may be seen in
the sharper disapproval that now falls on cheats and drunkards. From
such examples of the progress in civilization that has come in a single
country and a single lifetime, it is clear that the world has not been
standing still with us, but new arts, new thoughts, new institutions, new
rules of life, have arisen or been developed out of the older state of
things.
Now this growth or development in civilization, so rapid in our own time,
appears to have been going on more or less actively since the early ages
of man. Proof of this comes to us in several different ways. History, so
far as it reaches back, shows arts, sciences, and political institutions
beginning in ruder states, and becoming in the course of ages more
intelligent, more systematic, more perfectly arranged or organized, to
answer their purposes. Not to give many instances of a fact so familiar,
the history of parliamentary government begins with the old-world
councils of the chiefs and tumultuous assemblies of the whole people. The
history of medicine goes back to the times when _epilepsy_ or “seizure”
(Greek, _epilēpsis_) was thought to be really the act of a demon seizing
and convulsing the patient. But our object here is to get beyond such
ordinary information of the history books, and to judge what stages
civilization passed through in times yet earlier. Here one valuable aid
is archæology, which for instance shows us the stone hatchets and other
rude instruments which belonged to early tribes of men, thus proving
how low their state of arts was; of this more will be said presently.
Another useful guide is to be had from survivals in culture. Looking
closely into the thoughts, arts, and habits of any nation, the student
finds everywhere the remains of older states of things out of which they
arose. To take a trivial example, if we want to know why so quaintly cut
a garment as the evening dress-coat is worn, the explanation may be found
thus. The cutting away at the waist had once the reasonable purpose of
preventing the coat skirts from getting in the way in riding, while the
pair of useless buttons behind the waist are also relics from the times
when such buttons really served the purpose of fastening these skirts
behind; the curiously cut collar keeps the now misplaced notches made to
allow of its being worn turned up or down, the smart facings represent
the old ordinary lining, and the sham cuffs now made with a seam round
the wrist are survivals from real cuffs when the sleeve used to be turned
back. Thus it is seen that the present ceremonial dress-coat owes its
peculiarities to being descended from the old-fashioned practical coat
in which a man rode and worked. Or again, if one looks in modern English
life for proof of the Norman Conquest eight centuries ago, one may find
it in the “_Oh yes! Oh yes!_” of the town-crier, who all unknowingly
keeps up the old French form of proclamation, “_Oyez! Oyez!_” that is,
“Hear ye! Hear ye!” To what yet more distant periods of civilization such
survivals may reach back, is well seen in an example from India. There,
though people have for ages kindled fire for practical use with the
flint and steel, yet the Brahmans, to make the sacred fire for the daily
sacrifice, still use the barbaric art of violently boring a pointed stick
into another piece of wood till a spark comes. Asked why they thus waste
their labour when they know better, they answer that they do it to get
pure and holy fire. But to us it is plain that they are really keeping
up by unchanging custom a remnant of the ruder life once led by their
remote ancestors. On the whole, these various ways of examining arts and
sciences all prove that they never spring forth perfect, like Athene out
of the split head of Zeus. They come on by successive steps, and where
other information fails, the observer may often trust himself to judge
from the mere look of an invention how it probably arose. Thus no one can
look at a cross-bow and a common long-bow without being convinced that
the long-bow was the earlier, and that the cross-bow was made afterwards
by fitting a common bow on a stock, and arranging a trigger to let go the
string after taking aim. Though history fails to tell us who did this and
when, we feel almost as sure of it as of the known historical facts that
the cross-bow led up to the match-lock, and that again to the flint-lock
musket, and that again to the percussion musket, and that again to the
breech-loading rifle.
