[1] For the topography and later history see SUDAN and ABYSSINIA.
ETHNOLOGY and ETHNOGRAPHY (from the Gr. [Greek: ethnos], race, and
[Greek: logos], science, or [Greek: graphein], to write), sciences which
in their narrowest sense deal respectively with man as a racial unit
(_mankind_), i.e. his development through the family and tribal stages
into national life, and with the distribution over the earth of the
races and nations thus formed. Though the etymology of the words permits
in theory of this line of division between ethnology and ethnography, in
practice they form an indivisible study of man's progress from the point
at which anthropology (q.v.) leaves him.
Ethnology is thus the general name for investigations of the widest
character, including subjects which in this encyclopaedia are dealt with
in detail under separate headings, such as ARCHAEOLOGY, ART (and allied
articles), COMMERCE, GEOGRAPHY (and the headings for countries and
tribes), FAMILY, NAME, ETHICS, LAW, MYTHOLOGY, FOLK-LORE (and allied
articles), PHILOLOGY (and allied articles), AGRICULTURE, ARCHITECTURE,
RELIGION, SOCIOLOGY, &c., &c. It covers generally the whole history of
the material and intellectual development of man, as it has passed
through the stages of (a) hunting and fishing, (b) sheep and cattle
tending, (c) agriculture, (d) industry. It investigates his food, his
weapons, tools and implements, his housing, his social, economic and
commercial organization, forms of government, language, art, literature,
morals, superstitions and religious systems. In this sense ethnology is
the older term for what now is called sociology. At the present day the
progress of research has in practice, however, restricted the
"ethnologist" as a rule to the study of one or more branches only of so
wide a subject, and the word "ethnology" is used with a somewhat vague
meaning for any ethnological study; each country or nation has thus its
own separate ethnology. It becomes more convenient, therefore, to deal
with the ethnology as a special subject in each case. "Ethnography," in
so far as it has a distinctive province, is then conveniently restricted
to the scientific mapping out of different racial regions, nations and
tribes; and it is only necessary here to refer the reader to the
separate articles on continents, &c., where this is done. The only
fundamental problem which need here be referred to is that of the whole
question of the division of mankind into separate races at all, which is
consequential on the earlier problem (dealt with in the article
ANTHROPOLOGY) as to man's origin and antiquity.
If we assume that man existed on the earth in remote geological time,
the question arises, was this pleistocene man specifically one? What
evidence is there that he represented in his different habitats a series
of varieties of one species rather than a series of species? The
evidence is of three kinds, (1) anatomical, (2) physiological, (3)
cultural and psychical.
1. Dr Robert Munro, in his address to the Anthropological section of the
British Association in 1893, said: "All the osseous remains of man which
have hitherto been collected and examined point to the fact that, during
the larger portion of the quarternary period, if not, indeed, from its
very commencement, he had already acquired his human characteristics."
By "characteristics" is here meant those anatomical ones which
distinguish man from other animals, not the physical criteria of the
various races. Do, then, these anatomical characteristics of pleistocene
man show such differences among themselves and between them and the
types of man existing to-day as to justify the assumption that there has
ever been more than one species of man?
