Part 1
ANTHROPOLOGY
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE SERIES ON SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND ART DECEMBER 18, 1907
ANTHROPOLOGY
BY FRANZ BOAS PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
New York THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1908
COPYRIGHT, 1908, By THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS.
Set up, and published February, 1908.
ANTHROPOLOGY
In attempting to set forth briefly the principal results of anthropological research, I find my task beset with many difficulties. If the clear enunciation of the aims and methods of physical or biological science is not an easy matter, difficulties many times greater are encountered in an attempt to explain the present position of investigation dealing with mankind from the biological, geographical, and psychological points of view,--subjects that seem to lack in unity, and that present a number of most divergent aspects. Owing to the apparent heterogeneity of method, it seems necessary to explain the aims that unify the many lines of anthropological research. I can then proceed to describe what little has been attained, and how we hope to make further progress.
We do not discuss the anatomical, physiological, and mental characteristics of man considered as an individual; but we are interested in the diversity of these traits in groups of men found in different geographical areas and in different social classes. It is our task to inquire into the causes that have brought about the observed differentiation, and to investigate the sequence of events that have led to the establishment of the multifarious forms of human life. In other words, we are interested in anatomical and mental characteristics in so far as they are peculiar to groups of men living under the same biological, geographical, and social environment, and as determined by their past. Thus we are concerned with the effects of the climate and products of a country upon human life, with the influence of heat and of cold upon the bodily frame, with modifications in the life of communities brought about by geographical isolation, and with those due to the sufficiency or insufficiency of food-supply. No less interesting to us are the phenomena of dependence of human life upon those social conditions that find expression in the customary mode of nutrition and occupation; in the effects of contact between neighboring groups of people; in modifications brought about by migrations; and in the forms of life as influenced by the density of population. To understand these modifications, we require a knowledge of individual anatomy, physiology, and psychology, because the establishment of a characteristic social group can be brought about only by a parallel development which occurs in all the individuals exposed to similar influences.
Thus it appears that the genesis of the types of man, considered from an anatomical, physiological, and psychological point of view, is the chief object of anthropological research. When our problem is formulated in this manner, we recognize at once that a separation of anthropological methods from the methods of biology and psychology is impossible, and that certain problems of anthropology can be approached only from the point of view of these sciences. It might perhaps even be said that the investigation of the types of man is a purely biological problem, and that the only questions involved are such as can be treated by the application of those biological methods which are gradually clearing up the genesis of the types of animals and plants. A similar claim may be made in regard to the psychological problems. If there are any laws determining the growth and development of the human mind, they can be only laws that act in the individual, and consequently they must be determined by the application of individual psychology.
Thus an examination of our problems suggests that the whole group of anthropological phenomena may be evanescent, that they may be at bottom biological and psychological problems, and that the whole field of anthropology belongs either to the one or to the other of these sciences.
Nevertheless, anthropological phenomena possess a very genuine interest and unity. This is largely due to the fact that everything that concerns our own species is of special interest to us. The feeling of solidarity of mankind, but more particularly of the individual with his people and with the class of society to which he belongs, which finds in our day its strongest expression in the strife of the nations, has brought it about that the minute differences between the physical organization of different races, types, and social groups, have arrested attention much more vigorously than similar differences in the rest of the animal kingdom have done; and points of view have early become important that until recent times have received little attention on the part of biologists, or that have not yet claimed their attention. The distribution of distinct psychological types in man has proved an even more fascinating study, the investigation of which has led to problems that the inductive psychology of modern times is not yet ready to attack.
This centralization of interest in the manifestations of life in social units has determined the course of development of anthropology.
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Anthropological research leads us to two fundamental questions: Why are the tribes and nations of the world different, and how have the present differences developed? The first question, if it can be solved adequately, will always lead us to biological and psychological laws that act on man as an individual, in which we see the single event mirrored in one broad generalization. But even if we should have succeeded in reducing to a series of laws the multiplicity of events which manifest themselves in the development of new types and in the growth of new mental activities, a strong interest will remain in the actual developments which have occurred among the various peoples of the world.