Putting these various means of information together, it often becomes
possible to picture the whole course of an art or an institution, tracing
it back from its highest state in the civilized world till we reach its
beginnings in the life of the rudest tribes of men. For instance, let
us look at a course of modern mathematics, as represented in the books
taken in for university honours. A student living in Queen Elizabeth’s
time would have had no infinitesimal calculus to study, hardly even
algebraic geometry, for what is now called the higher mathematics was
invented since then. Going back into the Middle Ages, we come to the
time when algebra had been just brought in, a novelty due to the Hindu
mathematicians and their scholars, the Arabs; and next we find the
numeral ciphers, 0, 1, 2, 3, &c., beginning to be known as an improvement
on the old calculating board and the Roman I., II., III. In the classic
ages yet earlier, we reach the time when the methods of Euklid and the
other Greek geometers first appeared. So we get back to what was known
to the mathematicians of the earliest historical period in Babylonia and
Egypt, an arithmetic clumsily doing what children in the lower standards
are taught with us to do far more neatly, and a rough geometry consisting
of a few rules of practical mensuration. This is as far as history can
go toward the beginnings of mathematics, but there are other means of
discovering through what lower stages the science arose. The very names
still used to denote lengths, such as cubit, hand, foot, span, nail,
show how the art of mensuration had its origin in times when standard
measures had not yet been invented, but men put their hands and feet
alongside objects of which they wished to estimate the size. So there is
abundant evidence that arithmetic came up from counting on the fingers
and toes, such as may still be seen among savages. Words still used for
numbers in many languages were evidently made during the period when such
reckoning on the hands and feet was usual, and they have lasted on ever
since. Thus a Malay expresses five by the word _lima_, which (though he
does not know it) once meant “hand,” so that it is seen to be a survival
from ages when his ancestors, wanting a word for five, held up one hand
and said “hand.” Indeed, the reason of our own decimal notation, why we
reckon by tens instead of the more convenient twelves, appears to be that
our forefathers got from their own fingers the habit of counting by tens
which has been since kept up, an unchanged relic of primitive man. The
following chapters contain many other cases of such growth of arts from
the simplest origins. Thus, in examining tools, it will be seen how the
rudely chipped stone grasped in the hand to hack with, led up to the more
artificially shaped stone chisel fitted as a hatchet in a wooden handle,
how afterwards when metal came in there was substituted for the stone a
bronze or iron blade, till at last was reached the most perfect modern
foresters’ axe, with its steel blade socketed to take the well-balanced
handle. Specimens such as those in Chapter VIII. show these great moves
in the development of the axe, which began before chronology and history,
and has been from the first one of man’s chief aids in civilizing himself.
It does not follow from such arguments as these that civilization is
always on the move, or that its movement is always progress. On the
contrary, history teaches that it remains stationary for long periods,
and often falls back. To understand such decline of culture, it must be
borne in mind that the highest arts and the most elaborate arrangements
of society do not always prevail, in fact they may be too perfect to hold
their ground, for people must have what fits with their circumstances.
There is an instructive lesson to be learnt from a remark made by an
Englishman at Singapore, who noticed with surprise two curious trades
flourishing there. One was to buy old English-built ships, cut them down
and rig them as junks; the other was to buy English percussion muskets
and turn them into old-fashioned flintlocks. At first sight this looks
like mere stupidity, but on consideration it is seen to be reasonable
enough. It was so difficult to get Eastern sailors to work ships of
European rig, that it answered better to provide them with the clumsier
craft they were used to; and as for the guns, the hunters far away in
the hot, damp forests were better off with gunflints than if they had
to carry and keep dry a stock of caps. In both cases, what they wanted
was not the highest product of civilization, but something suited to
the situation and easiest to be had. Now the same rule applies both to
taking in new civilization and keeping up old. When the life of a people
is altered by emigration into a new country, or by war and distress at
home, or mixture with a lower race, the culture of their forefathers may
be no longer needed or possible, and so dwindles away. Such degeneration
is to be seen among the descendants of Portuguese in the East Indies,
who have intermarried with the natives and fallen out of the march of
civilization, so that newly-arrived Europeans go to look at them lounging
about their mean hovels in the midst of luxuriant tropical fruits and
flowers, as if they had been set there to teach by example how man falls
in culture where the need of effort is wanting. Another frequent cause
of loss of civilization is when people once more prosperous are ruined
or driven from their homes, like those Shoshonee Indians who have taken
refuge from their enemies, the Blackfeet, in the wilds of the Rocky
Mountains, where they now roam, called Digger Indians from the wild
roots they dig for as part of their miserable subsistence. Not only the
degraded state of such outcasts, but the loss of particular arts by other
peoples, may often be explained by loss of culture under unfavourable
conditions. For instance, the South Sea Islanders, though not a very rude
people when visited by Captain Cook, used only stone hatchets and knives,
being indeed so ignorant of metal that they planted the first iron nails
they got from the English sailors, in the hope of raising a new crop.
