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.
In the Natural History of Man we must keep almost exclusively to
the methods of deduction and observation; and in observation we are
limited to one sort only, _i. e._ that simple and spontaneous kind
where the object can be found if sought for, but cannot be artificially
produced. In other words, there is no great room for _experiment_.
The _corpus_ is not _vile_ enough for the purpose. Besides which,
“even if we suppose unlimited power of varying the experiment (which
is abstractedly possible), though no one but an oriental despot either
has the power, or if he had would be disposed to exercise it, a still
more essential condition is wanting--the power of performing any of the
experiments with scientific accuracy[10].” Experiment is nearly as much
out of place in Ethnology and Anthropology as it is in Astronomy.
Psammetichus, to be sure, according to Herodotus, did as follows. He
took children of a poor man, put them in the charge of a shepherd who
was forbidden to speak in their presence, suckled them in a lone hut
through a she-goat, waited for the age at which boys begin to talk,
and then took down the first word they uttered. This was _bekos_,
which when it was shown to mean in the Phrygian language _bread_, the
Egyptians yielded the palm of antiquity to that rival.
Now this was an ethnological experiment; but then Psammetichus _was_
an oriental despot; and the instance itself is, probably, the only one
of its class--the only one, or nearly so--the only one which is a true
experiment; since in order to be such there must be a definite and
specific end or object in view.
We know the tradition about Newton and the apple. This, if true, was
no experiment, but an observation. To have been the former, the tree
should have been shaken for the purpose of seeing the fruit descend.
There would then have been an end and aim--malice prepense, so to say.
Hence the phænomena of the African slave-trade, of English emigration,
and of other similar elements for observation are no experiments;
since it has not been Science that either the slaver or the settler
ever thought about. Sugar or cotton, land or money, was what ran in
their heads.
The revolting operation by which the jealous Oriental labours to secure
the integrity of his harem is in its end a scientific fact. It tells
how much the whole system sympathises with the mutilation of one of its
parts. But it is nothing for Science to either applaud or imitate. It
is repeated by the sensual Italian for the sake of ensuring fine voices
in the music-market; and Science is disgusted at its repetition. Even
if done in her own name, and for her own objects, it would still be but
an inhuman and intolerable form of zootomy.
Still the trade in Africans, and the emigration of Englishmen are said
to partake of the nature of a scientific experiment, even without being
one. They are said to serve as such. So they do; yet not in the way
in which they are often interpreted. A European regiment is decimated
by being placed on the Gambia, or in Sierra Leone. The American
Anglo-Saxon is said to have lost the freshness of the European--to have
become brown in colour, and wiry in muscle. Perhaps he has. Yet what
does this prove? Merely the effect of _sudden_ changes; the results
of _distant_ transplantation; the imperfect character of those forms
of acclimatization which are not _gradual_. It was not in this way
that the world was originally peopled. New climates were approached
by degrees, step by step, by enlargement and extension of the
circumference of a previously acclimated family. Hence the experience
of the kind in question, valuable as it is in the way of Medical
Police, is comparatively worthless in a theory as to the Migrations
of Mankind. Take a man from Caucasus to the Gold Coast, and he either
dies or takes a fever. But would he do so if his previous sojourn had
been on the Gambia, his grandfather’s on the Senegal, his ancestor’s
in the tenth degree on the Nile, and that ancestor’s ancestor’s on the
Jordan--thus going back till we reached the first remote patriarch of
the migration on the Phasis? This is an experiment which no single
generation can either make or observe; yet less than this is no
experiment at all, no imitation of that particular operation of Nature
which we are so curious to investigate.
What follows applies to Ethnology. The first result we get from our
observations is a _classification_, _i. e._ groups of individuals,
families, tribes, nations, sub-varieties, varieties, and (according
to some) of species connected by some common link, and united on some
common principle. There is no want of groups of this kind; and many
of them are so natural as to be unsusceptible of improvement. Yet
the nomenclature for their different divisions is undetermined, the
values of many of them uncertain, and, above all, the principle upon
which they are formed is by no means uniform. Whilst some investigators
classify mankind on _Zoological_, others do so on what may be called
_Mineralogical_, principles. This difference will be somewhat fully
illustrated.
