go back means not retrogression but decay. Society must test out the new programs, holding to those that work, discarding the others no matter how antique or how new. The old order changeth, yielding place to new, CHAPTER XIX THE SPREAD OF CULTURE "In harmony with nature"? Restless fool, Throughout this volume the attention of the reader has been directed not to the wonders of the physical universe but to the background of human activity. However unsuccessful he may have been, the author has sought to trace the development of man as related to the rest of the world. This has involved, naturally, some consideration of the growth of man's own understanding of things and of his own organization. The beginnings of man's culture are too deeply buried in the débris of history for us to see them. The very location of the most primitive cultures is uncertain and we have little idea of the arts of the Heidelberg man and no idea of his thoughts. When dawn comes in human history we find small groups of men already in possession of certain arts and simple tools. Had they developed these ere they left their original home sites to start the long journey to the ends of the earth? If not, have the various groups made similar inventions as they reached the various stages of culture, or has the original invention of some genius been adopted first by his group and then spread to the others? Here is an extremely perplexing and important question whose answer would throw much light on history. Much is still in doubt, yet we are greatly indebted to the cultural anthropologists of the last generation and it is to be expected that they will make even greater contributions in the future. Culture Diffusion It seems settled that a given culture radiates from the center in which it arises. The older traits or products are likely to be found at the extremities of this radiation rather than in the old center where newer forms have been devised. This assumes, of course, that the center itself has not been moved. The statement holds even to-day in spite of the fact that modern methods of commerce and transportation enable a given style to encompass the earth in a short time. Telephones and automobiles are most common in the United States. In more primitive times the spread of any article must have been relatively slow. It is entirely conceivable that wholly separated culture centers might have had a parallel development leading to the invention of similar devices in corresponding stages. In actual life, so far as we know, this has seldom happened. History records many instances of borrowing, very few of separate invention. So common has this borrowing habit been that the discovery of similar tools or traits always raises the suspicion of some hidden association. The copper axes of certain Indian tribes so closely resembled those of ancient Egypt that competent students have insisted that the Indians had worked on Egyptian models. There is not a scrap of evidence for this interpretation. The Maya Indians of Yucatan developed a calendar vastly more accurate than any known in the Old World for another thousand years. They had an excellent system of notation, based on 20 rather than on 10, and had invented a zero sign, by the time of Christ. The Romans had no such sign and their system was cumbersome; M equaled 1,000, but to write 1928 required many letters, MCMXXVIII. Our zero sign was invented by a Hindu sometime between the sixth and ninth centuries. Here is a case of parallelism, independent invention. Our alphabet is an excellent illustration of diffusion. We know that it was in use east of the Mediterranean by 1000 B.C. and recent discoveries have pushed it back possibly another millennium. As used by the Semites it contained no vowel signs. These were introduced by the Greeks who transformed some of the older breath and stop characters into vowels. Thus the Semitic vau (a sort of F) becomes upsilon and is put at the end of the alphabet, having a value of U or V. The vowel sound corresponded to the French pronunciation of U, hence the French name, Y-grec. The Romans could not represent this sound by U so introduced the Y. In time U and V come to represent different sounds so W is introduced into the English of the eleventh century. We distinguish between J and I but the useless dot over the small j shows its origin. Our letters have become pure symbols but their earlier names were taken from common objects: A=alpha=aleph=ox; B=beta=beth=house; G= gamma-gimel-camel. Thus an old device, modified to suit local needs, has lasted for ages and has spread over the earth. The Chinese and the Japanese use written characters in common but pronounce the words so differently that they cannot understand each other. The arch was invented but once (in India) so far as we know. The Arabic notation is almost universally followed. It appears, then, that man's intellectual devices, as well as his domestic plants and animals, have spread from certain original centers. It is easier to copy than to invent or rediscover. The most advanced peoples appear to have been (and to be) those in a position to borrow the most. The significance of this statement in relation to the problem of culture development should be noted. Culture Absorption Roughly speaking, the American Indians when the white man came here were about as far along the road to modern culture as were the north Europeans when Tacitus wrote his Germania. The culture of maize had spread from Central America to New York and it was cultivated in hills rather than sown broadcast as were the grains of Europe. In the birch-bark canoe they had the finest craft made by primitive men, but most of the Indians had no access to birch trees and the skin-covered tubs in which the Sioux crossed the rivers were like the coracles of old England. In the snowshoes the Indians surpassed any similar invention of the white man. In the arid Southwest they cultivated thousands of acres by irrigation ere the white man had learned to rotate his crops. Though the Indians in favored regions were using copper they were really in the new stone age. They had no domestic animals comparable to the horse, cow and pig nor were there any such in the New World. Their houses equaled those of Europe. Europeans The north European had just entered the age of metals but the use of metals as well as most of the domestic animals had been developed to the southeast. In these regards and in these only were they ahead of the Indians and no tribes of north Europe equaled the Mayas and Incas. But the former had the inestimable advantage of having advanced |