Chapter VII.

ETHNOLOGY: ITS SCOPE AND SOURCES

Definition.

“Ethnology” is a term which is often loosely used as synonymous with “Anthropology,” to cover the whole field of the science of man. It was in this sense that it first came into prominence, being chosen by M. W. F. Edwards as the title for the Société ethnologique de Paris, in 1839. The society was concerned with what we should now call Anthropology; but it was more especially interested in the origins and relationships of the historical races of Europe, which was the etymological justification for its name. The English Ethnological Society, established in 1843, imitated the French title, and did much to fix the vague and general interpretation of the word. Unfortunately, Professor Tylor, first and foremost of English ethnologists, seems purposely to avoid the use of the word in his Primitive Culture, which he refers to as “rational ethnography.” But, with the development of the subject, its scope became gradually more defined, until it is now generally restricted to the comparative and genetic study of human culture and of man as a social animal.

The materials for the study of ethnology have been always with us, but the study itself is of very recent development, and almost alone among the sciences can reckon its founders among the living. Professor J. L. Myres gives excellent reasons for this “late adolescence” in his opening address at the meeting of the British Association at Winnipeg, 1909:—

Anthropology ... gathers its data from all longitudes, and almost all latitudes, on this earth. It was necessary, therefore, that the study of man should lag behind the rest of the sciences, so long as any large masses of mankind remained withdrawn from its view; and we have only to remember that Australia and Africa were not even crossed at all—much less explored—by white men, until within living memory, to realise what this limitation means. In addition to this, modern Western civilisation, when it did at last come into contact with aboriginal peoples in new continents, too often came, like the religion which it professed, bringing “not peace, but a sword.” The customs and institutions of alien people have been viewed too often, even by reasonable and good men, simply as “ye beastlie devices of ye heathen,” and the pioneers of our culture, perversely mindful only of the narrower creed, that “he that is not with us is against us,” have set out to civilise savages by wrecking the civilisation which they had (pp. 589-590).

Sources.

There are, as Professor Myres points out, two kinds of anthropologists:—

There is an anthropologist to whom we go for our facts: the painful accurate observer of data, the storehouse of infinite detail; sometimes himself the traveller and explorer, by cunning speech or wiser silence opening the secrets of aboriginal hearts; sometimes the middleman, the broker of traveller’s winnings, insatiate after some new thing, unerring by instinct rather than by experience, to detect false coin, to disinter the pearl of great price.... To him we go for our facts....

And there is an anthropologist to whom we look for our light. His learning may be fragmentary, as some men count learning; his memory faulty; his inaccuracy beyond dispute; his inconsistency the one consistent thing about him. But with shattered and ricketty instruments he attains results; heedless of epicycles, disrespectful to the equator, he bequeaths his paradoxes to be demonstrated by another generation of men. He may not know, or reason, perhaps; but he has learnt to see; and what he sees he says (1908, p. 124).

Herodotus.

In the earliest times Herodotus may be cited as one of the most distinguished names in the former of the two groups, and Lucretius in the latter. The writings of Herodotus (circa 480-425 B.C.) are a veritable storehouse of information, from the highest civilisations down to the veriest savagery, and his work has lost none of its freshness or value through lapse of time. As a matter of fact, modern investigations carried out in the areas treated of by him more frequently confirm and exemplify than refute his statements.

Lucretius.

Lucretius (99 or 98-55 B.C.), the poet, teacher, and reformer, boldly declared that there was no Golden Age from which man has degenerated, but that his progress has continually been slowly upward from a condition of pure savagery:—

Arms of old were hands nails and teeth and stones and boughs broken off from the forests, and flame and fire, as soon as they had become known. Afterwards the force of iron and copper was discovered; and the use of copper was known before that of iron, as its nature is easier to work and it is found in greater quantity. With copper they would labour the soil of the earth, with copper stir up the billows of war.... Then by slow steps the sword of iron gained ground and the make of the copper sickle became a byword; and with iron they began to plough through the earth’s soil, and the struggles of wavering war were rendered equal.[[81]]

[81]. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things. Translated by H. A. J. Munro. Bohn’s edition, 1908, p. 214.

It is evident from his poems that Lucretius was a keen observer and a philosopher, who summed up existing Epicurean knowledge; and we are justified in believing that these particular generalisations were based upon tales told by travellers in distant lands, and upon traditional lore, which, with the exception of the recently acquired archæological evidence, is practically all upon which we have to rely. The philosophic poet apprehended the significance of various facts, and welded them into a consistent theory of the development of culture, and thereby earned the honour of being the first evolutionary anthropologist.

Strabo.