In Africa, as is well known, a great portion of the population is
black-skinned; and with this black skin other physical characteristics
are generally found in conjunction. Thus the hair is either crisp
or woolly, the nose depressed, and the lips thick. As we approach
Asia these criteria decrease; the Arab being fairer, better-featured
and straighter-haired than the Nubian, and the Persian more so than
the Arab. In Hindostan, however, the colour deepens; and by looking
amongst the most moist and alluvial parts of the southern peninsula
we find skins as dark as those of Africa, and hair crisp rather than
straight. Besides this, the fine oval contour and regular features of
the high-cast Hindus of the North become scarce, whilst the lips get
thick, the skin harsh, and the features coarse.
Further on--we come to the great Peninsula which contains the Kingdoms
of Ava and Siam--the Indo-Chinese or Transgangetic Peninsula. In many
parts of this the population blackens again; and in the long narrow
peninsula of Malacca, a _large_ proportion of the older population
has been described as _blacks_. In the islands we find them again; so
much so that the Spanish authorities call them _Negritos_ or _Little
Negroes_. In New Guinea all is black; and in Australia and Van Diemen’s
Land it is blacker still. In Australia the hair is generally straight;
but in the first and last-named countries it is frizzy, crisped, or
curling. This connects them with the Negroes of Africa; and their
colour does so still more. At any rate we talk of the Australian
_Blacks_, just as the Spaniards do of the Philippine _Negritos_. Moral
characteristics connect the Australian and the Negro, much in the same
manner as the physical ones. Both, as compared with the European,
are either really deficient in intellectual capacity, or (at least)
have played an unimportant part in the history of the world. Thus,
several populations have come under the class of _Blacks_. Is this
classification natural?
It shall be illustrated further. On the extremities of each of the
quarters of the world, we find populations that in many respects
resemble each other. In Northern Asia and Europe, the Eskimo, Samoeid,
and Laplander, tolerant of the cold of the Arctic Circle, are all
characterized by a flatness of face, a lowness of stature, and a
breadth of head. In some cases the contrast between them and their
nearest neighbours to the south, in these respects, is remarkable. The
Norwegian who comes in contact with the Lap is strong and well-made; so
are many of the Red Indians who front the Eskimo.
At the Cape of Good Hope something of the same sort appears. The
Hottentot of the southern extremity of Africa is undersized,
small-limbed, and broad-faced; so much so, that most writers, in
describing him, have said that, in his conformation, the Mongolian
type--to which the Eskimo belongs--Asiatic itself--re-appears in
Africa. And then his neighbour the Kaffre differs from him as the
Finlander does from the Lap.
_Mutatis mutandis_, all this re-appears at Cape Horn; where the
Patagonian changes suddenly to the Fuegian.
But we in Europe are favoured; our limbs are well-formed and our skin
fair. Be it so: yet there are writers who, seeing the extent to which
the islanders of the Pacific are favoured also, and noting the degree
to which European points of colour, size, and capacity for improvement,
real or supposed, re-appear at the Antipodes, have thrown the
Polynesian and the Englishman in one and the same class.
And so, perhaps, he is, if we are to judge by certain characteristics:
if agreement in certain matters, wherein the intermediate populations
differ, form the grounds upon which we make our groups, the Fuegians,
Eskimo, and Hottentots form one class, and the Negroes and Australians
another. But are these classes natural? That depends upon the questions
to which the classification is subservient. If we wish to know how far
moisture and coolness freshen the complexion; how far moisture and heat
darken it; how far mountain altitudes affect the human frame; in other
words, how far common external conditions develope common habits and
common points of structure, nothing can be better than the groups in
question.
But alter the problem: let us wish to know how certain areas were
peopled, what population gave origin to some other, how the Americans
reached America, whence the Britons came into England, or any
question connected with the migrations, affiliations, and origin of
the varieties of our species, and groups of this kind are valueless.
They tell us something--but not what we want to know: inasmuch as
our question now concerns blood, descent, pedigree, relationship. To
tell an inquirer who wishes to deduce one population from another
that certain distant tribes agree with the one under discussion in
certain points of resemblance, is as irrelevant as to tell a lawyer
in search of the next of kin to a client deceased, that though you
know of no relations, you can find a man who is the very picture
of him in person--a fact good enough in itself, but not to the
purpose; except (of course) so far as the likeness itself suggests a
relationship--which it may or may not do.
Classes formed irrespective of descent are classes on the
_Mineralogical_, whilst classes formed with a view to the same are
classes on the _Zoological_, principle. Which is wanted in the
Natural History of Man? The first for _Anthropology_; the second for
_Ethnology_.
