DIFFUSION
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.
89. THE COUVADE
The couvade is a custom to which the peasants of the Pyrenees adhered
until a century or two ago. When a couple had a child, the wife got up
and went about her daily work as well as she might, while the husband
went to bed to lie-in in state and receive the visits of the neighbors.
This was thought to be for the good of the baby.
The same custom is found among the Indians of Brazil. They believe that a
violation of the custom would bring sickness or ill luck upon the child.
They look upon the child as something new and delicate, a being requiring
not only physical nurture but the superadded protection of this religious
or magical practice.
The Basques of the Pyrenees and the Indians of Brazil are of different
race, separate origins, and without any known historical contacts. The
substantial identity of the custom among them therefore long ago led to
its being explained as the result of the cropping out of an instinctive
impulse of the human mind. Tylor, for instance, held that whenever a
branch of humanity reached a certain hypothetical stage of development,
namely, that phase in which the reckoning of descent from the mother
began to transform into reckoning of descent from the father, the couvade
tended to appear spontaneously as a natural accompaniment. The Basque
peasants, of course, are a more advanced people than the cannibalistic
Brazilian natives. But they are an old and a conservative people who
have long lived in comparative isolation in their mountainous district;
and thus, it might be argued, they retained the custom of the couvade as
a survival from the earlier transitional condition.
According to this method of explanation, the occurrence of almost any
custom, art, or belief among widely separated and unrelated peoples is
likely to be the result of the similar working of the human mind under
similar conditions. The cause of cultural identities and resemblances,
especially among primitive or “nature” peoples, is not to be sought
primarily in historical factors, such as common origin, migrations, the
propaganda of religion, or the gradual diffusion of an idea, but is
to be looked for in something inherent in humanity itself, in inborn
psychological tendencies. This explanation is that of “Independent
Evolution.” It is also known as the doctrine of “Elementary Ideas.”
Contrasting with this principle is that of borrowing—one people learning
an institution or belief from another, or taking over a custom or
invention. That borrowing has been considerably instrumental in shaping
the cultures of the more advanced nations, is an obvious fact. People are
Christians not through the spontaneous unfolding of the whole dogma and
ritual of Christianity in each of them, nor even within their nation,
but because of the historically documented spread of Christianity which
is still going on. As a heathen people is converted by missionaries
to-day, so our North European ancestors were converted by Romans, and the
Romans by the Apostles and their followers. When historical records are
available, cultural borrowing of this sort is generally easy to establish.
Borrowing can sometimes be shown as very likely even where direct
evidence is lacking. If two peoples that possess an institution in common
are known off-shoots one from the other, or if they have had numerous
trade relations, it is hardly necessary to demonstrate the specific time
and manner of transmission between them. Supposing that a religion,
an alphabet, and perhaps a number of arts have passed from one nation
to another, one would normally ask for little further evidence that a
custom, such as the couvade, which they shared, had also been originated
by one and borrowed by the other.
90. PROVERBS
Even where contacts are more remote, the geographical setting of two
peoples often makes borrowing seem likely. The custom of uttering
proverbs, for instance, has a significant distribution. It seems
astonishing that barbarous West African tribes should possess a stock of
proverbs as abundant and pithy as those current in Europe. Not that the
proverbs are identical. The negro lacks too many articles, and too many
of our manners, to allude as we do. But he does share with us the habit
of expressing himself on certain situations with brief current sayings
of homely and instantly intelligible nature, that put a generality into
specific and concrete form. Thus: “One tree does not make a forest”; “Run
from the sword and hide in the scabbard”; “If the stomach is weak, do not
eat cockroaches”; “Distant firewood is good firewood.”
The proverb tendency is a sufficiently general one to suggest its
independent origin in Africa and Europe. One’s first reaction to the
parallel is likely to be something like this: The negro and we have
formulated proverbs because we are both human beings; the coining of
proverbs is instinctive in humanity. So it might be maintained. However,
as soon as the distribution of proverbs the world over is reviewed, it
becomes evident that their coining cannot be spontaneous, since the
native American race appears never to have devised a single true proverb.
On the other side are the Europeans, Africans, Asiatics, and Oceanians
who are addicted to the custom. Degree of civilization evidently has
nothing to do with the matter, because in the Old World primitive and
advanced peoples alike use proverbs; whereas in the New World wild
hunting tribes as well as the most progressive nations like the Mayas
have no proverbs. The only inference which the facts allow is that
there must have been a time when proverbs were unknown anywhere—still
“uninvented” by mankind. Then, somewhere in the Old World, they came
into use. Perhaps it was a genius that struck off the first sayings to
be repeated by his associates and then by his more remote environment.