The undoubted "osseous remains" of pleistocene man are few. Burial was
not practised, and the few bones found are for the most part those which
have by mere chance been preserved in caves or rock-shelters. Of these
the three chief "finds," in order of probable age, are the Trinil (Java)
brain-cap, the lowest human skull yet described, characterized by
depressed cranial arch, with a cephalic index of 70; the Neanderthal
(Germany) skull, remarkable for its flat retreating curve with an index
of 73-76; and the two nearly perfect skeletons found at Spy (Belgium),
the skulls of which exhibit enormous brow ridges with cranial indices of
70 and 75. All these skulls, taken in conjunction with other
well-authenticated human remains such as those found at La Naulette
(Belgium), Shipka (Balkan Peninsula), Olmo (Italy), Predmert (Bohemia)
and in Argentina and Brazil, make it possible to reconstruct
anatomically the varying types of pleistocene man, and to establish the
fact that in essential features the same primitive type has persisted
through all time. The skeleton bones show differences so slight as to
admit of pathological or other explanation. What Professor Kollmann says
of man to-day was true in the remotest ages. Referring to Cuvier's
statement that from a single bone it is possible to determine the very
species to which an animal belongs, he says, "Precisely on this ground I
have mainly concluded that the existence of several human species cannot
be recognized, for we are unacquainted with a single tribe from a single
bone of which we might with certainty determine to what species it
belonged." Such differences as the bones exhibit are progressive
modifications towards the higher neolithic and modern types, and are in
themselves entirely incapable of supporting the theory that the owner of
the Trinil skull, say, and the "man of Spy" belonged to separate
species. All these "osseous remains" belong to the palaeolithic period,
and from the cranial indices it is thus clear that palaeolithic man was
long-headed. Neolithic man is, speaking generally, round-headed, and it
has been urged that round-headedness is entirely synchronous with the
neolithic age, and that the long-headed palaeolithic species of mankind
gave place all at once to the round-headed neolithic species. The point
thus raised involves the physiological as well as, indeed more than, the
anatomical proofs of man's specific unity.
2. All physiologists agree that species cannot breed with species.
Darwin himself laid it down as a fundamental principle. If then the
palaeolithic and neolithic types represented separate species, they
would be found to remain distinct through all time. This is not the
case. There is evidence that extreme dolichocephaly continued into
neolithic times, and was only slowly modified into brachycephaly. In the
neolithic caves of Italy, Austria, Belgium, and the barrows of Great
Britain, skulls of all types are found. The later cave-dwellers and
early dolmen builders of Europe were at first long-headed, then of
medium type, and finally in some places exclusively round-headed. In
England the round-heads appear to be synchronous with the metal age, as
shown by the contents of the barrows, and, as on the continental
mainland, the two types gradually blended. Permanent fertility between
them in prehistoric Europe is thus proved. And this is the case
throughout the habitable globe. An examination of the osseous remains of
American man supports the view that the human species has not varied
since quaternary times. The palaeolithic type is to be found among
modern European populations. Certain skulls from South Australia seem
cast in almost the same mould as the Neanderthal. After thousands of
years nearly pure descendants of quaternary man are found among living
races. And man's mutual fertility in prehistoric is repeated throughout
historic times: strict racial purity is almost unknown. Thus the unity
of the species man is proved by the test of fertility.
3. The works of early man everywhere present the most startling
resemblance. The palaeolithic implements all over the globe are all of
one pattern. "The implements in distant lands," writes Sir J. Evans,
"are so identical in form and character with the British specimens that
they might have been manufactured by the same hands.... On the banks of
the Nile, many hundreds of feet above its present level, implements of
the European types have been discovered; while in Somaliland, in an
ancient river-valley at a great elevation above the sea, Sir H.W.
Seton-Karr has collected a large number of implements formed of flint
and quartzite, which, judging from their form and character, might have
been dug out of the drift-deposits of the Somme and the Seine, the
Thames or the ancient Solent." This identity in the earliest arts is
repeated in the later stages of man's culture; his arts and crafts, his
manners and customs, exhibit a similarity so close as to compel the
presumption that all the races are but divisions of one family. But
perhaps the greatest psychical proof of man's specific unity is his
common possession of language. Theodore Waitz writes: "Inasmuch as the
possession of a language of regular grammatical structure forms a fixed
barrier between man and brute, it establishes at the same time a near
relationship between all people in psychical respects.... In the
presence of this common feature of the human mind, all other differences
lose their import" (_Anthropology_, p. 273). As Dr J.C. Prichard urged,
"the same inward and mental nature is to be recognized in all races of
men. When we compare this fact with the observations, fully established,
as to the specific instincts and separate psychical endowments of all
the distinct tribes of sentient beings in the Universe we are entitled
to draw confidently the conclusion that all human races are of one
species and one family." It has been argued that stock languages imply
stock races, but this assumption is untenable. There are some fifty
irreducible stock languages in the United States and Canada, yet, taking
into consideration the physical and moral homogeneity of the American
Indian races, he would be a reckless theorist who held that there were
therefore fifty separate human species. If it were so, how have they
descended? There are no anthropoid apes in America, none of the ape
family higher than the Cebidae, from which it is impossible to trace
men. Again, in Australia there is certainly one stock language, yet
there are not even Cebidae. In Caucasia, there are many distinct forms
of speech, yet all the peoples belong to the Caucasic division of
mankind.