But why the antagonism? Perhaps the two methods may coincide. The
possibility of this has been foreshadowed. The family likeness may,
perhaps, prove a family connexion. True: at the same time each case
must be tested on its own grounds. Hence, whether the African is to
be grouped with the Australian, or whether the two classes are to be
as far asunder in Ethnology as in Geography, depends upon the results
of the special investigation of that particular connexion--real or
supposed. It is sufficient to say that none of the instances quoted
exhibit any such relationship; though many a theory--as erroneous as
bold--has been started to account for it.
It is for Ethnology, then, that classification is most wanted--more
than for Anthropology; even as it is for Zoology that we require orders
and genera rather than for Physiology. This is based upon certain
distinctive characters; some of which are of a physical, others of a
moral sort. Each falls into divisions. There are moral and intellectual
phænomena which prove nothing in the way of relationship, simply
because they are the effects of a common grade of civilizational
development. What would be easier than to group all the hunting, all
the piscatory, or all the pastoral tribes together, and to exclude from
these all who built cities, milked cows, sowed corn, or ploughed land?
Common conditions determine common habits.
Again, much that seems at first glance definite, specific, and
characteristic, loses its value as a test of ethnological affinity,
when we examine the families in which it occurs. In distant countries,
and in tribes far separated, superstition takes a common form, and
creeds that arise independently of each other look as if they were
deduced from a common origin. All this makes the facts in what may be
called the Natural History of the Arts or of Religion easy to collect,
but difficult to appreciate; in many cases, indeed, we are taken up
into the rare and elevated atmosphere of metaphysics. What if different
modes of architecture, or sculpture, or varieties in the practice
of such useful arts as weaving and ship-building, be attributed to
the same principle that makes a sparrow’s nest different from a
hawk’s, or a honey-bee’s from a hornet’s? What if there be different
_instincts_ in human art, as there is in the nidification of birds?
Whatever may be the fact, it is clear that such a doctrine must modify
the interpretation of it. The clue to these complications--and they
form a Gordian knot which must be unravelled, and not cut--lies in
the cautious induction from what we know to what we do not; from the
undoubted differences admitted to exist within undoubtedly related
populations, to the greater ones which distinguish more distantly
connected groups.
This has been sufficient to indicate the existence of certain moral
characters which are really no characters at all--at least in the way
of proving descent or affiliation; and that physical ones of the same
kind are equally numerous may be inferred from what has already been
written.
It is these elements of uncertainty so profusely mixed up with almost
all the other classes of ethnological facts, that give such a high
value, as an instrument of investigation, to _Language_; inasmuch as,
although two different families of mankind may agree in having skins of
the same colour, or hair of the same texture, without, thereby, being
connected in the way of relationship, it is hard to conceive how they
could agree in calling the same objects by the same name, without a
community of origin, or else either direct or indirect intercourse.
Affiliation or intercourse--one of the two--this community of language
exhibits. One to the exclusion of the other it does _not_ exhibit. If
it did so, it would be of greater value than it is. Still it indicates
one of the two; and either fact is worth looking for.
The value of language has been overrated; chiefly, of course, by
the philologists. And it has been undervalued. The anatomists and
archæologists, and, above all, the zoologists, have done this. The
historian, too, has not known exactly how to appreciate it, when its
phænomena come in collision with the direct testimony of authorities;
the chief instrument in his own line of criticism.
It is overrated when we make the affinities of speech between
two populations _absolute_ evidence of connection in the way of
relationship. It is overrated when we talk of _tongues being
immutable_, and of _languages never dying_. On the other hand, it
is unduly disparaged when an inch or two of difference in stature,
a difference in the taste in the fine arts, a modification in the
religious belief, or a disproportion in the influence upon the affairs
of the world, is set up as a mark of distinction between two tribes
speaking one and the same tongue, and alike in other matters. Now,
errors of each kind are common.
The permanence of language as a sign of origin must be determined,
like every thing else of the same kind, by induction; and this tells
us that both the loss and retention of a native tongue are illustrated
by remarkable examples. It tells both ways. In St. Domingo we have
negroes speaking French; and this is a notable instance of the adoption
of a foreign tongue. But the circumstances were peculiar. _One_ tongue
was not changed for another; since no Negro language predominated.
The real fact was that of a _mixture of languages_--and this is next
to no language at all. Hence, when French became the language of the
Haytians, the usual obstacle of a previously existing common native
tongue, pertinaciously and patriotically retained, was wanting. It
superseded an indefinite and conflicting mass of Negro dialects, rather
than any particular Negro language.