At any rate, the custom spread from people to people until it extended
over almost all the eastern hemisphere. Some cause, however, such as
geographical isolation, prevented the extension of the movement to the
western hemisphere. The American Indians therefore remained proverbless
because the invention was never transmitted to them. Here, accordingly,
is a case of the very incompleteness of a distribution going far to
illuminate the history of a culture trait. The lack of parallelism
between the hemispheres disproves the explanation by instinctive
independent origin. This negative conclusion in turn tends strongly to
establish the probability that the custom was borrowed, perhaps from a
single source, in the four eastern continents.
91. GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION
Thus it appears that it is not always easy to settle the origin and
history of the phenomena of culture. Evidently, many facts must be taken
into consideration: above all, geographic distribution. Because a habit
is so well ingrained in our life as to seem absolutely natural and almost
congenital, it does not follow that it really is so. The vast majority
of culture elements have been learned by each nation from other peoples,
past and present. At the same time there are unexpected limits to the
principle of borrowing. Transmission often operates over vast areas and
for long periods but at other times ceases.
Two reflections arise. The first is the discouraging but salutary one
that the history of civilization and its parts is an intricate matter,
not to be validly determined by off-hand guesses. A second conclusion is
that the geographic distribution of any culture element is always likely
to be a fact of prime importance about it. It is because the Basques and
the Brazilian Indians are geographically separate that there is fair
prima facie probability of the couvade being the result of independent
origin. It is because of another geographic fact, that proverbs are known
throughout one hemisphere and lacking from the other, that it must be
inferred that they represent a borrowed culture trait.
In the following pages a number of culture elements will be examined from
the point of view of their distribution with the aim of determining how
far each of the two principles of parallel invention and of borrowing
may be inferred to have been operative in regard to them. In place of
“independent origin” the terms “parallelism” or “convergence” will
be generally used. As an equivalent of “borrowing” the somewhat less
metaphorical word “diffusion” will be applied. Well known historic cases
of diffusion, such as those of Christianity and Mohammedanism, of Roman
law, of the printing press and steam engine and of the great modern
mechanical inventions, will not be considered. It is however well to
keep these numerous cases in the background of one’s mind as a constant
suggestion that the principle of diffusion is an extremely powerful one
and still active. In fact, the chief reason why early anthropologists
did not make more use of this principle seems to have been their extreme
familiarity with it. It was going on all about them, so that in dealing
with prehistoric times or with remote peoples, they tended to overlook
it. This was perhaps a natural error, since the communications of savages
and their methods of transmission are so much more restricted than our
own. Yet of course even savages shift their habitations and acquire new
neighbors. At times they capture women and children from one another.
Again they intermarry; and they almost invariably maintain some sort
of trade relations with at least some of the adjacent peoples. Slow as
diffusion might therefore be among them, it would nevertheless go on, and
its lack of rapidity would be compensated by the immense durations of
time in the prehistoric period. It is certain that the simpler inventions
of primitive man generally did not travel with the rapidity of the
printing press and telegraph and camera. But on the other hand, instead
of a generation or a century, there would often be periods of a thousand
or five thousand years for an invention or a custom to spread from one
continent to another. There is thus every a priori reason why diffusion
could be expected to have had a very large part in the formation of
primitive and barbarous as well as advanced culture.
92. THE MAGIC FLIGHT
There is one folk-lore plot with a distribution that leaves little doubt
as to its diffusion from a single source. This is the incident known
as the Magic Flight or Obstacle Pursuit. It recounts how the hero,
when pursued, throws behind him successively a whetstone, a comb, and
a vessel of oil or other liquid. The stone turns into a mountain or
precipice; the comb into a forest or thicket; the liquid into a lake or
river. Each of these obstacles impedes the pursuer and contributes to the
hero’s final escape. This incident has been found in stories told by the
inhabitants of every continent except South America. Its distribution and
probable spread are shown in Fig. 27.
While no two of the tales or myths containing the episode of the Magic
Flight are identical, there can be no serious doubt as to a common
source of the incident because of the co-existence of the three separate
items that make it up. If a people in Asia and one in America each
knew a story of a person who to impede a pursuer spilt water on the
ground which magically grew into a vast lake, it would be dogmatic to
insist on this as proof of a historical connection between the two far
separated stories. Belief in the virtue of magic is world-wide, and it
is entirely conceivable that from this common soil of magical beliefs
the same episode might repeatedly have sprouted quite independently. The
same reasoning would apply to the incident of the transformation of the
stone and of the comb, as long as they occurred separately. The linking
of the three items, however, enormously decreases the possibility of
any two peoples having hit upon them separately. It would be stretching
coincidence pretty far to believe that each people independently invented
the triple complex. It is also significant that the number of impeding
obstacles is almost always three. In the region of western Asia and
Europe where the tale presumably originated, three is the number most
frequently employed in magic, ritual, and folk-lore. Among the American
Indians, however, three is scarcely ever thus used, either four or five
replacing it according to the custom pattern of the particular tribe.
