ANTHROPOLOGY
_By_
A. L. KROEBER
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY
THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY
RAHWAY, N. J.
PREFACE
In the preparation of Chapters II, III, and VI of this book I have drawn
on a University of California syllabus, “Three Essays on the Antiquity
and Races of Man”; for Chapter VII, on an article “Heredity, Environment,
and Civilization” in the _American Museum Journal_ for 1918; and Chapter
V makes use of some passages of “The Languages of the American Indians”
from the _Popular Science Monthly_ of 1911. In each case there has been
revision and for the most part rewriting.
Whatever quality of lucidity the volume may have is due to several
thousand young men and women with whom I have been associated during many
years at the University of California. Without their unwitting but real
co-authorship the book might never have been written, or would certainly
have been written less simply.
A. L. K.
Berkeley, California, January 22, 1923.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF ANTHROPOLOGY 1
1. Anthropology, biology, history.—2. Organic and
social elements.—3. Physical anthropology.—4. Cultural
anthropology.—5. Evolutionary processes and evolutionistic
fancies.—6. Age of anthropological science.
II. FOSSIL MAN 11
7. The “Missing Link.”—8. Family tree of the Primates.—9.
Geological and glacial time.—10. Place of man’s origin and
development.—11. Pithecanthropus.—12. Heidelberg man.—13. The
Piltdown form.—14. Neandertal man.—15. Rhodesian man.—16. The
Cro-Magnon race.—17. The Brünn race.—18. The Grimaldi race:
Neolithic races.—19. The metric expression of human evolution.
III. LIVING RACES 34
20. Race origins.—21. Race classification.—22. Traits on which
classification rests.—23. The grand divisions or primary
stocks.—24. Caucasian races.—25. Mongoloid races.—26. Negroid
races.—27. Peoples of doubtful position.—28. Continents
and oceans.—29. The history of race classifications.—30.
Emergence of the three-fold classification.—31. Other
classifications.—32. Principles and conclusions common to all
classifications.—33. Race, nationality, and language.
IV. PROBLEMS OF RACE 58
34. Questions of endowment and their validity.—35. Plan
of inquiry.—36. Anatomical evidence on evolutionary
rank.—37. Comparative physiological data.—38. Disease.—39.
Causes of cancer incidence.—40. Mental achievement and
social environment.—41. Psychological tests on the sense
faculties.—42. Intelligence tests.—43. Status of hybrids.—44.
Evidence from the cultural record of races.—45. Emotional
bias.—46. Summary.
V. LANGUAGE 87
47. Linguistic relationship: the speech family.—48. Criteria
of relationship.—49. Sound equivalences and phonetic laws.—50.
The principal speech families.—51. Classification of language
by types.—52. Permanence of language and race.—53. The
biological and historical nature of language.—54. Problems
of the relation of language and culture.—55. Period of the
origin of language.—56. Culture, speech, and nationality.—57.
Relative worth of languages.—58. Size of vocabulary.—59.
Quality of speech sounds.—60. Diffusion and parallelism in
language and culture.—61. Convergent languages.—62. Unconscious
factors in language and culture.—63. Linguistic and cultural
standards.—64. Rapidity of linguistic change.
VI. THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 137
65. Fossils of the body and of the mind.—66. Stone and
metals.—67. The old and the new stone ages.—68. The Eolithic
Age.—69. The Palæolithic Age: duration, climate, animals.—70.
Subdivisions of the Palæolithic.—71. Human racial types
in the Palæolithic.—72. Palæolithic flint implements.—73.
Other materials: bone and horn.—74. Dress.—75. Harpoons and
weapons.—76. Wooden implements.—77. Fire.—78. Houses.—79.
Religion.—80. Palæolithic art.—81. Summary of advance in the
Palæolithic.
VII. HEREDITY, CLIMATE, AND CIVILIZATION 180
82. Heredity.—83. Geographical environment.—84. Diet.—85.
Agriculture.—86. Cultural factors.—87. Cultural
distribution.—88. Historical induction.
VIII. DIFFUSION 194
89. The couvade.—90. Proverbs.—91. Geographic distribution.—92.
The magic flight.—93. Flood legends.—94. The double-headed
eagle.—95. The Zodiac.—96. Measures.—97. Divination.—98.
