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MAN AND HIS MIGRATIONS.
by
R. G. LATHAM, M.D., F.R.S.,
Corresponding Member to the Ethnological Society, New York, etc. etc.
[Illustration: Publisher's logo]
London:
John Van Voorst, Paternoster Row.
MDCCCLI.
Printed by Richard Taylor,
Red Lion Court, Fleet Street.
PREFACE.
The following pages represent a Course of Six Lectures delivered at
the Mechanics’ Institution, Liverpool, in the month of March of the
present year; the matter being now laid before the public in a somewhat
fuller and more systematic form than was compatible with the original
delivery.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Page
The Natural or Physical history of Man--the Civil--their
difference--divisions of the Natural or Physical
history--Anthropology--Ethnology--how far pursued by the
ancients--Herodotus--how far by the moderns--Buffon--
Linnæus--Daubenton--Camper--Blumenbach--the term
_Caucasian_--Cuvier--Philology as an instrument of
ethnological investigation--Pigafetta--Hervas--Leibnitz--
Reland--Adelung--Klaproth--the union of Philology and of
Anatomy--Prichard--its Palæontological character--
influence of Lyell’s Geology--of Whewell’s History of the
Inductive Sciences 1–36
CHAPTER II.
Ethnology--its objects--the chief problems connected with
it--prospective questions--transfer of populations--
Extract from Knox--correlation of certain parts of the
body to certain external influences--parts less subject to
such influences--retrospective questions--the unity or
non-unity of our species--opinions--plurality of species--
multiplicity of protoplasts--doctrine of development--
Dokkos--Extract--antiquity of our species--its geographical
origin--the term _race_ 37–66
CHAPTER III.
Methods--the science one of observation and deduction rather
than experiment--classification--on mineralogical, on
zoological principles--the first for Anthropology, the
second for Ethnology--value of Language as a test--
instances of its loss--of its retention--when it proves
original relation, when intercourse--the grammatical and
glossarial tests--classifications must be _real_--the
distribution of Man--size of area--ethnological contrasts
in close geographical contact--discontinuity and isolation
of areas--oceanic migrations 67–100
CHAPTER IV.
Details of distribution--their conventional character--
convergence from the circumference to the centre--
Fuegians; Patagonian, Pampa, and Chaco Indians--
Peruvians--D’Orbigny’s characters--other South American
Indians--of the Missions--of Guiana--of Venezuela--
Guarani--Caribs--Central America--Mexican civilization
no isolated phænomenon--North American Indians--Eskimo--
apparent objections to their connection with the Americans
and Asiatics--Tasmanians--Australians--Papuás--
Polynesians--Micronesians--Malagasi--Hottentots--Kaffres--
Negroes--Berbers--Abyssinians--Copts--the Semitic family--
Primary and secondary migrations 101–157
CHAPTER V.
The Ugrians of Lapland, Finland, Permia, the Ural Mountains
and the Volga--area of the light-haired families--
Turanians--the Kelts of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Gaul--the
Goths--the Sarmatians--the Greeks and Latins--difficulties
of European ethnology--displacement--intermixture--
identification of ancient families--extinction of ancient
families--the Etruscans--the Pelasgi--isolation--the
Basks--the Albanians--classifications and hypotheses--the
term Indo-European--the Finnic hypothesis 158–183
CHAPTER VI.
The Monosyllabic Area--the Tʻhay--the Môn and Khô--Tables--
the Bʻhot--the Chinese--Burmese--Persia--India--Tamulian
family--the Brahúi--the Dioscurians--the Georgians--Irôn--
Mizjeji--Lesgians--Armenians--Asia Minor--Lycians--
Carians--Paropamisans--Conclusion 184–250
MAN AND HIS MIGRATIONS.
CHAPTER I.
The Natural or Physical history of Man--the Civil--their difference--
divisions of the Natural or Physical history--Anthropology--
Ethnology--how far pursued by the ancients--Herodotus--how far
by the moderns--Buffon--Linnæus--Daubenton--Camper--Blumenbach--the
term _Caucasian_--Cuvier--Philology as an instrument of ethnological
investigation--Pigafetta--Hervas--Leibnitz--Reland--Adelung--
Klaproth--the union of Philology and of Anatomy--Prichard--its
Palæontological character--influence of Lyell’s Geology--of
Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences.
Let us contrast the _Civil_ with the _Natural_ History of Man.
The influence of individual heroes, the effect of material events, the
operations of ideas, the action and reaction of the different elements
of society upon each other, come within the domain of the former. An
empire is consolidated, a contest concluded, a principle asserted,
and the civil historian records them. He does more. If he be true
to his calling, he investigates the springs of action in individual
actors, measures the calibre of their moral and intellectual power,
and pronounces a verdict of praise or blame upon the motives which
determine their manifestation. This makes him a great moral teacher,
and gives a value to his department of knowledge, which places it on a
high and peculiar level.
Dealing with actions and motives, he deals nearly exclusively with
those of individuals; so much so, that even where he records the
movements of mighty masses of men, he generally finds that there is one
presiding will which regulates and directs them; and even when this is
not the case, when the movement of combined multitudes is spontaneous,
the spring of action is generally of a moral nature--a dogma if
religious, a theory if political.
