Contrasting with this principle is that of borrowing—one people learning an institution or belief from another, or taking over a custom or invention. That borrowing has been considerably instrumental in shaping the cultures of the more advanced nations, is an obvious fact. People are Christians not through the spontaneous unfolding of the whole dogma and ritual of Christianity in each of them, nor even within their nation, but because of the historically documented spread of Christianity which is still going on. As a heathen people is converted by missionaries to-day, so our North European ancestors were converted by Romans, and the Romans by the Apostles and their followers. When historical records are available, cultural borrowing of this sort is generally easy to establish.
Borrowing can sometimes be shown as very likely even where direct evidence is lacking. If two peoples that possess an institution in common are known off-shoots one from the other, or if they have had numerous trade relations, it is hardly necessary to demonstrate the specific time and manner of transmission between them. Supposing that a religion, an alphabet, and perhaps a number of arts have passed from one nation to another, one would normally ask for little further evidence that a custom, such as the couvade, which they shared, had also been originated by one and borrowed by the other.
90. Proverbs
Even where contacts are more remote, the geographical setting of two peoples often makes borrowing seem likely. The custom of uttering proverbs, for instance, has a significant distribution. It seems astonishing that barbarous West African tribes should possess a stock of proverbs as abundant and pithy as those current in Europe. Not that the proverbs are identical. The negro lacks too many articles, and too many of our manners, to allude as we do. But he does share with us the habit of expressing himself on certain situations with brief current sayings of homely and instantly intelligible nature, that put a generality into specific and concrete form. Thus: “One tree does not make a forest”; “Run from the sword and hide in the scabbard”; “If the stomach is weak, do not eat cockroaches”; “Distant firewood is good firewood.”
The proverb tendency is a sufficiently general one to suggest its independent origin in Africa and Europe. One’s first reaction to the parallel is likely to be something like this: The negro and we have formulated proverbs because we are both human beings; the coining of proverbs is instinctive in humanity. So it might be maintained. However, as soon as the distribution of proverbs the world over is reviewed, it becomes evident that their coining cannot be spontaneous, since the native American race appears never to have devised a single true proverb. On the other side are the Europeans, Africans, Asiatics, and Oceanians who are addicted to the custom. Degree of civilization evidently has nothing to do with the matter, because in the Old World primitive and advanced peoples alike use proverbs; whereas in the New World wild hunting tribes as well as the most progressive nations like the Mayas have no proverbs. The only inference which the facts allow is that there must have been a time when proverbs were unknown anywhere—still “uninvented” by mankind. Then, somewhere in the Old World, they came into use. Perhaps it was a genius that struck off the first sayings to be repeated by his associates and then by his more remote environment. At any rate, the custom spread from people to people until it extended over almost all the eastern hemisphere. Some cause, however, such as geographical isolation, prevented the extension of the movement to the western hemisphere. The American Indians therefore remained proverbless because the invention was never transmitted to them. Here, accordingly, is a case of the very incompleteness of a distribution going far to illuminate the history of a culture trait. The lack of parallelism between the hemispheres disproves the explanation by instinctive independent origin. This negative conclusion in turn tends strongly to establish the probability that the custom was borrowed, perhaps from a single source, in the four eastern continents.
91. Geographic Distribution
Thus it appears that it is not always easy to settle the origin and history of the phenomena of culture. Evidently, many facts must be taken into consideration: above all, geographic distribution. Because a habit is so well ingrained in our life as to seem absolutely natural and almost congenital, it does not follow that it really is so. The vast majority of culture elements have been learned by each nation from other peoples, past and present. At the same time there are unexpected limits to the principle of borrowing. Transmission often operates over vast areas and for long periods but at other times ceases.
Two reflections arise. The first is the discouraging but salutary one that the history of civilization and its parts is an intricate matter, not to be validly determined by off-hand guesses. A second conclusion is that the geographic distribution of any culture element is always likely to be a fact of prime importance about it. It is because the Basques and the Brazilian Indians are geographically separate that there is fair prima facie probability of the couvade being the result of independent origin. It is because of another geographic fact, that proverbs are known throughout one hemisphere and lacking from the other, that it must be inferred that they represent a borrowed culture trait.
In the following pages a number of culture elements will be examined from the point of view of their distribution with the aim of determining how far each of the two principles of parallel invention and of borrowing may be inferred to have been operative in regard to them. In place of “independent origin” the terms “parallelism” or “convergence” will be generally used. As an equivalent of “borrowing” the somewhat less metaphorical word “diffusion” will be applied. Well known historic cases of diffusion, such as those of Christianity and Mohammedanism, of Roman law, of the printing press and steam engine and of the great modern mechanical inventions, will not be considered. It is however well to keep these numerous cases in the background of one’s mind as a constant suggestion that the principle of diffusion is an extremely powerful one and still active. In fact, the chief reason why early anthropologists did not make more use of this principle seems to have been their extreme familiarity with it. It was going on all about them, so that in dealing with prehistoric times or with remote peoples, they tended to overlook it. This was perhaps a natural error, since the communications of savages and their methods of transmission are so much more restricted than our own. Yet of course even savages shift their habitations and acquire new neighbors. At times they capture women and children from one another. Again they intermarry; and they almost invariably maintain some sort of trade relations with at least some of the adjacent peoples. Slow as diffusion might therefore be among them, it would nevertheless go on, and its lack of rapidity would be compensated by the immense durations of time in the prehistoric period. It is certain that the simpler inventions of primitive man generally did not travel with the rapidity of the printing press and telegraph and camera. But on the other hand, instead of a generation or a century, there would often be periods of a thousand or five thousand years for an invention or a custom to spread from one continent to another. There is thus every a priori reason why diffusion could be expected to have had a very large part in the formation of primitive and barbarous as well as advanced culture.