Figure 65. Figure 66. Figure 67. Figure 59. The Great Gopura, Madura Temple, India Figure 62. Strange Customs. A widow following the custom of wearing her husband's skull strung from her back as a sign of mourning Figure 63. Deformation of Features by Congo Natives in submission to approved Styles Figure 64. Diagram illustrating Facial Angle, Head Form and Hair Form Color of Skin as distributed over the World Brachycephalic Asiatic Types: Uzbeg, Kiptchak and Kara- 175 179 204 206 . 207 211 Figure 68. Figure 69. Figure 70. Dolichocephalic African Types; Berber and Negro Figure 71. The Three European Racial Types; Baltic (Teutonic), Al- 223 Figure 72. Figure 73. Area of Differentiation of the White Race in the Baltic 225 228 Figure 74. Figure 75. Figure 76. Pottery made by the Pima Indians of Southern Arizona 235 237 242 PREFACE The object of this book is to present in elementary form a summary of the most generally accepted evidence and theory of Social Evolution. It does not pretend to be a learned treatise advancing some new or startling doctrine. The writer believes that there is a definite place to be filled by a book which, as a text for the study of Sociology, applies the best of sociological and evolutionary theory to the historical study of society. With the increasing emphasis that historians are placing upon social and economic phenomena, the average student learns at least something of the importance of social forces. At the present time the vast period of human evolution before the historical period, is known to us only by the material presented in highly specialized works. There is no single elementary presentation of the increasing body of scientific knowledge which enables us to picture prehistoric conditions. The author believes that the study of history and social science is made more real and valuable by some familiarity with the conditions and factors which were important in this early period. Professor W. I. Thomas says: "It is of course entirely proper for the student to limit himself very narrowly to a special field in order to work it intensively, but the historian, for instance, who begins the study of human activity with Greece and Rome or even with Assyria and Egypt, cuts himself off completely from the beginnings of his own subject as would the psychologist who neglected all study of child-psychology and of animal mind, or the biologist who attempted to understand bird or insect life without a knowledge of the stages of life lying below these. Indeed, when we consider that the human race is one, that the human mind is everywhere much the same, and that human practices are everywhere of the same general pattern, it appears that the neglect of the biologist or psychologist to study types of life lower than those in which he is immediately interested could hardly be so serious as the neglect of the historian to familiarize himself with the institutional life of savage society." Professor J. H. Robinson has recognized this necessity and says: "Prehistoric' is a word that must go the way of 'preadamite,' which we used to hear. They both indicate a suspicion that we are in some way gaining illicit information about what happened before the footlights were turned on and the curtain rose on the great human drama. Of the so-called 'prehistoric' period we of course know as yet very little indeed, but the bare fact that there was such a period constitutes in itself the most momentous of historical discoveries. The earliest, somewhat abundant, traces of mankind can hardly be placed earlier than six thousand years ago. They indicate, however, a very elaborate and advanced civilization, and it is quite gratuitous to assume that they represent the first occasions on which man rose to such a stage of culture. Even if they do, the wonderful tales of how these conditions of which we find hints in Babylonia, Egypt, and Crete came about are lost. . "From this point of view the historian's gaze, instead of sweeping back into remote ages when the earth was young, seems now to be confined to his own epoch. Rameses the Great, Tiglath-Pileser, and Solomon appear practically coeval with Cæsar, Constantine, Charlemagne, St. Louis, Charles V, and Victoria; Bacon, Newton, and Darwin are but the younger contemporaries of Thales, Plato, and Aristotle." Perhaps this short survey of a great subject will seem ambitious to many. (But evolution means the slow unfolding of hidden potentialities.) We must study prehistoric man as well as ancient man because the changes wrought in social evolution are so gradual that it is only by examining the long period that we can become conscious of their real significance. The change that is observable at the end of a long period is indistinguishable in the briefer interval. This is the author's justification for attempting to present as an organic whole a subject the divisions of which specialists often find quite baffling. In the effort to classify and generalize a great body of knowledge, the "clumsy forceps of our minds" always crush the truth a little and mar it. Yet there is a genuine gain from the very effort to attain perspective, although violence may be done to the strict accuracy of certain details. The artist suppresses many things in order to strengthen the general impression that the picture is to make. Thus, perhaps, the scientist can learn from his fellow seeker after truth. The author does not regard the book as final in any sense and would welcome the criticism of errors or suggestions by which the work may be improved. The illustrations have been carefully selected and arranged with a view to illuminate certain points made in the text which the average student would otherwise be unable to visualize. The author would have considerable emphasis placed upon this use of the illustrations since each has been chosen for a definite purpose. |