The human species

by A. de Quatrefages

Cuneiform writing has not attained the alphabet, and seems to consist of a mixture of idiographic and syllabic signs. In China writing has remained idiographic. Under the influences, however, of Buddhist missionaries, who made known the Devânagari alphabet in the extreme East, the Japanese and the Coreans, after having servilely imitated the Chinese, were the first to reach syllabism, the second to attain a veritable alphabet.

In Mexico, writing consisted of the mixture, still very confused, of symbolic, idiographic and phonetic signs, the latter representing, in some cases syllables, in others, simple letters. The discoveries made by l’Abbé Brasseur de Bourbourg seem to indicate that in Yucatan greater progress had been made, and that the Palanqué inscriptions are really alphabetic. It is much to be regretted that up to the present time the important facts, for which we are indebted to the aged curé of Rabinal, have not been utilized. The reading of the inscriptions of Central America would have a very different interest to the deciphering of a few more Egyptian tablets. However this may be, it is evident that the multiplicity, the variety of alphabets, and even their filiation furnish the anthropologist with characters of great importance, and specially fitted to establish ancient relations between human groups in some cases widely separated.

X. Social condition. Man is essentially a social being. “Were any one to ascend to heaven alone, and listen alone to the harmony of the spheres, he would not enjoy these marvels,” a Greek philosopher has said. Thus we find the human species everywhere collected into more or less numerous societies. In exceptional cases, which may be generally explained by a violent dispersion, these societies always consist of a more or less considerable number of families, and deserve at least the designation of peoples.

However limited or numerous peoples, tribes, or nations may be, the existence of three elementary social conditions has long been accepted as a fact, each of which is connected with the satisfaction of the first and most imperious of all necessities, that, namely, of nourishment. A certain gradation may, moreover, be observed in these conditions. Man at first only depended upon daily industry for his subsistence: he hunted either terrestrial or aquatic animals: he became a hunter or a fisherman. He afterwards brought the herbivorous species under his power, and found an unfailing resource in his flocks: he became a shepherd. Finally he directed his attention to the earth; he multiplied and cultivated certain plants which he learnt to know by experience; he became an agriculturist. In the latter case his diet would be fundamentally vegetables; in the two former flesh would form the basis of his food.

It is clear that these several kinds of existence place man under very different conditions of life, and impose upon him certain necessities, by demanding the development of physical and intellectual faculties which sometimes bear but a very slight resemblance to each other. In this manner certain physical and intellectual peculiarities are engendered, which, developed by exercise and heredity, finally become characters of races.

The hunter and fisherman present some points of resemblance in their manner of life. Both are obliged to display in turn, and occasionally at the same moment, according to the animal they are pursuing, a great amount of patience and courage; they must never be at a loss for a resource. Both, even when placed in the most favourable circumstances, pass alternately from extreme activity to almost complete repose. But the fisherman’s field of action is on the whole less extensive than that of the hunter, and he is not like the latter, forced to exercise all his physical faculties. He will probably never possess the same delicacy of hearing, or the same agility. Moreover, neither of them are placed in conditions favourable to intellectual development properly so called.

The shepherd is much more independent in certain respects, while at the same time he is subject to greater regularity. He is always sure of his morrow. The daily duties to his charge once fulfilled, he is at liberty to abandon himself to reflection and revery, so that his intellectual faculties have every facility for development.

This is still more strongly the case with the agriculturist. Seed-time and harvest are to him times of inevitable physical activity. Between the two he can rest at leisure, and apply the faculties with which he is endowed to something entirely different.

These three elementary modes of human society involve immediate consequences.

Game, in the true acceptance of the term, is nowhere so abundant as to afford an indefinite amount of nourishment to populations, however small, accumulated upon one spot. A great extent of country is absolutely necessary to the hunter, so that he can only form very limited communities. As soon as they increase in size they are forced to separate. Fishermen may form larger communities, particularly upon the shore of a productive sea. Even in their case, however, the size of the population is necessarily confined within somewhat narrow limits.