| Culture art. Primitive culture. CHAPTER II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE - 2 |
Page 2 of 2 Instances of civilized men taking to a wild life in out- lying districts of the world, and ceasing to obtain or want the appliances of civilization, give more distinct evidence of degradation. In connexion with this state of things takes place the nearest known approach to an independent dege- neration from a civilized to a savage state. This happens in mixed races, whose standard of civilization may be more or less below that of the higher race. The mutineers of the 1 Buchanan, ' Rerum Scoticarum Historia ; ' Edinburgh, 1528, p. 7. See 1 Early History of Mankind,' 2nd ed. p. 272. 8 Martin, ' Description of Western Islands,' in Pinkerton, vol. Hi. p. 639. 46 ' THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. Bounty, with their Polynesian wives, founded a small but not savage community on Pitcairn's Island. 1 The mixed Portuguese and native races of the East Indies and Africa lead a life below the European standard, but not a savage life.* The Gauchos of the South American Pampas, a mixed European and Indian race of equestrian herdsmen, are described as sitting about on ox-skulls, making broth in horns with hot cinders heaped round, living on meat with- out vegetables, and altogether leading a foul, brutal, comfortless, degenerate, but not savage life. 3 One step beyond this brings us to the cases of individual civilized men being absorbed in savage tribes and adopting the savage life, on which they exercise little influence for im- provement ; the children of these men may come distinctly under the category of savages. These cases of mixed breeds, however, do not show a low culture actually produced as the result of degeneration from a high one. Their theory is that, given a higher and a lower civilization existing among two races, a mixed race between the two may take to the lower or an intermediate condition. Degeneration probably operates even more actively in the lower than in the higher culture. Barbarous nations and savage hordes, with their less knowledge and scantier appliances, would seem peculiarly exposed to degrading influences. In Africa, for instance, there seems to have been in modern centuries a falling off in culture, probably due in a considerable degree to foreign influence. Mr. J. L. Wilson, contrasting the i6th and I7th century ac- counts of powerful negro kingdoms in West Africa with the present small communities, with little or no tradition of their forefathers' more extended political organization, looks especially to the slave-trade as the deteriorating cause. 4 1 Barrow, ' Mutiny of the Bounty ' ; W. Brodie, ' Pitcairn's Island.' 2 Wallace, ' Malay Archipelago,' vol. i. pp. 42, 471 ; vol. ii. pp. u, 43, 48 ; Latham, ' Descr. Eth.,' vol. ii. pp. 492-5 ; D. and C. Livingstone, ' Exp. to Zambesi,' p. 45. Southey, ' History of Brazil,' vol. iii. p. 422. 4 J.L.Wilson, 'W. Afr.,'p. 189. REMAINS OF PAST CIVILIZATION. 47 In South-East Africa, also, a comparatively high barbaric , culture, which we especially associate with the old descrip- tions of the kingdom of Monomotapa, seems to have fallen away, not counting the remarkable ruins of buildings of hewn stone fitted without mortar which indicate the intrusion of more civilized foreigners into the gold region ! l In North America, Father Charlevoix remarks of the Iroquois of the last century, that in old times they used to build their cabins better than other nations, and better than they do them- selves now ; they carved rude figures in relief on them ; but since in various expeditions almost all their villages have been burnt, they have not taken the trouble to restore them in their old condition. 8 The degradation of the Cheyenne Indians is matter of history. Persecuted by their enemies the Sioux, and dislodged at last even from their fortified village, the heart of the tribe was broken. Their numbers were thinned, they no longer dared to establish themselves in a permanent abode, they gave up the cultivation of the soil, and became a tribe of wandering hunters, with horses for their only valuable possession, which every year they bartered for a supply of corn, beans, pumpkins, and European merchandise, and then returned into the heart of the prairies. 8 When in the Rocky Mountains, Lord Milton and Dr. Cheadle came upon an outlying fragment of the Shushwap race, without horses or dogs, sheltering themselves under rude temporary slants of bark or matting, falling year by year into lower misery, and rapidly dying out ; this is another example of the degeneration which no doubt has lowered or destroyed many a savage people. 4 There are tribes who are the very outcasts of savage life. There is reason to look upon the miserable Digger Indians of North America and the Bushmen of South Africa as 1 Waitz, ' Anthropologie,' vol. ii. p. 359, see 91 ; Du Chaillu, ' Ashango- land,' p. 116 ; T. H. Bent, ' Ruined Cities of Mashonaland.' 8 Charlevoix, ' Nouvelle France,' vol. vi. p. 51. 8 Irving, ' Astoria,' vol. ii. ch. v. 4 Milton and Cheadle, ' North West Passage by Land,' p. 241 ; Waitr, vol. iii. pp. 74-6. 48 THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. the persecuted remnants of tribes who have seen happier days. 1 The traditions of the lower races of their ances- tors' better life may sometimes be real recollections of a not far distant past. The Algonquin Indians look back to old days as to a golden age when life was better than now, when they had better laws and leaders, and manners less rude. 8 And indeed, knowing what we do of their history, we may admit that they have cause to remember in misery happiness gone by. Well, too, might the rude Kamchadal declare that the world is growing worse and worse, that men are becoming fewer and viler, and food scarcer, for the hunter, and the bear, and the reindeer are hurrying away from here to the happier life in the regions below. 