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19 SEP 91
1499530 NEWCxc SEE NEXT
I. Culture diffusion. 2.
Anthropology. I. Malinowski,
Bronislaw, 1884-1942. II. Spinden,
Herbert Joseph, 1879- III.
Goldenweiser , Alexander A., 1880—
IV. Title
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CULTURE
THE NEW SCIENCE SERIES
Edited by C. K. OGDEN
Myth in Primitive Psychology
Bronislaw Malinowski, Ph.D., D.Sc.
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Types of Mind and Body
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The Standardization of Error
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Culture G. Elliott Smith, D.Sc; Bronislaw Mali-
nowski, Ph.D., D.Sc; Herbert J. Spinden,
Ph.D.; Alexander Goldenweiser, Ph.D.
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CULTURE
The Diffusion Controversy
BY
G. ELLIOTT SMITH, D.Sc.
BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI, D.Sc.
HERBERT J. SPINDEN, Ph.D.
ALEX. GOLDENWEISER, Ph.D.
NEW YORK
WW NORTON 6f COMPANY, INC.
Publishers
r
7
o
I/)
Copyright, 1927,
W;W.- NORTON 6- COMPANY, INC.
PHtNTED m THE UNTTZD STATES OF AMEMCA
FOB THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAN BEES PRESS
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Diffusion of Culture . 9
G. Elliot Smith
The Life of Culture . . 26
Bronislaio M alinoivs ki
The Prosaic vs. the Romantic
School in Anthropology . 47
Herbert J. Spinden
The Diffusion Controversy . 99
Alexander Goldeniueiser
CULTURE
THE DIFFUSION OF CULTURE
By G. Elliot Smith
Projessor of Anatomy in the University of London
At the present time among students
of mankind there are two conflicting
views as to the process that has played
the most essential part in the history of
civilization. One, the theory main-
tained by the vast majority of an-
thropologists to-day, is that in any com-
munity civilization can and did grow
up and develop quite independently of
similar events happening elsewhere in
the world. This involves a further
consideration. For if any community
can of its own initiative create a civ-
ilization, a more difficult problem has
to be solved: why it acquires a multi-
tude of features in its arts and crafts,
customs, and beliefs that present a strik-
ing similarity to those of other com-
[9]
CULTURE
munities, when all considerations of
contact or prompting directly or in-
directly are excluded. The other group
of anthropologists believes that civ-
ilization has been developing during
the w^hole of its history in very much
the same way that we know it to be do-
ing at the present time, and in fact
during the whole period of which we
have any written record. We know in
the case of every modern invention,
that it was made in one definite place
and became diffused over a wider and
wider area until everyone in any part
of the world who is making use of this
particular invention is indebted di-
rectly or indirectly to one man in one
particular place who was originally re-
sponsible for initiating the process.
Take, for example, the history of the
wooden match. For countless thou-
sands of years men have been devising
and using different means of producing
fire. During the latter part of the
eighteenth and early part of the nine-
[lo]
DIFFUSION OF CULTURE
teenth centuries, a series of modi-
fications and simplifications of one
particular method developed, until
eventually one man made the discovery
that he could put upon the end of a
strip of wood a chemical mixture that
under the influence of friction w^ould
give rise to fire. Nov^^ although at the
present day this seems to be a perfectly
simple and obvious procedure, we
know that it took countless centuries to
arrive at the result, and that eventually
one individual brought it to realiza-
tion. We know, of course, as an his-
torical fact that this invention has
spread throughout the world from one
particular spot. But if some European
traveler who was unaware of this fact
was roaming in a part of the world
where no white man had ever been be-
fore, and found there a wooden match,
he would inevitably conclude that the
match afforded certain evidence of con-
tact, direct or indirect, with someone
who had benefited by the English in-
[II]
CULTURE
vention. If, however, he were not a
mere man-in-the-street, but an ethnol-
ogist faithful to the orthodox theory of
his creed, he would have to assume
that so obvious a mechanism must have
been invented independently by the un-
cultured people of the country where
he had picked up the match.
If, on the other hand, he belonged
to what our opponents call the "Dif-
fusionist School" of anthropology, he
would assume (as every intelligent
man-in-the-street would unhesitatingly
do, whether he was familiar with the
history of the wooden match or not)
that the match itself provided un-
equivocal evidence of diffusion of cul-
ture. He would not entertain any
doubt that it had reached the place
where it was found either directly
from the home of its invention, or
from some community that had learned
the art of making matches directly or
indirectly from it. Nor would this
conclusion be affected even if the finder
[12]
DIFFUSION OF CULTURE
of the match could tell at a glance
whether the particular match was
made in Sweden or Japan, for the
match-makers of these two countries
had had the art handed down to them
from the original inventor who be-
longed to neither of these countries.
What we of the Dififusionist School
assume is that the processes of the
origin, development, and spread of any
invention in the time before written
records were made, followed the same
sort of course we know to have hap-
pened in the case of the match. These
are recorded in the written histories
of the various inventions and the
struggles of the pioneers to get their
achievements recognized and adopted.
But anyone can see and study the same
processes happening round him at the
present time in the community in
which he lives.
It is utterly unjustifiable to assume,
as modern ethnological theories im-
plicitly do, that human behaviour was
[13]
CULTURE
totally different before writing was
devised. There is not a scrap of evi-
dence to suggest that our unliterary
predecessors had a remarkable apti-
tude for invention far transcending
that of modern man. Nor again is
there anything to justify the even more
reckless assumption that this imaginary
aptitude found expression in a stereo-
typed form in every place where an-
cient civilization developed.