Tobacco.—99. Migrations.
IX. PARALLELS 216
100. General observations.—101. Cultural context.—102.
Universal elements.—103. Secondary parallelism in the
Indo-European languages.—104. Textile patterns and
processes.—105. Primary parallelism: the beginnings of
writing.—106. Time reckoning.—107. Scale and pitch of Pan’s
pipes.—108. Bronze.—109. Zero.—110. Exogamic institutions.—111.
Parallels and psychology.—112. Limitations on the parallelistic
principle.
X. THE ARCH AND THE WEEK 241
113. House building and architecture.—114. The problem of
spanning.—115. The column and beam.—116. The corbelled
arch.—117. The true arch.—118. Babylonian and Etruscan
beginnings.—119. The Roman arch and dome.—120. Mediæval
cathedrals.—121. The Arabs: India: modern architecture.—122.
The week: holy numbers.—123. Babylonian discovery of
the planets.—124. Greek and Egyptian contributions: the
astrological combination.—125. The names of the days and the
Sabbath.—126. The week in Christianity, Islam, and eastern
Asia.—127. Summary of the diffusion.—128. Month-thirds and
market weeks.—129. Leap days as parallels.
XI. THE SPREAD OF THE ALPHABET 263
130. Kinds of writing: pictographic and mixed phonetic.—131.
Deficiencies of transitional systems.—132. Abbreviation
and conventionalization.—133. Presumptive origins of
transitional systems.—134. Phonetic writing: the primitive
Semitic alphabet.—135. The Greek alphabet: invention of
the vowels.—136. Slowness of the invention.—137. The Roman
alphabet.—138. Letters as numeral signs.—139. Reform in
institutions.—140. The sixth and seventh letters.—141. The
tail of the alphabet.—142. Capitals and minuscules.—143.
Conservatism and rationalization.—144. Gothic.—145. Hebrew and
Arabic.—146. The spread eastward: the writing of India.—147.
Syllabic tendencies.—148. The East Indies: Philippine
alphabets.—149. Northern Asia: the conflict of systems in Korea.
XII. THE GROWTH OF A PRIMITIVE RELIGION 293
150. Regional variation of culture.—151. Plains, Southwest,
Northwest areas.—152. California and its sub-areas.—153. The
shaping of a problem.—154. Girls’ Adolescence Rite.—155. The
First Period.—156. The Second Period: Mourning Anniversary and
First-salmon rite.—157. Era of regional differentiation.—158.
Third and Fourth Periods in Central California: Kuksu and
Hesi.—159. Third and Fourth Periods in Southern California:
Jimsonweed and Chungichnish.—160. Third and Fourth Periods
on the Lower Colorado: Dream Singing.—161. Northwestern
California: world-renewal and wealth display.—162. Summary
of religious development.—163. Other phases of culture.—164.
Outline of the culture history of California.—165. The question
of dating.—166. The evidence of archæology.—167. Age of the
shell mounds.—168. General serviceability of the method.
XIII. THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION IN NATIVE AMERICA 326
169. Review of the method of culture examination.—170.
Limitations on the diffusion principle.—171. Cultural
ranking.—172. Cultural abnormalities.—173. Environmental
considerations.—174. Culture areas.—175. Diagrammatic
representation of accumulation and diffusion of culture
traits.—176. Representation showing contemporaneity and
narrative representation.—177. Racial origin of the American
Indians.—178. The time of the peopling of America.—179.
Linguistic diversification.—180. The primitive culture of
the immigrants.—181. The route of entry into the western
hemisphere.—182. The spread over two continents.—183. Emergence
of middle American culture: maize.—184. Tobacco.—185. The
sequence of social institutions.—186. Rise of political
institutions: confederacy and empire.—187. Developments
in weaving.—188. Progress in spinning: cotton.—189.
Textile clothing.—190. Cults: Shamanism.—191. Crisis rites
and initiations.—192. Secret societies and masks.—193.
Priesthood.—194. Temples and sacrifice.—195. Architecture,
sculpture, towns.—196. Metallurgy.—197. Calendars and
astronomy.—198. Writing.—199. The several provincial
developments: Mexico.—200. The Andean area.—201. Colombia.—202.