Nor should we overlook the versatile Strabo (circa 63 B.C.-21 A.D.), who was interested in many things, from climate to botany, and from sport to Druidism and Brahmanism. Alexander von Humboldt considered that he surpassed all other geographical labourers of antiquity by the diversity of the subject and the grandeur of the composition. His Geography contains much information on the early history and traditions of numerous peoples, their character, dress, dwellings, and mode of life.

In the writings of the earlier travellers (to mention but three names)—Marco Polo, in Cathay (1254-1323), Ibn Batuta (1304-1377), in Asia; and Joao de Barros (1496-1570), who was considered the greatest authority on Portuguese, African, and Asiatic travels of his time—and in the records of travels contained in collections such as those of Hakluyt (1552-1616), Purchas (1577-1626), and Pinkerton (1758-1826), much ethnological information can be sifted from among the marvellous tales. Sometimes the marvellous tales themselves can, by ethnology, be interpreted in fact, as when the “tailed men” of the Nicobars are found to owe their origin to the tail-like method of wearing the loin-cloth.[[82]] These were followed by the travellers and explorers of the nineteenth century, who brought back a vast amount of new information, both physical and cultural, from the lands they visited. Among these the names of Admiral Byron, James Bruce, L. A. Bougainville, Sir John Barrow, Captain Cook, de Lesseps, and Pallas may be mentioned.

[82]. E. H. Man, Journ. Anth. Inst., xv., p. 442.

Other sources of information were the works of the Jesuit missionaries of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, such as José d’Acosta (1539-1600), J. F. Lafitau (1670-1740), and F. X. de Charlevoix (1682-1761), who worked among the Canadian Indians, and M. Dobrizhoffer (1717-1791).

Next come the missionaries of the nineteenth century, such as William Ellis (1794-1872), who laboured in South Africa and Madagascar, but is best known for his work in Polynesia; John Williams (1796-1839); George Turner (1818-1891); W. Wyatt Gill (1828-1896), and others who also worked in the Pacific. In Africa we may mention Bishop Callaway (1817-1890) and David Livingstone (1813-1873). At the same time the Roman Catholic missionary E. R. Huc (1813-1860) was working in China and Tartary, while the Abbé Dubois (1770-1848) was laboriously investigating the manners, customs, and ceremonies of the Hindus.

Besides the missionaries, we owe a deep debt of gratitude to the early explorers and civil servants in all parts of the world, who have provided, consciously or unconsciously, a vast amount of information about the peoples among whom they travelled or over whom they ruled. Scientific expeditions, even before these were undertaken in the interests of anthropology, collected further material. Lastly come the various anthropological expeditions, consisting of trained workers, who, besides amassing fresh evidence, check, correct, or amplify the work of earlier writers.

These were the data on which the science of Ethnology, in its restricted sense, was to be built. The earliest ethnologists utilised the material mainly with a view to elucidating ethnic relationships, and to producing systematic classifications of the various races of mankind. Later workers such as Ratzel and Reclus produced systematic descriptions of races, peoples, and areas. A third method was that of Tylor, the chief exponent of Comparative Ethnology.

Systematic Works on Ethnology.

The earlier attempts at race classification were based merely on physical characters, and are dealt with elsewhere (Chap. VI.). During the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries geographical discovery brought a mass of new facts to light, especially in the realm of natural history; and in no branch of that science were the effects so marked as in that of Anthropology.

The marshalling of a vast array of new observations and deductions required a broad mind, wide knowledge, and shrewd reasoning powers. These, together with a sound training in anatomy, an unusual acquaintance with philology, and some eminence in psychology, produced the monumental work of Prichard.

J. C. Prichard.

Prichard.

James Cowles Prichard (1786-1848) showed, when a boy, a remarkable aptness for foreign languages. He was never sent to school, but was taught by various tutors, from whom he learnt Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and Spanish. His father, a merchant, and member of the Society of Friends, lived for a time in Bristol, and there the boy began his practical study of anthropology, spending his time by the docks, watching the foreign sailors, and chatting with them in their own tongues. Later on he chose medicine for his profession, less on account of any special liking for it than because it afforded him opportunities for indulging his anthropological tastes. His first contribution to the science was his thesis for the degree of Doctor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh, which was entitled De generis humani varietate, published in 1813 in an expanded form as Researches into the Physical History of Man. It was still further expanded in 1826, and a five-volume edition was issued between 1836 and 1847. In 1843 appeared another monumental work, The Natural History of Man, “comprising inquiries into the modifying influence of physical and moral agencies on the different tribes of the human family.”

Speaking of Prichard at the meeting of the British Association in Bristol in 1875, Professor Rolleston remarked: “His works remain, massive, impressive, enduring—much as the headlands along our southern coast stand out in the distance in their own grand outlines, while a close and minute inspection is necessary for the discernment of the forts and fosses added to them—indeed, dug out of their substance in recent times.” The services of Prichard in the field of Anthropology have often been compared with those of his contemporary Blumenbach, by whose fame during his lifetime he was overshadowed; but, though the latter was unequalled on the side of physical anthropology, there is no doubt that Prichard had a wider grasp of the subject, and his works formed the cornerstones of Anthropology in England.