8 It would be a valuable contribution to the study of civilization to have the action of decline and fall inves- tigated on a wider and more exact basis of evidence than has yet been attempted. The cases here stated are prob- ably but part of a long series which might be brought forward to prove degeneration in culture to have been, by no means indeed the primary cause of the existence of barbarism and savagery in 'the world, but a secondary action largely and deeply affecting the general develop- ment of civilization. It may perhaps give no unfair idea to compare degeneration of culture, both in its kind of operation and in its immense extent, to denudation in the geological history of the earth. In judging of the relations between savage and civilized life, something may be learnt by glancing over the divisions of the human race. For this end the classification by families of languages may be conveniently used, if checked by the evidence of bodily characteristics. No doubt speech by itself is an insufficient guide in tracing national descent, as witness the extreme cases of Jews in England, and three- parts negro races in the West Indies, nevertheless speaking 1 ' Early History of Mankind,' p. 187. 2 Schoolcraft, ' Algic Res.,' vol. i. p. 50. 8 Steller, ' Kamtschatka,' p. 272. LANGUAGE AND CIVILIZATION. 49 English as their mother-tongue. Still, under ordinary cir- cumstances, connexion of speech does indicate more or less connexion of ancestral race. As a guide in tracing the history of civilization, language gives still better evidence, for common language to a great extent involves common culture. The race dominant enough to maintain or impose its language, usually more or less maintains or imposes its civilization also. Thus the common descent of the lan- guages of Hindus, Greeks, and Teutons is no doubt due in great measure to common ancestry, but is still more closely bound up with a common social and intellectual history, with what Professor Max Muller well calls their ' spiritual relationship.' The wonderful permanence of language often enables us to detect among remotely ancient and distant tribes the traces of connected civilization. How, on such grounds, do savage and civilized tribes appear to stand related, within the various groups of mankind connected historically by the possession of kindred languages ? The Semitic family, which represents one of the oldest known civilizations of the world, includes Arabs, Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians, &c., and has an earlier as well as a later connexion in North Africa. This family takes in some rude tribes, but none which would be classed as savages. The Aryan family has existed in Asia and Europe certainly for many thousand years, and there are well-known and well-marked traces of its early barbaric condition,whichhas perhaps survived with least change among secluded tribes in the valleys of the Hindu Rush and Himalaya. There seems, again, no known case of any full Aryan tribe having become savage. The Gypsies and other outcasts are, no doubt, partly Aryan in blood, but their degraded condition is not savagery. In India there are tribes Aryan by language, but whose physique is rather of indigenous type, and whose ancestry is mainly from indigenous stocks with more or less mixture of the dominant Hindu. Some tribes coming under this category, as among the Bhils and Kulis of the 50 THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. Bombay Presidency, speak dialects which are Hindi in vocabulary at least , whether or not in grammatical structure, and yet the people themselves are lower in culture than some Hinduized nations who have retained their original Dravidian speech, the Tamils for instance. But these all appear to stand at higher stages of civilization than any wild forest tribes of the peninsula who can be reckoned as nearly savages ; all such are non-Aryan both in blood and speech. 1 In Ceylon, however, we have the remarkable phenomenon of men leading a savage life while speaking an Aryan dialect. This is the wild part of the race of Veddas or 'hunters/ of whom a remnant still inhabit the forest land. These people are dark-skinned arid flat-nosed, slight of frame, and very small of skull, and five feet is an average man's height. They are a shy, harmless, simple people, living principally by hunting ; they lime birds, take fish by poisoning the water, and are skilful in getting wild honey ; they have bows with iron-pointed arrows, which, with their hunting-dogs, are their most valuable possessions.! They dwell in caves or bark huts, and their very word for a house is Singhalese for a hollow tree (rukula) ; a patch ofj bark was formerly their dress, but now a bit of linen hangs to: their waist-cords ; their planting of patches of ground is said 1 to be recent. They count on their fingers, and produce fire with the simplest kind of fire-drill twirled by hand. They are most truthful and honest. Their monogamy and conju-j gal fidelity contrast strongly with the opposite habits of the' more civilized Singhalese. A remarkable Vedda marriage custom sanctioned a man's taking his younger (not elder sister as his wife; sister-marriage existing among the Singha lese, but being confined to the royal family. Mistaker statements have been made as to the Veddas having nc religion, no personal names, no language. Their religion in fact, corresponds with the animism of the ruder tribes o India ; some of their names are remarkable as being Hindu 1 See G. Campbell, ' Ethnology of India,' in Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, 1866 part ii. LANGUAGE AND CIVILIZATION. 51 but not in use among the modern Singhalese ; their language is a Singhalese dialect. There is no doubt attaching to the Eial opinion that the Veddas are in the main descended m the ' yakkos ' or demons ; i.e. from the indigenous DCS of the island. Legend and language concur to make probable an admixture of Aryan blood accompanying the adoption of Aryan speech, but the evidence of bodily characteristics shows the Vedda race to be principally of indigenous pre- Aryan type. 1 The Tatar family of Northern Asia and Europe (Turanian, if the word be used in a restricted sense) displays evidence of quite a different kind. This wide-lying group of tribes and nations has members nearly or quite touching the savage level in ancient and even modern times, such as Ostyaks, Tunguz, Samoyeds, Lapps, while more or less high ranges of culture are represented by Mongols, Turks, and Hungarians] Here, however, it is unquestionable that the rude tribes represent the earlier condition of the Tatar race at large, from which its more mixed and civilized peoples, mostly by adopting the foreign culture of Buddhist, Moslem, and Christian nations, and partly by internal development, are well known to have risen. The ethnology of South-Eastern Asia is somewhat obscure ; but if we may classify under one heading the native races of Siam, Burma, &c., the wilder tribes may be considered as representing earlier conditions, for the higher culture of this region is obviously foreign, especially of Buddhist origin. The Malay race is also remarkable for the range of civilization repre- sented by tribes classed as belonging to it. If the wild tribes of the Malayan peninsula and Borneo be compared with the semi-civilized nations of Java and Sumatra, it appears that part of the race survives to represent an early 1 J. Bailey, ' Veddahs,' in Tr. Eth. Soc., vol. ii. p. 278 ; see vol. iii. p. 70 ; Knox, ' Historical Relation of Ceylon,' London, 1681, part iii. chap. i. See A. Thomson, * Osteology of the Veddas,' in Journ. Anthrop. Inst. 1889, vol. xix. p. 125 ; L. de Zoysa, ' Origin of Veddas,' in Journ. Ceylon Branch Royal Asiatic Soc., vol. vii. ; B. F. Hartshorne in Fortnightly Rev., Mar. 1876. [Note to 3rd edition.] 