This is true not only of anthropology, but also of biology and genetic psychology, and of other sciences describing the sequence of events in the universe; and the intense modern interest in evolution expresses the recognition of the importance of what might be called the historical view-point.
In this sense, anthropology is the science that endeavors to reconstruct the early history of mankind, and that tries, wherever possible, to express in the form of laws ever-recurring modes of historical happenings. Since written history covers a brief span of time, and relates in fragmentary records the fates of a few only of the multitude of peoples of the earth, the anthropologist must endeavor by methods of his own to clear up the darkness of past ages and of remote parts of the world.
While, from this theoretical point of view, anthropology must devote itself to the investigation of human types and human activities and thought the world over, its actual field of work is much more restricted. Biology and psychology on the one hand, and history, economics, sociology, and philology on the other, have taken up anthropological problems, each from its own point of view, and each in connection with its own subject of investigation. As a matter of fact, the field of work as theoretically outlined would require such a vast variety of training, that no single person could possibly hope to master it. The special task that is actually assigned at the present time to the anthropologist is the investigation of the primitive tribes of the world that have no written history, that of prehistoric remains and of the types of man inhabiting the world at present and in past times. It will be recognized that this limitation of the field of work of the anthropologist is more or less accidental, and originated because other sciences occupied part of the ground before the development of modern anthropology.
It implies, however, also a point of view fundamentally distinct from that of history in the narrow sense of the term. In history we are, on the whole, concerned with events only that have had an influence upon the development of our own civilization; in anthropology the life of every people of the world is equally important. Therefore, in a wider sense, it is impossible to exclude any part of mankind from the considerations of anthropology. The results of studies carried on by the historian and by the sinologist must not be neglected by the anthropologist in his endeavors to investigate the history of mankind and its controlling forces. It will thus be seen that anthropology differs from history, and resembles the natural sciences in its endeavor to disregard the subjective values of historical happenings; that it tries to consider them objectively, simply as a sequence of events, regardless of their influence upon the course of our own civilization.
In the vastness of the outlook over the unwritten history of past ages, the individual is merged entirely in the social unit of which he forms a part, and we see in the dim distance of time and space only the movements of peoples, the emergence of new types of man, the gradual development of new forms of civilization, and a constant repetition of processes of integration and disintegration of peoples and cultures. Prehistoric remains, characteristics of bodily form, traits of language, industrial and economic achievements, peculiar customs and beliefs, are the only evidence that we can use,--evidence that was little regarded by history until the anthropological standpoint began to develop. Thus it happens that although the anthropologist may not be able, owing to the specialization of the methods of inquiry, to investigate problems like those dealing with the modern history of Europe and China, the historian and the sinologist will be able to view their problems from an anthropological standpoint. With the increase of our knowledge of the peoples of the world, specialization must increase, and anthropology will become more and more _a method_ that may be applied by a great number of sciences, rather than a science by itself.
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We shall next take up a consideration of the results of the biological and psychological researches carried on by anthropologists. It is somewhat remarkable that these two large branches of investigation have remained quite separate, and that the results of the one throw little light upon the problems of the other. Biological anthropology has concerned itself chiefly with the classification of races, their relations to their predecessors and ultimately to the higher animals; and little progress has been made in the clearing-up of the genealogical relations of distinct types. Diligent search has revealed a number of lower forms which lived during the early quaternary and the late tertiary periods that help a little in bridging the wide gap between man and animal; but we are still entirely in the dark regarding the origin of the fundamental races and of the types of man. Since observations in different geographical areas showed at an early time the differentiation of local types, which it was difficult to define in words, anthropology was the first of the biological sciences to have recourse to metrical methods; and the whole modern development of biometry takes its origin in the application of methods developed by anthropologists, and by means of which fine distinctions between closely related types can be discovered. Originally the metrical methods of anthropologists were used for purely taxonomic ends, for the description of distinct types; and for years chief attention has been paid to the classification of the types of man according to their similarities, and to speculation on their relationships; but, owing to the influence of Francis Galton and his successors, we are gradually outgrowing this condition, and we see that more and more problems relating to the influence of social and geographical environment, of heredity, of race mixture and selection, are made the subject of study. This development has been closely associated with the growth of biometric methods applied to zoology and botany.