Other Generalisations.

While Prichard was expanding his thesis, Antoine Desmoulins was writing his Histoire naturelle des races humaines, which appeared contemporaneously with Prichard’s revised Researches in 1826. He attempted to discover the origins and relations of the peoples of north-east Europe, north and east Asia, and South Africa, by the evidence of archæology, physiology, anatomy, and linguistics.

The work of systematising the mass of anthropological data and producing an orderly scheme must always be regarded as an almost superhuman task, and those who have attempted it deserve our grateful recognition.

The next Englishman after Prichard was Latham, who published his Natural History of the Varieties of Man in 1850 (the same year as Knox’s Races of Man), and his Descriptive Ethnology in 1859. In the latter year appeared the first instalment of the Anthropologie der Naturvölker of Waitz, the six volumes of which were completed in 1872—a work which largely assisted in laying a secure foundation for the new science. In 1873 Friedrich Müller published his Allgemeine Ethnographie. The following year saw the publication of Peschel’s Völkerkunde. Ratzel’s great work, Völkerkunde, appeared in 1885-88. In America Pickering’s Races of Man was published in 1848, and Nott and Gliddon’s Indigenous Races of the Earth in 1857. Paul Topinard’s L’Anthropologie (1876) is mentioned elsewhere (p. [38]).

The earlier of these generalisations were composed before the acceptance of the theory of evolution, in the new light of which all biological sciences had to start afresh, and all were written before the masses of new material collected by ethnologists and archæologists, working in the field, had brought so much fresh evidence to bear upon the whole geographical and historical aspect of man that it was impossible “to see the wood for the trees.” Thus the time for synthesis had arrived, and with the hour came the man. A. H. Keane’s Ethnology appeared in 1896, to be followed by his Man, past and present in 1899. J. Deniker’s Les races et les peuples de la terre, together with the English translation, appeared in the following year.

Ethnology and the Classics.

In summarising the sources from which the materials for the science of ethnology are derived, stress must be laid on the contributions from classic authors. No student can afford to neglect the histories, annals, poems, and sacred books of the ancients, whether African, European, or Asiatic. Professor J. L. Myres (1908) has pointed out that anthropological investigations and speculations were already afoot in the fifth century B.C. and before, and has outlined the ethnological problems concerning man, his origin and relationships, and the questions connected with his social life that interested and puzzled the ancient Greek world. Not only Herodotus, but other writers, show that these problems were thoroughly familiar to the Greeks. Long before Herodotus, Hesiod refers to a standard scheme of archæology, in which Ages of Gold, Silver, and Bronze succeed each other; primitive man is described as a forest dweller growing no corn, but subsisting on acorns and beech mast; Anaximander and Archelaus have suggestions to solve the mystery of man’s origin, Anaximander taking an “almost Darwinian outlook”[[83]] of the animal kingdom; Æschylus distinguishes the tribes of men by culture, noting the differences in their dress and equipments, religious observances and language.

[83]. This statement is criticised by E. E. Sikes in Folk-Lore, xx., 1909, p. 424.

The chief value of the Greeks to the ethnologist is that they were collectors of material. Some of their theories have been substantiated, but they arrived at conclusions by deduction rather than by induction.

Thus in many ways anthropology owes a deep debt of gratitude to the classics. It was not until recently that this debt began to be repaid.

Within the last twenty or thirty years there has been an increasing recognition of the value of anthropological studies in the elucidation of the classics; and this healthy movement is mainly associated with the name of Professor William Ridgeway, of Cambridge, who devoted his presidential address before the Royal Anthropological Institute, in 1909, to this subject.

In 1887 Professor Ridgeway proceeded to apply the comparative method to Greek coins and weights in a paper called the “Homeric Talent: Its Origin and Affinities.”[[84]] He there tried to show that the origin of coined money among the Lydians, and its evolution by the Greeks and Italians, entirely accorded with the evolution of primitive money from the use of objects such as axes, ornaments, cattle, and so forth.

[84]. Hellenic Journal, VIII., p. 133; see also The Origin of Metallic Currency, 1892.

One of the relations of Ethnology to other branches of the Humanities which hitherto has received scant acknowledgment is its influence on the course of Political Science. Professor J. L. Myres recently gave a brilliant address on this subject at Winnipeg, in which he points out how Bodin (1530-1596), Edward Grimstone (1615), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), Montesquieu (1689-1755), Rousseau (1712-1778), Voltaire (1694-1778), Herder (1744-1803), and others, referred to or utilised the accounts of natives by travellers to illustrate their theories of statecraft.