Man, then, may be regarded as specifically one, and thus he must have
had an original cradle-land, whence the peopling of the earth was
brought about by migration. The evidence tends to prove that the world
was peopled by a generalized proto-human form. Each division of mankind
would thus have had its pleistocene ancestors, and would have become
differentiated into races by the influence of climatic and other
surroundings. As to the man's cradle-land there have been many theories,
but the weight of evidence is in favour of Indo-Malaysia.
Of all animals man's range alone coincides with that of the habitable
globe, and the real difficulty of the "cradle-land" theory lay in
explaining how the human race spread to every land. This problem has
been met by geology, which proves that the earth's surface has undergone
great changes since man's appearance, and that continents, long since
submerged, once existed, making a complete land communication from
Indo-Malaysia. The evidence for the Indo-African continent has been
summed up by R.D. Oldham,[1] and proofs no less cogent are available of
the former existence of an Eurafrican continent, while the extension of
Australia in the direction of New Guinea is more than probable. Thus the
ancestor of man was free to move in all directions over the eastern
hemisphere. The western hemisphere was more than probably connected with
Europe and Asia, in Tertiary times, by a continent, the existence of
which is evidenced by a submarine bank stretching from Scotland through
the Faeroes and Iceland to Greenland, and on the other side by
continuous land at what is now the Behring Straits.
Acclimatization has been urged as an argument against the cradle-land
theory, but the peopling of the globe took place in inter-Glacial if not
pre-Glacial ages, when the climate was much milder everywhere, and thus
pleistocene man met no climatic difficulties in his migrations.
Probably before the close of Palaeolithic times all the primary
divisions of man were specialized in their several habitats by the
influence of their surroundings. The profound effect of climate is seen
in the relative culture of races. Thus, tropical countries are inhabited
by savage or semi-savage peoples, while the higher races are confined to
temperate zones. The primary divisions of mankind, Ethiopic, Mongolic,
Caucasic, were certainly differentiated in neolithic times, and these
criteria had almost certainly occurred not consecutively in one area but
simultaneously in several areas. A Negro was not metamorphosed into a
Mongol, nor the latter into a White, but the several semi-simian
precursors under varying environments developed into generalized Negro,
generalized Mongol, generalized Caucasian.
Taking, then, these three primary divisions as those into which it is
most reasonable broadly to divide mankind they may be analysed as to
their racial constituents and their habitats as follows:--
1. Caucasic or White Man is best divided, following Huxley, into (a)
Xanthochroi or "fair whites" and (b) Melanochroi or "dark whites." (a)
The first--tall, with almost colourless skin, blue or grey eyes, hair
from straw colour to chestnut, and skulls varying as to proportionate
width--are the prevalent inhabitants of Northern Europe, and the type
may be traced into North Africa and eastward as far as India. On the
south and west it mixes with that of the Melanochroi and on the north
and east with that of the Mongoloids. (b) The "dark whites" differ from
the fair whites in the darkening of the complexion to brownish and
olive, and of the eyes and hair to black, while the stature is somewhat
lower and the frame lighter. To this division belong a large part of
those classed as Celts, and of the populations of Southern Europe, such
as Spaniards, Greeks and Arabs, extending as far as India, while endless
intermediate grades between the two white types testify to ages of
intermingling. Besides these two main types, the Caucasic division of
mankind has been held with much reason to include such aberrant types as
the brown Polynesian races of the Eastern Pacific, Samoans, Hawaiians,
Maoris, &c., the proto-Malay peoples of the Eastern archipelago,
sometimes termed Indonesians, represented by the Dyaks of Borneo and the
Battaks of Sumatra, the Todas of India and the Ainus of Japan.