One of the important facts that has been recognized by a study of the morphology of the races is that man must be considered as a domesticated animal, and that even those tribes which are industrially the most primitive are somewhat removed from the anatomical conditions characterizing the wild animals. It appears, however, that the degree of domestication has strongly increased with the growing complexity of industrial organization; and most of the races of the present day are anatomically in the same condition as those types of domesticated animals which are highly modified by regular feeding and by disuse of a considerable portion of the muscular system, without, however, having been subjected to any considerable artificial selection. This seems to be one of the causes of the high degree of variability of the races of man.
While it is not yet possible to express definite views in regard to the relationship of the races of man, a few facts stand out boldly. We recognize that the two extreme types of mankind are represented, on the one hand by the Negro race, on the other hand by the Mongoloid race. The former of these includes the races of Africa and many of those inhabiting the large islands surrounding Australia; the other includes the people of eastern Asia and of America. The other strongly divergent types of man can most readily be classed with these two fundamental types, and may perhaps be considered as mutants which developed at an early period. Thus we find affiliated with the Negro race two divergent types, nevertheless apparently closely related to it,--the dwarfish South African, who is perhaps intimately related to the many isolated dwarfish tribes of other parts of Africa and southern Asia; and the Australian. The Mongoloid type, on the other hand, has also a considerable number of affiliated types, which may perhaps represent mutants of this type. Here belong the Malay of southeastern Asia, the Ainu of northern Japan, and perhaps the European. If we base our conception of the division of mankind on this broad outline, it would appear that two large divisions were established at an early geological period,--the race of the Indian Ocean, which represents all the Negroid types; and the race of the Pacific Ocean, which represents the Mongoloid and affiliated types. The enormous increase in the number of Europeans during the last two or three thousand years, and their rapid spread over the surface of the globe, disturb the clearness of this view; but we must remember that the white race represented originally only a very small part of mankind, and occupied only a small portion of the inhabited world.
What relation the two principal types may have had to the predecessor of mankind which is represented by the early quaternary race of Europe is unknown.
The history of the spread of these large races over the continents remains also, to a great extent, obscure. It seems likely, however, that the race of the Pacific Ocean immigrated into America at a very early time, and that after the retreat of the ice-sheet it swept back into northern Asia and re-established itself in the whole northern part of the Old World, which had been uninhabited for long periods. Much of this, however, remains hypothesis, which may be confirmed or disproved by further studies.
While the divergence of the types of man suggests that the tendency to form mutants has been ever-present, it would seem that the varieties which have survived up to the present time have been exceedingly stable, within the limits of their characteristic ranges of variation. The human remains found in Europe, which undoubtedly date back many thousands of years, and the remains of ancient Egypt, both of which may be compared with the types represented in the modern population of those countries, are much like the modern forms, and apparently no change of type has occurred in these districts for thousands of years. The same stability of race types manifests itself in cases of mixture. It would seem that among the human races there is a strong tendency for hybrids to revert to either parental type without forming an intermediate race. Thus we find that in western Asia the low-headed Semitic type and the high-headed Armenian type persist, although an intermingling of these people has been going on for thousands of years.
Nevertheless an influence of environment must be recognized. It may be observed, for instance, in the development of the European after his immigration into America. It may be recognized in the minute but noticeable differences of types in various parts of Europe and in different occupations, in the acceleration of growth of children of well-to-do classes, and in the stunting and retarding effect of mal-nutrition. Whether, however, these effects can be considered as permanent, is a question that is still entirely open.
Our investigations of the permanence and relationships of human types have also shown that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to find what might be called a pure type, and the endeavors to find pure races through a mixture of which the present variable types may have originated must be given up. We have recognized that the transitions between types are so gradual, and in so many different directions, that the establishment of any one of the series as a primary type would be quite arbitrary. All the nations of modern times, and those of Europe not less than those of other continents, are equally mixed; and the racial purity on which European nations like to pride themselves does not exist.