In the southern parts of Central America the ethnology is obscure,
especially for the Republics of San Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa
Rica. Yet if we turn to Colonel Galindo’s account of them, we find
the specific statement that aborigines still exist, and that their
language is the _Spanish_; not any native Indian dialect. As similar
assertions respecting the extinction and replacement of original
languages have frequently proved incorrect, let us assume this to be an
over-statement--though I have no definite grounds for considering it
one. Over-statement though it may be, it still shows the direction in
which things are going; and that is towards the supremacy of a European
tongue.
On the confines of Asia and Europe there is the nation, tribe or family
of the Bashkirs. Their present tongue is the Turkish. It is believed,
however, that originally it was the mother-tongue of the Majiars of
Hungary.
Again, the present Bulgarian is akin to the Russian. Originally, it was
a Turk dialect.
Lastly--for I am illustrating, not exhausting, the subject--there
died, in the year 1770, at Karczag in Hungary, an old man named Varro;
the last man, in Europe, that knew even a few words of the language
of his nation. Yet this nation was and is a great one; no less a one
than that of the ancient Komanian Turks, some of whom invaded Europe
in the eleventh century, penetrated as far as Hungary, settled there
as conquerors, and retained their language till the death of this
same Varro. The rest of the nation remained in Asia; and the present
occupants of the parts between the Caspian and the Aral are their
descendants. Languages then may be lost; and one may be superseded by
another.
The ancient Etruscans as a separate substantive nation are extinct:
so is their language, which we know to have been peculiar. Yet the
Etruscan blood still runs in the veins of the Florentine and other
Italians.
On the other hand, the pertinacity with which language resists the
attempts to supersede it is of no common kind. Without going to
Siberia, or America, the great _habitats_ of the broken and fragmentary
families, we may find instances much nearer home! In the Isle of Man
the native Manks still remains; though dominant Norsemen and dominant
Anglo-Saxons have brought their great absorbent languages in collision
with it. In Malta, the labourers speak Arabic--with Italian, with
English, and with a Lingua Franca around them.
In the western extremities of the Pyrenees, a language neither French
nor Spanish is spoken; and has been spoken for centuries--possibly
milleniums. It was once the speech of the southern half of France, and
of all Spain. This is the Basque of Biscay.
In contact with the Turk on one side, and the Greek and the Slavonic on
the other, the Albanian of Albania still speaks his native Skipetar.
A reasonable philologist makes similarity of language strong--very
strong--_primâ facie_ evidence in favour of community of descent.
When does it imply this, and when does it merely denote commercial
or social intercourse? We can measure the phænomena of languages and
exhibit the results numerically. Thus the _percentage_ of words common
to two languages may be 1, 2, 3, 4–98, 99, or any intermediate number.
But, now comes the application of a maxim. _Ponderanda non numeranda._
We ask what _sort_ of words coincide, as well as _how many?_ When
the names of such objects as _fire_, _water_, _sun_, _moon_, _star_,
_hand_, _tooth_, _tongue_, _foot_, &c. agree, we draw an inference
very different from the one which arises out of the presence of such
words as _ennui_, _fashion_, _quadrille_, _violin_, &c. Common sense
distinguishes the words which are likely to be borrowed from one
language into another, from those which were originally common to the
two.
There are a certain amount of French words in English, _i. e._ of words
borrowed from the French. I do not know the percentage, nor yet the
time required for their introduction; and, as I am illustrating the
subject, rather than seeking specific results, this is unimportant.
Prolong the time, and multiply the words; remembering that the former
can be done indefinitely. Or, instead of doing this, increase the
points of contact between the languages. What follows? We soon begin
to think of a familiar set of illustrations; some classical and some
vulgar--of the Delphic ship so often mended as to retain but an
equivocal identity; of the Highlander’s knife, with its two new blades
and three new handles; of Sir John Cutler’s silk-stockings degenerated
into worsted by darnings. We are brought to the edge of a new question.
We must tread slowly accordingly.
In the English words call-_est_, call-_eth_ (call-_s_), and call-_ed_,
we have two parts; the first being the root itself, the second a sign
of _person_, or _tense_. The same is the case with the word father-_s_,
son-_s_, &c.; except that the _-s_ denotes _case_; and that it is
attached to a substantive, instead of a verb. Again, in wis-_er_ we
have the sign of a comparative; in wis-_est_ that of a superlative
degree. All these are _inflexions_. If we choose, we may call them
_inflexional_ elements; and it is convenient to do so; since we can
then analyse words and contrast the different parts of them: _e. g._
in _call-s_ the _call-_ is radical, the _-s_ inflexional.
