The Evolution of Culture, and Other Essays

by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers

The distribution of races, according to supposed original distinctions of colour and complexion, will be seized upon by polygenists as an argument in their favour; for it will be said that, according to this theory, the distinctions of race in the earliest times must have been as great, or greater, than they are at present.

There are three ways in which it has been attempted to account for these early distinctions of colour and persistency of type—(1) by supposing the several races of man to have been separately created upon distinct continents of land; (2) by assuming that on each primaeval continent, man was evolved from the anthropoid apes of that continent;[186] or (3), by supposing that these divisions of race, remotely and immeasurably distant though they be, nevertheless carry us only a short way back into the history of man, and that still earlier ages, if we could penetrate them, would show the races of man united.

Now, with respect to the first assumption, that of creation, though we are not, of course, in a position to deny the possibility of it, I confess it appears to me unwarranted by any of the phenomena of nature. We have no knowledge of the special creation of any organized being; and how can we scientifically assume as probable, that, for the probability of which there is no sort of evidence of a nature that inductive science would be warranted in building upon? Continuity and development are seen to be the order of the universe. Man is seen to be, both mentally and physically, amenable to that law; and on what grounds can we assume that he was ever an exception to it? I cannot conceive how those who believe geological changes to have been brought about by causes which are still in operation in our own day, and who make great calls upon time in order to reconcile those causes to the phenomena observed, can, in treating biological phenomena, advocate belief in so great a break in the observed order of the universe as is implied by the special creation of man. Still less willing am I, in the absence of more cogent argument than has ever yet been advanced in support of it, to assent to hypotheses of the separate development of races, which appears to me equally at variance with nature. There can be no doubt that all the existing races of man, whatever their colour and physical peculiarities, have greater affinity to each other than any of them have to the apes, or to any other class of animals. The tendency of progress is from simplicity to complexity, from unity to diversity, and it would be a complete inversion of the order of nature that animals so various as the apes should independently produce animals so much resembling each other as the races of man. The recognized law that, with certain variations, like begets like, appears to me to negative this assumption as fully as it would do the notion, if it were put forward, that because the horse and some other classes of the mammalia, say the rhinoceros, for instance, have some affinities in their bony structure, therefore the black horse is descended from the African rhinoceros, and the white horse from that of India. Moreover, all the races of mankind interbreed, and I am at a loss to understand how a circumstance like this, which throughout the animal kingdom is regarded as a proof of unity of species, should be discarded in its application to humanity. If, then, it is true that diversity of colour is as old as the very earliest traces of man, and there is evidence that the several coloured races were inhabitants of distinct continents, which have disappeared through geological changes dispersing and mixing the races, blending the colours and obliterating the traces of their formerly isolated homes; then to the same causes, which produced the mixing and the blending, we must also attribute the original separation. According to the view I hold, we must ask for more time, and still further geological changes, to bring them together again in the primaeval cradle of the human race.

Now, to apply this reasoning to the origin of weapons. The only vestiges of the primaeval tools of mankind now left to us are those constructed of stone; others of the more perishable materials have decayed, and their representatives only have remained in some few cases as survivals. In my last lecture I showed how uniform in shape and in development these stone implements are found to be in all parts of the world, whether derived from the northern or southern continent of America, from Siberia, Australia, India, Africa, or the surface soils and river gravels of Europe. This uniformity of shape has been used as an argument that mankind must have independently designed the same forms of tools in various parts of the world, and that under like conditions, like forms will be produced by men, however remotely separated. I am not prepared to deny the possibility of some of these forms having had an independent origin; but if the proof of it is to be based upon the separation of continents, we see how entirely groundless such an argument is when applied to the earliest ages of humanity. For if, as has been conjectured, the races of man may have been dispersed by geographical changes of land and sea, it is obvious they may have carried with them, from some primal source, the art of manufacturing stone weapons; the resemblance of which is far more satisfactorily accounted for by this means[187] than by supposing such singular and invariable coincidence in design to be the result of independent discovery. As we contemplate man in his lower and lowest conditions, we find the imitative faculty stands out more and more prominently by the absence of those higher qualities which characterize civilized races; and whatever power of originality for the invention of new arts may have been possessed by the earliest inhabitants of the globe, its results appear to have been spread over so vast a lapse of time that it can scarcely be accounted at all as an element in the mental attributes of primaeval man.