52 ' THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. savage state, while part is found in possession of a civiliza- tion which the first glance shows to have been mostly borrowed from Hindu and Moslem sources. Some forest tribes of the peninsula seem to be representatives of the Malay race at its lowest level of culture, how far original and how far degraded it is not easy to say. Among them the very rude Orang Sabimba, who have no agriculture and no boats, give a remarkable account of themselves, that they are descendants of shipwrecked Malays from the Bugis country, but were so harassed by pirates that they gave up civilization and cultivation, and vowed not to eat fowls, which betrayed them by their crowing. So they plant nothing, but eat wild fruit and vegetables, and all animals but the fowl. This, if at all founded on fact, is an interesting case of degeneration. But savages usually invent myths to account for peculiar hatiits, as where, in the same district, the Biduanda Kallang account for their not cultivating the ground by the story that their ancestors vowed not to make plantations. Another rude people of the Malay peninsula are the Jakuns, a simple, kindly race, among whom some trace their pedigree to a pair of white monkeys, while others declare that they are descendants of white men ; and indeed there is some ground for supposing these latter to be really of mixed race, for they use a few Portuguese words, and a re- port exists of some refugees having settled up the country. 1 The Melanesians, Papuans, and Australians represent grades of savagery spread each over its own vast area in a com- paratively homogeneous way. Lastly, the relations of savagery to higher conditions are remarkable, but obscure, on the American continents. There are several great linguistic families whose members were discovered in a savage state throughout ; such are the Esquimaux, Algon- quin, and Guarani groups. On the other hand there were three apparently unconnected districts of semi-civilization reaching a high barbaric level, viz., in Mexico and Central America, Bogota, and Peru. Between these higher and 1 Journ, Ind. Archip., vol. i. pp. 295-9 ; vol. ii. p. 237. PROPAGATION OF CIVILIZATION. 53 r conditions were races at the level of the Natchez of Louisiana and the Apalaches of Florida. Linguistic con- nexion is not unknown between the more advanced peoples and the lower races around them. 1 But definite evidence showing the higher culture to have arisen from the lower, or the lower to have fallen from the higher, is scarcely forth- coming. Both operations may in degree have happened. It is apparent, from such general inspection of this ethno- logical problem, that it would repay a far closer, study than it has as yet received. As the evidence stands at present, it appears that when in any race some branches much excel the rest in culture, this more often happens by elevation than by subsidence. But this elevation is much more apt to be produced by foreign than by native action. Civilization is a plant much oftener propagated than developed. As regards the lower races, this accords with the results of European intercourse with savage tribes during the last three or four centuries ; so far as these tribes have survived the process, they have assimilated more or less of European Culture and risen towards the Euro- pean level, as in Polynesia, South Africa, South America. Another important point becomes manifest from this ethnological survey. The fact, that during so many thou- sand years of known existence, neither the Aryan nor the Semitic race appears to have thrown off any direct savage offshoot, tells, with some force, against the probability of degradation to the savage level ever happening from high-level civilization. With regard to the opinions of older writers on early civilization, whether progressionists or degenerationists, it must be borne in mind that the evidence at their disposal 1 For the connexion between the Aztec language and the Sonoran family extending N. W. toward the sources of the Missouri, see Busch- mann, ' Spuren der Aztekischen Sprache im Nordlichen Mexico,' &c., in Abh. der Akad. der Wissensch, 1854 ; Berlin, 1859 5 a ' so Tr - Etn - Soc., vol. ii. p. 130. For the connexion between the Natchez and Maya languages see Daniel G. Brinton, in 'American Historical Magazine,' 1867, vol. i. p. 1 6 ; and ' Myths of the New World,' p. 28. i. E 54 THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. fell far short of even the miserably imperfect data now accessible. Criticizing an i8th century ethnologist is like criticizing an i8th century geologist. The older writer may have been far abler than his modern critic, but he had not the same materials. Especially he wanted the guidance of Prehistoric Archaeology, a department of research only established on a scientific footing within the last few years. It is essential to gain a clear view of the bearing of this newer knowledge on the old problem. Chronology, though regarding as more or less fictitious the immense dynastic schemes of the Egyptians, Hindus, and Chinese, passing as they do into mere ciphering-book sums with years for units, nevertheless admits that existing monuments carry back the traces of comparatively high civilization to a distance of above five thousand years. By piecing together Eastern and Western documentary evidence it seems that the great religious divisions of the Aryan race, to which modern Brahmanism,Zarathustrism, andBuddhism are due, belong to a period of remotely ancient history. Even if we cannot hold, with Professor Max Miiller, in the preface to his translation of the ' Rig Veda/ that this collection of Aryan hymns ' will take and maintain for ever its position as the most ancient of books in the library of mankind,' and if we do not admit the stringency of his reckonings of its date in centuries B.C., yet we must grant that he shows cause to refer its composition to a very ancient period, where it then proves that a comparatively high barbaric culture already existed. The linguistic argu- ment for the remotely ancient common origin of the Indo- European nations, in a degree as to their bodily descent, and in a greater degree as to their civilization, tends toward the same result. So it is again with Egypt. The calcula- tions of Egyptian dynasties in thousands of years, how- ever disputable in detail, are based on facts which at any rate authorize the reception of a long chronology. To go no further than the identification of two or three Egyptian names mentioned in Biblical and Classical LIMITS OF CHRONOLOGY. 