Such a history as this could not be written of the brute animals,
neither could it be written _for_ them. No animal but Man supplies
either its elements or its objects; nor yet the record which transmits
the memory of past actions, even when they are of the most material
kind. The civil historian, therefore, of our species, or, to speak with
a conciseness which common parlance allows, the _historian_, living
and breathing in the peculiar atmosphere of humanity, and exhibiting
man in the wide circle of moral and intellectual action,--a circle in
which none but he moves,--takes up his study where that of the lower
animals ends. Whatever is common to them and man, belongs to the
naturalist. Let each take his view of the Arab or the Jew. The one
investigates the influence of the Bible and the Koran; whilst the other
may ask how far the Moorish blood has mixed with that of the Spaniard,
or remark the permanence of the Israelite features under climates so
different as Poland, Morocco, or Hindostan. The one will think of
instincts, the other of ideas.
In what part of the world did this originate? How was it diffused over
the surface of the earth? At what period in the world’s history was it
evolved? Where does it thrive best? Where does it cease to thrive at
all? What forms does it take if it degenerate? What conditions of soil
or climate determine such degenerations? What favour its improvement?
Can it exist in Nova Zembla? In Africa? In either region or both?
Do the long nights of the Pole blanch, does the bright glare of the
Equator deepen its colour? &c. Instead of multiplying questions of
this kind, I will ask to what they apply. They apply to every being
that multiplies its kind upon earth; to every animal of the land
or sea; to every vegetable as well; to every organized being. They
apply to the ape, the horse, the dog, the fowl, the fish, the insect,
the fruit, the flower. They apply to these--and they apply to man as
well. They--and the like of them--Legion by name--common alike to the
lords and the lower orders of the creation, constitute the _natural_
history of genus _Homo_; and I use the language of the Zoologist for
the sake of exhibiting in a prominent and palpable manner, the truly
zoological character of this department of science. _Man as an animal_
is the motto here; whilst _Man as a moral being_ is the motto with the
Historian.
It is not very important whether we call this _Natural_ or _Physical_
History. There are good authorities on both sides. It is only important
to see how it differs from the _History of the Historian_.
Man’s Civil history has its divisions. Man’s Natural history has them
also.
The first of these takes its name from the Greek words for _man_
(_anthrôpos_) and _doctrine_ (_logos_), and is known as _Anthropology_.
When the first pair of human beings stood alone on the face of the
earth, there were then the materials for Anthropology; and so there
would be if our species were reduced to the last man. There would be an
Anthropology if the world had no inhabitants but Englishmen, or none
but Chinese; none but red men of America, or none but blacks of Africa.
Were the uniformity of feature, the identity of colour, the equality
of stature, the rivalry of mental capacity ever so great, there would
still be an Anthropology. This is because Anthropology deals _with Man
as compared with the lower animals_.
We consider the structure of the human extremities, and enlarge upon
the flatness of the foot, and the flexibility of the hand. The one
is subservient to the erect posture, the other to the innumerable
manipulations which human industry demands. We compare them with
the fins of fishes, the wings of birds; in doing which, we take the
most extreme contrasts we can find. But we may also take nearer
approximations, _e.g._ the hands of the higher apes. Here we find
likeness as well as difference; difference as well as likeness. We
investigate both; and record the result either in detail or by some
general expression. Perhaps we pronounce that the one side gives the
conditions of an arboreal life, the other those of a social state; the
ape being the denizen of the woods, the man of towns and cities; the
one a climber, the other a walker.
Or we compare the skull of the man and the chimpanzee; noticing that
the ridges and prominences of the external surface, which in the
former are merely rudimentary, become strongly-marked crests in the
latter. We then remember that the one is the framework for the muscles
of the face; the other is the case for the brain.
All that is done in this way is Anthropology.
Every class of organized beings has, _mutatis mutandis_, its
anthropological aspect; so that the dog may be contemplated in respect
to the fox which equals, the ape which excels, or the kangaroo
which falls short of it in its approach to a certain standard of
organization; in other words, as _species_ and _genera_ have their
relative places in the ladder of creation, the investigation of such
relations is co-extensive with the existence of the classes and groups
on which it rests.
Anthropology deals too much with such matters as these to be popular.
Unless the subject be handled with excessive delicacy, there is
something revolting to fastidious minds in the cool contemplation of
the _differentiæ_ of the Zoologist
“Who shows a Newton as he shows an ape.”
Yet, provided there be no morbid gloating over the more dishonourable
points of similarity, no pleasurable excitement derived from the
lowering view of our nature, the study is _not_ ignoble. At any
rate, it is part of human knowledge, and a step in the direction of
self-knowledge.
Besides this, the relationship is merely one of degree. We may not
be either improperly or unpleasantly like the orang-utan or the
chimpanzee. We may even be angelomorphic. Nevertheless, we are more
like orang-utans and chimpanzees than aught else upon earth.
The other branch of Man’s Natural History is called Ethnology--from the
Greek word signifying _nation_ (_ethnos_).
It by no means follows, that because there is an _anthropology_ there
is an _ethnology_ also. There is no ethnology where there is but a
single pair to the species. There would be no ethnology if all the
world were negroes; none if every man was a Chinese; none if there were
naught but Englishmen. The absolute catholicity of a religion without
sects, the centralized uniformity of a universal empire, are types and
parallels to an anthropology without an ethnology. This is because
Ethnology deals with _Man in respect to his Varieties_.