2. Mongolic or Yellow Man prevails over the vast area lying east of a
line drawn from Lapland to Siam. His physical characteristics are a
short squat body, a yellowish-brown or coppery complexion, hair lank,
straight and black, flat small nose, broad skull, usually without
prominent brow-ridges, and black oblique eyes. Of the typical Mongolic
races the chief are the Chinese, Tibetans, Burmese, Siamese; the Finnic
group of races occupying Northern Europe, such as Finns, Lapps,
Samoyedes and Ostyaks, and the Arctic Asiatic group represented by the
Chukchis and Kamchadales; the Tunguses, Gilyaks and Golds north of, and
the Mongols proper west of, Manchuria; the pure Turkic peoples and the
Japanese and Koreans. Less typical, but with the Mongolic elements so
predominant as to warrant inclusion, are the Malay peoples of the
Eastern archipelago. Lastly, though differentiated in many ways from the
true Mongol, the American races from the Eskimo to the Fuegians must be
reckoned in the Yellow division of mankind.
3. Negroid or Black Man is primarily represented by the Negro of Africa
between the Sahara and the Cape district, including Madagascar. The skin
varies from dark brown to brown-black, with eyes of the same colour, and
hair usually black and always crisp or woolly. The skull is narrow, with
orbital ridges not prominent, the jaws protrude, the nose is flat and
broad, and the lips thick and everted. Two important families are
classed in this division; some authorities hold, as special
modifications of the typical Negro to-day, others as actually nearer the
true generalized Negroid type of neolithic times. First are the Bushman
of South Africa, diminutive in stature and of a yellowish-brown colour:
the neighbouring Hottentot is believed to be the result of crossing
between the Bushman and the true Negro. Second are the large Negrito
family, represented in Africa by the dwarf races of the equatorial
forests, the Akkas, Batwas, Wochuas and others, and beyond Africa by the
Andaman Islanders, the Aetas of the Philippines, and probably the
Senangs and other aboriginal tribes of the Malay Peninsula. The Negroid
type seems to have been the earliest predominant in the South Sea
islands, but it is impossible to say certainly whether it is itself
derived from the Negrito, or the latter is a modification of it, as has
been suggested above. In Melanesia, the Papuans of New Guinea, of New
Caledonia, and other islands, represent a more or less Negroid type, as
did the now extinct Tasmanians.
Excluded from this survey of the grouping of Man are the aborigines of
Australia, whose ethnical affinities are much disputed. Probably they
are to be reckoned as Dravidians, a very remote blend of Caucasic and
Negro man. For a detailed discussion of the branches of these three
main divisions of Man the reader must refer to articles under race
headings, and to NEGRO; NEGRITOS; MONGOLS; MALAYS; INDIANS, NORTH
AMERICAN; AUSTRALIA; AFRICA; &c., &c.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--J.C. Prichard, _Natural History of Man_ (London, 1843),
_Researches into the Physical History of Mankind_ (5 vols.,
1836-1847); T.H. Huxley, _Man's Place in Nature_ (London, 1863), and
"Geographical Distribution of Chief Modifications of Mankind," in
_Journ. Anthropological Institute_ for 1870; Theodore Waitz,
_Anthropologie der Naturvoelker_ (1859-1871); A. de Quatrefages,
_Histoire generale des races humaines_ (Paris, 1889); E.B. Tylor,
_Anthropology_ (1881); Lord Avebury, _Prehistoric Times_ (1865; 6th
ed., 1900) and _Origin of Civilization_ (1870; 6th ed., 1902); F.
Ratzel, _History of Mankind_ (Eng. trans., 1897); A.H. Keane,
_Ethnology_ (2nd ed., 1897), and _Man: Past and Present_ (2nd ed.,
1899); G. de Mortillet, _Le Prehistorique_ (Paris, 1882; 3rd ed.,
1900); D.G. Brinton, _Races and Peoples_ (1890); J. Deniker, The Races
of Man (London, 1900); Hutchinson's _Living Races of Mankind_ (1906).