Thus, we find that of the Northern Athabaskans of western Canada, the southern Carrier and the Chilcotin Indians share with the Shuswap Indians of Salish stock the use of semi-subterranean huts which even in winter seem like ovens. Are we to recognize in this an adaptation to the inclemencies of the climate? Hardly, when we find that this type of dwelling is used precisely by those Athabaskans living farthest south, where of course the climate is much milder, while the more northern tribes of the family get along with crude double shelters about a central fireplace. The use of the semi-subterranean lodge by the Carrier and Chilcotin is perfectly explained as a contact phenomenon. They have simply adopted the idea from their Salish neighbors: the cultural environment has proved more effective than the physical environment in determining a cultural trait. Other members of the same family furnish corresponding instances. Though many of the Northern Athabaskans have long, snowy winters, only the Loucheux, who are in contact with the Eskimo, have adopted the wooden goggles of the Eskimo, which serve as a protection against snow-blindness. Similarly, they are the only members of the stock to substitute for the widespread Canadian toboggan the Eskimo sledge with runners.[6-iii]
As the physical environment is overshadowed in cultural significance by a neighboring culture, so it may vanish into nothingness in the face of what we may call cultural inertia—the tendency of a preëxisting cultural trait of indigenous growth to assert itself. A familiar example of this tendency is the exact imitation of forms of implements in quite different and often refractory material. Thus, the Central Eskimo generally make lamps and pots out of soapstone. In Southampton Island, where this material is lacking, they have not devised a new form but have at the expenditure of much ingenuity and labor cemented together slabs of limestone so as to produce the traditional shape.[7-iii] The same phenomenon appears in other fields. Grooved copper axes have been found in parts of the United States; their shape is patterned exactly on the stone axes characteristic of the same localities. The beginnings of the copper and bronze ages in Europe are equally suggestive in this regard. The incipient metallurgist does not automatically make the most of his material but slavishly follows his stone or bone models. His copper ornaments imitate bear’s teeth or bone beads, his implements resemble the stone celts and hammers of an earlier era.[8-iii] As Professor Boas points out on the basis of Bogoras’ descriptions, an equivalent development may be traced in the history of the Chukchee tent. This type of habitation is extremely clumsy and not at all well adapted to the roving life of the Reindeer division of the tribe, considerably hampering their progress. It represents, however, a variety of the older form of stationary house used when the Chukchee were a purely maritime people.[9-iii]
It might be objected that maladjustments of this sort are transitional, that just as the copper and bronze workers ultimately freed themselves from the influence of the preëxisting stone technique so the Chukchee would finally have abandoned their inconvenient tent and developed a new and more readily transportable lodge. This sounds, of course, very plausible but misses the point of the argument. Undoubtedly, a more and more perfect adaptation to elements of the physical surroundings has repeatedly taken place. But the very fact that culture history, on its material side, implies this progressive adjustment also implies that the cultural phenomena at different periods of time differ where the same environmental stimuli persist and therefore cannot be explained by them, which is what we have been trying to prove.
Indeed, environment is not only unable to create cultural features, in some instances it is even incapable of perpetuating them. Thus, pottery was once distributed over an extensive region in the New Hebrides but is now restricted to a few isolated localities on a single island. Again, in southeastern New Guinea ancient pottery has been found that vastly surpasses its present representatives in point of craftsmanship.[10-iii] A similar phenomenon has been noted in the Southwest of the United States, where the evolution and deterioration of glazed earthenware may be clearly traced in the same region.[11-iii] Dr. Rivers has pointed out an even more instructive example of cultural degeneration. In the Torres Islands of Melanesia the natives have no canoes for traversing the channels which separate their islands from one another but are obliged to use unseaworthy bamboo rafts inadequate even for fishing purposes. Yet there is evidence that the Torres Islanders once shared the art of canoe-making with their fellow-Oceanians and that it has died out in recent times independently of European influence. It is difficult to conceive of any people less likely a priori to lose the art of navigation than a South Sea Island group; yet, their maritime environment proved inadequate to preserve so vital a feature of their daily life.