There would be an anthropology if but one single variety of mankind
existed.
But if one variety of mankind--and no more--existed, there would be no
ethnology. It would be as impossible a science as a polity on Robinson
Crusoe’s island.
But let there be but a single sample of different though similar bodily
conformation. Let there be a white as well as a black, or a black as
well as a white man. In that case ethnology begins; even as a polity
began on Crusoe’s island when his servant Friday became a denizen of it.
The other classes of organized beings, although, _mutatis mutandis_,
they have, of necessity, their equivalent to an anthropology, may
or may not have an ethnology. The dog has one; the chimpanzee has
either none or an insignificant one; differences equivalent to those
which separate the cur from the greyhound, or the shepherd’s-dog
from the pointer, being wanting. Again, a treatise which showed how
the chimpanzee differed from the orang-utan on one side, and man on
the other, would be longer than a dissertation upon the extent to
which chimpanzees differed from each other; yet a dissertation on the
_varieties of dogs_ would be bulkier than one on their relations to
the fox. This shows how the proportions of the two studies may vary
with the species under consideration. In the _Natural History of Man_,
the ethnological aspect is the most varied. It is also the one which
has been most studied. With the horse, or the sheep, with many of the
domestic fowls, with the more widely-cultivated plants, the study of
the _variety_ outweighs that of the _species_. With the dog it does
so in an unparalleled degree. But what if the dog-tribe had the use
of language? what if the language differed with each variety? In
such a case the study of canine ethnology would be doubly and trebly
complex, though at the same time the _data_ for conducting it would be
both increased and improved. A distant--a _very_ distant approach--to
this exists. The wild dog _howls_; the companion of man alone _barks_.
This is a difference of language as far as it goes. This is written to
foreshadow the importance of the study of language as an instrument of
ethnological investigation.
Again--what if the dog-tribe were possessed of the practice of certain
human arts, and if these varied with the variety? If they buried
their dead? and their tombs varied with the variety? if those of one
generation lasted for years, decenniums, or centuries? The ethnology
would again increase in complexity, and the _data_ would again be
increased. The graves of an earlier generation would serve as unwritten
records of the habits of sepulture with an earlier one. This is
written to foreshadow the importance of the study of antiquities as an
instrument of the same kind with philology.
With dogs there are impossibilities. True; but they serve as
illustrations. With man they are realities--realities which make
philology and archæology important adjuncts to his natural history.
We have now ascertained the character of the study in question; and
seen how far it differs from _history_ properly so-called--at least
we have done so sufficiently for the purpose of definition. A little
reflection will show its relations to certain branches of science,
_e.g._ to physiology, and mental science--a relation upon which there
is no time to enlarge. It is enough to understand the existence of such
a separate substantive branch of knowledge and inquiry.
What is the amount of this knowledge? This is proportionate to that of
the inquiry. What has this been? Less than we are prepared to expect.
“The proper study of mankind is Man.”
This is a stock quotation on the subject.
“Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto.”
This is another. Like many apophthegms of the same kind, they have
more currency than influence, and are better known than acted on. We
know the zoology of nine species out of ten amongst the lower animals
better than that of our own genus. So little have the importance and
the investigation of a really interesting subject been commensurate.
It is a _new_ science--so new as scarcely to have reached the period of
adolescence. Let us ask what the ancients cared about it.
We do not look for systematic science in the Scriptures; and the
ethnology which we derive from them consists wholly of incidental
notices. These, though numerous, are brief. They apply, too, to but
a small portion of the earth’s surface. That, however, is one of
pre-eminent interest--the cradle of civilization, and the point where
the Asiatic, African, and European families come in contact.
Greece helps us more: yet Greece but little. The genius of Thucydides
gave so definite a character to history, brought it so exclusively in
contact with moral and political, in opposition to physical, phænomena,
and so thoroughly made it the study of the statesman rather than of the
zoologist, that what may be called the _naturalist_ element, excluded
at the present time, was excluded more than 2000 years ago. How widely
different this from the slightly earlier Herodotean record--the form
and spirit of which lived and died with the great father of historic
narrative! The history of the Peloponnesian war set this kind of
writing aside for ever, and the loss of what the earlier prototype
might have been developed into, is a great item in the price which
posterity has to pay for the κτῆμα εἰς ἀεὶ of the Athenian. As it
is, however, the nine books of Herodotus form the most ethnological
work not written by a professed and conscious ethnologist. Herodotus
was an unconscious and instinctive one; and his ethnology was of a
sufficiently comprehensive character. Manners he noted, and physical
appearance he noted, and language he noted; his Scythian, Median,
Ægyptian, and other glosses having the same value in the eyes of the
closet philologist of the present century, as the rarer fossils of
some old formation have with the geologist, or venerable coins with
the numismatic archæologist. Let his name be always mentioned with
reverence; for the disrespectful manner in which his testimony has been
treated by some recent writers impugns nothing but the scholarship of
the cavillers.
