On accurate analysis of culture phenomena, this sort of result proves to be fairly frequent. When independent developments have occurred, there is a basic or psychological similarity, but concrete details are markedly different. On the other hand if a differentiation from a common source has taken place, so that true historical connection exists, some specific identity of detail almost always remains as evidence. It therefore follows that if only it is possible to get the facts fully enough, there is no theoretical reason why ultimately all cultural phenomena that are still hovering doubtfully between the parallelistic and the diffusionary interpretations should not be positively explainable one way or the other. This of course is not an assertion that such proof has been brought. In fact there are far more traits of civilization whose history remains to be elucidated than have yet been solved. But the attainments already achieved, and an understanding of the principles by which they have been made, encourage hope for an indefinite increase of knowledge regarding the origin and growth of the whole of human culture.
96. Measures
Another increment of civilization due to the Babylonians is a series of metric standardizations. These include the division of the circle into three hundred and sixty degrees, of the day into twenty-four (originally twelve) hours, of the hour into sixty minutes, of the foot into twelve inches, and the pound—as it survives in our troy weight—into twelve ounces. It is apparent that the system involved in these measures is based on the number twelve and its multiple sixty. The weights current in the ancient Near East also increased by sixties. On these weights were based the ancient money values. The Greek mina, Hebrew maneh, approximately a pound, comprised sixty shekels (or a hundred Athenian drachmas), and sixty minas made a talent. A talent of silver and one of gold possessed different values, but the weight was the same. This system the Greeks derived from Asia Minor and Phœnicia. Their borrowing of the names, as well as the close correspondence of the actual weight of the units, evidences their origin in Babylonia or adjacent Aramæa.
The duodecimal method of reckoning was carried west, became deeply ingrained during the Roman Empire, and has carried down through the Middle Ages to modern times. It would be going too far to say that every division of units of measure into twelve parts can be traced directly to Babylonia. Now and then new standards were arbitrarily fixed and new names given them. But even when this occurred, the old habit of reckoning by twelves for which the Babylonians were responsible, was likely to reassert itself in competition with the decimal system. Modern coinage systems have become prevailingly decimal, but it is only a short time ago that in south Germany 60 kreuzer still made a gulden; and the twelve pence of the English shilling obviously suggest themselves.
Certain of these metric units became fixed more than two thousand years ago and have descended to us by an unbroken tradition. The Babylonian degrees, minutes, and seconds, for instance, became an integral part of the ancient astronomy, were taken up by the Greeks, incorporated by them in their development of the system of astronomy known as the Ptolemaic, and thus became a part of Roman, Arab, and mediæval European science. When a few centuries ago, beginning with the introduction of the Copernican point of view, astronomy launched forward into a new period of progress, the old system of reckoning was so deeply rooted that it was continued without protest. Had the first truly scientific beginnings of astronomy taken place as late as those of chemistry, it is extremely doubtful whether we should now be reckoning 360 degrees in the circumference of the circle. The decimal system would almost certainly have been applied.
The last few examples may give the impression that cultural diffusion takes place largely in regard to names and numbers. They may arouse the suspicion that the intrinsic elements of inventions and accomplishments are less readily spread. This is not the case. In fact it has happened time and again in the history of civilization that the substance of an art or a knowledge has passed from one people to another, while an entirely new designation for the acquisition has been coined by the receiving people. The English names of the seven days of the week (§ [125]) are a case in point. If stress seems to have been laid here on names and numbers, it is not because they are more inclined to diffusion, or most important, but because their diffusion is more easily traced. They often provide an infallible index of historical connection when a deficiency of historical records would make it difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove that the common possession of the thing itself went back to a single source. If historical records are silent, as they are only too often, on the origin of a device among a people, the occurrence of the same device at an earlier time among another people may strongly suggest that it was transmitted from these. But the indication is far from constituting a proof because of the theoretical possibility that the later nation might have made the invention independently. It is chiefly when the device is complex and the relation of its parts identical that the probability of diffusion approaches surety. If however not only the thing but its name also are shared by distinct nations, doubt is removed. It is obvious that peoples speaking unrelated languages will not coincide one time in a thousand in using the same name for the same idea independently of each other. The play of accident is thus precluded in such cases and a connection by transmission is established. In fact the name is the better touchstone. An invention may be borrowed and be given a home-made name. But a foreign name would scarcely be adopted without the object being also accepted.