55 history, we gain a strong impression of remote antiquity. Such are the names of Shishank ; of the Psammitichos line, whose obelisks are to be seen in Rome ; of Tirhakah, King of Ethiopia, whose nurse's coffin is in the Florence Museum ; of the city of Rameses, plainly connected with that great Ramesside line which Egyptologists call the iQth Dynasty. Here, before classic culture had arisen, the culture of Egypt culminated, and behind this time lies the somewhat less advanced age of the Pyramid kings, and behind this again the indefinite lapse of ages which such a civilization required for its production. Again, though no part of the Old Tes- tament cart satisfactorily prove for itself an antiquity of composition approaching that of the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions, yet all critics must admit that the older of the historical books give on the one hand contem- porary documents showing considerable culture in the Semitic world at a date which in comparison with classic history is ancient ; while on the other hand they afford evidence -by way of chronicle, carrying back ages farther the record of a somewhat advanced barbaric civilization. Now if the development-theory is to account for phenomena such as these, its chronological demand must be no small one, and the more so when it is admitted that in the lower ranges of culture progress would be extremely slow in comparison with that which experience shows among nations already far advanced. On these conditions of the first appearance of the middle civilization being thrown back to distant antiquity, and of slow development being required to perform its heavy task in ages still more remote, Prehistoric Archaeology cheerfully takes up the problem. And, indeed, far from being dismayed by the vastness of the period required on the narrowest computation, the prehistoric archaeologist shows even too much disposition to revel in calculations of thousands of years, as a financier does in reckonings of thousands of pounds, in a liberal and maybe somewhat reckless way. Prehistoric Archaeology is fully alive to facts which may 56 THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. bear on degeneration in culture. Such are the colossal human figures of hewn stone in Easter Island, which may possibly have been shaped by the ancestors of the existing islanders, whose present resources, however, are quite un- equal to the execution of such gigantic works. 1 A much more important case is that of the former inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley. In districts where the native tribes known in modern times rank as savages, there formerly dwelt a race whom ethnologists call the Mound-Builders, from the amazing extent of their mounds and enclosures, of which there is a single group occupying an area of four square miles. The regularity of the squares and circles and the repetition of enclosures similar in dimensions, raise interesting questions as to the methods by which these were planned out. To have constructed such works the Mound-Builders must have been a numerous population, mainly subsisting by agriculture, and indeed vestiges of their ancient tillage are still to be found. They did not however in industrial arts approach the level of Mexico. For instance, their use of native copper, hammered into shape for cutting instruments, is similar to that of some of the savage tribes farther north. On the whole, judging by their earthworks, fields, pottery, stone implements and other remains, they seem to have belonged to those high savage or barbaric tribes of the Southern States, of whom the Creeks and Cherokees, as described by Bart ram, may be taken as typical. 8 If any of the wild roving hunting tribes now found living near the huge earthworks of the Mound-Builders are the descendants of this somewhat advanced race, then a very considerable degradation has taken place. The question is an open one. The explanation of the traces of tillage may perhaps in this case be lil 1 J. H. Lamprey, in Trans, of Prehistoric Congress, Norwich, 1868, p. 60 j. Linton Palmer, in Journ. Eth. Soc., vol. i. 1869. 2 Sqliier and Davis, ' Mon. of Mississippi Valley,' &c., in Smithsonis Contr., vol. i. 1848 ; Lubbock, ' Prehistoric Times,' chap. vii. ; Waitz, * Anthropologie,' vol. iii. p. 72 ; Bartram, ' Creek and Cherokee Ind.,' in Tr. Amer. Ethnol. Soc. y vol. iii. part i. See Petrie, ' Inductive Metrology/ 1877, P- !** [Note to 3rd ed.] PREHISTORIC ARCHEOLOGY. 57 that of the remains of old cultivation-terraces in Borneo, the work of Chinese colonists whose descendants have mostly been merged in the mass of the population and follow the native habits. 1 On the other hand, the evi- dence of locality may be misleading as to race. A traveller in Greenland, coming on the ruined stone buildings at Kakortok, would not argue justly that the Esquimaux are degenerate descendants of ancestors capable of such architecture, for in fact these are the remains of a church and baptistery built by the ancient Scandinavian settlers. 2 On the whole it is remarkable how little of colourable evidence of degeneration has been disclosed by archaeology. Its negative evidence tells strongly the other way. As an in- stance maybe quoted Sir John Lubbock's argument against the idea that tribes now ignorant of metallurgy and pottery formerly possessed but have since lost these arts. ' We may also assert, on a general proposition, that no weapons or instruments of metal have ever been found in any country inhabited by savages wholly ignorant of metallurgy. A still stronger case is afforded by pottery. Pottery is not easily destroyed ; when known at all it is always abundant, and it possesses two qualities, namely, those of being easy to break and yet difficult to destroy, which render it very valuable in an archaeological point of view. Moreover, it is in most cases associated with burials. It is, therefore, a very signi- ficant fact, that no fragment of pottery has ever been found in Australia, New Zealand, or in the Polynesian Islands.' 