Nevertheless, several American tribes depart from their usual pattern and
mention only three obstacles in telling this story.
This instance introduces a consideration that is of growing importance
in culture history determinations. If a trait is composed of several
elements which stand in no necessary relation to each other, and these
several elements recur among distinct or remote peoples in the same
combination, whereas on the basis of mere accident it could be expected
that the several elements would at times combine and at other times
crop out separately, one can be reasonably sure of the real identity
and common origin of the complex trait. When a trait is simple, it is
more difficult to be positive that the apparent resemblance amounts to
identity. Such doubt applies for instance to isolated magical practices.
A custom found among separate nations, such as sprinkling water to
produce rain, may be the result of an importation of the idea from one
people to another. Or again it may represent nothing more than a specific
application of the assumed principle that an act similar to a desired
effect will produce that effect. This magical belief is so broad, and so
ramifying in its exemplifications, as to become almost impossible to use
as a criterion. The essential basis of magic may conceivably have been
developed at a single culture center in the far distant past and have
been disseminated thence over the whole world. Or again, for all that it
is possible to prove, magic beliefs may really be rooted instinctively in
the human mind and grow thence over and over again with inevitability.
There seems no present way of determining which interpretation is correct.
93. FLOOD LEGENDS
This situation applies to many widely spread concepts in folk-lore. Flood
myths of some sort, for instance, are told by probably the majority of
human nations. In the early days of the science, this wide distribution
of flood myths was held to prove the actuality of a flood, or to be
evidence of the descent of all mankind from a single nation which had
once really experienced it. Such explanations are too obviously naïve
to require refutation to-day. Yet it is difficult to interpret the wide
prevalence of flood myths, either as spontaneous growth from out the
human mind, or as diffusion from a single devising of the idea. Much
of the difficulty is caused by the fact that one cannot be sure that
the various flood myths are identical. Some peoples have the flood come
after the earth is formed and inhabited, and have it almost destroy the
human race. Other nations begin their cosmology with a flood. For them,
water was in existence before there was an earth, and the problem for
the gods or creative animals was to make the world. This, according to
some American Indian versions, they finally accomplished by having one of
their number dive to the bottom and bring up a few grains of sand which
were then expanded to constitute terra firma. The first type of story is
evidently a true “flood” myth; the second might better be described as
a concept of “primeval water.” The difficulty is enhanced by the fact
that the two types are sometimes found amalgamated in a single mythology.
Thus the Hebrew account begins with the primeval waters but subsequent to
the formation of the earth the deluge covers it. So, according to some
American tribes, the flood came after the earth, but the waters remained
until after the diving. It is clear that flood stories are more shifting
than the Magic Flight episode. They may conceivably all be variations
of a single theme which has gradually come to differentiate greatly.
But again, several distinct concepts—primeval water, flood, the diving
animals, the ark—may have been evolved in different parts of the world,
each developing in its own way, and traveling so far, in some cases, as
to meet and blend with others. This last interpretation is favored by
some of the facts of distribution: the prevalence of the diving concept
in America, for instance, and the absence of flood myths from much of
Africa.
[Illustration: FIG. 27. The Magic Flight tale, an example of
inter-continental and inter-hemispheric diffusion. After Stucken, with
additions.]
There is a vast amount of folk-lore recorded, and much of it has lent
itself admirably to the working out of its historical origins, so far
as limited regions are concerned. Folk-lorists are often able to prove
that one tale originated in India and was carried into mediæval Europe,
or that another was probably first devised on the coast of British
Columbia and then disseminated across the Rocky mountains to the interior
tribes of Indians. When it comes to intercontinental and world-wide
distribution, however, difficulties of the sort just set forth in regard
to flood myths become stronger and stronger. While the most interesting
mythical ideas are those which are world-wide, it is in these that
uncertainty between origin by diffusion or parallelism is greatest. The
Magic Flight therefore constitutes a grateful exception. It opens the
door to a hope that more assiduous analysis and comparison may lead to
the accurate determination of the source and history of other common and
fundamental myths.
94. THE DOUBLE-HEADED EAGLE
An unexpected story of wandering attaches to the figure or symbol of the
double-headed eagle. Like many other elements of civilization, this goes
back to an Egyptian beginning. One of the great gods of Egypt was the
sun. The hawk and vulture were also divine animals. A combination was
made showing the disk of the sun with a long narrow wing on each side.