The Tropical Forest.—203. Patagonia.—204. North America: the
Southwest.—205. The Southeast.—206. The Northern Woodland.—207.
Plains area.—208. The Northwest Coast.—209. Northern marginal
areas.—210. Later Asiatic influences.
XIV. THE GROWTH OF CIVILIZATION: OLD WORLD PREHISTORY AND ARCHÆOLOGY 393
211. Sources of knowledge.—212. Chronology of the grand
divisions of culture history.—213. The Lower and Upper
Palæolithic.—214. Race influence and regional differentiation
in the Lower Palæolithic.—215. Upper Palæolithic culture
growths and races.—216. The Palæolithic aftermath:
Azilian.—217. The Neolithic: its early phase.—218. Pottery and
the bow.—219. Bone tools.—220. The dog.—221. The hewn ax.—222.
The Full Neolithic.—223. Origin of domesticated animals and
plants.—224. Other traits of the Full Neolithic.—225. The
Bronze Age: Copper and Bronze phases.—226. Traits associated
with bronze.—227. Iron.—228. First use and spread of iron.—229.
The Hallstadt and La Tène Periods.—230. Summary of Development:
Regional differentiation.—231. The Scandinavian area as an
example.—232. The late Palæolithic Ancylus or Maglemose
Period.—233. The Early Neolithic Litorina or Kitchenmidden
Period.—234. The Full Neolithic and its subdivisions
in Scandinavia.—235. The Bronze Age and its periods in
Scandinavia.—236. Problems of chronology.—237. Principles of
the prehistoric spread of culture.
XV. THE GROWTH OF CIVILIZATION: OLD WORLD HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY 440
238. The early focal area.—239. Egypt and Sumer and their
background.—240. Predynastic Egypt.—241. Culture growth
in dynastic Egypt.—242. The Sumerian development.—243.
The Sumerian hinterland.—244. Entry of Semites and
Indo-Europeans.—245. Iranian peoples and cultures.—246. The
composite culture of the Near East.—247. Phœnicians, Aramæans,
Hebrews.—248. Other contributing nationalities.—249. Ægean
civilization.—250. Europe.—251. China.—252. Growth and spread
of Chinese civilization.—253. The Lolos.—254. Korea.—255.
Japan.—256. Central and northern Asia.—257. India.—258.
Indian caste and religion.—259. Relations between India and
the outer world.—260. Indo-China.—261. Oceania.—262. The East
Indies.—263. Melanesia and Polynesia.—264. Australia.—265.
Tasmania.—266. Africa.—267. Egyptian radiations.—268. The
influence of other cultures.—269. The Bushmen.—270. The West
African culture-area and its meaning.—271. Civilization, race,
and the future.
INDEX 507
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGE
1. The descent of man: diagram 12
2. The descent of man, elaborated 14
3. The descent of man in detail, according to Gregory 16
4. The descent of man in detail, according to Keith 17
5. Antiquity of man: diagram 20
6. Fossil and modern skull outlines superposed 25
7. Measurements made on fossil skulls 31
8. Relationship of the races: diagram 47
9. Family tree of the human races 48
10. Map: distribution of primary racial stocks 50
11. Map: circumpolar distribution of the races 51
12. Map: linguistic families of Asia and Europe (_facing_) 94
13. Map: linguistic families of Africa 97
14. Map: principal linguistic families of North America 99
15. Map: principal linguistic families of South America 101
16. Map: type stations of the Palæolithic periods 153
17. Earliest prehistory of Europe: diagram 156
18. Palæolithic flint implements, illustrating the principal
techniques 159
19. Flint core with reassembled flakes 163
20. Aurignacian sculpture: human figure 173
21. Magdalenian sculpture: horse 174
22. Magdalenian engraving of a mammoth 175
23. Magdalenian engraving of a herd 176
24. Magdalenian engraving of a browsing reindeer 177
25. Growth of civilization during the Palæolithic: diagram 178
26. Culture distribution and history in the Southwest: diagram 191
27. Map: diffusion of the Magic Flight tale 201
28. Maya symbols for zero 230
29. Map: types of exogamic institutions in Australia 233
30. Map: the spread of alphabetic writing (_facing_) 284
31. Map: culture-areas of native California 297
32. Map: the growth of rituals in native California 308
33. Distribution of culture elements indicative of their
history: diagram 328
34. Map: culture-areas of America 337
35. Occurrence of elements in the culture-areas of
America: diagram (_facing_) 340
36. Development of American civilization in time, according
to Spinden: diagram (_facing_) 342
37. Map: Europe in the early Lower Palæolithic 399
38. Map: Europe in the Aurignacian and Lower Capsian 401
39. Map: Europe in the Solutrean, Magdalenian, and Upper Capsian 403
40. Map: Europe in the Azilian and Terminal Capsian 409
41. Prehistoric corbelled domes in Greece, Portugal, and Ireland 420
42. Growth and spread of prehistoric civilization in Europe,
according to Müller: diagram 436
ANTHROPOLOGY
CHAPTER I
SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF ANTHROPOLOGY
1. Anthropology, biology, history.—2. Organic and
social elements.—3. Physical anthropology.—4. Cultural
anthropology.—5. Evolutionary processes and evolutionistic
fancies.—6. Age of anthropological science.