Possibly their ancestors never had metals, but it seems as likely that
these ancestors were an Asiatic people to whom metal was known, but who,
through emigration to ocean islands and separation from their kinsfolk,
lost the use of it and fell back into the stone age. It is necessary for
the student to be alive to the importance of decline in civilization,
but it is here more particularly mentioned in order to point out that it
in no way contradicts the theory that civilization itself is developed
from low to high stages. One cannot lose a thing without having had it
first, and wherever tribes are fallen from the higher civilization of
their ancestors, this only leaves it to be accounted for how that higher
civilization grew up.
On the whole it appears that wherever there are found elaborate arts,
abstruse knowledge, complex institutions, these are results of gradual
development from an earlier, simpler, and ruder state of life. No stage
of civilization comes into existence spontaneously, but grows or is
developed out of the stage before it. This is the great principle which
every scholar must lay firm hold of, if he intends to understand either
the world he lives in or the history of the past. Let us now see how this
bears on the antiquity and early condition of mankind. The monuments
of Egypt and Babylonia show that toward 5,000 years ago certain nations
had already come to an advanced state of culture. No doubt the greater
part of the earth was then peopled by barbarians and savages, as it
remained afterwards. But in the regions of the Nile and the Euphrates
there was civilization. The ancient Egyptians had that greatest mark
of a civilized nation, the art of writing; indeed the hieroglyphic
characters of their inscriptions appear to have been the origin of our
alphabet. They were a nation skilled in agriculture, raising from their
fields fertilized by the yearly inundation those rich crops of grain
that provided subsistence for the dense population. How numerous and how
skilled in constructive art the ancient Egyptians were, is seen by every
traveller who looks on the pyramids which have made their name famous
through all history. The great pyramid of Gizeh still ranks among the
wonders of the world, a mountain of hewn limestone and syenite, whose
size Londoners describe by saying that it stands on a square the size
of Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, and rises above the height of St. Paul’s. The
perfection of its huge blocks and the beautiful masonry of the inner
chambers and passages show the skill not only of the stonecutter but of
the practical geometer. The setting of the sides to the cardinal points
is so exact as to prove that the Egyptians were excellent observers
of the elementary facts of astronomy; the day of the equinox can be
taken by observing the sunset across the face of the pyramid, and the
neighbouring Arabs still adjust their astronomical dates by its shadow.
As far back as anything is known of them, the Egyptians appear to have
worked in bronze and iron, as well as gold and silver. So their arts and
habits, their sculpture and carpentry, their reckoning and measuring,
their system of official life with its governors and scribes, their
religion with its orders of priesthood and its continual ceremonies,
all appear the results of long and gradual growth. What, perhaps, gives
the highest idea of antiquity, is to look at very early monuments, such
as the tomb of prince Teta of the 4th dynasty in the British Museum,
and notice how Egyptian culture had even then begun to grow stiff and
traditional. Art was already reaching the stage when it seemed to men
that no more progress was possible, for their ancestors had laid down
the perfect rule of life, which it was sin to alter by way of reform. Of
the early Babylonians or Chaldæans less is known, yet their monuments
and inscriptions show how ancient and how high was their civilization.