Or the bird itself was depicted with outstretched wings but its body
consisting of the sun disk. These were striking figures of considerable
æsthetic and imaginative appeal. From Egypt the design was carried in the
second millenium B.C. to the Assyrians of Mesopotamia and to the Hittites
of Asia Minor. A second head was added, perhaps to complete the symmetry
of the figure. Just as a wing and a foot went out from each side of the
body or disk, so now there was a head facing each way. This double-headed
bird symbol was carved on cliffs in Asia Minor. Here the pictures
remained, no doubt wondered at but uncopied, for two thousand years. In
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries after Christ, the Turkish princes,
feeling the symbol to be a fit emblem of sovereignty, began stamping it
on their coins. The later Crusaders brought these coins, or the idea of
the pattern, back with them to Europe, where the mediæval art of heraldry
was flourishing. The double-headed eagle was a welcome addition to the
lions and griffins with which artists were emblazoning the coats of arms
of the feudal nobility. The meaning of sovereignty remaining attached
to the figure, the device before long became indicative of the imperial
idea. This is the origin of its use as a symbol in the late empires of
Austro-Hungary and Russia.
Four hundred years ago Charles V was king of Spain and Austria and Holy
Roman emperor of Germany. It was in his reign that Cortez and Pizarro
conquered Mexico and Peru. Thus the symbol of the double-headed eagle
was carried into the New World and the Indians became conversant with
it. Even some of the wilder tribes learned the figure, although they
were perhaps more impressed with it as a decorative motive than as
an emblem. At any rate, they introduced it into their textiles and
embroideries. The Huichol in the remote mountains of Mexico, who use
the design thus, seem to believe that their ancestors had always been
conversant with the figure. But such a belief of course proves no more
than did the ignorance of European heraldists of the fact that their
double-headed eagle came to them from Asia Minor and ultimately from
Egypt. No pre-Columbian representation of the two-headed eagle is known
from Mexico. The conclusion can therefore hardly be escaped that this
apparently indigenous textile pattern of the modern Huichol is also to be
derived from its far source in ancient Egypt of whose existence they have
never heard.
95. THE ZODIAC
The foregoing example should not establish the impression that the main
source of all culture is to be sought in Egypt. Many other ancient and
modern countries have made their contribution. It is to the Chinese,
for instance, that we owe silk, porcelain, and gun powder. The ancient
Sumerians and Babylonians, on the lower course of the Tigris and
Euphrates, moved toward definite cultural progress about as early as
the Egyptians, and have perhaps contributed as many elements to the
civilization of to-day.
One of these is the zodiac. This is the concept of dividing the path of
the sun, moon, and planets around the heavens into twelve equal parts,
each named after a constellation. The series runs: ram, bull, twins,
crab, lion, virgin, scales, scorpion, archer, goat, water-carrier,
fishes. Constellations, indeed, had begun to be named at a very early
time, as is clear from the practice being common to all mankind. But the
specific arrangement of these twelve constellations as a measure of the
movement of the heavenly bodies seems to have made its first appearance
among the Chaldæan Babylonians about a thousand years before Christ. From
them the Persians, and then the Greeks, learned the zodiac; and with its
introduction to the Roman Empire it became part of the fund of knowledge
common to the whole of western civilization. It does not appear to have
been accepted by the Egyptians until Roman imperial times. Knowledge of
the zodiac also spread eastward to India. It seems to have been carried
as far as China by Buddhist missionaries, but failed to be seriously
adopted in that country until its reintroduction by Jesuit missionaries
in the seventeenth century.
The Chinese long before had invented a series of twelve signs which has
sometimes been called a zodiac, and gradually transmitted it to the
adjacent natives of Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Turkistan, and Tibet. This
seems to be of independent origin from the western or Babylonian zodiac.
It appears to have been devised to designate the hours, then applied to
other periods of time, and finally to the heavens. Its path through the
sky is the reverse of the western zodiac; and its signs are specifically
different: rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, serpent, horse, sheep, monkey,
hen, dog, and pig. At most, therefore, it would seem that there might
have penetrated to China from the west the idea of dividing time or space
into twelve units and assigning to each of these the name of an animal.
The working out and utilization of the idea were native Chinese.
Already in ancient times the pictures of the twelve constellations of
the western zodiac began to be abbreviated and reduced to symbols. These
gradually become more and more conventional, although evidences of
their origin are still visible. The sign of the ram, for instance, as we
employ it in almanacs, shows the downward curling horns of this animal;
that for the ox, his rising horns; for the archer, his arrow, and so on.
