Anthropology

by A. L. Kroeber

237. Principles of the Prehistoric Spread of Culture

This chronology has much to commend it besides its almost daring conservatism; especially the clarity of its consistent recognition of certain cultural processes. Five principles and three extensions are set up by Müller:

1. The south [of Europe, with the Near East] was the vanguard and dispensing source of culture; the peripheral regions, especially in the north [of Europe] followed and received.

2. The elements of southern culture were transmitted to the north only in reduction and extract.

3. They were also subject to modifications.

4. These elements of southern culture sometimes appeared in the remoter areas with great vigor and new qualities of their own.

5. But such remote appearances are later in time than the occurrence of the same elements in the south.

6. Forms of artifacts or ornaments may survive for a long time with but little modification, especially if transmitted to new territory.

7. Separate elements characteristic of successive periods in a culture center may occur contemporaneously in the marginal areas, their diffusion having occurred at different rates of speed.

8. Marginal cultures thus present a curious mixture of traits whose original age is great and of others that are much newer; the latter, in fact, occasionally reach the peripheries earlier than old traits.

The basic idea of these formulations is that of the gradual radiation of culture from creative focal centers to backward marginal areas, without the original dependence of the peripheries wholly precluding their subsequent independent development. It is obvious that this point of view is substantially identical with that which has been held to in the presentation of native American culture in the preceding chapter.

It is only fair to say that a number of eminent archæologists combat the prevalent opinion that the sources of European Neolithic and Bronze Age civilization are to be derived almost wholly from the Orient. They speak of this view as an “Oriental mirage.” They see more specific differences than identities between the several local cultures of the two regions, and tend to explain the similarities as due to independent invention.

Since knowledge of ancient cultures is necessarily never complete, there is a wide range of facts to which either explanation is, theoretically, applicable. But the focal-marginal diffusion interpretation has the following considerations in its favor.

Within the fully historic period, there have been numerous undoubted diffusions, of which the alphabet, the week, and the true arch may be taken as illustrations. At least in the earlier portion of the historic period, the flow of such diffusions was regularly out of the Orient; which raises a considerable presumption that the flow was in the same direction as early as the Neolithic. On the other hand, indubitably independent parallelisms are very difficult to establish within historic areas and periods, and therefore likely to have been equally rare during prehistory.

Then, too, the diffusion interpretation explains a large part of civilization to a certain degree in terms of a large, consistent scheme. To the contrary, the parallelistic opinion leaves the facts both unexplained and unrelated. If the Etruscans devised the true arch and liver divination independently of the Babylonians, there are two sets of phenomena awaiting interpretation instead of one. To say that they are both “natural” events is equivalent to calling them accidental, that is, unexplainable. To fall back on instinctive impulses of the human mind will not do, else all or most nations should have made these inventions.

Of course it is important to remember that no sane interpretation of culture explains everything. We do not know what caused the true arch to be invented in Babylonia, hieroglyphic writing in Egypt, the alphabet in Phœnicia, at a certain time rather than at another or rather than in another place. The diffusion point of view simply accepts certain intensive focal developments of culture as empirically given by the facts, and then relates as many other facts as possible to these. Every clear-minded historian, anthropologist, and sociologist admits that we are still in ignorance on the problems of what caused the great bursts of higher organization and original productiveness of early Egypt and Sumer, of Crete, of ancient North China, of the Mayas, of Periclean Athens. We know many of the events of civilization, know them in their place and order. We can infer from these something of the processes of imitation, conservatism, rationalization that have shaped them. We know as yet as good as nothing of the first or productive causes of civilization.

It is extremely important that this limitation of our understanding be frankly realized. It is only awareness of darkness that brings seeking for light. Scientific problems must be felt before they can be grappled. But within the bounds of our actual knowledge, the principle of culture derivation and transmission seems to integrate, and thus in a measure to explain, a far greater body of facts than any other principle—provided it is not stretched into an instrument of magic and forced to explain everything.

CHAPTER XV
THE GROWTH OF CIVILIZATION: OLD WORLD HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY

[238.] The early focal area.—[239.] Egypt and Sumer and their background.—[240.] Predynastic Egypt.—[241.] Culture growth in dynastic Egypt.—[242.] The Sumerian development.—[243.] The Sumerian hinterland.—[244.] Entry of Semites and Indo-Europeans.—[245.] Iranian peoples and cultures.—[246.] The composite culture of the Near East.—[247.] Phœnicians, Aramæans, Hebrews.—[248.] Other contributing nationalities.—[249.] Ægean civilization.—[250.] Europe.—[251.] China.—[252.] Growth and spread of Chinese civilization.—[253.] The Lolos.—[254.] Korea.—[255.] Japan.—[256.] Central and northern Asia.—[257.] India.—[258.] Indian caste and religion.—[259.] Relations between India and the outer world.—[260.] Indo-China.—[261.] Oceania.—[262.] The East Indies.—[263.] Melanesia and Polynesia.—[264.] Australia.—[265.] Tasmania.—[266.] Africa.—[267.] Egyptian radiations.—[268.] The influence of other cultures.—[269.] The Bushmen.—[270.] The West African culture-area and its meaning.—[271.] Civilization, race, and the future.