Religion has furnished another example of typical evolution in human thought. At an early time man began to think and ponder about the phenomena of nature. Everything appeared to him in an anthropomorphic form of thought; and thus the first primitive concepts regarding the world came into being, in which the stone, the mountain, the heavenly orbs, were viewed as animate anthropomorphic beings endowed with will-power, and willing to help man or threatening to endanger him. The observation of the activities of man’s own body and of his mind led to the formulation of the idea of a soul independent of the body; and with increasing knowledge and with increasing philosophic thought, religion and science grew out of these simple beginnings.
The sameness of all these phenomena in different parts of the world has been considered as proof not only of the fundamental unity of the mind of all the races of man, but also of the truth of the theory of evolution of civilization; and thus a grand structure has been reared, in which we see our present civilization as the necessary outcome of the activities of all the races of man that have risen in one grand procession, from the simplest beginnings of culture, through periods of barbarism, to the stage of civilization that they now occupy. The march has not been equally rapid; for some are still lagging behind, while others have forged forward, and occupy the first places in the general advance.
It seems desirable to understand more clearly what this theory of parallelism of cultural development implies. It seems to mean that different groups of mankind started at a very early time from a general condition of lack of culture; and, owing to the unity of the human mind and the consequent similar response to outer and inner stimuli, they have developed everywhere approximately along the same lines, making similar inventions and developing similar customs and beliefs. It also seems to involve a certain correlation between industrial development and social development, and therefore a definite sequence of inventions as well as of forms of organization and of belief.
In the absence of historical data in regard to the earliest history of primitive man the world over, we have only three sources of historical proof of this assumption,—the evidence contained in the earliest history of the civilized people of the Old World, survivals in modern civilization, and archæology. The last-named is the only method by means of which we can approach the problem in regard to people that have no history.
While it is certainly true that analogues can be found between the types of culture represented by primitive people and those conditions which prevailed among the ancestors of the present civilized peoples at the dawn of history, and that these analogues are supported by the evidence furnished by survivals, the evidence of archæology does not support the complete generalization. The theory of parallel development, if it is to have any significance, would require that among all branches of mankind the steps of invention should have followed, at least approximately, in the same order, and that no important gaps should be found. The facts, so far as known at the present time, are entirely contrary to this view. We find, for instance, large areas of the world inhabited by people well advanced in the arts of life, but who have never made the discovery of pottery, one of the essential steps in the advance of civilization. Pottery is not found in the extreme southern parts of Africa, in Australia, in northeastern Siberia,[[6]] in the whole northwestern part of North America, and in the extreme south of South America. According to what has been said before (p. [169]), it would seem as if Old-World pottery covers about the same territory as the other characteristic traits referred to before, while in America its centre lies in the area of more advanced culture in the middle part of the continent. Thus it happens that the well-advanced tribes of Northwest America have no pottery, and its presence or absence seems to be due more to geographical location than to general cultural causes.
The same may be said in regard to the use of metals. The invention of metallurgy, which marks so important an advance of European civilization, does not appear associated with analogous levels of development in other parts of the world. Similar remarks may be made in regard to the development of agriculture and of the domestication of animals. People whom in a general way we ought to class as on the same level of culture may some possess the art of agriculture, others may have domesticated animals, while still others may rely upon the bounty of the sea or upon the natural vegetable products of their home.[[7]] As soon as we begin to investigate the industrial achievements of different types belonging to different races, parallelism of industrial development does not seem to exist in any degree of detail. Only one general trait of industrial development remains; namely, the constant addition of new elements to the older stock of knowledge and an increasing refinement of methods and of results, setting aside periods of temporary regression.
Thus it does not seem to be certain that every people in an advanced stage of civilization must have passed through all the stages of development, which we may gather by an investigation of all the types of culture which occur all over the world.
A still more serious objection is based on another observation. The validity of the general sameness of the evolution of mankind is based on the assumption that the same cultural features must always have developed from the same causes, and that all variations are only minor details of the grand uniform type of evolution. In other words, its logical basis is the assumption that the same ethnical phenomena are always due to the same causes. Thus the inference in regard to the sequence of maternal and paternal institutions, to which I referred before, is based on the generalization that because in a few cases paternal families have developed from maternal ones, therefore all paternal families have developed in the same way. If we do not make the assumption that the same phenomena have everywhere developed in the same way, then we may just as well conclude that paternal families have in some cases arisen from maternal institutions, in other cases in other ways.
In the same way it is inferred that because many conceptions of the future life have evidently developed from dreams and hallucinations, all notions of this character have had the same origin. This is true only if it can be shown that no other causes could possibly lead to the same ideas.
To give another example. It has been claimed that among the Indians of Arizona, pottery developed from basketry, and it has been inferred that all pottery must therefore be later in the cultural development of mankind than basketry. Evidently this conclusion cannot be defended, for pottery may develop in other ways.