For example, there is no natural
reason for attaching the tremendous
economic and religious significance to
'gold, which is an arbitrary enhance-
ment of its real qualities. The fact
that almost every early civilization did
assign to this soft and relatively use-
less metal a fantastic and irrelevant
value is surely the strongest possible
evidence of the influence of Eg>^pt, in
which a peculiar set of fortuitous cir-
cumstances was responsible for creat-
ing the fictitious attributes assigned to
the metal.
[14]
DIFFUSION OF CULTURE
One might take up one after another
of the thousands of ingredients that go
to the making of civilization, ancient
or modern, and show in each case the
complexity of the set of circumstances,
in which chance played an obstrusive
part, involved in every invention.
Each of them originated in one place
and from there became diffused
abroad, the complex tissue of civiliza-
tion itself no less than the individual
threads of which it is woven.
Turning to the consideration of the
general question, no historian at the
present day refuses to admit that Eu-
rope is indebted for the original in-
spiration of her civilization to Greece
and to Rome, and that Rome in her
turn derived much of her culture from
Greece. Modern archaeological re-
search has shown that Greece derived
much of her own civilization from
Crete and Asia Minor, and that both
of these countries were in turn in-
debted to the older civilization of
[15]
CULTURE
Egypt for their cultural equipment.
This much is admitted by the leading
archaeologists who have been working
in Crete. At the present time there is
a difference of opinion as to whether
Egypt or Mesopotamia was the pio-
neer in civilization; but among mod-
ern scholars the trend is strongly
toward the view that whether Egypt
was indebted to Mesopotamia, or Mes-
opotamia to Egypt, there was intimate
contact between the nvo, and that one
borrowed the essential elements of its
civilization from the other.
This claim for diffusion is confi-
dently made even by some of the most
outspoken opponents of the theory of
diffusion — a typical illustration of the
inconsistency that runs through these
discussions. The view is widely held
amongst archaeologists that Babylo-
nian civilization, or rather its predeces-
sor, that of Sumer, is more ancient
than that of Egypt. This is an amaz-
ing inference. For it is admitted, even
[i6]
DIFFUSION OF CULTURE
by those now excavating in Mesopo-
tamia, that the earliest Sumerian re-
mains cannot be proved to be older
than 3000 B.C. Yet, even if we ac-
cept the minimum dating of Egyptian
history, the First Dynasty was flourish-
ing on the banlcs of the Nile three cen-
turies before then, and even so it
followed a predynastic phase of de-
velopment of several — perhaps as
many as ten — centuries, which affords
a full and adequate explanation of the
form that Egyptian civilization had
assumed in 3300 B.C.
I need not discuss this matter fur-
ther here. Professor George A. Reis-
ner of Harvard University has demon-
strated in the most conclusive manner
that Egyptian civilization was actually
fashioned in the Nile Valley. As there
can be no doubt of the genetic connec-
tion between the earliest civilizations
of Egypt, Sumer, and Elam, one must
assume that these Asiatic centres must
have derived their cultural capital
[17]
CULTURE
from Egypt, where civilization had
been developing for five, or more
probably ten, centuries before culture
appeared suddenly and fully developed
in Elam and Sumer. The evidence
in substantiation of these claims I have
set forth in the article "Anthropology"
in the supplementary volumes of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica (1922).
The excavations of Professor Pum-
pelly at Anau in Turkestan have re-
vealed the influence of Sumer and
Elam, in the country east of the Cas-
pian, which represents a step in the
diffusion right up into the heart of
Siberia and into the Shensi Province
in China. The recent discoveries by
M. J. G. Andersson of early settle-
ments in northern China (the Prov-
inces of Honan and Fengtien) estab-
lished even more exactly the affinities
of the original culture of China to
that of Anau, Elam, Sumer, and other
centres in western Asia. These people
in the Far East were making arrow-
[18]
DIFFUSION OF CULTURE
heads of chalcedony and other flint-
like stones, also other stone imple-
ments, rings of stone and shell,
beads, pottery (both monochrome and
painted), and even small figurines, all
revealing clear and unmistakable in-
dications of diffusion of culture from
Mesopotamia.
The influence of Mesopotamia upon
India in the third millennium is
equally definite. There vi^as a spread
by land from Turkestan as well as
from Persia, from the ancient civiliza-
tion of Elam into the valley of the
Indus. The recent discoveries an-
nounced by Sir John Marshall have
established this fact beyond any doubt.
At the same time or possibly at an
even earlier period western culture
was being brought into southern India
by early mariners sailing in ships con-
forming in every respect to the pecu-
liar type of vessel invented originally
for navigation on the Nile in the Pyra-
mid Age.
[19]
CULTURE
No one questions the dominant in-
fluence of India in inspiring the
earliest civilization of Indo-China and
of the islands of the Malay Archi-
pelago. The early culture of the
islands of the Pacific could have come
only from the southeastern corner of
Asia and the West. The debt of
Africa to Egypt is beyond question.
Hence one can demonstrate with an
enormously rich mass of evidence the
spread of civilization throughout the
Old World from one centre, which
must clearly have been in the valley of
the Nile. The distinctive form and
outlook of the world's civilization
were determined by the methods of
early agriculture, based upon the ex-
perience of a gentle and beneficent
river like the Nile. The fact that so
much of early belief was inspired by
the essentially Egyptian practice of
mummification would alone provide
adequate proof that Egypt was the
home of the earliest civilization. But
[20]
DIFFUSION OF CULTURE
the whole body of evidence corrobo-
rates this view. Throughout the
world the earliest types of sea-going
ship provide unmistakable demonstra-
tion of the inspiration of Egyptian
methods of shipbuilding, which is it-
self both a corroboration of the gen-
eral inference and also a demonstra-
tion of the means by which this wide
diffusion was brought about.
A very curious argument has re-
peatedly been put to me verbally. But
fortunately Mr. Enthoven has recently
used it in print (in the issue of Folk-
Lore for September, 1925, p. 224).