3 How different a state of things the popular degeneration- theory would lead us to expect is pointedly suggested by Sir Charles Lyell's sarcastic sentences in his ' Antiquity of Man.' Had the original stock of mankind, he argues, been really endowed with superior intellectual powers and inspired knowledge, while possessing the same improvable nature as their posterity, how extreme a point of advancement would 1 St. John, ' Life in Forests of Far East/ vol. ii. p. 327. - Rafn, ' Americas Arctiske Landes Gamle Geographic,' pi. vii., viii. 3 Lubbock (Lord Avebury), in 'Report of British Association, 1867,' p. 121. 58 ' THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. they have reached. ' Instead of the rudest pottery or flint tools, so irregular in form as to cause the unpractised eye to doubt whether they afford unmistakable evidence of design, we should now be finding sculptured forms surpass- ing in beauty the masterpieces of Phidias or Praxiteles ; lines of buried railways or electric telegraphs from which the best engineers of our day might gain invaluable hints ; astronomical instruments and microscopes of more advanced construction than any known in Europe, and other indica- tions of perfection in the arts and sciences, such as the nineteenth century has not yet witnessed. Still farther would the triumphs of inventive genius be found to have been carried, when the later deposits, now assigned to the ages of bronze and iron, were formed. Vainly should we be straining our imaginations to guess the possible uses and meaning of such relics machines, perhaps, for navigating the air or exploring the depths of the ocean, or for calcula- ting arithmetical problems beyond the wants or even the conceptions of living mathematicians.' 1 The master-key to the investigation of man's primaeval condition is held by Prehistoric Archaeology. This key is the evidence of the Stone Age, proving that men of remotely ancient ages were in the savage state. Ever since the long- delayed recognition of M. Boucher de Perthes' discoveries (1841 and onward) of the flint implements in the Drift gravels of the Somme Valley, evidence has been accumulating over a wide European area to show that the ruder Stone Age, represented by implements of the Palaeolithic or Drift type, prevailed among savage tribes of the Quaternary period, the contemporaries of the mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros, in ages for which Geology asserts an antiquity far more remote than History can avail to substantiate for the human race. Mr. John Frere had already written in 1797 respecting such flint instruments discovered at Hoxne in Suffolk. ' The situation in which these weapons were found may tempt us to refer them to a very remote period 1 Lyell, ' Antiquity of Man,' chap. xix. PALAEOLITHIC AND NEOLITHIC PERIODS. 59 indeed, even beyond that of the present world.' 1 The vast lapse of time through which the history of London has represented the history of human civilization, is to my mind one of the most suggestive facts disclosed by archaeology. There the antiquary, excavating but a few yards deep, may descend from the debris representing our modern life, to relics of the art and science of the Middle Ages, to signs of Norman, Saxon, Romano-British times, to traces of the higher Stone Age. And on his way from Temple Bar to the Great Northern Station he passes near the spot (' opposite to black Mary's near Grayes inn lane ') where a Drift implement of black flint was found with the skeleton of an elephant by Mr. Conyers, about a century and a half ago, the relics side by side of the London mammoth and the London savage. 2 In the gravel-beds of Europe, the laterite of India, and other more superficial localities, where relics of the Palaeolithic Age are found, what principally testifies to man's condition is the extreme rudeness of his stone implements, and the absence of even edge-grinding. The natural inference that this indicates a low savage state is confirmed in the caves of Central France. There a race of men, who have left indeed really artistic portraits of themselves and the reindeer and mammoths they lived among, seem, as may be judged from the remains of their weapons, implements, &c., to have led a life somewhat of Esquimaux type, but lower by the want of domesticated animals. The districts where implements of the rude primitive Drift type are found are limited in extent. It is to ages later in time and more advanced in development, that the Neolithic or Polished Stone Period belonged, when the manufacture of stone instruments was much improved, and grinding and polishing were generally intro- duced. During the long period of prevalence of this state of things, Man appears to have spread almost over the whole 1 Frere, in ' Archaeologia,' 1800. a J. Evans, in ' Archaeologia,' 1861 ; Lubbock, ' Prehistoric Times,' 2nd ed -, P- 335- 60 ' THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. habitable earth. The examination of district after district of the world has now all but established a universal rule that the Stone Age (bone or shell being the occasional substitutes for stone) underlies the Metal Age everywhere. Even the districts famed in history as seats of ancient civilization show, like other regions, their traces of a yet more archaic Stone Age. Asia Minor, Egypt, Palestine, India, China, furnish evidence from actual specimens, historical mentions, and survivals, which demonstrate the former prevalence of conditions of society which have their analogues among modern savage tribes. 1 The Duke of Argyll, in his ' Primeval Man/ while admitting the Drift implements as having been the ice hatchets and rude knives of low tribes of men inhabiting Europe toward the end of the Glacial Period, concludes thence ' that it would be about as safe to argue from these implements as to the condi- tion of Man at that time in the countries of his Primeval Home, as it would be in our own day to argue from the habits and arts of the Eskimo as to the state of civilization in London or in Paris.' 