Having become familiarized with this distinction, we may now take
a word of French or German origin--say _fashion_ or _waltz_. Each,
of course, is foreign. Nevertheless, when introduced into English,
it takes an English inflexion. Hence we say, _if I dress absurdly
it is fashion’s fault_; also, _I am waltz_-ing, _I waltz_-ed, _he
waltz_-es--and so on. In these particular words, then, the inflexional
part has been English; even when the radical was foreign. This is
no isolated fact. On the contrary, it is sufficiently common to be
generalized so that the _grammatical_ part of language has been
accredited with a permanence which has been denied to the _glossarial_
or _vocabular_. The one changes, the other is constant; the one is
immortal, the other fleeting; the one form, the other matter.
Now it is imaginable that the glossarial and grammatical tests may
be at variance. They would be so if all our English verbs came to be
French, yet still retained their English inflexions in _-ed_, _-s_,
_-ing_, &c. They would be so if all the verbs were like _fashion_,
and all the substantives like _quadrille_. This is an extreme case.
Still, it illustrates the question. Certain Hindu languages are said
to have nine-tenths of the vocables common with a language called the
Sanskrit--but _none_ of their inflexions; the latter being chiefly
Tamul. What, then, is the language itself? This is a question which
divides philologists. It illustrates, however, the difference between
the two tests--the _grammatical_ and the _glossarial_. Of these, it is
safe to say that the former is the more constant.
Yet the philological method of investigation requires caution. Over
and above the terms which one language borrows from another, and which
denote intercourse rather than affinity, there are two other classes of
little or no ethnological value.
1. _Coincidences may be merely accidental._ The likelihood of their
being so is a part of the Doctrine of Chances. The mathematician may
investigate this: the philologist merely finds the _data_. Neither has
been done satisfactorily, though it was attempted by Dr. T. Young.
2. _Coincidences may have an +organic+ connexion._ No one would say
that because two nations called the same bird by the name _cuckoo_, the
term had been borrowed by either one from the other, or by both from a
common source. The true reason would be plain enough. Two populations
gave a name on imitative principles, and imitated the same object.
_Son_ and _brother_, _sister_ and _daughter_--if these terms agree,
the chances are that a philological affinity is at the bottom of the
agreement. But does the same apply to _papa_ and _mama_, identical in
English, Carib, and perhaps twenty other tongues? No. They merely show
that the infants of different countries begin with the same sounds.
Such--and each class is capable of great expansion--are the cases where
philology requires caution. Another matter now suggests itself.
To be valid a classification must be _real_; not _nominal_ or
_verbal_--not a mere book-maker’s arrangement. Families must be in
definite degrees of relationship. This, too, will bear illustration. A
man wants a relation to leave his money to: he is an Englishman, and
by relation means nothing more distant than a _third_ cousin. It is
nothing to him if, in Scotland, a _fifth_ cousinship is recognised.
He has not found the relation he wants; he has merely found a greater
amount of latitude given to the term. Few oversights have done more
harm than the neglect of this distinction. Twenty years ago the
Sanskrit, Sclavonic, Greek-and-Latin, and Gothic languages formed a
class. This class was called Indo-Germanic. Its western limits were
in Germany; its eastern in Hindostan. The Celtic of Wales, Cornwall,
Brittany, Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man was not included in
it. Neither was it included in any other group. It was anywhere or
nowhere--in any degree of isolation. Dr. Prichard undertook to fix it.
He did so--well and successfully. He showed that, so far from being
isolated, it was connected with the Greek, German, and Sclavonic by
a connexion with the Sanskrit, or (changing the expression) with the
Sanskrit through the Sclavonic, German, and Greek--any or all. The
mother-tongue from which all these broke was supposed to be in Asia.
Dr. Prichard’s work was entitled the ‘Eastern Origin of the Celtic
Nations.’ Did this make the Celtic Indo-Germanic? It was supposed to do
so. Nay, more--it altered the name of the class; which was now called,
as it has been since, Indo-European. Inconveniently. _A_ relationship
was mistaken for _the_ relationship. The previous tongues were (say)
second cousins. The Celtic was a fourth or fifth. What was the result?
Not that a new second cousin was found, but that the family circle was
enlarged.