If, he argues, it be admitted that the
Egyptians without any outside help in-
vented irrigation, why couldn't the
peoples of India have done the same
thing? This plausible line of argu-
ment is purely scholastic. What we
have to do is to find an explanation of
the established facts rather than specu-
late on what could or ought to happen.
The very peculiar methods of agricul-
[21]
CULTURE
ture used in the earliest times were de-
termined by conditions peculiar to the
Nile Valley, as Professor Cherry has
made abundantly clear, and these
methods were not adapted to Indian
conditions until many centuries later.
There remains the problem of early
American civilization. Did the Pre-
Columbian civilization grow up in
Mexico, Central America, and Peru,
quite independently of what had hap-
pened during the preceding centuries
in the Old World, or did dififusion of
the arbitrary compound of customs
and beliefs extend beyond the Old
World to the New and provide the
stimulus for the momentous events that
began to take place there at about the
beginning of the Christian Era? In
Central America, Mexico, and Peru
civilization made its appearance quite
suddenly, and in a fully developed
form. But there is another fact to be
explained : it conformed in almost
every respect to the distinctive type of
[22]
DIFFUSION OF CULTURE
civilization (admittedly a very pecu-
liar one) that was flourishing in the
southeastern corner of Asia at the time
when it made its appearance in Cen-
tral America. The type of pyramid
found in America was also the dom-
inant feature of the architecture of
Cambodia and Java during the same
centuries. The same system of beliefs
and customs, the same distinctive fea-
tures of its architecture, in fact a whole
series of arts and crafts, customs and
beliefs, were suddenly introduced into
the New World, which seem to bear
unmistakable evidence of their Asiatic
origin. Moreover, the only additions
that were made to these customs in
their transit across the Pacific were
features distinctive of Melanesian and
Polynesian practices. Instead of de-
tracting from the cogency of the iden-
tity, these trivial additions afford strik-
ing corroboration, not only of the
original source of the inspiration, but
also of the road taken by the ancient
[23]
CULTURE
mariners who were responsible for the
introduction into the New World of
the germs of its distinctive civilization.
It is an altogether incredible supposi-
tion that the Polynesian sailors who
searched many thousands of miles in
the Pacific with such thoroughness as
not to miss even the minutest islets
were not repeatedly landing on the
shores of America for ten centuries
and more. How could the people who
found Hawaii, Easter Island, and New
Zealand have failed to discover the
vast continent stretching from pole to
pole?
In his memoir on the Copper and
Bronze Ages in South America Baron
Nordenskiold has recently called atten-
tion to the similarities of metal-work
in Peru and in the Old World. Cop-
per axes similar to those found in Cam-
bodia, Laos, Burma, the Malay Penin-
sula, the Malay Archipelago, Tonkin,
Yunnan, and elsewhere in China have
been found in Peru. The T-shaped
[24]
DIFFUSION OF CULTURE
axes from Peru are said to be precisely
similar to those made in Ancient
Egypt. Many other copper objects,
such as tweezers, barbless fish-hooks,
needles, hoe-blades, and certain types
of hoes, still further emphasize the
significance of these similarities. But
it is not merely the form, but also the
technical procedures for making these
metal utensils that establish the cul-
tural connection. The method of cast-
ing known as cire perdue was common
both to the Old and the New Worlds,
as also the technique of gilding and
silvering. The truth of any scientific
theory that cannot be tested by direct
experiment can be established only by
examining newly discovered evidence
and deciding whether or not it con-
forms to the principles laid down.
[25]
THE LIFE OF CULTURE
By Bronislaw Malinowski
Reader in Anthropology at the London School of
Economics
Anthropology, the Science of Man
and of his Culture, has for the most
part tried to evade live issues and the
problems of life: it has tried to shelter
behind the Chinese Wall of mere anti-
quarian curiosity. In all humanistic
studies there is a strong temptation to
play about with dead remains instead
of grappling with actualities; to affect
a so-called "purely academic" interest
in theory, to abstain from testing doc-
trines in the crucible of practical
reality.
The anthropologist of the past has
felt safe in spinning his hypotheses
about what did happen when Man
tried to evolve from the Pithecanthro-
[26]
THE LIFE OF CULTURE
pos Erectus, or else, tired of inventing
"origins" and "developments," he be-
gan to manufacture out of his inner
consciousness various "histories" and
"diffusions." This latter line of ap-
proach is now fashionable, and a num-
ber of anthropologists of the day are
busy reconstructing the influence of
Egyptian culture on Central America;
they quarrel as to whether all civiliza-
tion started in Mesopotamia, Atlantis,
or Pamir. This historical or difiusion-
ist trend is now being advertised as the
"revolutionary" or "modern" school of
anthropology, though in reality it is
as old as the Ten Lost Tribes fallacy.
The hypothesis of the origins of all
culture in Egypt, for instance, was in-
vented long ago by a German scholar,
Eduard Braun, though it received lit-
tle "diffusion" at that time.
Those who support the extreme dififu-
sionist view are wont to frame the prob-
lem in a singularly insidious manner,
inquiring as to whether diffusion or in-
[27]
CULTURE
dependent invention had been the dom-
inant factor in progress. As usually
happens in the perpetration of scien-
tific fallacies, the error has been intro-
duced into the framing of the question.
Hence we are tempted at first sight to
jump to the erroneous answer. The
correct reply to the above question,
however, must insist that the very op-
position, sharp and precise though it
appears, between diffusion and inven-
tion, is really misleading.
Let us inquire, then, what precisely
an "invention" is. In the case of every
modern invention, we know that it is
invariably made and re-made time
after time in different places, by dif-
ferent men along slightly different
roads, independently of one another.