Their writing was in cuneiform or wedge-shaped characters, of which
they seem to have been the inventors, and which their successors, the
Assyrians, learnt from them. They were great builders of cities, and
the bricks inscribed with their kings’ names remain as records of their
great temples, such, for instance, as that dedicated to the god of Ur,
at the city known to Biblical history as Ur of the Chaldees. Written
copies of their laws exist, so advanced as to have provisions as to the
property of married women, the imprisonment of a father or mother for
denying their son, the daily fine of a half-measure of corn levied on the
master who killed or ill-used his slaves. Their astrology, which made
the names of Chaldæan and Babylonian famous ever since, led them to make
those regular observations of the heavenly bodies which gave rise to
the science of astronomy. The nation which wrote its name thus largely
in the book of civilization, dates back into the same period of high
antiquity as the Egyptian. These then are the two nations whose culture
is earliest vouched for by inscriptions done at the very time of their
ancient grandeur, and therefore it is safer to appeal to them than to
other nations which can only show as proofs of their antiquity writings
drawn up in far later ages. Looking at their ancient civilization, it
seems to have been formed by men whose minds worked much like our own.
No super-human powers were required for the work, but just human nature
groping on by roundabout ways, reaching great results, yet not half
knowing how to profit by them when reached; solving the great problem
of writing, yet not seeing how to simplify the clumsy hieroglyphics
into letters; devoting earnest thought to religion and yet keeping up a
dog and cat worship which was a jest even to the ancients; cultivating
astronomy and yet remaining mazed in the follies of astrology. In the
midst of their most striking efforts of civilization, the traces may be
discerned of the barbaric condition which prevailed before; the Egyptian
pyramids are burial-mounds like those of præhistoric England, but huge in
size and built of hewn stone or brick; the Egyptian hieroglyphics, with
their pictures of men and beasts and miscellaneous things, tell the story
of their own invention, how they began as a mere picture-writing like
that of the rude hunters of America. Thus it appears that civilization,
at the earliest dates where history brings it into view, had already
reached a level which can only be accounted for by growth during a long
præhistoric period. This result agrees with the conclusions already
arrived at by the study of races and language.
Without attempting here to draw a picture of life as it may have been
among men at their first appearance on the earth, it is important to
go back as far as such evidence of the progress of civilization may
fairly lead us. In judging how mankind may have once lived, it is also
a great help to observe how they are actually found living. Human
life may be roughly classed into three great stages, Savage, Barbaric,
Civilized, which may be defined as follows. The lowest or _savage_
state is that in which man subsists on wild plants and animals, neither
tilling the soil nor domesticating creatures for his food. Savages may
dwell in tropical forests where the abundant fruit and game may allow
small clans to live in one spot and find a living all the year round,
while in barer and colder regions they have to lead a wandering life in
quest of the wild food which they soon exhaust in any place. In making
their rude implements, the materials used by savages are what they find
ready to hand, such as wood, stone, and bone, but they cannot extract
metal from the ore, and therefore belong to the Stone Age. Men may be
considered to have risen into the next or _barbaric_ state when they
take to agriculture. With the certain supply of food which can be stored
till next harvest, settled village and town life is established, with
immense results in the improvement of arts, knowledge, manners, and
government. Pastoral tribes are to be reckoned in the barbaric stage, for
though their life of shifting camp from pasture to pasture may prevent
settled habitation and agriculture, they have from their herds a constant
supply of milk and meat. Some barbaric nations have not come beyond
using stone implements, but most have risen into the Metal Age. Lastly,
_civilized_ life may be taken as beginning with the art of writing,
which by recording history, law, knowledge, and religion for the service
of ages to come, binds together the past and the future in an unbroken
chain of intellectual and moral progress. This classification of three
great stages of culture is practically convenient, and has the advantage
of not describing imaginary states of society, but such as are actually
known to exist. So far as the evidence goes, it seems that civilization
has actually grown up in the world through these three stages, so that
to look at a savage of the Brazilian forests, a barbarous New Zealander
or Dahoman, and a civilized European, may be the student’s best guide to
understanding the progress of civilization, only he must be cautioned
that the comparison is but a guide, not a full explanation.
In this way it is reasonably inferred that even in countries now
civilized, savage and low barbaric tribes must have once lived.
Fortunately it is not left altogether to the imagination to picture the
lives of these rude and ancient men, for many relics of them are found
which may be seen and handled in museums. It has now to be considered
what sort of evidence of man’s age is thus to be had from archæology and
geology, and what it proves.
