The Evolution of Culture, and Other Essays

by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers

Scattered over the world in various localities are savage races showing various degrees of culture, some higher and some lower than others, many of which have now been greatly influenced by contact with civilized races, but of the majority of which we have more or less detailed records, dating from the time of their first discovery by Europeans, when their arts may be regarded as indigenous, or, at any rate, free from any admixture with the arts of civilized races.

If these savage races have been degraded from a higher condition of culture, then, seeing that sequence of ideas is necessary to the existence of any ideas whatever, we must inevitably find traces in their arts of those higher arts from which they descended. But if, on the other hand, they have risen from a lower state, and their present savage condition arises from their having advanced less rapidly than those races which are now above them in the social scale, then what are the conditions which we must expect to find prevailing amongst them?

We shall find, firstly, that the forms of their implements, instead of showing evidence of having been derived from higher and more complex forms, will, in proportion to the low state of their civilization, show evidence of being derived from natural forms, such as might have been employed by man before he had learnt the art of modifying them to his uses; and secondly, we shall find that the persistency of the forms is proportioned to the low state of their culture.

Now this is found to be the case with nearly every race of savages of whose condition we have any knowledge. Lowest amongst the existing races of the world of whom we have any accurate knowledge are the Australians. All their weapons assimilate to the forms of nature; all their wooden weapons are constructed on the grain of the wood, and consequently their curves are the curves of the branches out of which they were constructed. In every instance in which I have attempted to arrange my collection in sequence, so as to trace the higher forms from natural forms, the weapons of the Australians have found their place lowest in the scale, because they assimilate most closely to the natural forms.

Of this many examples may be given. I will not now again enter into the history of the boomerang, to which I have already drawn the attention of the Society on former occasions. Those who wish to see the subject treated in greater detail will find it discussed in my catalogue of the collection, in which are also given the authorities for many facts that are mentioned here, and which the limits of time and space do not enable me to quote at length. Suffice to say that the whole of the Australian weapons can be traced by their connecting links to the simple stick, such as might have been used by an ape or an elephant before mankind appeared upon this earth, and I have arranged them so as to show this connexion on the screens. Here also we are able to trace the development of the idea of a shield to cover the body, which in its simplest form is a simple parrying-stick held in the centre, and which expands gradually into an oval shield. It is also shown upon the screens how the simple waddy, or club with a lozenge-shaped head, by a gradual development of one side, grew into a kind of wooden hatchet, which ultimately became converted into a hatchet-boomerang.

The whole of the Australian weapons, without exception, are of this simple character, and in proof of the persistency with which this nation has continued to employ the same forms, no further evidence is necessary than the fact that they are the same, with but slight variations, over the whole continent. The slight differences between them, as Mr. Oldfield has pointed out, are so minute as scarcely to be perceptible to a European, but sufficient to enable a native to determine at a glance from what locality any specimen that may be shown him has been obtained.

But although all the connecting forms between the forms of nature and the more advanced forms are found amongst the existing weapons of these savages, we are not to assume from this that the whole of the progress observed has been effected in modern times. The whole sequence of ideas connecting these weapons (which are now constructed in a manner to show that the art of producing them is partly automatic) was reasoned out by such processes of the mind as stood for reason, at various former periods in the history of the race, each successive improvement constituting a link in the chain of progressive development. Each link has left its representatives, which, with certain modifications, have survived to the present time; and it is by the means of these survivals, and not by the links themselves, that we are able to trace out the sequence that has been spoken of.

This is the hypothesis put forward, and which I profess to justify by the facts accumulated in this collection.