In still other directions have the investigations of anthropology rudely shattered some of our cherished illusions. It has been tacitly assumed and loudly proclaimed that one of the effects of advance in civilization has been the improvement of the physical organization of the human body, and particularly of the central nervous system. At the present time we are not so apt to accept this assumption as proved. No progressive development of the nervous system in regard to complexity of connections or in regard to size has so far been proved. A critical examination of the facts leaves the desire to feel ourselves as superiors to our fellow-beings as almost the sole support of this contention. The question involved is, of course, a very important one, and forms an aspect of the general question of the transmission of acquired characters; but our present attitude can only be one for a demand for further investigation.
A word should also be said about the question of the difference of mental ability in different races. Here also the evidence given by anthropology does not sustain the claim of superiority of any race over the others. All the arguments that have been brought forward to prove the superiority of the white race over all others can readily be explained by other anthropological considerations. There _are_ differences in form and size of the brains of different races, but the variability within each race is so great that the small average differences between distinct racial types are almost insignificant as compared to the total range of racial variability; and if we base our inferences entirely on the results of anatomical study, it would seem that there is no reason to believe that the bulk of the people constituting two distinct races might not be approximately on the same level. Nevertheless it seems reasonable to assume that the differences in form of the body must be accompanied by differences in function, and we may suppose that there may be certain peculiarities in the general mental tendencies of each race, only we must guard against the inference that divergence from the European type is synonymous with inferiority.
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The history of development of the mental side of anthropology has been quite different from the growth of physical anthropology. While in the latter branch of our science the _differences_ between human types were the first to attract attention, it was the _similarity_ in cultural types found in remote regions which first impressed itself upon ethnologists. A comparison of the descriptions of the customs of primitive peoples the world over brought out analogies in ever-increasing number. These were early correlated with general impressions regarding the degrees of civilization; and thus it happened that one of the most difficult and complex problems of ethnology--namely, the question of the general typical evolution of the history of civilization of mankind--was the first to receive attention. I cannot pass this subject by without mentioning the deep impression made by men like Tylor and Bachofen, Morgan and Spencer, who were among the first to present the data of anthropology as illustrating the history of civilization.
The development of this side of anthropology was stimulated by the work of Darwin and his successors, and its fundamental ideas can be understood only as an application of the theory of biological evolution to mental phenomena. The conception that the manifestations of ethnic life represent a series, which from simple beginnings has progressed to the complex type of modern civilization, has been the underlying thought of this aspect of anthropological science.
The arguments in support of the theory that the development of civilization has followed a similar course everywhere, and that among primitive tribes we may still recognize the stages through which our own civilization has passed, are largely based on the similarities of types of culture found in distinct races the world over, but also on the occurrence of peculiar customs in our own civilization, which can be understood only as survivals of older customs, that had a deeper significance at an earlier time, and which are still found in full vigor among primitive people.
It is necessary to point out at least a few of the aspects of this general problem, in order to make clear the significance of the evolutionary theory of human civilization.
The social organization of primitive tribes shows similar traits in many different parts of the world. Instead of counting descent in the way we do, many tribes consider the child as a member only of its mother’s family, and count blood-relationship only in the maternal line; so that cousins on the mother’s side are considered as near relatives, while cousins on the father’s side are considered as only distantly related. Other tribes have a strict paternal organization, so that the child belongs only to the father’s family, not to the mother’s, while still others follow the same principles that we adhere to, reckoning relationships in both directions. Connected with these customs is the selection of the domicile of the newly married couple, who sometimes reside with the wife’s tribe or family, sometimes with the man’s tribe or family. When the couple take up their residence with the social group to which the wife belongs, it is often found that the man is treated as a stranger until his first child is born. These phenomena have been made the subject of thorough studies, and the observation has been made that apparently the customs of residence and of descent are closely associated. As a result of these inquiries the conclusion has been drawn that everywhere maternal institutions precede paternal institutions, and that the social organization of mankind was such that originally perhaps no distinct family organization existed; that later on maternal institutions developed, which in turn were followed by paternal institutions, and again by the system of counting blood-relationship equally in maternal and paternal lines.