These cursive symbols, once they became fixed, underwent some travels of
their own which carried them to unexpected places. The Negroes of the
west coast of Africa make gold finger rings ornamented with the twelve
zodiacal symbols in their proper sequence. They seem ignorant of the
meaning, in fact do not possess sufficient astronomical knowledge to
be able to understand the use of the signs. It also remains uncertain
whether they learned the set of symbols from European navigators or from
the Arabs that have penetrated the northern half of Africa. Nevertheless
it is the true zodiac which they portray, even though only as a
decorative pattern.
There has been some assertion that the zodiac was known to the more
advanced Middle American Indians between Arizona and Peru, but the
claim has also been denied. There does appear to have been at least one
series of animal signs used by the Mayas of Yucatan in an astronomical
connection. It is not known that this series served the true zodiacal
function of noting the positions of the heavenly bodies. Further, the
Maya series consists of thirteen instead of twelve symbols, and the
figures present only distant resemblances to the Old World zodiac. There
is only one that is the same as in the Old World zodiac: the scorpion.
The relationship of the Maya and Old World series is therefore unproved,
and probably fictitious. The case however possesses theoretical interest
in that it illustrates the criteria of the determination of culture
relationships.
The Mexican zodiac would unquestionably be interpreted as a derivative
from the Asiatic one, even though its symbols departed somewhat from
those of the latter, provided that the similar symbols came in the same
order. The Asiatic ram might well be replaced by a Mexican deer, the lion
by a wildcat, and the virgin by a maize goddess. And if the deer, the
wildcat, and the maize goddess came in first, fifth, and sixth place, it
would be almost compulsory to look upon them as superficially altered
equivalents of the Old World ram, lion, and virgin. It is conceivable
enough that similar individual symbols might independently come into
use in remote parts of the world. But it is practically impossible that
a series of symbols should be put into the same arbitrary sequence
independently. As a mere matter of mathematical probability there would
be no more than an infinitesimal chance of such a complex coincidence.
If therefore the sequential identity of the American series and the Old
World zodiac should ever be proved,[14] it would be necessary to believe
that this culture element was somehow carried into the Middle American
regions from Asia, either across northern America or across the Pacific.
Identity of sequence failing, there might still remain an instance
of partial convergence. It is within the range of possibility that
the Mayas, who were painstaking astronomers and calculators, and who
like ourselves named the stars and constellations after animals,
arranged a series of these as a mnemonic or figurative aid in their
calendrical reckoning. This, however, would be a case of only incomplete
parallelism. The general concept would in that event have been developed
independently, its specific working out remaining distinctive.
On accurate analysis of culture phenomena, this sort of result proves to
be fairly frequent. When independent developments have occurred, there is
a basic or psychological similarity, but concrete details are markedly
different. On the other hand if a differentiation from a common source
has taken place, so that true historical connection exists, some specific
identity of detail almost always remains as evidence. It therefore
follows that if only it is possible to get the facts fully enough, there
is no theoretical reason why ultimately all cultural phenomena that are
still hovering doubtfully between the parallelistic and the diffusionary
interpretations should not be positively explainable one way or the
other. This of course is not an assertion that such proof has been
brought. In fact there are far more traits of civilization whose history
remains to be elucidated than have yet been solved. But the attainments
already achieved, and an understanding of the principles by which they
have been made, encourage hope for an indefinite increase of knowledge
regarding the origin and growth of the whole of human culture.
96. MEASURES
Another increment of civilization due to the Babylonians is a series of
metric standardizations. These include the division of the circle into
three hundred and sixty degrees, of the day into twenty-four (originally
twelve) hours, of the hour into sixty minutes, of the foot into twelve
inches, and the pound—as it survives in our troy weight—into twelve
ounces. It is apparent that the system involved in these measures is
based on the number twelve and its multiple sixty. The weights current
in the ancient Near East also increased by sixties. On these weights
were based the ancient money values. The Greek mina, Hebrew maneh,
approximately a pound, comprised sixty shekels (or a hundred Athenian
drachmas), and sixty minas made a talent. A talent of silver and one of
gold possessed different values, but the weight was the same. This system
the Greeks derived from Asia Minor and Phœnicia. Their borrowing of the
names, as well as the close correspondence of the actual weight of the
units, evidences their origin in Babylonia or adjacent Aramæa.
The duodecimal method of reckoning was carried west, became deeply
ingrained during the Roman Empire, and has carried down through the
Middle Ages to modern times. It would be going too far to say that every
division of units of measure into twelve parts can be traced directly
to Babylonia. Now and then new standards were arbitrarily fixed and new
names given them. But even when this occurred, the old habit of reckoning
by twelves for which the Babylonians were responsible, was likely to
reassert itself in competition with the decimal system. Modern coinage
systems have become prevailingly decimal, but it is only a short time
ago that in south Germany 60 kreuzer still made a gulden; and the twelve
pence of the English shilling obviously suggest themselves.