To sum up: Environment cannot explain culture because the identical environment is consistent with distinct cultures; because cultural traits persist from inertia in an unfavorable environment; because they do not develop where they would be of distinct advantage to a people; and because they may even disappear where one would least expect it on geographical principles.
Shall we then cavalierly banish geography from cultural considerations? This would be manifestly going beyond the mark. Geographical phenomena can no more be discarded than can psychological phenomena. They represent in the first place a limiting condition. As cultures cannot contravene psychological principles so they cannot, except in a limited measure, override geographical factors. To use some drastically clear if somewhat hackneyed examples, the Eskimo do not eat coconuts nor do the Oceanians build snow-houses; where the horse does not occur it cannot be domesticated; in the Hopi country where watercourses are lacking navigation naturally did not develop. As Jochelson points out, the Koryak of northeastern Siberia cannot cultivate cereals because of the low temperature and they cannot succeed as cattle-breeders because of the poor quality of the grasses.[12-iii] This minimum recognition of environment as a purely negative factor, however, does not do full justice to it. Take the bison out of the Plains Indian’s life and his cultural atmosphere certainly changes. Nevertheless, we have seen that the presence of the bison by no means fully determined the cultural employment possible. Instead of hunting it as the Solutrean Europeans did the wild horse, the Indian might have domesticated it as his namesake by misnomer in Asia domesticated the buffalo. The environment, then, enters into culture, not as a formative but rather as an inert element ready to be selected from and molded. It is, of course, a matter of biological necessity for a people to establish some sort of adaptation to surrounding conditions, but such adaptation is no more spontaneously generated by the environment than are strictly biological adaptations. There are alternatives to adaptation—migration and destruction.
It is true, as Dr. Wissler has forcibly pointed out, that when some kind of adjustment has once been established it will tend to persist in the region of its origin.[13-iii] This, however, illustrates not so much the active influence of environment as rather the tremendous force of cultural inertia which tends to perpetuate an old muddling-along adjustment, however imperfect, provided only it has bare survival value.
Altogether we may illustrate the relations of culture to environment by an analogy used by Dr. Wissler in another connection, which also brings us back to my initial analogy of the environmental theory with the associationist system in psychology. The environment furnishes the builders of cultural structures with brick and mortar but it does not furnish the architect’s plan. As the illustrations cited clearly prove, there is a variety of ways in which the same materials can be put together, nay, there is always a range of choice as regards the materials themselves. The development of a particular architectural style and the selection of a special material from among an indefinite number of possible styles and materials are what characterize a given culture. Since geography permits more than a single adjustment to the same conditions, it cannot give the interpretation sought by the student of culture. Culture can no more be built up of environmental blocks than can consciousness out of isolated ideas; and as the association of ideas already implies the synthetizing faculty of consciousness, so the assemblage and use of environmental factors after a definite plan already implies the selective and synthetic agency of a preëxisting or nascent culture.
IV. THE DETERMINANTS OF CULTURE
Psychology, racial differences, geographical environment, have all proved inadequate for the interpretation of cultural phenomena. The inference is obvious. Culture is a thing sui generis which can be explained only in terms of itself. This is not mysticism but sound scientific method. The biologist, whatever metaphysical speculations he may indulge in as to the ultimate origin of life, does not depart in his workaday mood from the principle that every cell is derived from some other cell. So the ethnologist will do well to postulate the principle, Omnis cultura ex cultura.[1-iv] This means that he will account for a given cultural fact by merging it in a group of cultural facts or by demonstrating some other cultural fact out of which it has developed. The cultural phenomenon to be explained may either have an antecedent within the culture of the tribe where it is found or it may have been imported from without. Both groups of determinants must be considered.