2 The progress of Archaeology for years past, however, has been continually cutting away the ground on which such an argument as this can stand, till now it is all but utterly driven off the field. Where now is the district of the earth that can be pointed to as the ' Primeval Home ' of Man, and that does not show by rude stone implements buried in its soil the savage condition of its former inhabitants ? There is scarcely a known province of the world of which we cannot say certainly, savages once dwelt here, and if in such a case an ethno- logist asserts that these savages were the descendants or successors of a civilized nation, the burden of proof lies on him. Again, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age belong in great measure to history, but their relation to the Stone Age proves the soundness of the judgement of Lucretius, when, attaching experience of the present to memory and 1 See ' Early History of Mankind/ 2nd ed. chap. viii. 2 Argyll, ' Primeval Man,' p. 129. STONE, BRONZE, AND IRON AGES. 6l inference from the past, he propounded what is now a tenet of archaeology, the succession of the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages: ' Arma antiqua manus ungues dentesque fuerunt, Et lapides et item silvarum fragmina rami Posterius ferri vis est aerisque reperta, Et prior aeris erat quam ferri cognitus usus.' l roughout the various topics of Prehistoric Archaeology, the force and convergence of its testimony upon the develop- ment of culture are overpowering. The relics discovered in gravel-beds, caves, shell-mounds, terramares, lake-dwellings, earthworks, the results of an exploration of the superficial soil in many countries, the comparison of geological evi- dence, of historical documents, of 'modern savage life, corroborate and explain one another. The megalithic structures, menhirs, cromlechs, dolmens, and the like, only known to England, France, Algeria, as the work of races of the mysterious past, have been kept up as matters of modern construction and recognized purpose among the ruder indi- genous tribes of India. The series of ancient lake-settle- ments which must represent so many centuries of successive population fringing the shores of the Swiss lakes, have their surviving representatives among the rude tribes of the East Indies, Africa, and South America. Outlying savages are still heaping up shell-mounds like those of far-past Scandi- navian antiquity. The burial mounds still to be seen in civilized countries have served at once as museums of early culture and as proofs of its savage or barbaric type. It is enough, without entering farther here into subjects fully discussed in modern special works, to claim the general support given to the development-theory of culture by Pre- historic Archaeology. It was with a true appreciation of the bearings of this science that one of its founders, the venerable Professor Sven Nilsson, declared in 1843 in the 1 Lucret. De Rerum Natura, v. 1281. 62 THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. Introduction to his ' Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia/ that we are ' unable properly to understand the significance of the antiquities of any individual country without at the same time clearly realizing the idea that they are the frag- ments of a progressive series of civilization, and that the human race has always been, and still is, steadily advancing in civilization.' 1 Enquiry into the origin and early development of the material arts, as judged of by comparing the various stages at which they are found existing, leads to a corresponding result. Not to take this argument up in its fulJ range, a few typical details may serve to show its general character. Amongst the various stages of the arts, it is only a minority which show of themselves by mere inspection whether they are in the line of progress or of decline. Most such facts may be compared to an Indian's canoe, stem and stern alike, so that one cannot tell by looking at it which way it is set to go. But there are some which, like our own boats, distinctly point in the direction of their actual course. Such facts are pointers in the study of civilization, and in every branch of the enquiry should be sought out. A good example of these pointer-facts is recorded by Mr. Wallace. In Celebes, where the bamboo houses are apt to lean with the prevalent west wind, the natives have found out that if they fix some crooked timbers in the sides of the house, it will not fall. They choose such accordingly, the crookedest they can find, but they do not know the rationale of the contrivance, and have not hit on the idea that straight poles fixed slanting would have the same effect in making the structure rigid. 8 In fact, they have gone half-way toward inventing what builders call a ' strut,' but have stopped 1 See Lyell, ' Antiquity of Man,' 3rd ed. 1863 ; Lubbock, ' Prehistoric Times,' 2nd ed. 1870; 'Trans, of Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology' (Norwich, 1868); Stevens, 'Flint Chips, &c.,' 1870; Nilsson, 'Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia ' (ed. by Lubbock, 1868) ; Falconer, ' Palseon to- logical Memoirs, &c.' ; Lartet and Christy, ' Reliquiae Aquitanicae ' (ed. by , T. R. Jones) ; Keller, ' Lake Dwellings ' (Tr. and Ed. by J. E. Lee), &c., &c. 2 Wallace, ' Indian Archipelago,' vol. i. p. 357. PROGRESS BY INVENTION. 63 short. Now the mere sight of such a house would show that the plan is not a remnant of higher architecture, but a half-made invention. This is a fact in the line of progress, but not of decline. I have mentioned elsewhere a number of similar cases ; thus the adaptation of a cord to the fire- drill is obviously an improvement on the simpler instru- ment twirled by hand, and the use of the spindle for making thread is an improvement on the clumsier art of hand-twisting ; l but to re verse this position, and suppose the hand-drill to have come into use by leaving off the use of the cord of the cord-drill, or that people who knew the use of the spindle left it off and painfully twisted their thread by hand, is absurd. Again, the appearance of an art in a par- ticular locality where it is hard to account for it as borrowed from elsewhere, and especially if it concerns some special native product, is evidence of its being a native invention. Thus, what people can claim the invention of the hammock, or the still more admirable discovery of the extraction of the wholesome cassava from the poisonous manioc, but the natives of the South American and West Indian districts to which these things belong ? As the isolated possession of an art goes to prove its invention where it is found, so the absence