We must remember that none of the great civilizations of the world was the product of the genius of a single people.21 In ancient times, civilization was shifting over a rather limited area and was transferred from conqueror to conquered, or vice versa. Ideas and inventions were carried from one to another and each people participated in this early development and contributed its share to the general progress. In this process of borrowing and development, the fact that the European race happened to distance all others is merely a matter of a few thousand years, and in the vast history of man this. is a short period. We must remember that the highly specialized Magdalenian culture is not less than twenty thousand years old, and yet there is no reason to believe that this stage was reached by mankind the world over at the same period.22 Now that we know that we are dealing with vast periods of time it seems probable that the life-history of a people, the vicissitudes of its history, are fully sufficient to explain a delay of this character without obliging us to assume a difference in their aptitude for social development.23 "This retardation would be significant only if it could be shown that it occurs independently over and over again in the same race, while in other races greater rapidity of development was found repeatedly in independent cases." 24. At the present time, practically all members of the White race participate to a greater or less degree in the advance of civilization. In no other race has the civilization that has been attained at one time or another, reached all the tribes or peoples of that race. 21 Ibid., pp. 6-7. 22 Ibid., p. 9. This does 23 Waitz, T.—Anthropologie der Naturvölker, 2nd. ed., vol. 1, p. 381. 24 Ibid., p. 10. not mean that all members of the White race had the power of originating or developing the essential elements of civilization with equal rapidity. But the White race does show a remarkable power of assimilation, which does not seem to have manifested itself to an equal degree in any other race.25 The problem is therefore one of explaining why the tribes of ancient Europe readily assimilated the civilization that was offered to them by Rome and Greece, while at the present time we find primitive peoples dwindling away before the approach of modern civilization. In the first place these barbarous peoples were in their appearance, like the civilized men of their times. The stigma of inferiority, because they had not developed a civilization like the ancient civilization, did not attach to these peoples. The colonies of ancient times grew by accretion from among the more primitive people. Then, in ancient times, the devastating influences of diseases which nowadays begin to ravage the inhabitants of territories newly opened to the whites, were not so marked. These peoples lived in more permanent contiguity, and, being always in contact with one another, were subject to the same influences; consequently no isolated portion of the race had opportunity to become immune to certain diseases through natural selection. In modern times, the settling of an area near the habitation of some primitive folk is followed by epidemics among them contracted from the whites which sweep away large numbers, disturbing or completely destroying the whole social or economic structure of the people. But the most potent fact which accounts for the apparently greater powers of assimilation possessed by 25 Ibid. the ancestors of the European peoples, is found in the differences of culture which are economic. The contrast between the culture represented by the modern white man and that of the primitive man is far more fundamental than the contrast between the ancients and the people with whom they came in contact. This is particularly in economic and industrial activities. The industries of primitive peoples of our times are exterminated by the cheapness and enormous quantity of the products imported by the white trader. The slow and laborious industrial processes of primitive peoples cannot compete with the power of production of the machines of the whites. Moreover, primitive tribes are swamped by the numbers of the immigrating race, which crowds them out of their old haunts so rapidly that there is no time for gradual assimilation. In olden times there was no such immense inequality in numbers as we observe in many regions to-day.26 "We conclude, therefore, that the conditions for assimilation in ancient Europe were much more favorable than in those countries where in our times primitive people come in contact with civilization. Therefore, we do not need to assume that the ancient Europeans were more gifted than other races which have not become exposed to the influences of civilization until recent times." 27 SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS. BOAS, F.-The Mind of Primitive Man. GIDDINGS, F. H.-Principles of Sociology, part iii, chapter ii (the theory of the present chapter will not be found in this 26 Ibid., p. 13. 27 Ibid.; also Gerland, Georg-Das Aussterben der Naturvölker; Ratzel, F.-Anthropogeographie, vol. ii, pp. 330 et seq. reference as it has been advanced since "The Principles" was published, and is taken with Professor Giddings' permission from notes of his lectures at Columbia University.) KEANE, A. H.-Ethnology. RIPLEY, W. Z.-The Races of Europe. VIII TRIBAL SOCIETY. THERE are three means of determining approximately the characteristics of social life among prehistoric men: first, a considerable mass of archeological remains; second, the existence of survivals in the traditions of civilized society indicating a time when the ancestors of these peoples lived under very primitive conditions; and third, a general parallelism between some features of prehistoric cultures and some features of the culture of primitive societies which exist to-day among the Australian aborigines, the American Indians, and other savage peoples. But this parallelism has certain important limitations which must be remembered in any comparison. we may wish to make. Modern savage groups live in relatively barren, inhospitable, inaccessible regions of the earth, into which they have been crowded by stronger peoples.1 Moreover, the spread of the European race with its highly developed civilization has cut short the growth of the existing independent germs of civilization among these primitive peoples without regard to their mental aptitude. Thus the parallelism is not exact, for while we cannot premise any marked intellectual superiority of prehistoric man over existing savages in explaining present cultural differences, we must recognize that advantage of some sort was possessed by the prehistoric 1 Giddings, Principles of Sociology, p. 210. 2 Boas, op. cit., p. 17. |