What follows? Dr. Prichard’s fixation of the Celtic as a member of even
the same _clan_ with the German, &c. was an addition to ethnographical
philology that many inferior investigators strove to rival; and it
came to be current belief--acted on if not avowed--that tongues as
like the Celtic as the Celtic was to the German were Indo-European
also. This bid fair to inundate the class--to make it prove too
much--to render it no class at all. The Albanian, Basque, Etruscan,
Lap, and others followed. The outlier of the group once created
served as a nucleus for fresh accumulations. A strange language of
Caucasus--the Irôn or Ossetic--was placed by Klaproth as Indo-Germanic;
and that upon reasonable grounds, considering the unsettled state
of criticism. Meanwhile, the Georgian, another tongue of those same
mysterious mountains, wants placing. It has undoubted Ossetic--or
Irôn--affinities. But the Ossetic--or Irôn--is Indo-European. So
therefore is the Georgian. This is a great feat; since the Caucasian
tongues and the Caucasian skulls now agree, both having their
affinities with Europe--as they ought to have. But what if both the
Irôn and Georgian are half Chinese, or Tibetan, _i. e._ are all but
monosyllabic languages both in grammar and vocables? If such be the
case, the term ‘Indo-European’ wants revising; and not only that--the
principles on which terms are fixed and classes created want revising
also. At the same time, the ‘Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations’
contains the most definite addition to philology that the present
century has produced; and the proper compliment to it is Mr. Garnett’s
review of it in the ‘Quarterly;’ the first of a series of masterly
and unsurpassed specimens of inductive philology applied to the
investigation of the true nature of the inflexions of the Verb. But
this is episodical.
The next instrument of ethnological criticism is to be found in the
phænomena themselves of the dispersion and distribution of our species.
First as to its universality. In this respect we must look minutely
before we shall find places where Man is _not_. These, if we find
them at all, will come under one of two conditions; the climate will
be extreme, or the isolation excessive. For instances of the first we
take the Poles; and, as far as the Antarctic Circle is concerned, we
find no inhabitants in the ice-bound regions--few and far between--of
its neighbourhood; none south of 55° S. lat., or the extremity of
the Tierra del Fuego. This, however, _is_ peopled. We must remember,
however, that in the Southern Ocean such regions as New South Shetland
and Victoria Land are isolated as well as cold and frozen.
The _North_ Pole, however, must be approached within 25° before we lose
sight of Man, or find him excluded from even a permanent habitation.
Spitzbergen is beyond the limits of human occupancy. Nova Zembla,
when first discovered, was also uninhabited. So was Iceland. Here,
however, it was the isolation of the _island_ that made it so. A hardy
stock of men, nearly related to ourselves, have occupied it since the
ninth century; and _continental_ Greenland is peopled as far as the
75th degree--though, perhaps, only as a summer residence.
Far to the east of Nova Zembla and opposite to the country of the
Yukahiri--a hardy people on the rivers Kolyma and Indijirka, and
within the Arctic Circle--lies the island of New Siberia. I find from
Wrangell’s Travels in Siberia that certain expatriated Yukahiri are
believed to have fled thither. Have they lived or died? Have they
reached the island? In case they have done so, and kept body and
soul together, New Siberia is probably the most northern spot of the
inhabited world.
How _cold_ a country must be in order to remain empty of men, we have
seen. Such localities are but few. None are too _hot_--unless, indeed,
we believe the centre of Equatorial Africa to be a solitude.
In South America there is a great blank in the Maps. For many degrees
on each side of the Upper Amazons lies a vast tract--said to be a
jungle--and marked _Sirionos_, the name of a frontier population. Yet
the _Sirionos_ are not, for one moment, supposed to fill up the vast
hiatus. At the same time, there are few, or none, besides. Is this
tract a drear unhumanized waste? It is said to be so--to be wet, woody,
and oppressively malarious. Yet, this merely means that there is a
forest and a swamp of a certain magnitude, and of a certain degree of
impenetrability.
Other such areas are unexplored--yet we presume them to be occupied;
though ever so thinly: _e. g._ the interiors of New Guinea and
Australia.
That Greenland was known to the early Icelanders is well known. And
that it was occupied when so first known is also certain. One of the
geographical localities mentioned in an old Saga has an Eskimo word
for one of its elements--_Utibuks-firth_ = _the firth of the isthmus_;
_Utibuk_ in Eskimo meaning _isthmus_.
Of the islands originally uninhabited those which are, at one and the
same time, large and near continents are Madeira and Iceland--the
former being a lonely wood. The Canaries, though smaller and more
isolated, have been occupied by the remarkable family of the Guanches.
Add to these, Ascension, St. Helena, the Galapagos, Kerguelen’s Island,
and a few others.
Easter Island, a speck in the vast Pacific, and more than half way
between Asia and America, exhibited both inhabitants and ruins to its
first discoverers.