It is enough to mention the famous dis-
putes about the discovery of the in-
finitesimal calculus, the steam engine,
the telephone, the turbine, the wireless;
the endless priority wrangles in sci-
ence; the difficulties of establishing
[28]
THE LIFE OF CULTURE
rights to a patent; and so on. The fact
is that each invention is arrived at
piece-meal, by infinitely many, in-
finitely small steps, a process in which
it is impossible to assign a precise
share to any one worker or still less
to connect a definite object and a
definite idea with a single contribu-
tion. In the wireless, for instance, the
man to whom the invention is popu-
larly ascribed has little more than com-
mercialized the already existing prac-
tical appliances. The real work can
be traced back through Righi, Braun,
Hertz, Clerk-Maxwell, Faraday, Am-
pere, and so on back to Galvani and
Galileo. But these are only the sum-
mits—illuminated by the flash-light of
sensational coincidence and the lime-
light of success as well as by the
elevation of their genius. The real
pathway of ideas and achievements
goes through hundreds and thousands
of humbler workers and laboratory
mechanics, the mathematicians and en-
[29]
CULTURE
gineers who jointly make the final suc-
cess possible. Thus the invention of
the wireless can be treated as a single
and singular event and ascribed to one
man or another only after its nature
has been completely misconceived.
This is quite legitimate from the point
of view of the patent office, but quite
erroneous for the science of culture.
Every cultural achievement is due
to a process or growth in which dif-
fusion and invention have equal shares.
As independent entities, neither inven-
tion nor diffusion ever takes place in
the sense that you could either spon-
taneously generate an idea or pour it
out from one head into another. Dif-
fusion and invention are always mixed,
always inseparable.
If it is impossible to speak of either
of these phenomena in isolation or as
absolute categories within the same
culture, the definition becomes espe-
cially fallacious when we deal with
[30]
THE LIFE OF CULTURE
the contact of different cultures. Just
because no idea and no object can ex-
ist in isolation from its cultural con-
text, it is impossible to sever mechani-
cally an item from one culture and
place it in another. The process is
always one of adaptation in which the
receiving culture has to re-evolve the
idea, custom, or institution which it
adopts; and it can be said without ex-
aggeration that diffusion is a partial
evolution, though the contrary is not
true.
A puerile example is sometimes used
by those who believe that culture can
be contracted only by contagion and
that man is merely an imitative mon-
key. We are asked whether a wooden
match found in use among a Negro,
Pigmy, or Papuan tribe has been in-
vented by them or diffused to them.
The answer is, neither. A wooden
match, as I have found it in use in
Papua and in Melanesia, among the
Australian aborigines and the North
[31]
CULTURE
American Indians, is not a part of the
culture of these natives. It has been
mechanically imported and supplied
to them by the trader. I have watched
Melanesian natives time after time
producing fire by friction when, dur-
ing the War, there was a difficulty in
obtaining matches. The match had
never been part of their culture. They
could neither produce nor procure it.
It has to be put into their hands by
another society which is in contact
with them and which has never suc-
ceeded in "diftusing" its chemistry,
physics, and engineering into the Me-
lanesian culture. We might quite as
well ask whether a baby has invented
the golden watch which has been put
into its hands and take the denial as
a dialectical triumph. I have myself
seen the savage invent independently
the counterpart of a wooden match
by putting some kerosene on the end
of a rubbing stick to make it flare up
more easily, so that even this ap-
[32]
THE LIFE OF CULTURE
patently obvious example of the im-
possibility of independent invention is
not adequate.
Archaeology and history furnish us
with a number of definite instances in
which a type of mechanical contri-
vance, an art, or a social institution, can
be shown to have evolved independ-
ently in different cultures. Take
music, for instance, which produces
parallel effects as it satisfies parallel
cravings, but has such a distinctly dif-
ferent imprint among the Mongolian,
Semitic, Melanesian, Papuan, and
Caucasian races that it cannot be "dif-
fused" even under pressure, as is
shown by the inability of another race
to grasp our melodies, and vice versa.
The existence in social organization,
in religion, in language, and in eco-
nomics of cultural contrivances which
satisfy the same need, which are thus
functionally akin, and which yet bear
an entirely different physiognomy and
are carried out by entirely different
[33]
CULTURE
mechanisms, spells all over the surface
of human culture the assertion of in-
dependent origins. The compass, the
art of writing, chemistry, the calendar
— all were independently invented, as
is known to archaeologists. Paper was
made of papyrus in Egypt, of rags in
China, of another material in Mexico.
It is identical only in its function.
The technique of production, the ma-
terial or way of using it, had to be
independently invented.
Extreme diffusionism appears on
closer analysis as futile and fallacious as
the belief that every culture follows an
independent course of evolution. The
remedy for anthropology lies not in
conjuring up one conjecture in the
place of another, but in giving the
science of man a foundation of real
fact open to observation, in making it
bear upon the practical and vital is-
sues of to-day. What are the problems
in which it can be made practically
useful and what are the methods by
[34]
THE LIFE OF CULTURE
which it can be made, if not experi-
mental, at least empirical?
It is obviously impossible to place
an empire under glass, to treat a sav-
age chief or a modern politician as the
biologist treats his guinea-pig. The
anthropologist is not even allowed to
observe long stretches of human his-
tory, while savages have no written
records and have left few monuments.
For all this, however, the anthropol-
ogist is compensated by the wide range
of his material, by the variety of cul-
tures from the crudest Stone Age to
the highest flights of modern civiliza-
tion.
But the comparative method is beset
with many pitfalls. One of these has
been the simple evolutionary assump-
tion by which all variations were as-
signed to differences in level and all
similarities to the same universal se-
quence of evolutionary stages. De-
velopment thus was regarded as a
metaphysical fatality driving man to
[35]
CULTURE
some sort of Hegelian self-realization.