I now pass to what has been announced as the subject proper of my present communication, viz. the origin and development of metal tools. I use the word metal intentionally, in preference to specifying bronze, because, although we have good reason for supposing that in Europe, Egypt, Assyria, and the central parts of America, bronze preceded iron as a material for weapons, it is not so certain that this was the case in all parts of Asia; and in Africa we know that iron was the first metal employed by the negroes.

Perhaps no subject has given rise to so much difference of opinion amongst archaeologists as this question of the origin of metal implements, or has been accompanied with such uncertain results, owing to the great mass of conflicting evidence to be dealt with, and the great doubt which rests upon much of it, whether in regard to the casual mention of the subject in ancient authors, or to the often ill-directed researches of modern times. It would be hopeless, in the brief time allotted me on the present occasion, to attempt to throw fresh light on this intricate subject, even if I possessed the materials for so doing. All I shall endeavour to do is, to put together, in as intelligible a form as possible, some of the more salient points upon which archaeologists are divided, and trace the continuity observable in passing from the stone to the metal age.

We have already seen, in speaking of the implements of the stone age, a gradual improvement in form and fabrication, developing itself in proportion as the wild animals which were contemporaneous with the first traces of man in Europe became extinct, partly, no doubt, through the efforts of man himself in exterminating them, and partly, as there seems reason to suppose, owing to an alteration of temperature, rendering the climate unsuited to the constitution and habits of those animals, which therefore migrated by degrees, and the majority of which are now found chiefly, though not exclusively, in arctic regions. Thither they have been accompanied by races of men whose arts and implements show them to be very nearly in a corresponding stage of civilization to the early races, the relics of which are found associated with the same animals in Europe. The simultaneous migration of races of men in the hunting stage of civilization, with the animals, the pursuit of which forms the almost sole occupation of their lives, is well shown in the case of the North American Indians, whose geographical distribution is now almost identical with that of the buffalo. This forms a strong point in the arguments of those who are disposed to attribute all the changes in the world’s civilization to the influx and extermination of antagonistic races. But it must be remembered that progress advances in an increasing ratio, and the phenomenon now seen in America and Australia of a highly civilized race constantly fed by steam-communication from the Old World, driving before it and rapidly exterminating other races so vastly its inferior as the Australians and American Indians, is one which could have had no parallel at the early period of which I am now speaking. We must here look for a slower process, though doubtless the operating causes may, to a great extent, have been the same.

The fabrication of stone implements would of itself lead by degrees to a knowledge of the metals which are contained in stones. Thus, for example, I have here a specimen of a stone mace-head from Central America, figure 2, Plate XIX, composed of a nodule of haematite partially coated with micaceous iron ore, the particles of which are distinctly visible on its glittering surface. The weight of this implement, being nearly double that of a mace-head composed of ordinary stone, would at once attract the notice of the savage fabricator, and lead him to investigate the uses of metal.

But, as a general rule, races engaged exclusively in hunting, who rarely turn their attention to the ground except to examine a trail or to search for water, would have little opportunity of profiting by the mineral wealth of the soil over which they roamed. Witness the Australians, who have continued for ages in ignorance of the gold and other mines which are now so attractive to Europeans; or the North and South American Indians, and the Esquimaux, amongst whom the art of smelting metal has never been found associated with those races who are in a purely hunting stage of existence; the wrought metals used by such races to point their weapons being invariably derived from civilized sources.

From hunting wild animals, the savage, in the natural sequence of progress, would turn his attention to their capture and domestication, and thus he creeps gradually into the pastoral life; and as the bones of animals under domestication, through want of exercise and good living, become smoother and of finer texture, the experienced anatomist is thereby afforded the means of distinguishing, amongst the vestiges of antiquity, the remains of domesticated animals from those derived from the chase, and of observing to what extent the domestication of animals was contemporaneous with other changes in the social condition of the people.[188] Still, however, in the pastoral state, the barbarian is not necessarily brought in contact with metals; and hence we should expect in many cases to find the traces of domesticated animals associated with people who are still in the stone age. This was notably the case amongst the ancient inhabitants of the Swiss lakes, where the sheep and horse have been found at Moosseedorf, and other lake habitations which are proved to belong to the stone age, though not in such abundance as in the settlements belonging to the bronze age.[189]