Certain of these metric units became fixed more than two thousand years
ago and have descended to us by an unbroken tradition. The Babylonian
degrees, minutes, and seconds, for instance, became an integral part
of the ancient astronomy, were taken up by the Greeks, incorporated
by them in their development of the system of astronomy known as the
Ptolemaic, and thus became a part of Roman, Arab, and mediæval European
science. When a few centuries ago, beginning with the introduction of
the Copernican point of view, astronomy launched forward into a new
period of progress, the old system of reckoning was so deeply rooted
that it was continued without protest. Had the first truly scientific
beginnings of astronomy taken place as late as those of chemistry, it is
extremely doubtful whether we should now be reckoning 360 degrees in the
circumference of the circle. The decimal system would almost certainly
have been applied.
The last few examples may give the impression that cultural diffusion
takes place largely in regard to names and numbers. They may arouse the
suspicion that the intrinsic elements of inventions and accomplishments
are less readily spread. This is not the case. In fact it has happened
time and again in the history of civilization that the substance of
an art or a knowledge has passed from one people to another, while an
entirely new designation for the acquisition has been coined by the
receiving people. The English names of the seven days of the week (§ 125)
are a case in point. If stress seems to have been laid here on names and
numbers, it is not because they are more inclined to diffusion, or most
important, but because their diffusion is more easily traced. They often
provide an infallible index of historical connection when a deficiency of
historical records would make it difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove
that the common possession of the thing itself went back to a single
source. If historical records are silent, as they are only too often, on
the origin of a device among a people, the occurrence of the same device
at an earlier time among another people may strongly suggest that it was
transmitted from these. But the indication is far from constituting a
proof because of the theoretical possibility that the later nation might
have made the invention independently. It is chiefly when the device is
complex and the relation of its parts identical that the probability of
diffusion approaches surety. If however not only the thing but its name
also are shared by distinct nations, doubt is removed. It is obvious
that peoples speaking unrelated languages will not coincide one time in
a thousand in using the same name for the same idea independently of
each other. The play of accident is thus precluded in such cases and a
connection by transmission is established. In fact the name is the better
touchstone. An invention may be borrowed and be given a home-made name.
But a foreign name would scarcely be adopted without the object being
also accepted.
97. DIVINATION
One other Babylonian invention may be cited on account of its curious
history. This is the pseudo-science of predicting the outcome of
events by examination of the liver of animals sacrificed to the gods.
A system of such divination, known as hepatoscopy, was worked out by
the Babylonian priests perhaps by 2,000 B.C. Their rules are known from
the discovery of ancient clay models of the liver with its several
lobes, each part being inscribed with its significance according as
it might bear such and such appearance. In some way which is not yet
wholly understood, this system was carried, like the true arch, from the
Babylonians to the Etruscans. As there are definite ancient traditions
which brought the Etruscans into Italy from Asia, the gap is however
lessened. The Etruscans, who were evidently addicted to priestly
magic, carried on this liver divination alongside another method,
that of haruspicy or foretelling from the flight or actions of birds.
Both systems were learned from them by the Romans, according to Roman
tradition itself.
With the spread of Christianity, hepatoscopy and haruspicy died out in
the west. But meanwhile they had been carried in the opposite direction
from their Babylonian source of origin, and became established in eastern
Asia and finally, in somewhat modified form, among remote uncivilized
peoples. The pagan priests of Borneo and the Philippines even to-day are
foretelling the future by observing the flight of birds and examining
the gall bladder—an organ intimately associated with the liver—of
sacrificial animals. If these primitive Malaysian peoples had always
remained uninfluenced by higher cultures, their divinatory customs might
be imputed to independent invention. They live, however, at no great
distance from the Asiatic mainland, and are known to have been subjected
to heavy cultural influences from China, Arabia, and especially India.
Four centuries ago, to cite only a few specific instances, the Philippine
chieftains went under the title of rajah, the Hindu word for king. In
the southern Philippine islands there are “sultans” to-day. In all parts
of the Philippines as well as Borneo, even among the rude tribes of the
interior mountains, Chinese jars imported centuries ago are treasured as
precious heirlooms. With these streams of higher culture flowing into the
Malaysian islands, the only reasonable conclusion is that the arts of
liver and bird divination were also imported. In fact, it seems probable
that the broader custom of sacrificing animals to the gods and spirits, a
custom to which the pagan Malaysians still adhere, is a part of the same
wave of influence from the Orient which has so deeply stamped the Homeric
poems and the Old Testament. Although theoretically it is not surprising
that hepatoscopy and haruspicy still flourish among some backward and
marginally situated peoples, yet, in the concrete and at first blush, it
is striking to find that an institution which was active in Babylonia
three or four thousand years ago should still maintain an unbroken life
in Borneo. Evidently the diffusion principle reaches far and long.