1. ANTHROPOLOGY, BIOLOGY, HISTORY
Anthropology is the science of man. This broad and literal definition
takes on more meaning when it is expanded to “the science of man and
his works.” Even then it may seem heterogeneous and too inclusive.
The products of the human mind are something different from the body.
And these products, as well as the human body, are the subjects of
firmly established sciences, which would seem to leave little room for
anthropology except as a less organized duplication. Ordinary political
history, economics, literary criticism, and the history of art all deal
with the works and doings of man; biology and medicine study his body. It
is evident that these various branches of learning cannot be relegated to
the position of mere subdivisions of anthropology and this be exalted to
the rank of a sort of holding corporation for them. There must be some
definite and workable relation.
One way in which this relation can be pictured follows to some extent
the course of anthropology as it grew into self-consciousness and
recognition. Biology, medicine, history, economies were all tilling their
fields of knowledge in the nineteenth century, some with long occupancy,
when anthropology shyly entered the scene and began to cultivate a
corner here and a patch there. It examined some of the most special and
non-utilitarian aspects of the human body: the shape of the head, the
complexion, the texture of the hair, the differences between one variety
of man and another, points of negligible import in medicine and of quite
narrow interest as against the broad principles which biology was trying
to found and fortify as the science of all life. So too the historical
sciences had preëmpted the most convenient and fruitful subjects within
reach. Anthropology modestly turned its attention to nations without
records, to histories without notable events, to institutions strange in
flavor and inventions hanging in their infancy, to languages that had
never been written.
Yet obviously the heterogeneous leavings of several sciences will never
weld into an organized and useful body of knowledge. The dilettante, the
collector of oddities who loves incoherence, may be content to observe
to-day the flare of the negro’s nostrils, to-morrow the intricacy of
prefixes that bind his words into sentences, the day after, his attempts
to destroy a foe by driving nails into a wooden idol. A science becomes
such only when it learns to discover relations and a meaning in facts.
If anthropology were to remain content with an interest in the Mongolian
eye, the dwarfishness of the Negrito, the former home of the Polynesian
race, taboos against speaking to one’s mother-in-law, rituals to make
rain, and other such exotic and superseded superstitions, it would earn
no more dignity than an antiquarian’s attic. As a co-laborer on the
edifice of fuller understanding, anthropology must find more of a task
than filling with rubble the temporarily vacant spaces in the masonry
that the sciences are rearing.
The other manner in which the subject of anthropology can be conceived
is that this is neither so vast as to include everything human, nor
is it the unappropriated odds and ends of other sciences, but rather
some particular aspect of human phenomena. If such an aspect exists,
anthropology vindicates its unity and attains to integrity of aim.