When an antiquary examines the objects dug up in any place, he can
generally judge in what state of civilization its inhabitants have
been. Thus if there are found weapons of bronze or iron, bits of fine
pottery, bones of domestic cattle, charred corn and scraps of cloth,
this would be proof that people lived there in a civilized, or at least
a high barbaric condition. If there are only rude implements of stone
and bone, but no metal, no earthenware, no remains to show that the land
was tilled or cattle kept, this would be evidence that the country had
been inhabited by some savage tribe. One of the chief questions to be
asked about the condition of any people is, whether they have metal in
use for their tools and weapons. If so, they may be said to be in the
metal age. If they have no copper or iron, but make their hatchets,
knives, spear-heads, and other cutting and piercing instruments of stone,
they are said to be in the stone age. Wherever such stone implements
are picked up, as they often are in our own ploughed fields, they prove
that stone-age men have once dwelt in the land. It is an important fact
that in every region of the inhabited world ancient stone implements are
thus found in the ground, showing that at some time the inhabitants were
in this respect like the modern savages. In countries where the people
have long been metal-workers, they have often lost all memory of what
these stone things are, and tell fanciful stories to account for their
being met with in ploughing or digging. One favourite notion, in England
and elsewhere, is that the stone hatchets are “thunderbolts” fallen
from the sky with the lightning flash. It has been imagined that in the
East, the seat of the most ancient civilizations, some district might be
found without any traces of man having lived there in a state of early
rudeness, so that in this part of the world he might have been civilized
from the first. But it is not so. In Assyria, Palestine, Egypt, as in
other lands, one may find sharp-chipped flints which show that here also
tribes in the stone age once lived, before the use of metal brought in
higher civilization.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.—Later Stone Age (neolithic) implements. _a_, stone
celt or hatchet; _b_, flint spear-head; _c_, scraper; _d_, arrow-heads;
_e_, flint flake-knives; _f_, core from which flint-flakes taken off;
_g_, flint-awl; _h_, flint saw; _i_, stone hammer-head.]
Whether it may be considered or not that Europe was a quarter of the
globe inhabited by the earliest tribes of men, it so happens that remains
found in Europe furnish at present the best proofs of man’s antiquity.
To understand these, it must be explained that the stone age had an
earlier and a later period, as may be plainly seen in looking at a good
collection of stone implements. Fig. 1 is intended to give some idea of
those in use in the later stone age. The hatchet is neatly shaped and
edged by rubbing on a grinding-stone, as is also the hammer-head. The
spear and arrows, scraper, and flake-knife it would have been waste of
labour to grind, but they are chipped out with much skill. On the whole,
these stone implements are much like those which the North American
Indians have been using to our own day. The question is, how long ago
tribes who made such stone implements were living in Europe. As to
this, we may fairly judge from the position in which they are found in
Denmark. The forests of that country are mainly of beeches, but in the
peat-mosses lie innumerable trunks of oaks, which show that at an earlier
period oak-forests prevailed, and deeper still there lie trunks of pine
trees, which show that there were pine-forests still older than the
oak-forests. Thus there have been three successive forest-periods, the
beech, the oak, and the pine, and the depth of the peat-mosses, which
in places is as much as thirty feet, shows that the period of the pine
trees was thousands of years ago. While the forests have been changing,
the condition of the people living among them has changed also. The
modern woodman cuts down the beech-trees with his iron axe, but among the
oak-trunks in the peat are found bronze swords and shield-bosses, which
show that the inhabitants of the country were then in the bronze age, and
lastly, a flint hatchet taken out from where it lay still lower in the
peat beneath the pine-trunks, proves that stone-age men in Denmark lived
in the pine-forest period, which carries them back to high antiquity.
In England, the tribes who have left such stone implements were in the
land before the invasion of that Keltic race whom we call the ancient
Britons, and who no doubt came armed with weapons of metal. The stone
hatchet-blades and arrow-heads of the older population lie scattered over
our country, hill and dale, moor and fen, near the surface of the ground,
or deeper underground in peat-mosses, or beds of mud and silt. Such bogs
or mud-flats began at a date which chronologists would call ancient.
