99. Migrations
It may seem strange that with all the reference to diffusion in the foregoing pages, there has been so little mention of migration. The reason is that migrations of peoples are a special and not the normal means of culture spread. They form the crass instances of the process, easily conceived by a simple mind. That a custom travels as a people travels with it, is something that a child can understand. The danger is in stopping thought there and invoking a national migration for every important culture diffusion, whereas it is plain that most culture changes have occurred through subtler and more gradual operations. The Mongols overran vast areas of Asia and Europe without seriously modifying the civilization of those tracts. The accretions that most influenced them, such as writing and Buddhism, came to them by the quieter and more pervasive process of peaceful penetration, in which but few individuals were active. We are all aware that printing and the steam engine, the doctrine of evolution and the habit of riming verses, have spread through western civilization without conquests or migrations, and that each year’s fashions flow out from Paris in the same way. When however it is a question of something remote, like the origin of Chinese civilization, it is only necessary for it to be pointed out that the early forms of Chinese culture bear certain resemblances to the early culture of Mesopotamia, and we are sure to have some one producing a theory that marches the Chinese out of the west with their culture packed away in little bundles on their backs. That is far more picturesque, of course, more appealing to the emotions, than to conceive of a slow, gradual transfusion stretching over a thousand years. In proportion as the known facts are few, imagination soars unchecked. It is not because migrations of large bodies of men are rare or wholly negligible in their influence on civilization that they have been touched so lightly here, but because we all tend, through the romantic and sensationalistic streak in us, to think more largely in terms of them than the sober truth warrants. It is in culture-history as in geology: the occasional eruptions, quakings, and other cataclysms stir the mind, but the work of change is mainly accomplished by quieter processes, going on unceasingly, and often almost imperceptible until their results accumulate.
CHAPTER IX
PARALLELS
[100.] General observations.—[101.] Cultural context.—[102.] Universal elements.—[103.] Secondary parallelism in the Indo-European languages.—[104.] Textile patterns and processes.—[105.] Primary parallelism: the beginnings of writing.—[106.] Time reckoning.—[107.] Scale and pitch of Pan’s pipes.—[108.] Bronze.—[109.] Zero.—[110.] Exogamic institutions.—[111.] Parallels and psychology.—[112.] Limitations on the parallelistic principle.