88. Historical Induction
The sort of conclusion here outlined is really a historical induction drawn from the facts of culture distribution among living but historyless tribes. Where documents are available, the development, the growth of the pyramid itself, as it were, can often be seen as it happened. Thus, about the year 100 A.D., Rome, Italy, France, England, Scotland, stood on successive descending culture levels related to one another much like Pueblo, Navaho, Pima, Mohave, Gabrielino; and also in the same placement of ever more outward geographic situation.
Where written records fail, archæological remains sometimes take their place. This is true of the Southwest, whose ancient pottery, stone edifices and implements, and evidences of agriculture remain as records of the past, telling a story only a little less complete and direct than that of the Roman historians. One of the archæologists of the Southwest has drawn up a pair of diagrams to outline the culture history of the area as he has reconstructed it from comparison of the prehistoric remains ([Fig. 26]).
Fig. 26. Diagrammatic representation by Nelson of the geography and history of the culture of the Indians of the southwestern United States: above, in space; below, in time, on A-B diameter of circle.
In all this story, what has become of natural environment and heredity? They have dropped from sight. We have been able to build up a reasonable and probably reliable reconstruction of the course of development of civilization in an area without reference to these two sets of factors. The reconstruction is in terms of culture. Evidently environment and heredity are in the main superfluous. They need not be brought in; are likely to be confusing, to diminish the internal consistency of the findings attained, if they are brought in. This is true in general, not only of the instance chosen. By using environment or heredity, one can often seem to explain certain selected features of a culture, but the appearance is illusory, because one need only be impartial to realize that one can never explain in this way the whole of any culture. When, however, the explanation can be made in terms of culture—always of course on the basis of a sufficient knowledge and digestion of facts—it applies increasingly to the whole of a civilization, and each portion explained helps to explain better all other portions. The cultural interpretation of culture is therefore progressive, and ever more productive, whereas the environmental and the biological-hereditary interpretation fail in proportion as they are pushed farther; in fact can be kept going only by ignoring larger and larger masses of fact to which they do not apply.
Historians, who may be described as anthropologists whose work is made easy for them by the possession of written and dated records, have tacitly recognized this situation. They may now and then attribute some event or condition of civilization to an inherent quality of a race, or to an influence of climate or soil or sea. But this is mostly in their introductory chapters. When they really get to grips with their subject, they explain in terms of human thought and action, in other words, of culture. It is true that they dwell more on personalities than anthropologists do. But that is because the materials left them by former historians are full of personalities and anecdotes. And on the other hand, anthropological data are usually unduly deficient in the personal element; they consist of descriptions of customs, tools used by long forgotten individuals, and the like. If anthropologists were able to recover knowledge of the particular Pueblo woman who first painted a third color or a glaze on a bowl, or of the priest who first instituted a masked dance in order to make rain, we may be confident that they would discuss these individuals. And such knowledge would throw more light on the history of Southwestern pottery and religion and culture generally than any amount of emphasis on the number of inches of rainfall per year, or the pulse rate or similar hypothetical and remote causes.
CHAPTER VIII
DIFFUSION
[89.] The couvade.—[90.] Proverbs.—[91.] Geographic distribution.—[92.] The magic flight.—[93.] Flood legends.—[94.] The double-headed eagle.—[95.] The Zodiac.—[96.] Measures.—[97.] Divination.—[98.] Tobacco.—[99.] Migrations.