2. ORGANIC AND SOCIAL ELEMENTS
To the question why a Louisiana negro is black and thick lipped, the
answer is ready. He was born so. As dogs produce pups, and lions cubs,
so negro springs from negro and Caucasian from Caucasian. We call the
force at work, heredity. The same negro is lazy by repute, easy going
at his labor. Is this too an innate quality? Off-hand, most of us
would reply: Yes. He sings at his corn-hoeing more frequently than the
white man across the fence. Is this also because of his heredity? “Of
course: he is made so,” might be a common answer; “Probably: why not?”
a more cautious one. But now our negro is singing Suwanee River, which
his great-grandfather in Africa assuredly did not sing. As regards the
specific song, heredity is obviously no longer the cause. Our negro
may have learned it from an uncle, perhaps from his schoolmates; he
can have acquired it from human beings not his ancestors, acquired it
as part of his customs, like being a member of the Baptist church and
wearing overalls, and the thousand other things that come to him from
without instead of from within. At these points heredity is displaced by
tradition, nature by nurture, to use a familiar jingle. The efficient
forces now are quite different from those that made his skin black and
his lips thick. They are causes of another order.
The particular song of the negro and his complexion represent the
clear-cut extremes of the matter. Between them lie the sloth and the
inclination to melody. Obviously these traits may also be the result of
human example, of social environment, of contemporary tradition. There
are those that so believe, as well as those who see in them only the
effects of inborn biological impulse. Perhaps these intermediate dubious
traits are the results of a blending of nature and nurture, the strength
of each factor varying according to each trait or individual examined.
Clearly, at any rate, there is room here for debate and evidence. A
genuine problem exists. This problem cannot be solved by the historical
sciences alone because they do not concern themselves with heredity. Nor
can it be solved by biology which deals with heredity and allied factors
but does not go on to operate with the non-biological principle of
tradition.
Here, then, is a specific task and place in the sun for anthropology:
the interpretation of those phenomena into which both organic and social
causes enter. The untangling and determination and reconciling of these
two sets of forces are anthropology’s own. They constitute, whatever
else it may undertake, the focus of its attention and an ultimate goal.
No other science has grappled with this set of problems as its primary
end. Nor has anthropology as yet much of a solution to offer. It may be
said to have cleared the ground of brush, rather than begun the felling
of its tree. But, in the terminology of science, it has at least defined
its problem.
To deal with this interplay of what is natural and nurtural, organic and
social, anthropology must know something of the organic, as such, and of
the social, as such. It must be able to recognize them with surety before
it endeavors to analyze and resynthesize them. It must therefore effect
close contact with the organic and the social sciences respectively,
with “biology” and “history,” and derive all possible aid from their
contributions to knowledge. Up to the present time, a large part of
the work of anthropology has consisted in acquiring the fruits of the
activity of these sister sciences and applying them for its own ends;
or, where the needed biological and historical data were not available,
securing them.
3. PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
The organic sciences underlie the social ones. They are more directly
“natural.” Anthropology has therefore found valuable general principles
in biology: laws of heredity, the doctrines of cell development and
evolution, for instance, based on facts from the whole range of life.
Its business has been to ascertain how far these principles apply to
man, what forms they take in his particular case. This has meant a
concentration of attention, the devising of special methods of inquiry.
Many biological problems, including most physiological and hereditary
ones, can be most profitably attacked in the laboratory, or at least
under experimental conditions. This method, however, is but rarely
open as regards human beings, who must ordinarily be observed as they
are. The phenomena concerning man have to be taken as they come and
laboriously sifted and re-sifted afterward, instead of being artificially
simplified in advance, as by the experimental method. Then, too, since
anthropology was operating within the narrow limits of one species, it
was driven to concern itself with minute traits, such as the zoölogist
is rarely troubled with: the proportions of the length and breadth of
the skull—the famous cephalic index—for instance; the number of degrees
the arm bones are twisted, and the like. Also, as these data had to be
used in the gross, unmodifiable by artificially varied conditions, it
has been necessary to secure them from all possible varieties of men,
different races, sexes, ages, and their nearest brute analogues. The
result is that biological or physical anthropology—“Somatology” it is
sometimes called in Anglo-Saxon countries, and simply “anthropology” in
continental Europe—has in part constituted a sort of specialization or
sharpening of general biology, and has become absorbed to a considerable
degree in certain particular phenomena and methods of studying them about
which general biologists, physiologists, palæontologists, and students of
medicine are usually but vaguely informed.
4. CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
The historical or social sciences overlie the organic ones. Men’s bodies
and natural equipment are back of their deeds and accomplishments as
transmitted by tradition, primary to their culture or civilization. The
relation of anthropology to historical science has therefore been in a
sense the opposite of its relation to biological science. Instead of
specializing, anthropology has been occupied with trying to generalize
the findings of history. Historians cannot experiment. They deal with the
concrete, with the unique; for in a degree every historical event has
something unparalleled about it. They may paint with a broad sweep, but
they do not lay down exact laws.