Not less fatalistic, however, is the view
which makes culture shoot up in one
place as a glorious and miraculous ac-
cident, and thence be mechanically
transported all over the globe.
To the modern anthropologist
trained in the field, culture, whether
savage or civilized, is not a heap of
trinkets which can be peddled about
across oceans and round continents.
Living among one savage tribe after
another, the anthropological field-
worker becomes convinced that culture
is something which is constantly at
work, which is there for the satisfac-
tion of elementary human needs, which
in turn creates new wants and provides
means for their fulfilment.
Man, making a generous allowance
for Tennessee, has evolved from the
animal; there is no necessity to believe,
with the psychoanalyst, that all civiliza-
tion is but a roundabout satisfaction of
the sexual instinct, in order to realize
[36]
THE LIFE OF CULTURE
that a wide domain— the organization
of the family, the customs of courtship
and mating, domestic arrangements, the
clan, exogamy, and a part of human
morals— can only be properly ac-
counted for as an expression of the
human biological need for propagation
and the cultural need for educating
each generation. Culture creates new
forms of love-making, of marriage, of
family life, but they are all directly cor-
related with the biological arrange-
ments by which courtship, mating, and
family life are regulated in the state of
nature.
Again, though the historical mate-
rialists are no doubt mistaken in telling
us that mankind advances on its belly,
the need for nutrition, as well as the
appetites, instincts, and tendencies
which it governs, plays an enormous
part in primitive and in higher cul-
tures. The psychology of taking meals
in common, of festive eating, of nutri-
tion rites, totemic feasts, and acts of
[37]
CULTURE
communion; the sacramental value of
accumulated food and its role in prim-
itive religion; the ramification of the
economical aspect in the magical and
religious — all this cannot be understood
if we forget that man is an omnivorous
animal, and that eating under condi-
tions of culture is not merely an absorp-
tion of food, but a communal bond, a
sacrament, and a source of social,
artistic, and religious values.
Now nutrition and sex drive man to
the search for food and companionship,
to hunting, fishing, and scouring his
district; and thus they compel him to
master his surroundings, to exploit his
territory, and to conquer its natural re-
sources; they also compel him to live
a communal life. In all this man's
success is dependent upon his material
outfit in implements, weapons, and con-
structions, upon the perfection of his
knowledge, and on the degree of his
social organization.
But here in the very act of bestowing
[38]
THE LIFE OF CULTURE
her blessings, culture heaps up burdens
and creates difficulties. The fruit of
knowledge is a dangerous thing, and in
giving man forethought, culture gives
him also the terrors and pangs of de-
spondency; it makes him probe into his
own destiny, and ponder over the ulti-
mate things of human existence. Belief
in immortality, early ideas of spirit
gods and beneficent favours, give man
comfort and dispel his early misgivings.
Again since man is to adventure in
pursuits for which he is not equipped
instinctively— to move through water,
jungle, and desert, to invade and con-
quer cold, arid, and tropical places-
culture has to provide man with a
mental force which carries him across
the gaps in instinctive endowment. The
confidence in his own powers of con-
trolling his environment by spell and
rite are given to man in magic.
And here we have gained a very im-
portant insight into the nature of prim-
itive ritual and belief. The value of
[39]
CULTURE
so-called savage "superstition" and the
essence of primitive belief is to be
found in the confidence which magical
rite gives man in forgetting difficulties
and in bridging over gaps in which he
is forsaken by his knowledge and
technical abilities. Primitive religion,
again, by assuring man of his immortal-
ity, by revealing to him the existence of
a benevolent providence, by guiding
him sacramentally through the crises of
life, gives him the metaphysical com-
fort without which life becomes an
intolerable burden to a being endowed
with forethought, knowledge, and senti-
ment. Primitive religion thus appears
as a more important and more valuable
aspect of savage culture.
The functional analysis makes us
regard culture primarily as an outfit
which gives man the mastery of his
environment, allows him to maintain
the species, the integrity of the individ-
ual, and the cohesion of his tribe. The
practical value of such a theory is that
[40]
THE LIFE OF CULTURE
it teaches us the relative importance of
various customs, how they dovetail into
each other, how they have to be handled
by missionaries, colonial authorities,
and those who economically have to
exploit savage trade and savage labour.
The functional view obviously does
not dispose of a sound and limited
evolutionary conception of culture,
though it discourages any hope of giv-
ing an exact reconstruction of human
development. It strengthens our con-
viction that the denial of evolution by
pseudo-religious and pseudo-scientific
fundamentalists is but a wilful mis-
apprehension. Moreover, the func-
tional method in no way denies or
minimizes diffusion, its influence on the
course of evolution, the importance of
tracing its probable routes. But it
teaches us that diffusion never takes
place in the form of mere mechanical
transmission. Whenever one culture
"borrows" from another, it always
transforms and readapts the objects or
[41]
CULTURE
customs borrowed. The idea, institu-
tion, or contrivance has to be placed
within a new cultural milieu, fitted into
it, and assimilated to the receiving civ-
ilization. In this process of readapta-
tion the form and function, often the
very nature, of the object or idea is
deeply modified— it has to be, in short,
reinvented. Diffusion is but a modified
mvention, exactly as every invention is a
i partial borrowing. What is really im-
portant to the anthropologist is the
nature of the cultural process which is
mixed borrowing and invention, and the
study of its mechanism and its general
laws. To explain away one culture as
a mere result of "diffusion" is as mis-
leading as to account for it by an imag-
inary trend of universal evolution.
f<-^CAe«-^ir>,No culture is a sirnple copy of any
other. No historian of present-day
European culture would dare assign it
to any one original source. He knows
perfectly well that we have borrowed
from everywhere, from ancient Greece
[42]
THE LIFE OF CULTURE
as well as China and Japan, from India
and from aboriginal America, and that
out of the mixture we have evolved an
entirely independent and homogeneous
culture. Modern archaeology ab-
solutely and explicitly repudiates the
suggestion that Asiatic, Cretan, or
Aegean civilization is any more in-
debted to Egypt than Egypt is to any
of the surrounding civilizations. Au-
thorities such as Sir Flinders Petrie, the
greatest British Egyptologist, as well as
Professor J. L. Myers of Oxford and
Sir Arthur Evans, have all laughed to
scorn the suggestion that Egypt has
been even to a limited degree the source
of civilized life. Always subject to
natural law, man was in his develop-
ment bound to strike on a number of
contrivances and ideas which were
essentially similar.