97. Divination
One other Babylonian invention may be cited on account of its curious history. This is the pseudo-science of predicting the outcome of events by examination of the liver of animals sacrificed to the gods. A system of such divination, known as hepatoscopy, was worked out by the Babylonian priests perhaps by 2,000 B.C. Their rules are known from the discovery of ancient clay models of the liver with its several lobes, each part being inscribed with its significance according as it might bear such and such appearance. In some way which is not yet wholly understood, this system was carried, like the true arch, from the Babylonians to the Etruscans. As there are definite ancient traditions which brought the Etruscans into Italy from Asia, the gap is however lessened. The Etruscans, who were evidently addicted to priestly magic, carried on this liver divination alongside another method, that of haruspicy or foretelling from the flight or actions of birds. Both systems were learned from them by the Romans, according to Roman tradition itself.
With the spread of Christianity, hepatoscopy and haruspicy died out in the west. But meanwhile they had been carried in the opposite direction from their Babylonian source of origin, and became established in eastern Asia and finally, in somewhat modified form, among remote uncivilized peoples. The pagan priests of Borneo and the Philippines even to-day are foretelling the future by observing the flight of birds and examining the gall bladder—an organ intimately associated with the liver—of sacrificial animals. If these primitive Malaysian peoples had always remained uninfluenced by higher cultures, their divinatory customs might be imputed to independent invention. They live, however, at no great distance from the Asiatic mainland, and are known to have been subjected to heavy cultural influences from China, Arabia, and especially India. Four centuries ago, to cite only a few specific instances, the Philippine chieftains went under the title of rajah, the Hindu word for king. In the southern Philippine islands there are “sultans” to-day. In all parts of the Philippines as well as Borneo, even among the rude tribes of the interior mountains, Chinese jars imported centuries ago are treasured as precious heirlooms. With these streams of higher culture flowing into the Malaysian islands, the only reasonable conclusion is that the arts of liver and bird divination were also imported. In fact, it seems probable that the broader custom of sacrificing animals to the gods and spirits, a custom to which the pagan Malaysians still adhere, is a part of the same wave of influence from the Orient which has so deeply stamped the Homeric poems and the Old Testament. Although theoretically it is not surprising that hepatoscopy and haruspicy still flourish among some backward and marginally situated peoples, yet, in the concrete and at first blush, it is striking to find that an institution which was active in Babylonia three or four thousand years ago should still maintain an unbroken life in Borneo. Evidently the diffusion principle reaches far and long.
Another method of foretelling, which has spread equally far, although its flow has been mainly from the east westward, is scapulimancy, divination from the cracks that develop in scorched shoulder blades. This seems to have originated in ancient China with the heating of tortoise shells; had spread by the third century after Christ to Japan, where deer shoulder blades were employed; and is found to-day among the Koryak and Chukchi of northeasternmost Siberia, who utilize the same bones from seals and reindeer respectively. Elsewhere domestic animals, above all the sheep, furnish the proper shoulder blade. All the central Asiatic nations as far south as the Tibetans and Lolos are addicted to the custom, which had official status with the Mongol rulers in the thirteenth century, but must have been older, since it was in vogue among the Byzantine Greeks two hundred years earlier. The practice spread over practically all Europe, where it flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and still lingers among belated rural populations; to Morocco and perhaps other parts of north Africa; and in Asia to South Arabia, Afghanistan, and westernmost India. Scapulimancy was not known to the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans; it seems not to have penetrated far into India and not at all into the countries and islands to the east of India, which are sheepless regions; and it did not obtain a foothold in North America, where sheep and other tame animals were also not kept. It appears therefore that the custom, after a period of somewhat wavering formation in eastern Asia, crystallized into an association with the domesticated sheep, forming a true culture “complex,” and was then diffused almost as far as this animal.