But they are what geologists, accustomed to vaster periods of time,
consider modern. They belong to the newer alluvial deposits, that is,
they were formed within the times when the lie of the land and the flow
of the streams were much as they are now. To get an idea of this, one has
only to look down from a hill-side into a wide valley below, and notice
how its flat flooring of mud and sand, stretching right across, must
have been laid down by flood-waters following very much their present
course along the main stream and down the side slopes. The people of the
newer stone age, whose implements are seen in Fig. 1, lived within this
historically ancient, but geologically modern period, and relics of them
are found only in places where man or nature could then have placed them.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.—Earlier Stone Age (palæolithic) flint picks or
hatchets.]
But there had been a still earlier period of the stone age, when yet
ruder tribes of men lived in our parts of the world, when the climate
and the face of the country were strangely different from the present
state of things. On the slopes of river valleys such as that of the Ouse,
in England, and the Somme, in France, 50 or 100 feet above the present
river-banks, and thus altogether out of the reach of any flood now, there
are beds of so-called drift gravel. Out of these beds have been dug
numerous rude implements of flint, chipped into shape by the hands of
men who had gained no mean dexterity in the art, as any one will find who
will try his hand at making one, with any tools he thinks fit. The most
remarkable implements of this earlier stone age are the picks or hatchets
shown in Fig. 2. The coarseness of their finish, and the absence of any
signs of grinding even at the edges of hacking or cutting instruments,
show that the makers had not come nearly to the skill of the later
stone age. It is usual to distinguish the two kinds of implements, and
the periods they belong to, by the terms introduced by Sir J. Lubbock,
palæolithic and neolithic, that is “old-stone” and “new-stone.” Looking
now at the high gravel-beds in which palæolithic implements such as those
shown in Fig. 2 occur, it is evident from their position that they had
nothing to do with the water-action which is now laying down and shifting
sand-banks and mud-flats at the bottom of the valleys, nor with the
present rain-wash which scours the surface of the hill-sides. They must
have been deposited in a former period when the condition of land and
water was different from what it is now. How far this state of things was
due to the valleys not being yet cut out to near their present depth, to
the whole country lying lower above the sea-level, or to the rivers being
vastly larger than at present from the heavier rainfall of a pluvial
period, it would be raising too intricate geological questions to discuss
here. Geology shows the old drift-gravels to belong to times when the
glacial or icy period with its arctic climate was passing, or had passed
away, in Europe. From the bones and teeth found with the flint implements
in the gravel-beds, it is known what animals inhabited the land at the
same time with the men of the old stone age. The mammoth, or huge woolly
elephant, and several kinds of rhinoceros, also extinct, browsed on the
branches of the forest trees, and a species of hippopotamus much like
that at present living frequented the rivers. The musk-ox and the grizzly
bear, which England harboured in this remote period, may still be hunted
in the Rocky Mountains, but the ancient cave-bear, which was one of the
dangerous wild beasts of our land, is no longer on the face of the earth.
The British lion was of a larger breed than those now in Asia and Africa,
and perhaps than those which Herodotus mentions as prowling in Macedonia
in the fifth century B.C., and falling on the camels of Xerxes’ army.
To judge by such signs as the presence of the reindeer, and the mammoth
with its hairy coat, the climate of Europe was severer than now, perhaps
like that of Siberia. How long man had been in the land there is no clear
evidence. For all we know, he may have lasted on from an earlier and more
genial period, or he may have only lately migrated into Europe from some
warmer region. Implements like his are not unknown in Asia, as where in
Southern India, above Madras, there lies at the foot of the Eastern
Gháts a terrace of irony clay or laterite, containing stone implements of
very similar make to those of the drift-men in Europe.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.—Sketch of mammoth from cave of La Madeleine
(Lartet and Christy).]