Take, for instance, gold. To anyone
ignorant of physics, chemistry, and
cultural technique there might appear
something mystical about the attraction
[43]
CULTURE
which gold has for primitive man, for
the modern prospector, and for the
demi-mondaine. Yet a minute's reflec-
tion shows that a similar attraction is
exercised by silver, a slightly smaller
one by copper, and that iron is for
certain native tribes, notably African,
almost as seductive as the nobler metals.
'Again, gold and silver are the only
V>^* metals found extensively in a native
, ( condition, and gold is the more mal-
^/y ^^^b^e of the two. It is absurd to speak
f ^A °f ^* ^s ^ "soft and relatively useless
^Y metal," and to regard its value as
\f arbitrary, if v^t remember that it is an
indispensable substance in modern
technique where the dentist, the foun-
tain-pen manufacturer, the optician,
and the industrial chemist are prepared
to pay high prices for it apart from its
value as means of exchange. Even
clearer is the case of other materials,
the stone for primitive axes, the hard
wood for implements, large stones em-
ployed for building, and so on. Or are
[44]
THE LIFE OF CULTURE
we to suppose that the use of fire for
warmth and cooking, of water for
drinking and irrigation, or air for
breathing is each a cultural invention
once made in Egypt and thence
diffused? The question might appear
absurd had it not been seriously put
forward that the use of water for irriga-
tion, of large stones for building, of
gold for practical and decorative uses,
is due to one single influence diffused
all over the world.
In conclusion then: it has been main-
tained by the diffusionists that the one
centre of original invention was Egypt,
that this civilization was diffused into
the Mediterranean basin, and into
western Asia, India, China, and further
across the Pacific, even into America;
and that the higher cultures are copies
of the Egyptian prototype.
To this we reply that every aspect
of culture— the implements and arts,
social organization, law, magic, and
religion — correspond to a specific need
[45]
CULTURE
of human nature, to the local environ-
ment, and to the general character of a
given civilization. Both from the latest
technical achievements and from an-
cient history numerous examples can be
given of independent parallel inven-
tions.
Diffusion never takes place: it is
^ always a readaptation, a truly creative
'^■^ process, in which external influence is
remoulded by inventive genius. The
culture of Egypt is no older than that
of China, Mesopotamia, or India, and
it took as much from its neighbours as
it gave. Civilization is fortunately not
a disease — not always at least — and the
immunit}^ of most people to culture is
notorious : culture is not contagious! It
has neither been invented nor diffused,
but imposed by the natural conditions
which drive man upon the path of prog-
ress with inexorable determinism.
[46]
THE PROSAIC VS. THE RO-
MANTIC SCHOOL IN
ANTHROPOLOGY
By Herbert J. Spinden
Peahody Museum, Harvard University
Does man, at large, think or merely
remember? This query strikes the
bed-rock logic which distinguishes the
prosaic from the romantic schools of
anthropology.
For the prosaic school insists that
man does think and that separate soci-
eties of human beings make similar but
not necessarily uniform inductions and
deductions from experience and are
thus capable of solving independently
about the same problems of life in
about the same way. Moreover, the
prosaic school insists that there are
important mechanical factors, both
[47]
CULTURE
within and without the body of man,
which lead to frequent conformities in
his manifold thoughts whether these
are expressed in words, or tools, or ob-
jects of beautv', or ceremonies, or the
forms of government. Human insti-
tutions, in the words of Tylor, belong
in "series substantially the same over
the globe." There are common psychic
trends if not complete psychic unity
among all the races of mankind.
Similar experiences are everywhere
producing similar results in handicraft
and statecraft. The prosaic school of
anthropology accepts the possibility of
independent invention — of thoughts
finding expression over and over again
— and sees no need for straining his-
torical evidence beyond the elastic
limit to account for the dissemination
of certain cultural traits around the
world.
The romantic school, on the other
hand, sees in cultural similarities the
almost certain proofs of dissemination
[48]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
from a favoured intellectual source even
though ages and oceans intervene. The
members of this school picture the
great mass of humanity as devoid of
inventive ability but possessed of an
extremely retentive memory. Ancient
transmissions and inoculations, of
which history furnishes not the slight-
est direct evidence, are invoked as a
logical necessity where there is any de-
tail to be exploited as a surviving strain.
But the romanticists agree with each
other only in the hypothetical need of
contacts between distant peoples and
they differ grotesquely from each other
as to the ways and means of obtaining
these contacts. Their numerous spe-
cial theses force them to invent varie-
gated, stranger-than-fiction explana-
tions. Only outstanding hypotheses
can be reviewed.
THE ROUND OF ROMANTIC THEORIES
America with her teeming nations
had no sooner been discovered by Euro-
[49]
CULTURE
peans than writers of romantic mood
began to find similarities in culture to
the Old World and to explain them
by miraculous immigrations from a
single fountain head of all good things.