Such is the _horizontal_ distribution of Man; _i.e._ his distribution
according to the degrees of latitude. What other animal has such a
range? What species? What genus or order? Contrast with this the
localized habitats of the Orang-utan, and the Chimpanzee as species; of
the Apes as genera; of the Marsupialia as orders.
The _vertical_ distribution is as wide. By _vertical_ I mean elevation
above the level of the sea. On the high table-land of Pamer we have
the Kerghiz; summer visitants at least, where the _Yak_ alone, among
domesticated animals, lives and breathes in the rarefied atmosphere.
The town of Quito is more than 10,000 feet above the sea; Walcheren is,
perhaps, below the level of it.
Who expects uniformity of physiognomy or frame with such a distribution?
_The size of ethnological areas._--Comparatively speaking, Europe is
pretty equally divided amongst the European families. The Slavonic
populations of Bohemia, Silesia, Poland, Servia, and Russia may,
perhaps, have more than their due--still the French, Italians,
Spaniards, Portuguese, and Wallachians, all speaking languages of
classical origin, have their share; and so has our own Germanic
or Gothic family of English, Dutch, Frisians, Bavarians, and
Scandinavians. Nevertheless, there are a few families as limited in
geographical area as subordinate in political importance. There are
the Escaldunac, or Basques,--originally the occupants of all Spain and
half France, now pent up in a corner of the Pyrenees--the Welsh of the
Iberic Peninsula. There are, also, the Skipetar, or Albanians; wedged
in between Greece, Turkey, and Dalmatia. Nevertheless, the respective
areas of the European families are pretty equally distributed; and
the land of Europe is like a lottery wherein all the prizes are of an
appreciable value.
The comparison with Asia verifies this. In immediate contact with the
vast Turkish population centred in Independent Tartary, but spread
over an area reaching, more or less continuously, from Africa to the
Icy Sea (an area larger than the whole of Europe), come the tribes
of Caucasus--Georgians, Circassians, Lesgians, Mizjeji, and Irôn;
five well-defined groups, each falling into subordinate divisions,
and some of them into subdivisions. The language of Constantinople
is understood at the Lena. In the mountain range between the Caspian
and the Black Sea, the mutually unintelligible languages are at least
fifteen--perhaps more, certainly not fewer. Now, the extent of land
covered by the Turk family shows the size to which an ethnological
area may attain; whilst the multiplicity of mutually unintelligible
tongues of Caucasus shows how closely families may be packed. Their
geographical juxtaposition gives prominence to the contrast.
At the first view, this contrast seems remarkable. So far from being
so, it is of continual occurrence. In China the language is one and
indivisible: on its south-western frontier the tongues are counted
by the dozen--just as if in Yorkshire there were but one provincial
dialect throughout; two in Lincolnshire; and twenty in Rutland.
The same contrast re-appears in North America. In Canada and the
Northern States the Algonkin area is measured by the degrees of
latitude and longitude; in Louisiana and Alabama by the mile.
The same in South America. One tongue--the Guarani--covers half the
continent. Elsewhere, a tenth part of it contains a score.
The same in Southern Africa. From the Line to the neighbourhood of the
Cape all is Kaffre. Between the Gambia and the Gaboon there are more
than twenty different divisions.
The same in the North. The Berbers reach from the Valley of the Nile to
the Canaries, and from the Mediterranean to the parts about Borneo. In
Borneo there are said to be thirty different languages.
Such are areas in size, and in relation to each other; like the
bishoprics and curacies of our church, large and small, with a
difficulty in ascertaining the average. However, the simple epithets
_great_ and _small_ are suggestive; since the former implies an
_encroaching_, the latter a _receding_ population.
A distribution over continents is one thing; a distribution over
islands another. The first is easiest made when the world is young and
when the previous occupants create no obstacles. The second implies
maritime skill and enterprise, and maritime skill improves with the
experience of mankind. One of the greatest facts of ethnological
distribution and dispersion belongs to this class. All the islands of
the Pacific are peopled by the members of one stock, or family--the
Polynesian. These we find as far north as the Sandwich Islands, as
far south as New Zealand, and in Easter Island half-way between Asia
and America. So much for the _dispersion_. But this is not all: the
_distribution_ is as remarkable. Madagascar is an African rather than
an Asiatic island; within easy sail of Africa; the exact island for
an African population. Yet, ethnologically, it is Asiatic--the same
family which we find in Sumatra, Borneo, the Moluccas, the Mariannes,
the Carolines, and Polynesia being Malagasi also.