Moreover, history inevitably begins with an interest in the present and
in ourselves. In proportion as it reaches back in time and to wholly
foreign peoples, its interest tends to flag and its materials become
scant and unreliable. It is commonly considered useful for a man to
know that Napoleon was a Corsican and was defeated at Waterloo in 1815,
but a rather pedantic piece of knowledge that Shi Hwang-ti was born
in northwestern China and unified the rule of China in 221 B.C. From
a theoretical or general point of view, however, one of these facts
is presumably as important as the other, for if we wish to know the
principles that go into the shaping of human social life or civilization,
China counts for as much as France, and the ancient past for as much as
the nearby present. In fact, the foreign and the old are likely to be
inquired into with even more assiduity by the theoretically minded, since
they may furnish wholly new clues to insight, whereas the subjects of
conventional history have been so familiarized as to hold out less hope
of novel conclusions still to be extricated from them.
Here, then, is the cause of the seeming preoccupation of social or
cultural anthropology with ancient and savage and exotic and extinct
peoples: the desire to understand better all civilizations, irrespective
of time and place, in the abstract or in form of generalized principle
if possible. It is not that cave men are more illuminating than Romans,
or flint knives more interesting than fine porcelains or the art of
printing, that has led anthropology to bear so heavily on the former,
but the fact that it wanted to know about cave men and flint knives as
well as about Romans and printing presses. It would be irrational to
prefer the former to the latter, and anthropology has never accepted
the adjudication sometimes tacitly rendered that its proper field is
the primitive, as such. As well might zoölogy confine its interest
to eggs or protozoans. It is probably true that many researches into
early and savage history have sprung from an emotional predilection for
the forgotten or neglected, the obscure and strange, the unwonted and
mysterious. But such occasional personal æsthetic trends can not delimit
the range of a science or determine its aims and methods. Innumerable
historians have been inveterate gossips. One does not therefore insist
that the only proper subject of history is backstairs intimacies.
This, then, is the reason for the special development of those
subdivisions of anthropology known as Archæology, “the science of what
is old” in the career of humanity, especially as revealed by excavations
of the sites of prehistoric occupation; and Ethnology, “the science of
peoples,” irrespective of their degree of advancement.[1]
5. EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES AND EVOLUTIONISTIC FANCIES
In their more elementary aspects the two strands of the organic and
the social, or the hereditary and environmental, as they are generally
called with reference to individuals, run through all human life and
are distinguishable as mechanisms, as well as in their results. Thus a
comparison of the acquisition of the power of flight respectively by
birds in their organic development out of the ancestral reptile stem some
millions of years ago, and by men as a result of cultural progress in
the field of invention during the past generation, reveals at once the
profound differences of process that inhere in the ambiguous concept of
“evolution.” The bird gave up a pair of walking limbs to acquire wings.
He added a new faculty by transforming part of an old one. The sum total
of his parts or organs was not greater than before. The change was
transmitted only to the blood descendants of the altered individuals.
The reptile line went on as it had been before, or if it altered, did so
for causes unconnected with the evolution of the birds. The aeroplane,
on the contrary, gave men a new faculty without impairing any of those
they had previously possessed. It led to no visible bodily changes,
nor alterations of mental capacity. The invention has been transmitted
to individuals and groups not derived by descent from the inventors;
in fact, has already influenced their careers. Theoretically, it is
transmissible to ancestors if they happen to be still living. In sum, it
represents an accretion to the stock of existing culture rather than a
transformation.
Once the broad implications of the distinction which this example
illustrates have been grasped, many common errors are guarded against.
