Man And His Ancestor: A Study In Evolution

by Charles Morris

In Africa the only existing indication of a migration of the forest folk into the open country is found in the Bushmen and Hottentots of the far south. The former, confined to the desert, remain nomad hunters and present no step of advance beyond the Akka and other equatorial tribes. The Hottentots, on the contrary, have made an important step of progress. While still nomads and addicted to hunting, they have domesticated cattle and sheep and become essentially a herding people, though mentally the lowest race of herders on the face of the earth.

With this change in habits, the Hottentots have significantly increased in stature. While still of medium height, they are considerably larger than their Bushmen kindred, to whom they present a close resemblance in other respects. This increase in size is a common result of a change in habits which insures a fuller supply of food with less strain upon the muscular organization in obtaining it; a fact of which the lower animal world is full of illustrations. The life of the forest and desert hunters is one of incessant activity, and their food supply is precarious. The Hottentots, on the contrary, take life easily and are inclined to indolence, their herds supplying them with food in abundance with little exertion. They retain enough of the primeval strain to be fond of hunting, and while thus engaged display the activity of their ancestral race, but ordinarily they pursue an idle, wandering life, and their increase in size may well be a result of their change in habits.

The Hottentots, while still low in the human scale, are mentally a stage in advance of the Bushmen, they having a more developed social organization and superior powers of thought. The latter is indicated by their myths and legends, of which they have a considerable store, though they are in great measure destitute of religious conceptions, such religion as they possess taking in great part the primitive form of ancestor worship. Under the influence of Europeans they are gradually abandoning their old habits and adopting those of civilized life, but while improving in social and industrial conditions there is little evidence of intellectual advance.

The development in method of food-getting displayed by the Hottentots was really but the completion of the old battle for dominion with the animal host. It consisted in subjecting some of the docile herbivora more fully to human mastership. The hunter has to do with hostile beasts, victims but not servants of man. The herder has reduced some of these animals to servitude, and no longer has to overcome them through the arduous labors of the chase. He is able to obtain, as we have said, more food with less exertion, a larger population can live in a limited district, and the beneficial effects upon the mind of a closer social intercourse are shown.

But the most important event in this stage of evolution was the subjection of the plant world to man. For ages of interminable length this was not thought of. Fruits and other vegetable products formed part of man's food; but these were the growth of wild nature, and the plant world was left to its own will, with no effort to bring it under human control. There is nothing to show that the idea of agriculture ever entered the mind of a Pygmy. Of the plants surrounding him, far the greater number were useless for food, only the few were available; but the conception of favoring the few at the expense of the many apparently never occurred to him. There is, indeed, some crude and simple agriculture pursued by a few of the Negritos of Luzon, but evidently as an imitation of the Malay agriculture or as a result of direct teaching, certainly not as an original conception. The conflict of the Pygmies with nature has been confined to the animal world, and reached its highest level in the herding industries of the Hottentots.

Where and when the subjugation of the plant world began it is impossible to say. It very probably had its origin in the fertile open lands of the tropics. But that it originated in the central region of Africa, or that the agriculturists of that region were of native origin, are both subjects open to question. The forest folk may have spread into the open country, there developed a crude agriculture, favored the growth of food plants at the expense of useless shrubs and trees, and gradually advanced in this new form of industry. This would be in accordance with the opinion of Virchow, who looks upon the negro as the descendant of the Pygmy. No great change was necessary to convert the one into the other. The Pygmy is negro-like in cast of countenance and bodily formation. He differs in size, in complexion, and in shape of head. But new conditions may have given rise to these differences. The fierce suns of the African lowlands may well have caused an increased deposit of pigment, changing the yellowish hue of the Pygmy to the deep black of the negro. An increase in size is a natural result when exertion diminishes and food increases. And a tendency for the head to change from the short to the long shape is shown in the Bushmen.

On the other hand, certain anthropologists, of whom we may name Quatrefages, take an opposite view, and believe that the negroes migrated from Asia or the Eastern islands to Africa, being, like the negro-like Papuans, descendants of the sable or dark brown Negritos of the East. In this case agriculture may have originated in Asia and have been brought by migrants to Africa. All we know historically concerning it is that the earliest traceable seats of agriculture appear to have been the fertile valleys of India, Babylonia, and Egypt. But the known culture of the earth in these regions goes back only a few thousands of years, while for the first crude stages of agriculture we must probably measure years by tens of thousands.

The degree of subjection of nature to man's needs, as displayed in tropical agriculture, was comparatively small, and its effect on the development of the human intellect, while important, was limited. It had the highly useful result of a great increase in population, the growth of village and town life, an advance in social relations, and the beginning of political relations. New implements were needed, better houses were erected, the settled condition of the people gave rise to direct efforts at education, and added the important element of commerce, in its earliest form, to the industries of mankind. The result must have been a fresh start in the development of the intellect, though one that probably soon reached its culminating point in the central tropics.

The highest results of the development of agriculture in tropical countries, unaided by secondary influences, seem to have been those existing in the highly fertile regions of Egypt and Babylonia at the opening of the historical period. The density of population in those countries, due to their prolific production of food stuffs, gave rise to considerably developed political and social institutions, and laid the foundations for a great subsequent advance under the influence of warfare, invasion, and the other more potent causes of human progress. Only for such ulterior influences the agriculturists of these countries would perhaps to-day remain dormant in the stage of mental progress they had attained ten thousand years ago.

In considering the existing conditions of the forest nomads and the African agriculturists, it is not safe to credit them with the origination of all the arts and implements they possess. The negroes, for instance, have been for ages in more or less close association with the Pygmies, and may have taught them many things which they would not have attained through their own limited powers of thought. The bow and poisoned arrow are very likely original with them. They possess this weapon throughout the wide range from the African Hottentots to the Philippine Negritos, while it is not a weapon of the surrounding peoples. The spear is probably also original. The same cannot safely be said of their traps and snares for game. These seem beyond their power of invention, and may well have been taught them by the negro tribes. Their habitations, aside from the mere leaf shelters, had probably a similar origin. In Africa the huts doubtless had their model in those of the negroes. In the Philippines they are pile-supported bamboo huts of the pattern of those of the Malays. If, then, we take from the forest folk the arts taught them or imitated by them, we reduce them to a very low level of intellect and a remarkable paucity of products from their own powers of thought.