I do not say that there are no ethnological facts--it may be that
we occasionally find ethnological theories--in the Greek writers
subsequent; I only state that they by no means answer the expectations
raised by the names of the authors, and the opportunities afforded by
the nature of their subjects. Something is found in Hippocrates in
the way of theory as to the effect of external condition, something
in Aristotle, something in Plato--nothing, however, by which we find
the study of Man as an animal recognized as a separate substantive
branch of study. More than this--in works where the description of
new populations was especially called for, and where the evidence of
the writer would have been of the most unexceptionable kind, we find
infinitely less than there ought to be. How little we learn of Persia
from the Cyropædia, or of Armenia from the Anabasis--yet how easily
might Xenophon have told us much!
Amongst the successors of Aristotle, we find none who writes a
treatise περὶ βαρβάρων--yet how natural the subject, and how great the
opportunities!--great, because of the commerce of the Euxine, and the
institution of domestic slavery: the one conducting the merchant to
the extreme Tanais, the other filling Athens with Thracians, and Asia
Minor with Africans. The advantages which the Greeks of the age of
Pericles neglected, are the advantages which the Brazilian Portuguese
neglect at present, and which, until lately, both the English and the
States-men of America neglected also. And the loss has been great. Like
time and tide, ethnology waits for no man; and, even as the Indian of
America disappears before the European, so did certain populations of
antiquity. The process of extinction and amalgamation is as old as
history; and whole families have materially altered in character since
the beginning of the historical period. The present population of
Bulgaria, Wallachia, and Moldavia is of recent introduction. What was
the ancient? “Thracians and Getæ” is the answer. But what were they?
“Germans,” says one writer; “Slavonians,” another; “an extinct race,”
another. So that there is doubt and difference of opinion. Yet we know
some little about them in other respects. We know their political
relations; a little of their creed, and manners; the names of some of
their tribes. Their place in the classification of the varieties of our
species we do _not_ know; and this is because, though the Greeks wrote
the _civil_, they neglected the _physical_ history of Man.
Thrace, Asia Minor, and the Caucasus--these are the areas for which
the ancients might easily have left descriptions, and for which they
neglected to do so; the omission being irreparable.
The opportunities of the Roman were greater than those of the Greek;
and they were better used. Dissertations, distantly approaching the
character of physical history, occur in even the pure historical
writers of Greece, I allude more especially to the sketch of the
manners and migrations of the ancient Greeks in the first, and the
history of the Greek colonization of Sicily in the sixth book of
Thucydides. Parallels to these re-appear in the Roman writers; and, in
some cases, their proportion to the rest of the work is considerable.
Sallust’s sketch of Northern Africa, Tacitus’ of Jewish history are of
this sort--and, far superior to either, Cæsar’s account of Gaul and
Britain.
The _Germania_[1] of Tacitus is the nearest approach to proper
ethnology that antiquity has supplied. It is far, however, from either
giving us the facts which are of the most importance, or exhibiting
the _method_ of investigation by which ethnology is most especially
contrasted with history.
But the true measure of the carelessness of the Romans upon these
points is to be taken by the same rule which applied to that of the
Greeks; _i. e._ the contrast between their opportunities and their
inquiry. Northern Italy, the Tyrol, Dalmatia, Pannonia, have all stood
undescribed in respect to the ancient populations; yet they were all in
a favourable position for description.
If the Jewish, Greek, and Roman writers give but little, the
literatures derived from them give less; though, of course, there is a
numerous selection of important passages to be made from the authors
of the Middle Ages, as well as from the Byzantine historians. Besides
which, there is the additional advantage of Greece and Rome having
ceased to be the only countries thought worthy of being written about.
A Gothic, a Slavonic, a Moorish history now make their appearance.
Still they are but _civil_--not _natural_--histories. However, our
sphere of observation increases, the members of the human family
increase, and our records increase. Nevertheless, the facts for the
_naturalist_ occur but incidentally.
Of the Oriental literature I can only give my _impression_; and, as
far as that goes, it is in favour of the Chinese statements having the
most, and the Indian the least ethnological value; indeed, the former
nation appears to have connected the notice of the occupant population
with the notice of the area occupied, with laudable and sufficient
closeness. I believe, too, that several differences of language are
also carefully noted. Still, such ethnology as this supplies is an
educt from the works in question, rather than their subject.
We now come to times nearer our own. For a sketch like the present,
the _Science_ begins when the _classification_ of the Human Varieties
is first attempted. Meanwhile, we must remember that America has
been discovered, and that our opportunities now differ from those of
the ancients not merely in degree but in kind. The field has been
infinitely enlarged; and the world has become known in its extremities
as well as in its middle parts. The human naturalists anterior to the
times of Buffon and Linnæus are like the great men before Agamemnon.
A minute literary history would doubtless put forward some names
for this period; indeed for some departments of the study there are
a few great ones. Still it begins with the times of Linnæus and
Buffon--Buffon first in merit. That writer held that a _General History
of Man_, as well as _A Theory of the Earth_, was a necessary part of
his great work; and, as far as the former subject is concerned, he
thought rightly. It is this, too, in which he has succeeded best.
Thoroughly appreciating its importance, he saw its divisions clearly;
and after eight chapters on the Growth of Man, his Decay, and his
Senses, he devotes a ninth, as long as the others put together, to the
consideration of the _Varieties of the Human Species_. “Every thing,”
he now writes, “which we have hitherto advanced relates to Man as an
individual. The history of the species requires a separate detail,
of which the principal facts can only be derived from the varieties
that are found in the inhabitants of different regions. Of these
varieties, the first and most remarkable is the colour, the second the
form and size, and the third the disposition. Considered in its full
extent, each of these objects might afford materials for a volume[2].”