The program of eugenics, for instance, loses much of its force. There is
certainly much to be said in favor of intelligence and discrimination
in mating, as in everything else. There is need for the acquisition
of exacter knowledge on human heredity. But, in the main, the claims
sometimes made that eugenics is necessary to preserve civilization from
dissolution, or to maintain the flourishing of this or that nationality,
rest on the fallacy of recognizing only organic causes as operative,
when social as well as organic ones are active—when indeed the social
factors may be much the more powerful ones. So, in what are miscalled
race problems, the average thought of the day still reasons largely from
social effects to organic causes and perhaps vice versa. Anthropology is
by no means yet in a position to state just where the boundary between
the contributing organic and social causes of such phenomena lies. But
it does hold to their fundamental distinctness and to the importance of
this distinctness, if true understanding is the aim. Without sure grasp
of this principle, many of the arguments and conclusions in the present
volume will lose their significance.
Accordingly, the designation of anthropology as “the child of Darwin” is
most misleading. Darwin’s essential achievement was that he imagined,
and substantiated by much indirect evidence, a mechanism through which
organic evolution appeared to be taking place. The whole history of
man however being much more than an organic matter, a pure Darwinian
anthropology would be largely misapplied biology. One might almost as
justly speak of a Copernican or Newtonian anthropology.
What has greatly influenced anthropology, mainly to its damage, has been
not Darwinism, but the vague idea of evolution, to the organic aspect of
which Darwin gave such substance that the whole group of evolutionistic
ideas has luxuriated rankly ever since. It became common practice in
social anthropology to “explain” any part of human civilization by
arranging its several forms in an evolutionary sequence from lowest
to highest and allowing each successive stage to flow spontaneously
from the preceding—in other words, without specific cause. At bottom
this logical procedure was astonishingly naïve. We of our land and day
stood at the summit of the ascent, in these schemes. Whatever seemed
most different from our customs was therefore reckoned as earliest,
and other phenomena disposed wherever they would best contribute to
the straight evenness of the climb upward. The relative occurrence of
phenomena in time and space was disregarded in favor of their logical
fitting into a plan. It was argued that since we hold to definitely
monogamous marriage, the beginnings of human sexual union probably lay
in indiscriminate promiscuity. Since we accord precedence to descent
from the father, and generally know him, early society must have
reckoned descent from the mother and no one knew his father. We abhor
incest; therefore the most primitive men normally married their sisters.
These are fair samples of the conclusions or assumptions of the classic
evolutionistic school of anthropology, whose roster was graced by some
of the most illustrious names in the science. Needless to say, these men
tempered the basic crudity of their opinions by wide knowledge, acuity or
charm of presentation, and frequent insight and sound sense in concrete
particulars. In their day, a generation or two ago, under the spell of
the concept of evolution in its first flush, such methods of reasoning
were almost inevitable. To-day they are long threadbare, descended to
material for newspaper science or idle speculation, and evidence of a
tendency toward the easy smugness of feeling oneself superior to all the
past. These ways of thought are mentioned here only as an example of the
beclouding that results from baldly transferring biologically legitimate
concepts into the realm of history, or viewing this as unfolding
according to a simple plan of progress.
6. AGE OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL SCIENCE
The foregoing exposition will make clear why anthropology is generally
regarded as one of the newer sciences—why its chairs are few, its places
in curricula of education scattered. As an organized science, with
a program and a method of its own, it is necessarily recent because
it could not arise until the biological and social sciences had both
attained enough organized development to come into serious contact.
On the other hand, as an unmethodical body of knowledge, as an interest,
anthropology is plainly one of the oldest of the sisterhood of sciences.
How could it well be otherwise than that men were at least as much
interested in each other as in the stars and mountains and plants and
animals? Every savage is a bit of an ethnologist about neighboring
tribes and knows a legend of the origin of mankind. Herodotus, the
“father of history,” devoted half of his nine books to pure ethnology,
and Lucretius, a few centuries later, tried to solve by philosophical
deduction and poetical imagination many of the same problems that modern
anthropology is more cautiously attacking with the methods of science.
In neither chemistry nor geology nor biology was so serious an interest
developed as in anthropology, until nearly two thousand years after these
ancients.
In the pages that follow, the central anthropological problems that
concern the relations of the organic and cultural factors in man will
be defined and solutions offered to the degree that they seem to have
been validly determined. On each side of this goal, however, stretches
an array of more or less authenticated formulations, of which some
of the more important will be reviewed. On the side of the organic,
consideration will tend largely to matters of fact; in the sphere of
culture, processes can here and there be illustrated; in accord with
the fact that anthropology rests upon biological and underlies purely
historical science.