These European savages of the mammoth-period resorted much to shelter
at the foot of overhanging cliffs, and to caverns such as Kent’s Hole
near Torquay, where the implements of the men and the bones of the
beasts are found together in abundance. In Central France especially,
the examination of such bone-caves has brought to light evidence of
the whole way of life of a group of ancient tribes. The reindeer which
have now retreated to high northern latitudes, were then plentiful in
France, as appears from their bones and antlers imbedded with remains of
the mammoth under the stalagmite floors of the caves of Perigord. With
them are found rude stone hatchets and scrapers, pounding-stones, bone
spear-heads, awls, arrow-straighteners, and other objects belonging to
a life like that of the modern Esquimaux who hunt the reindeer on the
coasts of Hudson’s Bay. Like the Esquimaux also, these early French and
Swiss savages spent their leisure time in carving figures of animals.
Among many such figures found in the French caves is a mammoth, Fig.
3, scratched on a piece of its own ivory, so as to touch off neatly
the shaggy hair and huge curved tusks which distinguish the mammoth
from other species of elephant. There has been also found a rude
representation of a man, Fig. 4, grouped with two horses’ heads and
a snake or eel; this is interesting as being the most ancient human
portrait known.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.—Sketch of man and horses from cave (Lartet and
Christy).]
Thus it appears that man of the older stone age was already living when
the floods went as high above our present valley-flats as the tops of
the high trees growing there now reach, and when the climate was of that
Lapland kind suited to the woolly mammoth and the reindeer, and the rest
of the un-English looking group of animals now perished out of this
region, or extinct altogether. From all that is known of the slowness
with which such alterations take place anywhere in the lie of the land,
the climate, and the wild animals, we cannot suppose changes so vast
to have happened without a long lapse of time before the newer stone
age came in, when the streams had settled down to near their present
levels, and the climate and the wild creatures had become much as they
were within the historical period. It is also plain from the actual
remains found, that these most ancient known tribes were wild hunters and
fishers, such as we should now class as savages. It is best, however,
not to apply to them the term primitive men, as this might be understood
to mean that they were the first men who appeared on earth, or at least
like them. The life the men of the mammoth-period must have led at
Abbeville or Torquay, shows on the face of it reasons against its being
man’s primitive life. These old stone-age men are more likely to have
been tribes whose ancestors while living under a milder climate gained
some rude skill in the arts of procuring food and defending themselves,
so that afterwards they were able by a hard struggle to hold their own
against the harsh weather and fierce beasts of the quaternary period.
How long ago this period was, no certain knowledge is yet to be had.
Some geologists have suggested twenty thousand years, while others say a
hundred thousand or more, but these are guesses made where there is no
scale to reckon time by. It is safest to be content at present to regard
it as a geological period lying back out of the range of chronology.
It is thought by several eminent geologists that stones shaped by man,
and therefore proving his presence, occur in England and France in beds
deposited before the last glacial period, when much of the continent
lay submerged under an icy sea, where drifting icebergs dropped on what
is now dry land their huge boulders of rock transported from distant
mountains. This cannot be taken as proved, but if true it would immensely
increase our estimate of man’s age. At any rate the conclusive proofs of
man’s existence during the quaternary or mammoth period do not even bring
us into view of the remoter time when human life first began on earth.
Thus geology establishes a principle which lies at the very foundation of
the science of anthropology. Until of late, while it used to be reckoned
by chronologists that the earth and man were less than 6,000 years old,
the science of geology could hardly exist, there being no room for its
long processes of building up the strata containing the remains of its
vast successions of plants and animals. These are now accounted for on
the theory that geological time extends over millions of years. It is
true that man reaches back comparatively little way into this immense
lapse of time. Yet his first appearance on earth goes back to an age
compared with which the ancients, as we call them, are but moderns. The
few thousand years of recorded history only take us back to a præhistoric
period of untold length, during which took place the primary distribution
of mankind over the earth and the development of the great races, the
formation of speech and the settlement of the great families of language,
and the growth of culture up to the levels of the old world nations of
the East, the forerunners and founders of modern civilized life.
Having now sketched what history, archæology, and geology teach as to
man’s age and course on the earth, we shall proceed in the following
chapters to describe more fully Man and his varieties as they appear in
natural history, next examining the nature and growth of Language, and
afterwards the development of the knowledge, arts, and institutions,
which make up Civilization.