In those days the complexion of an-
cient history was biblical and there
was a rush to discover among American
Indians a knowledge of Adam and Eve,
the Tower of Babel. Xoah's Ark upon
the Flood, the dry-shod crossing of the
Red Sea, the Crucifixion of Christ and
the subsequent worship of the Cross
with much impedimenta of^hristian-
in'. Quetzalcoatl, a Toltec monarch
who died in 1208 A.D., was confidently
identified with St. Thomas, while the
American aborigines became the Ten
Lost Tribes of Israel. This pattern
was well set before 1600 A.D. among
Spanish churchmen, yet it inspired
Lord Kingsborough to waste his for-
tune in a monumental publication given
to the world between 1831 and 1848.
Long before this great work ap-
[50]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
peared, however, the Phoenicians had
been glorified at the cost of their Se-
mitic brothers. Because they had
crept along shore to the Scilly Islands
and even to the Canaries, it was deemed
probable that they also crossed the
broad Atlantic. Next Modoc with his
Welshmen and St. Brandon with his
Irishmen were found to have left home
and since they did not return it was
believed that they had reached Amer-
ica. When George Catlin reached the
Mandans on the upper Missouri he
saw many resemblances between this
people and the Welsh, which van-
ished into thin air under scientific
examination.
Egypt was not neglected in sundry
speculations, and China came into her
own as a proposed source of the Cen-
tral American civilization by writers
improving on curious hints of Hum-
boldt, who merely flirted with the idea.
John Ranking in 1823 wrote his His-
torical Researches on the Conquest of
[51]
CULTURE
Peru, Mexico, Bogota, Natchez and
Talomeco in the Thirteenth Century by
the Mongols, Accompanied with Ele-
phants. The bones of the mammoth and
the mastodon proved his case, ahhough
he asserted that in his time a few Chi-
nese elephants were still running wild
about Bogota. The existence of jade
in America gave rise to the jade
theory which also involved China.
Happily now this is dissipated by chem-
ical analyses which distinguish the
oriental from the occidental stones.
Other writers dabbled with zodiacs of
Assyrian, Hindoo or Chinese types,
and by this astrology explained the
Central American calendar.
Perhaps the most daring group of
romantic writers seized upon a Greek
fable referring vaguely to the Canary
,^ Islands, if to any real location. These
J pulled up a great continent out of
jl 30,000 feet of ocean, as Maui, the
SAi. Maori god, pulled up New Zealand
^■^ on his fishing line. But the Lost At-
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
lantis sank again after permitting the
Mayas to walk dry shod to Africa for
the purpose of founding Egypt, if Le
Plongeon is to be believed, while Ig-
nacius Donnelly would have the young
Greeks planting their dynamic sym-
metries in Mexico by the reverse route.
Louis Spence within a year or two has
revived this watery highway, partly by
picturing Quetzalcoatl as none other
than the world-weary Atlas.
Today we find two tumultuous theo-
ries bearing down on ancient America
from diametrically opposite directions,
the one sponsored by Leo Wiener and
the other by G. Elliot Smith.
Professor Wiener solves the riddle
of old American civilizations with an
Arabico-Mendingo lexicon and derives
everything of importance in the New
World from the highly civilized coasts
of Gambia and Sierra Leone. From
brightest Africa came the principal
American food plants, the Mayan
calendar and the Mexican religion.
[53]
CULTURE
He has accomplished this end by mak-
ing vague and caliginous comparisons
with outlandish words, after finding the
"single alif" of Omar that is the key
to everything. The full splendor of
his disarticulation is demonstrated in
several books. One, freshly off the
press, has no colored plates and i6
plates in black and white, a veritable
monument to misguided enthusiasm.
In this highly colored thesaurus numer-
ous American names are neatly warped
to African sources, but the illustrations
coming from Mexican and Mayan
books find no parallels in Africa. It
may be added that Professor Wiener
swarms his Negroes across the Atlantic
in no less than fifty voyages before
Columbus. He refuses to give Poor
Lo even the honour of knowing tobacco
and recognizes no specimens of tobacco
pipes as truly archaeological. He ac-
counts for the fine cotton cloth of Peru
on the ground that bodies were dug up
and re-clothed in post-Spanish times.
[54]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
ROMANTIC ANTHROPOLOGY IN
GERMANY AND ENGLAND
Lowie, in his treatise on Social
Anthropology in the new section of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica mentions
two "diffusionist" or romantic groups
whose major operations have been con-
ducted across the Pacific. They use
different methods but an indifferent
logic.
The first of these diffusionist groups
is German, with F. Graebner and W.
Schmidt as the outstanding leaders and
the second is English with H. R. Rivers
(now dead and worthy of better re-
membrances for his early work), G.
Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry directing
the offensive. Each team ignores the
possibility of independent civilization
and believes, to quote Lowie, that
"similarities are ipso facto evidence of
transmission, and the proof is perfect
when not merely single traits but com-
plexes recur — megalithic monuments
[55]
CULTURE
and a sun colt, conical roofs and a solar
mythology, rectangular huts and a di-
vision into matrilinear descent." But
if recapitulating thought is not possible
among men, then memory must be in-
voked to preserve the historical con-
tmuities, as various quaint ideas, dis-
tributed by imaginary migrations, are
found to survive in the four quarters of
the globe.
Comparative calm settled over an-
thropological doctrine in the first ten
years of the twentieth century follow-
ing the overthrow of those romanti-
cists who had trailed civilization by the
swastika and the ring-and-cross sym-
bol. Then the world was startled by
the announcement of Graebner that
the costumes of the "devil dancers" on
the Amazon and Orinoco were histor-
ically connected with those of the Duk-
duk ceremony in the Bismarck
Archipelago. This proof, affecting
primitive peoples of different race and
language, separated by half the circum-
[56]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
ference of the world, consisted in
nothing more significant in human af-
fairs than over-size conical hats with
fringes on the rim. These hats were
large enough nearly to conceal the
body of the wearer and therefore to
serve as complete costumes.