No man need draw a clearer line between anthropology and ethnology
than this. Of the systematic classification, which philology has so
especially promoted, no signs occur in his treatise; on the other hand,
his appreciation of the effects of difference in physical conditions
is well-founded in substance, and definitely expressed. To this he
attributes the contrast between the Negro, the American, and the
African, and, as a natural result, he commits himself unequivocally to
the doctrine of the unity of the species.
Linnæus took less cognizance of the species to which he belonged; the
notice in the first edition of the _Systema Naturæ_ being as follows:--
=Quadrupedalia.=
_Corpus hirsutum, pedes quatuor, feminæ viviparæ, lactiferæ._
=Anthropomorpha.=
_Dentes primores iv. utrinque vel nulli._
{ Europæus albescens.
{ Americanus rubescens.
=Homo= Nosce te ipsum H. { Asiaticus fuscus.
{ Africanus niger.
Anteriores. Posteriores.
=Simia= _Digiti_ 5. _Digiti_ 5. Simia, cauda carens.
Papio. Satyrus.
Posteriores anterioribus similes. } Cercopithecus.
} Cynocephalus.
=Bradypus= _Digiti_ 3. vel 2. _Digiti_ 3. Ai--_ignavus_.
Tardigradus.
Now both Buffon and Linnæus limit their consideration of the bodily
structure of man to the phænomena of colour, skin, and hair; in other
words, to the so-called _soft parts_.
From the Greek word _osteon_ = _bone_, we have the anatomical term
_osteology_ = _the study of the bony skeleton_.
This begins with the researches of the contemporary and helpmate of
Buffon. Daubenton first drew attention to the _base of the skull_, and,
amongst the parts thereof, to the _foramen ovale_ most especially.
Through the _foramen ovale_ the spinal chord is continued into the
brain, or--changing the expression--the brain prolonged into the
spinal chord; whilst by its attachments the skull is connected with
the vertebral column. The more this point of junction--the pivot on
which the head turns--is in the _centre_ of the base of the skull, the
more are the conditions of the erect posture of man fulfilled; the
contrary being the case if the _foramen_ lie backward, as is the case
with the ape as compared with the Negro, and, in some instances, with
the Negro as compared with the European. I say _in some instances_,
because the backward position of the _foramen ovale_ in the Negro is by
no means either definite or constant. Now the notice of the variations
of the position of the _foramen ovale_--one of the first specimens
of ethnological criticism applied to the _hard parts_ of the human
body--is connected with the name of Daubenton.
The study of the skull--for the skeleton is now dividing the attention
of investigators with the skin and hair--in _profile_ is connected
with that of Camper. This brings us to his well-known _facial angle_.
It means the extent to which the forehead _retreated_; sloping
backwards from the root of the nose in some cases, and in others rising
perpendicularly above the face.
Now the osteology of Daubenton and Camper was the osteology that
Blumenbach found when _he_ took up the subject. It was something; but
not much.
In 1790, Blumenbach published his anatomical description of ten
skulls--his first decade--drawn up with the special object of showing
how certain varieties of mankind differed from each other in the
conformation of so important an organ as the skull of a reasonable
being--a being thereby distinguished and characterized.
He continued his researches; publishing at intervals similar decades,
to the number of six. In 1820, he added to the last a pentad, so that
the whole list amounted to sixty-five.
It was in the third decade, published =A.D.= 1795, that an unfortunate
skull of a Georgian female made its appearance. The history of this
should be given. Its owner was taken by the Russians, and having been
removed to Moscow died suddenly. The body was examined by Professor
Hiltenbrandt, and the skull presented to De Asch of St. Petersburg.
Thence it reached the collection of Blumenbach, of which it seems to
have been the gem--“_universus hujus cranii habitus tam elegans et
venustus, ut et tantum non semper vel indoctorum, si qui collectionem
meam contemplentur, oculos eximia sua proportionis formositate
feriat_.” This encomium is followed by the description. Nor is this
all. A plaster cast of one of the most beautiful busts of the Townley
Museum was in possession of the anatomist. He compared the two;
“and so closely did they agree that you might take your oath of one
having belonged to the other”--“_adeo istud huic respondere vides,
ut illud hujus prototypo quondam inhæsisse pejerares_.” Lastly, he
closes with an extract from Chardin, enthusiastically laudatory of
the beauty of the women of Georgia, and adds that his skull verifies
the panegyric--“_Respondet ceteroquin formosum istud cranium, quod
sane pro canone ideali habere licet, iis quæ de summa Georgianæ gentis
pulcritudine vel in vulgus nota sunt._”
At the end of the decade in question he used the epithets Mongolian,
Æthiopian, and Caucasian (_Caucasia varietas_).