of an art goes to prove that it was never present. The onus probandi is on the other side ; if anyone thinks that the East African's ancestors had the lamp and the potter's wheel, and that the North American Indians once possessed the art of making beer from their maize like the Mexicans, but that these arts have been lost, at any rate let him show cause for such an opinion. I need not, perhaps, go so far as a facetious ethnological friend of mine, who argues that the existence of savage tribes who do not kiss their women is a proof of primaeval barbarism, for, he says, if they had ever known the practice they could not possibly have forgotten it. Lastly and principally, as experience shows us that arts of civilized life are developed through successive stages of improvement, we may assume that the 1 ' Early History of Mankind,' pp. 192, 243, &c., &c. 64 THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. early development of even savage arts came to pass in a similar way, and thus, finding various stages of an art among the lower races, we may arrange these stages in a series probably representing their actual sequence in history. If any art can be traced back among savage tribes to a rudimentary state in which its invention does not seem beyond their intellectual condition, and especially if it may be produced by imitating nature or following nature's direct suggestion, there is fair reason to suppose the very origin of the art to have been reached. Professor Nilsson, looking at the remarkable similarity of the hunting and fishing instruments of the lower races of mankind, considers them to have been contrived instinct- ively by a sort of natural necessity. As an example he takes the bow and arrow. 1 The instance seems an unfortunate one, in the face of the fact that the supposed bow-and- arrow-making instinct fails among the natives of Tasmania, to whom it would have been very useful, nor have the Australians any bow of their own invention. Even within the Papuan region, the bow so prevalent in New Guinea is absent, or almost so, from New Caledonia. It seems .to me that Dr. Klemm, in his dissertations on Implements and Weapons, and Colonel Lane Fox, in his lectures on Primitive Warfare, take a more instructive line in tracing the early development of arts, not to a blind instinct, but to a selection, imitation, and gradual adaptation and improvement of objects and operations which Nature, the instructor of primaeval man, sets before him. Thus Klemm traces the stages by which progress appears to have been made from the rough stick to the finished spear or club, from the natural sharp-edged or rounded stone to the artistically fashioned celt, spear-head, or hammer. 2 Lane Fox traces connexion through the various types of weapons, pointing out how a form once arrived at is repeated in various sizes, like the spear-head and 1 Nilsson, ' Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia,' p. 104. - Klemm, * Allg. Culturwissenschaft,' part ii., Werkzeuge und Waffen. PROGRESS BY INVENTION. 65 row-point ; how in rude conditions of the arts the same jtrument serves different purposes, as where the Fuegians their arrow-heads also for knives, and Kafirs carve dth their assagais, till separate forms are adopted for ial purposes ; and how in the history of the striking, itting, and piercing instruments used by mankind, a continuity may be traced, which indicates a gradual pro- gressive development from the rudest beginnings to the most advanced improvements of modern skill. To show how far the early development of warlike arts may have been due to man's imitative faculty, he points out the analogies in methods of warfare among animals and men, classifying as defensive appliances hides, solid plates, jointed plates, scales ; as offensive weapons, the piercing, striking, serrated, poisoned kinds, &c. ; and under the head of stratagems, flight, concealment, leaders, outposts, war- cries, and so forth. 1 The manufacture of stone implements is now almost perfectly understood by archaeologists. The processes used by modern savages have been observed and imitated. Sir John Evans, for instance, by blows with a pebble, pressure with a piece of stag's horn, sawing with a flint-flake, boring with a stick and sand, and grinding on a stone surface, succeeds in reproducing all but the finest kinds of stone implements. 2 On thorough knowledge we are now able to refer in great measure the remarkable similarities of the stone scrapers, flake-knives, hatchets, spear- and arrow- heads, &c., as found in distant times and regions, to the similarity of natural models, of materials, and of require- ments which belong to savage life. The history of the Stone Age is clearly seen to be one of development. Begin- ning with the natural sharp stone, the transition to the 1 Lane Fox (Pitt-Rivers), ' Lectures on Primitive Warfare,' Journ. United Service Inst., 1867-9. 2 Evans in ' Trans, of Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology ' (Norwich, 1868), p. 191 ; Rau in ' Smithsonian Reports/ 1868 ; Sir E. Belcher in Tr. Eth. Soc., vol. i. p. 129. 66 THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. rudest artificially shaped stone implement is imperceptibly gradual, and onward from this rude stage much indepen- dent progress in different directions is to be traced, till the manufacture at last arrives at admirable artistic perfection, by the time that the introduction of metal is superseding it. So with other implements and fabrics, of which the stages are known through their whole course of development from the merest nature to the fullest art. The club is traced from the rudest natural bludgeon up to the weapon of finished shape and carving. Pebbles held in the hand to hammer with, and cutting-instruments of stone shaped or left smooth at one end to be held in the hand, may be seen in museums, hinting that the important art of fixing instru- ments in handles was the result of invention, not of instinct. The stone hatchet, used as a weapon, passes into the battle- axe. The spear, a pointed stick or pole, has its point hardened in the fire, and a further improvement is to fix on a sharp point of horn, bone, or chipped stone. Stones are flung by hand, and then by the sling, a contrivance widely but not universally known among savage tribes. From first to last in the history of war the spear or lance is grasped as a thrusting weapon. Its use as a missile no doubt began as early, but it has hardly survived so far in civilization. Thus used, it is most often thrown by the unaided arm, but a sling for the purpose is known to various savage tribes. The short cord with an eye used in the New Hebrides, and called a ' becket ' by Captain Cook, and a whip-like in- strument noticed in New Zealand, are used for spear- throwing. But the more usual instrument is a wooden handle, a foot or two long. This spear-thrower is known across the high northern districts of North America, among some tribes of South America, and among the Australians. These latter, it has been asserted, could not have invented it in their present state of barbarism. But the remarkable feature of the matter is that the spear-thrower belongs espe- cially to savagery, and not to civilization. Among the higher nations the nearest approach to it seems to have been the PROGRESS BY INVENTION. 