Another method of foretelling, which has spread equally far, although its
flow has been mainly from the east westward, is scapulimancy, divination
from the cracks that develop in scorched shoulder blades. This seems to
have originated in ancient China with the heating of tortoise shells; had
spread by the third century after Christ to Japan, where deer shoulder
blades were employed; and is found to-day among the Koryak and Chukchi
of northeasternmost Siberia, who utilize the same bones from seals and
reindeer respectively. Elsewhere domestic animals, above all the sheep,
furnish the proper shoulder blade. All the central Asiatic nations as far
south as the Tibetans and Lolos are addicted to the custom, which had
official status with the Mongol rulers in the thirteenth century, but
must have been older, since it was in vogue among the Byzantine Greeks
two hundred years earlier. The practice spread over practically all
Europe, where it flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and
still lingers among belated rural populations; to Morocco and perhaps
other parts of north Africa; and in Asia to South Arabia, Afghanistan,
and westernmost India. Scapulimancy was not known to the ancient
Babylonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans; it seems
not to have penetrated far into India and not at all into the countries
and islands to the east of India, which are sheepless regions; and it
did not obtain a foothold in North America, where sheep and other tame
animals were also not kept. It appears therefore that the custom, after
a period of somewhat wavering formation in eastern Asia, crystallized
into an association with the domesticated sheep, forming a true culture
“complex,” and was then diffused almost as far as this animal.
98. _Tobacco_
The speed with which inventions sometimes diffuse over large areas is
in marked contrast to the slowness with which they travel on other
occasions. The art or habit of smoking originated in tropical America
where the tobacco plant is indigenous. From this middle region the custom
spread, like agriculture, pottery, and weaving, in both directions over
most of north and south America. Originally, it would seem, a tobacco
leaf was either rolled on itself to form a rude cigar, or was stuffed,
cigarette fashion, into a reed or piece of cane. Columbus found the
West Indians puffing at cigars. In the Southwestern United States, the
natives smoked from hollow reeds. Farther into the United States, both
to the east and west, the reed had become a manufactured tube of wood or
stone or pottery. This tubular pipe, something like a magnified cigarette
holder, has the bowl enlarged at one end to receive the tobacco. It has
to be held more or less vertically. This form has survived to the present
day among the California Indians. As the tubular pipe spread into the
central and eastern United States, it was elaborated. The bowl was made
to rise from the top of the pipe, instead of merely forming its end.
This proved a convenience, for the pipe had now no longer to be pointed
skyward to be smoked. Here then was a pipe with a definite bowl; but
its derivation from the straight tubular pipe is shown by the fact that
the bowl was most frequently set not at the end of the stem, as we
“automatically” think a pipe should be, but near its middle. The bowl
evidently represented a secondary addition which there seemed no more
reason to place at the end than in the middle of the pipe; and the latter
happened to become the fashion.
All this evolution took place at least a thousand years ago, probably
much longer. Elaborate stone pipes have been discovered in the earthworks
left by the Mound Builders of the Ohio Valley, a people whose very
existence had been forgotten when the whites first came. Californian
stone pipes occur well down toward the bottom of shell mounds estimated
to have required three or four thousand years to accumulate.
Here and there this slow diffusion suffered checks. In the Andean region
of South America tobacco came into competition with coca, a plant whose
leaf was chewed. The effect of the contained alkaloid is to prevent
fatigue and hunger. Of the two, coca triumphed over tobacco, possibly
because its action is more drug-like. In North America, on the other
hand, tribes that had not adopted maize and bean agriculture, sometimes
tilled tobacco patches. With them, tobacco cultivation had outstripped
the spread of so important an institution as food agriculture. In the
extreme parts of North America, climatic factors checked the growth of
tobacco, either wild or cultivated. Where the supply was scarce, it
was either diluted with pulverized tree bark, as by many tribes of the
central United States, or it was eaten, as by a number of groups on the
Pacific coast. To these latter, tobacco seemed too precious to set fire
to and lightly puff away. They mixed it with lime from burnt shells and
swallowed it. Taken in this form, a small quantity produces a powerful
effect. In the farthest north of the continent, even this device had not
obtained a foothold. The development of intertribal trade was too slender
and intermittent for anything but valuables, let alone an article of
daily consumption, to be transported over long distances. The result was
that the Eskimo, when first discovered, knew nothing of tobacco or pipes.