In the next (=A.D.= 1808), he speaks of the excessive beauty--the
ideal--the normal character of his Georgian skull; and speaks of his
osteological researches having established a quinary division of the
Human Species; naming them--1. The _Caucasian_; 2. The Mongolian;
3. The Æthiopic; 4. The American; and 5. The Malay.
Such is the origin of the term _Caucasian_; a term which has done much
harm in Ethnology; a term to which Blumenbach himself gave an undue
value, and his followers a wholly false import. This will be seen
within a few pages. Blumenbach’s Caucasian class contained--
1. Most of the Europeans.
2. The Georgians, Circassians, and other families of Caucasus.
3. The Jews, Arabs, and Syrians.
In the same year with the fourth decade of Blumenbach, John Hunter gave
testimony of the value of the study of Man to Man, by a dissertation
with a quotation from Akenside on the title-page--
“---------- the spacious West
And all the teeming regions of the South,
Hold not a quarry, to the curious flight
Of Knowledge half so tempting or so fair,
As Man to Man.”
His tract was an Inaugural Dissertation, and I merely mention it
because it was written by Hunter, and dedicated to Robertson.
Cuvier, in his _Règne Animal_, gives at considerable length the
anthropological characteristics of Man, and places him as the only
species of the genus _Homo_, the only genus of the order _Bimana_ =
_two-handed_; the apes being _Quadrumana_ = _four-handed_. This was the
great practical recognition of Man in his zoological relations.
In respect to the Ethnology, the classification of Blumenbach was
modified--and that by increasing its generality. The absolute primary
divisions were reduced to three--the Malay and the American being--not
without hesitation--subordinated to the Mongolian. Meanwhile, an
additional prominence was given to the group which contained the
Australians of Australia, and the Papuans of New Guinea. Instead,
however, of being definitely placed, it was left for further
investigation.
The abuse of the term Caucasian was encouraged. Blumenbach had merely
meant that his favourite specimen had exhibited the best points in the
greatest degree. Cuvier speaks of traditions that ascribe the origin
of mankind to the mountain-range so-called--traditions of no general
diffusion, and of less ethnological value.
The time is now convenient for taking a retrospective view of the
subject in certain other of its branches. Colour, hair, skin, bone,
stature--all these are points of _physical_ conformation or structure;
material and anatomical; points which the callipers or the scalpel
investigates. But colour, hair, skin, bone, and stature, are not the
only characteristics of man; nor yet the only points wherein the
members of his species differ from each other. There is the _function_
as well as the organ; and the parts of our body must be considered
in regard to what they _do_ as well as with reference to what they
_are_. This brings in the questions of the phænomena of growth and
decay,--the average duration of life,--reproduction, and other allied
functions. This, the physiological rather than the purely anatomical
part of the subject, requires a short notice of its own. _A priori_, we
are inclined to say that it would be closely united, in the practice
of investigation, with what it is so closely allied as a branch of
science. Yet such has not been exactly the case. The anatomists were
physiologists as well; and when Blumenbach described a skull, he,
certainly, thought about the power, or the want of power, of the brain
which it contained. But the speculators in physiology were not also
anatomists. Such speculators, however, there were. An historian aspires
to philosophy. There are some facts which he would account for; others
on which he would build a system. Hot climates favour precocity of the
sexual functions. They also precipitate the decay of the attractions
of youth. Hence, a woman who is a mother at twelve has outgrown her
beauty at twenty. From this it follows that mental power and personal
attractions become, necessarily, disunited. Hence the tendency on the
part of the males to take wives in succession; whereby polygamy is
shown to have originated in a law of nature.
I do not ask whether this is true or false. I merely remind the reader
that the moment such remarks occur, the _natural_ history of Man has
become recognized as an ingredient in the _civil_.
The chief early writers who expanded the real and supposed facts of the
_natural history of Man_, without being professed ethnologists, were
Montesquieu and Herder. By advertising the subject, they promoted it.
It is doubtful whether they did more.
We are still within the pale of _physical_ phænomena; and the purely
intellectual, mental, or moral characteristics of Man have yet to be
considered. What divisions were founded upon the difference between the
arts of the Negro and the arts of the Parisian? What upon the contrast
between the despotisms of Asia and the constitutions of Europe?
What between the cannibalism of New Zealand and the comparatively
graminivorous diet of the Hindu? There were not wanting naturalists
who even in _natural history_ insisted upon the high value of such
characters, immaterial and supra-sensual as they were. The dog and
fox, the hare and rabbit were alike in form; different in habits and
temper--yet the latter fact had to be recognized. Nay, more, it helped
to verify the specific distinctions which the mere differences of form
might leave doubtful.
All that can be said upon this matter is, that no branch of the subject
was earlier studied than that which dealt with the manners and customs
of strange nations; whilst no branch of it both was and is half so
defective as that which teaches us their value as characteristics. With
ten writers familiar with the same facts there shall be ten different
ways of appreciating them:--
“Manserunt hodieque manent vestigia ruris.”
In the year 1851, this is the weakest part of the science.
With one exception, however--indefinite and inappreciable as may be the
ethnological value of such differences as those which exist between the
superstitions, moral feelings, natural affections, or industrial habits
of different families, there is one great intellectual phænomenon which
in definitude yields to no characteristic whatever--I mean Language.
Whatever may be said against certain over-statements as to constancy,
it is an undoubted fact that identity of language is _primâ facie_
evidence of identity of origin.
No reasonable man has denied this. It is not _conclusive_, but _primâ
facie_ it undoubtedly is. More cannot be said of colour, skin, hair,
and skeleton. Possibly, not so much.