67 classic amentum, a thong attached to the middle of the shaft of the javelin to throw it with. The highest people known to have used the spear-thrower proper were the nations of Mexico and Central America. Its existence among them is vouched for by representations in the mythological pictures, by its Mexican name ' atlatl,' and by a beautifully artistic specimen of the thing itself in the Christy Museum ; but we do not hear of it as in practical use after the Spanish Conquest. In fact the history of the instrument seems in absolute opposition to the degradation-theory, representing as it does an invention belonging to the lower civilization, and scarcely able to survive beyond. Nearly the same may be said of the blow- tube, which as a serious weapon scarcely ranges above rude tribes of the East Indies and South America, though kept up in sport at higher levels. The Australian boomerang has been claimed as derived from some hypothetical high culture, whereas the transition-stages through which it is connected with the club are to be observed in its own country, while no civilized race possesses the weapon. The use of spring traps of boughs, of switches to fillip small missiles with, and of the remarkable darts of the Pelew Islands, bent and made to fly by their own spring, indicate inventions which may have led to that of the bow, while the arrow is a miniature form of the javelin. The practice of poisoning arrows, after the manner of stings and serpents' fangs, is no civilized device, but a characteristic of lower life, which is generally discarded even at the barbaric stage. The art of narcotizing fish, remembered but not approved by high civilization, belongs to many savage tribes, who might easily discover it in any forest pool where a suitable plant had fallen in. The art of setting fences to catch fish at the ebb of the tide, so common among the lower races, is a simple device for assisting nature quite likely to occur to the savage, in whom sharp hunger is no mean ally of dull wit. Thus it is with other arts. Fire-making, cooking, pottery, the textile arts, are to be traced along lines of 68 ' THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE. gradual improvement. 1 Music begins with the rattle and the drum, which in one way or another hold their places from end to end of civilization, while pipes and stringed instruments represent an advanced musical art which is still developing. So with architecture and agriculture. Com- plex, elaborate, and highly-reasoned as are the upper stages of these arts, it is to be remembered that their lower stages begin with mere direct imitation of nature, copying the shelters which nature provides, and the propagation of plants which nature performs. Without enumerating to the same purpose the remaining industries of savage life, it may be said generally that their facts resist rather than require a theory of degradation from higher culture. They agree with, and often necessitate, the same view of develop- ment which we know by experience to account for the origin and progress of the arts among ourselves. In the various branches of the problem which will hence- forward occupy our attention, that of determining the relation of the mental condition of savages to that of civi- \ lized men, it is an excellent guide and safeguard to keep j before our minds the theory of development in the material j arts. Throughout all the manifestations of the human intellect, facts will be found to fall into their places on the same general lines of evolution. The notion of the intel- lectual state of savages as resulting from decay of previous high knowledge, seems to have as little evidence in its! favour as that stone celts are the degenerate successors of i Sheffield axes, or earthen grave-mounds degraded copies of Egyptian pyramids. The study of savage and civilized life alike avail us to trace in the early history of the human intellect, not gifts of transcendental wisdom, but rude shrewd sense taking up the facts of common life and shaping from them schemes of primitive philosophy. It will be seen again and again, by examining such topics as language, mythology, custom, religion, that savage opinion is in a more or less rudimentary state, while the civilized 1 See details in ' Early History of Mankind,' chap, vii.-ix. GENERAL TENDENCY. 69 mind still bears vestiges, neither few nor slight, of a past condition from which savages represent the least, and civilized men the greatest advance. Throughout the whole vast range of the history of human thought and habit, while civilization has to contend not only with survival from lower levels, but also with degeneration within its own borders, it yet proves capable of overcoming both and taking its own course. History within its proper field, and ethnography over a wider range, combine to show that the institutions which can best hold their own in the world gradually supersede the less fit ones, and that this in- cessant conflict determines the general resultant course of culture. I will venture to set forth in mythic fashion how progress, aberration, and retrogression in the general course of culture contrast themselves in my own mind. We may fancy ourselves looking on Civilization, as in personal figure she traverses the world ; we see her lingering or resting by the way, and often deviating into patns that bring her toiling back to where she had passed by long ago ; but, direct or devious, her path lies forward, and if now and then she tries a few backward steps, her walk soon falls into a helpless stumbling. It is not according to her nature, her feet were not made to plant uncertain steps behind her, for both in her forward view and in her onward gait she is of truly human type. |