_Contrast between contiguous populations._--Ethnological resemblance
by no means coincides with geographical contiguity. The general
character of the circumpolar families of the Arctic Circle is that
of the Laplander, the Samoeid, and the Eskimo. Yet the zone of
population that encircles the inhospitable shores of the Polar Sea is
not exclusively either Lap or Samoeid--nor yet Eskimo. In Europe, the
Laplander finds a contrast on each side. There is the Norwegian on the
west; the Finlander on the east. We can explain this. The former is
but a recent occupant; not a natural, but an intruder. This we infer
from the southern distribution of the other members of his family--who
are Danish, German, Dutch, English, and American. For the same reason
the Icelander differs from the Greenlander. The Finlander, though more
closely allied to the Lap than the Norwegian--belonging to the same
great Ugrian family of mankind--is still a southern member of his
family; a family whose continuation extends to the Lower Volga, and
prolongations of which are found in Hungary. East of the Finlander,
the Russian displaces the typically circumpolar Samoeid; whilst at the
mouth of the Lena we have the Yakuts--Turk in blood, and tongue, and,
to a certain extent, in form also.
In America the circumpolar population is generally Eskimo. Yet at
one point, we find even the verge of the Arctic shore occupied by a
population of tall, fine-looking athletes, six feet high, well-made,
and handsome in countenance. These are the Digothi Indians, called also
Loucheux. Their locality is the mouth of the M{c}Kenzie River; but
their language shows that their origin is further south--_i. e._ that
they are Koluches within the Eskimo area.
In Southern Africa we have the Hottentot in geographical proximity
to the Kaffre, yet the contrast between the two is considerable.
Similar examples are numerous. What do they denote? Generally, but
not always, they denote encroachment and displacement; encroachment
which tells us which of the two families has been the stronger, and
displacement which has the following effect. It obliterates those
intermediate and transitional forms which connect varieties, and so
brings the more extreme cases of difference in geographical contact,
and in ethnological contrast; hence _encroachment_, _displacement_, and
the _obliteration of transitional forms_ are terms required for the
full application of the phænomena of distribution as an instrument of
ethnological criticism.
_Continuity and isolation._--In Siberia there are two isolated
populations--the Yakuts on the Lower Lena, and the Soiot on the Upper
Yenesey. The former, as aforesaid, are Turk; but they are surrounded by
nations other than Turk. They are cut off from the rest of the stock.
The Soiot in like manner are surrounded by strange populations. Their
true relations are the Samoeids of the Icy Sea; but between these two
branches of the stock there is a heterogeneous population of Turks and
Yeneseians--so-called.
The great Iroquois family of America is separated into two parts--one
northern and one southern. Between these lie certain members of the
Algonkin class. Like the Soiot, and the Northern Samoeids, the two
branches of the Iroquois are separated.
The Majiars of Hungary are wholly enclosed by non-Hungarian
populations; and their nearest kinsmen are the Voguls of the Uralian
Mountains, far to the north-east of Moscow.
This shows that ethnological areas may be either uninterrupted or
interrupted; continuous or discontinuous; unbroken or with isolated
fragments; and a little consideration will show, that _wherever there
is isolation there has been displacement_. Whether the land has risen
or the sea encroached is another question. We know why the Majiars
stand separate from the other Ugrian nations. They intruded themselves
into Europe within the historical period, cutting their way with the
sword; and the parts between them and their next of kin were never more
Majiar than they are at the present moment.
But we know no such thing concerning the Iroquois; and we infer
something quite the contrary. We believe that they once held all the
country that now separates their two branches, and a great deal more
beside. But the Algonkins encroached; partially dispossessing, and
partially leaving them in occupation.
In either case, however, there has been _displacement_; and the
displacement is the inference from the _discontinuity_.
But we must remember that true discontinuity can exist in _continents_
only. The populations of two _islands_ may agree, whilst that of
a whole archipelago lying between them may differ. Yet this is no
discontinuity; since the sea is an unbroken chain, and the intervening
obstacle can be sailed round instead of crossed. The nearest way from
the continent of Asia to the Tahitian archipelago--the nearest part of
Polynesia--is _viâ_ New Guinea, New Ireland, and the New Hebrides. All
these islands, however, are inhabited by a different division of the
Oceanic population. Does this indicate displacement? No! It merely
suggests the Philippines, the Pelews, the Carolines, the Ralik and
Radak groups, and the Navigators’ Isles, as the route; and such it
almost certainly was.
FOOTNOTE
[10] Mill (vol. ii.), speaking of the allied subject of the Moral
History of Man.