The use of tobacco was quickly carried to the Old World by the Spaniards,
and before long all Europe was smoking. Throughout that continent,
irrespective of language, the plant is known by modifications of the
Spanish name _tabaco_, which in turn seems based on a native American
name for cigar. By the Spaniards and Portuguese, and later also by the
Arabs, the habit of smoking was carried to various points on the shores
of Africa, Asia, and the East Indies. Thence it spread inland. Native
African tribes, and others in New Guinea, who had never seen a white
man, have been found not only growing and smoking tobacco, but firmly
believing that their ancestors from time immemorial had done so. This is
a characteristic illustration of the short-livedness of group memory and
the unreliability of oral tradition.
In northeastern Siberia, where the Russians introduced tobacco, a special
form of pipe came into use. It has a narrow bowl flaring at the top.
Seen from above, this bowl looks like a disk with a rather small hole in
the center. In profile it is almost like a capital T. It is set on the
end of the pipe-stem. This stem may be straight or flattened and curved.
This form of pipe, along with tobacco as a trade article, crossed Behring
Strait and was taken up by the Alaska Eskimo. That this pipe is not of
Eskimo origin is shown by its close resemblance to the Chukchi pipe of
Siberia. The fact that it is impossible for the Eskimo to grow tobacco
corroborates the late introduction, as does the Alaska Eskimo name:
tawak. In short, smoking reached the Eskimo only after having made the
round of the globe. Originating in Middle America, the custom spread very
anciently to its farthest native limits without being able to penetrate
to the Eskimo. As soon as the Spaniards appeared on the scene, the custom
started on a fresh career of travel and rolled rapidly eastward about the
globe until it reëntered America in the hitherto non-smoking region of
Alaska.
A second invasion of America by a non-American form of pipe occurred
in the eastern United States. The old pipe of this region, as already
stated, had its bowl set well back from the end of the stem. The whole
object thus had nearly the shape of an inverted capital T, whereas the
European pipe might be compared to an L laid on its back. After the
English settlers had become established on the Atlantic coast, a tomahawk
pipe was introduced by them for trade purposes. This was a metal hatchet
with the butt of the blade hollowed out into a bowl which connected
with a bore running through the handle. One end of the blade served to
chop, the other to smoke. The hatchet handle was also the pipe stem. The
combination implement could be used as a weapon in war and as a symbol of
peace in council. This doubleness of purpose caused it to appeal to the
Indian. The heads of these iron tomahawk pipes were made in England for
the Indian trade. They became so popular that those natives who were out
of reach of established traders, or who were too poor to buy the metal
hatchet-pipes, began to imitate them in the stone which their forefathers
had used. In the Missouri valley, a generation ago, among tribes like the
Sioux and the Blackfeet, imitation tomahawk pipes, which would never have
withstood usage as hatchets, were being made of red catlinite together
with the standard, native, inverted-T pipes. One of the two coexisting
forms represented a form indigenous to the region since a thousand years
or more, the other an innovation developed in Europe as the result of
the discovery of America and then reintroduced among the aborigines.
Diffusion sometimes follows unexpectedly winding routes.
99. MIGRATIONS
It may seem strange that with all the reference to diffusion in the
foregoing pages, there has been so little mention of migration. The
reason is that migrations of peoples are a special and not the normal
means of culture spread. They form the crass instances of the process,
easily conceived by a simple mind. That a custom travels as a people
travels with it, is something that a child can understand. The danger is
in stopping thought there and invoking a national migration for every
important culture diffusion, whereas it is plain that most culture
changes have occurred through subtler and more gradual operations. The
Mongols overran vast areas of Asia and Europe without seriously modifying
the civilization of those tracts. The accretions that most influenced
them, such as writing and Buddhism, came to them by the quieter and more
pervasive process of peaceful penetration, in which but few individuals
were active. We are all aware that printing and the steam engine, the
doctrine of evolution and the habit of riming verses, have spread through
western civilization without conquests or migrations, and that each
year’s fashions flow out from Paris in the same way. When however it is
a question of something remote, like the origin of Chinese civilization,
it is only necessary for it to be pointed out that the early forms
of Chinese culture bear certain resemblances to the early culture of
Mesopotamia, and we are sure to have some one producing a theory that
marches the Chinese out of the west with their culture packed away in
little bundles on their backs. That is far more picturesque, of course,
more appealing to the emotions, than to conceive of a slow, gradual
transfusion stretching over a thousand years. In proportion as the known
facts are few, imagination soars unchecked. It is not because migrations
of large bodies of men are rare or wholly negligible in their influence
on civilization that they have been touched so lightly here, but because
we all tend, through the romantic and sensationalistic streak in us, to
think more largely in terms of them than the sober truth warrants. It is
in culture-history as in geology: the occasional eruptions, quakings,
and other cataclysms stir the mind, but the work of change is mainly
accomplished by quieter processes, going on unceasingly, and often almost
imperceptible until their results accumulate.