Again, language without being identical may be similar; just as
individuals without being brothers or sisters may be first or second
cousins. Similarity, then, is _primâ facie_ evidence of relationship.
Lastly, this similarity may be weighed, measured, and expressed
numerically; an important _item_ in its value. Out of 100 words in two
allied languages, a per-centage of any amount between 1 and 99 may
coincide. Language then is a _definite_ test, if it be nothing else. It
has another recommendation; or perhaps I should say convenience. It can
be studied in the closet: so that for one traveller who describes what
he sees in some far-distant country, there may be twenty scholars at
work in the libraries of Europe. This is only partially the case with
the osteologist.
Philological ethnology began betimes; long before ethnology, or even
anthropology--which arose earlier--had either a conscious separate
existence or a name. It began even before the physical researches of
Buffon.
“There is more in language than in any of its productions”--Many who by
no means undervalue the great productions of literature join in this:
indeed it is only saying that the Greek language is a more wonderful
fact than the Homeric poems, or the Æschylean drama. This, however, is
only an expression of admiration at the construction of so marvellous
an instrument as human speech.
“When history is silent, language is evidence”--This is an explicit
avowal of its value as an instrument of investigation.
I cannot affiliate either of these sayings; though I hold strongly with
both. They must prepare us for a new term--_the philological school
of ethnology_, _the philological principle of classification_, _the
philological test_. The worst that can be said of this is that it was
isolated. The philologists began work independently of the anatomists,
and the anatomists independently of the philologists. And so, with one
great exception, they have kept on.
Pigafetta, one of the circumnavigators with Magalhaens, was the first
who collected specimens of the unlettered dialects of the countries
that afforded opportunities.
The Abbé Hervas in the 17th century, published his Catalogue of
Tongues, and Arithmetic of Nations, parts of a large and remarkable
work, the _Saggio del Universo_. His _data_ he collected by means of
an almost unlimited correspondence with the Jesuit missionaries of the
Propaganda.
The all-embracing mind of Leibnitz had not only applied itself to
philology, but had clearly seen its bearing upon history. A paper on
the Basque language is a sample of the ethnology of the inventor of
Fluxions.
Reland wrote on the wide distribution of the Malay tongue; criticised
certain vocabularies from the South-Sea Islands of Hoorn, Egmont,
Ticopia (then called Cocos Island), and Solomon’s Archipelago, and gave
publicity to a fact which even now is mysterious--the existence of
Malay words in the language of Madagascar.
In 1801 Adelung’s _Mithridates_ appeared, containing specimens of
all the known languages of the world; a work as classical to the
comparative philologist as Blackstone’s Commentaries are to the
English lawyer. Vater’s Supplement (1821) is a supplement to Adelung;
Jülg’s (1845) to Vater’s.
Klaproth’s is the other great classic in this department. His _Asia
Polyglotta_ and _Sprachatlas_ give us the classification of all the
families of Asia, according to the _vocabularies_ representing their
languages. Whether a comparison between their different _grammars_
would do the same is doubtful; since it by no means follows that the
evidence of the two coincides.
Klaproth and Adelung have the same prominence in _philological_ that
Buffon and Blumenbach have in _zoological_ ethnology.
Blumenbach _appreciated_ the philological method: but the first
who _combined_ the two was Dr. Prichard. His profession gave him
the necessary physiology; and that he was a philologist amongst
philologists is shown not only by numerous details scattered
throughout his writings, but by his ‘Eastern Origin of the Celtic
Nations’--the most definite and desiderated addition that has been
made to ethnographical philology. I say nothing about the details of
Dr. Prichard’s great work. Let those who doubt its value try to do
without it.
But there is still something wanting. The relation of the sciences to
the other branches of knowledge requires fixing. With anthropology the
case is pretty clear. It comes into partial contact with the naturalist
sciences (or those based on the principle of classification) and the
biological (or those based on the idea of organization and life).
Ethnology, however, is more undecided in respect to position. If it
be but a form of history, its place amongst the inductive sciences is
equivocal; since neither the laws which it developes nor the method of
pursuing it give it a place here. These put it in the same category
with a series of records taken from the testimony of witnesses, or with
a book of travels--literary but not scientific. And so it really is to
a certain extent. Two remarkable productions, however, have determined
its relations to be otherwise.
In Sir C. Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology’ we have an elaborate
specimen of reasoning from the known to the unknown, and of the
_inference of causes from effects_. It would have been discreditable
to our philosophy if such a sample of logic put in practice had been
disregarded.
Soon after, came forth the pre-eminently suggestive works, _par
nobile_, of the present Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Here we
are taught that in the sciences of geology, ethnology, and archæology,
the _method_ determines the character of the study; and that in all
these we argue backwards. Present _effects_ we know; we also know
their _causes_ as far as the historical period goes back. When we get
beyond this, we can still reason--reason from the experience that the
historical period has supplied. Climate, for instance, and certain
other conditions have _some_ effect; within the limits of generation
a small, within that of a millenium a larger one. Hence, before we
dismiss a difference as inexplicable, we must investigate the changes
that may have produced it, the conditions which may have determined
those changes, and the time required from the exhibition of their
influence.
In Dr. Prichard’s ‘Anniversary Address,’ delivered before the
Ethnological Society of London in 1847--a work published after the
death of its illustrious author--this relationship to Geology is
emphatically recognized:--“Geology, as every one knows, is not an
account of what nature produces in the present day, but of what it has
long ago produced. It is an investigation of the changes which the
surface of our planet has undergone in ages long since past. The facts
on which the inferences of geology are founded, are collected from
various parts of Natural History. The student of geology inquires into
the processes of nature which are at present going on, but this is for
the purpose of applying the knowledge so acquired to an investigation
of what happened in past times, and of tracing, in the different
layers of the earth’s crust--displaying, as they do, relics of various
forms of organic life--the series of the repeated creations which have
taken place. This investigation evidently belongs to _History_ or
_Archæology_, rather than to what is termed _Natural History_. By a
learned writer, whose name will ever be connected with the annals of
the British Association, the term Palæontology has been aptly applied
to sciences of this department, for which Physical Archæology may be
used as a synonym. Palæontology includes both Geology and Ethnology.
Geology is the archæology of the globe--ethnology that of its human
inhabitants.”
When ethnology loses its palæontological character, it loses half its
scientific elements; and the practical and decided recognition of this
should be the characteristic of the English school of ethnologists.
This chapter will conclude with the notice of the bearings of the
palæontological method upon one of the most difficult parts of
ethnology, viz. the identification of ancient populations, or the
distribution of the nations mentioned by the classical, scriptural
and older oriental writers amongst the existing or extinct stocks and
families of mankind.
There are the Etruscans--who were they? The Pelasgians--who were they?
The Huns that overrun Europe in the fifth century; the Cimmerii that
devastated Asia, 900 years earlier? Archæology answers some of these
questions; and the testimony of ancient writers helps us in others. Yet
both mislead--perhaps, almost as often as they direct us rightly. If
it were not so, there would be less discrepancy of opinion.
Nevertheless, up to the present time the primary fact concerning
any such populations has always been the testimony of some ancient
historian or geographer, and the first question that has been put
is, _What say Tacitus--Strabo--Herodotus--Ptolemy_, &c. &c.? In
critical hands the inquiries go further; and statements are compared,
testimonies weighed in a balance against each other, the opportunities
of knowing, and the honesty in recording of the respective authors
investigated. In this way a sketch of ancient Greece by Thucydides
has a value which the authority of a lesser writer would fail to give
it--and so on with others. Nevertheless, what Thucydides wrote he
wrote from report, and inferences--report, most probably, carefully
weighed, and inferences legitimately drawn. Yet sources of error,
for which he is not to be held responsible, are innumerable. He went
upon hearsay evidence--he sifted it, perhaps; but still he went upon
hearsay evidence only. How do we value such evidence? By the natural
probabilities of the account it constitutes. By what means do we
ascertain these?
I submit there is but one measure here--the existing state of things
as either known to ourselves, or known to contemporaries capable of
learning them at the period nearest the time under consideration. This
we examine as the effect of some antecedent cause--or series of causes.
Ποῦ στῶ; says the scholar. On the dictum of such or such an author. Ποῦ
στῶ; says the Archimedean ethnologist. On the last testified fact.
Of the unsatisfactory character of anything short of contemporary
testimony in the identification of ancient nations, the pages and pages
that nine-tenths of the historians bestow upon the mysterious _Pelasgi_
is a specimen. Add Niebuhr to Müller, and Thirlwall to Niebuhr--Pelion
to Ossa, and Olympus to Pelion--and what _facts_ do we arrive at--facts
that we may rely on as such, facts supported by contemporary evidence,
and recorded under opportunities of being ascertained? Just the
three recognized by Mr. Grote; viz. that their language was spoken
at Khreston--that it was spoken at Plakeæ--that it differed, in some
unascertained degree, from the Greek.
This is all that the ethnologist recognizes; and from this he argues as
he best can. Every fact, less properly supported by either first-hand
or traceable evidence, he treats with indifference. It may be good in
history; but it is not good for _him_. He has too much use to put it
to, too much to build upon it, too much argument to work out of it, to
allow it to be other than unimpeachable.
Again--Tacitus carries his _Germania_ as far as the Niemen, so as to
include the present countries of Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg,
West and East Prussia, and Courland. Is this improbable in itself? No.
The area is by no means immoderately large. Is it improbable when we
take the present state of those countries in question? No. They are
German at present. Is it improbable in any case? and if so, in what?
Yes. It becomes improbable when we remember that the present Germans
have been as unequivocally and undoubtedly recent immigrants for the
parts in question, as are the English of the Valley of the Mississippi,
and that at the beginning of the historical period the whole of
them were Slavonic, with nothing but the phraseology of Tacitus to
prevent us from believing that they always had been so. But it is also
improbable that so respectable a writer as Tacitus should be mistaken.
Granted. And here begins the conflict of difficulties. Nevertheless,
the primary ethnological fact is the state of things as it existed when
the countries under consideration were first accurately known, taken
along with the probability or improbability of its having so existed
for a certain period previous, as compared with the probability or
improbability of the migrations and other assumptions necessary for its
recent introduction.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The value of Tacitus as an authority is minutely investigated in an
ethnological edition of the _Germania_ by the present writer, now in
course of publication. The object of the present chapter is merely to
show the extent to which the science in question is of recent, rather
than ancient, origin.
[2] Barr’s Translation, vol. iv. p. 191.