The general argument of the diffu-
sive Germans, built on raw facts like
the above, was that three "primary"
cultures arose from the rock-bottom
simplicity of nomadic hunters. One of
these was strongly feminist, due to
women's invention of agriculture, and
its religious and artistic expressions
were concerned with female deities and
lunar mythology. A second was mas-
culine in temperament and had its birth
in the perfection of manly arts and
was devoted to patrilinear descent,
totemism, male deities and solar myths.
A third primary culture emerged after
the domestication of animals and was
developed by pastoral nomads. The
later course of history was a mingling
[57]
CULTURE
of germ plasm from these first sources
of social life.
The modern English diffusionists de-
rive everything worth while from a so-
called archaic civilization which had
its origin in Egypt or thereabouts.
Numerous ideas were planted in all
parts of the world by adventurous
bands who departed from this cradle of
original thought in search of gold,
pearls and what-not. Mr. H. G. Wells'
with truly dramatic instinct, placed
the origin of this civilization on the
present bottom of the Mediterranean
and let the Atlantic burst in through the
Gates of Hercules to destroy the
evidence.
But Dr. G. Elliot Smith is more
conservative. The ingredients of his
Heliolithic Theory are gathered
plainly enough under the Pharaohs,
but the dissemination is by dark ways
that lead hither and yon across the
world. The low-browed Australians
learned magic from the specific con-
[58]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
coction invented on the Nile, although
it is admitted that many concepts
gathered new flavour in India, Cam-
bodia and China before they finally
reached America. Dr. Smith's method
is admirably illustrated in his Ele-
phants and Ethnologists wherein he
revives all old identifications of ele-
phants in the art of America and makes
new ones. He relates these supposed
representations to Buddhist pictures,
also dilating on certain grotesque, com-
posite figures of southern Asia which
he holds to be the first parents of all
American monsters.
Even the most casual reader must
realize that the romantic theories out-
lined above cannot all be true because
they oppose each other and fall into
riotous discord. Many are flights of
childish adventure. Others, sincere
and hard-working enough, are based
upon the narrow and depressing con-
cept that man in general cannot think
for himself but must imitate and re-
[59]
CULTURE
member the actions of a favoured race.
The romantic school that decries in-
dependent invention is itself stuffed
with invention. The argument is con-
sistent only in that it is always made
on the curiosas rather than on the solid
achievements of mankind. We now
turn to a brief statement of the argu-
ments used by the humble majority of
anthropologists where the essential in-
dependence of several great civiliza-
tions is under discussion.
AMERICAN CIVILIZATION IN AN
INDEPENDENT FAMILY
That America was the home of a
family of civilizations independent of
the family of civilizations in the Old
World in all the higher reaches of
achievement is the contention of prosaic
anthropologists. If this contention is
correct then such parallels as do occur
on various planes of culture have a tre-
mendous bearing on the innate poten-
[60]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
tialities of mankind, and thus, in turn,
on the future course of political and
social evolution.
Mankind is now believed to repre-
sent one species of animal subdivided
into races. The origin of man himself
and the primary development of his
culture are considered to have taken
place in the great continental masses of
Asia, Europe and Africa and there is
good evidence that he had reached the
general cultural level of the Lov^er
Neolithic before migration out of the
Old World continents took place and
the species became cosmopolitan. In
other vi^ords, man was a creature per-
fected in mind and body, with tools,
speech and the rudiments of all impor-
tant arts before he left home for the
ends of the earth.
Civilizations are first of all depend-
ent upon abundant and constant food
supply. Without such food supply
population cannot become dense, nor
leisure be allowed for the graces of
[6i]
CULTURE
life. But civilizations are also depend-
ent upon the creation of loyalties and
inhibitions among the members of the
social group. The American record
indicates in very complete fashion the
natural history of civilizations, from
the family hunting band type of asso-
ciation up through the fisherman's and
farmer's villages to nationalities, in-
cluding all the members of a language
group and even to empires based on
conquest and tribute. The psycho-
logical bases of leadership— blood,
might, wealth and magic— all are
found in varying degree, in different
parts of America. The blood-bond
strikes curious parallels to the Old
World in such institutions as cross-
cousin marriage, totemic or non-totemic
clans, etc., but to claim that these paral-
lels mean historical continuity of an
ancient pattern is unjustifiable. They
may be reiterated answers to the
mechanistic problem of making the
family continuous. Ethnographic re-
[62]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
search shows that the higher types of
social organization have their centers
in areas of good food supply. Social
classifications break clean across the
linguistic ones in many instances, in-
dicating that culture may rise or fall
quickly and is not necessarily perma-
nent.
The culture areas of American eth-
nologists rest on a static concept. They
correspond to the nuclear distributions
of dominant arts on a given horizon or
historical level. To some extent they
also correspond to environmental prov-
inces, but it is recognized that life may
be developed along different lines in
the same environmental province, w^it-
ness the nomadic Apache and the seden-
tary Pueblo of desert southwestern
states. But human culture is dynamic,
and if the vertical or historical changes
are correlated with the horizontal or
geographical changes we obtain storm
movements. That is, there is a flowing
[63]
CULTURE
out from a cultural high into a cul-
tural low as on a weather map.
CONVERGENCE AND DIVERGENCE
The doctrine of convergence, or of
convergent evolution, has been used to
explain striking similarities between
the arts of man in different parts of
the world and especially as a reply to
the argument that such similarities
mean historical connections between
widely sundered peoples. By defini-
tion convergence means that things
originally different have become the
same and by divergence that things
originally the same have become dif-
ferent. In other words, the proof of
historical continuity should be sought
in divergence, while convergence in
human arts means that some mechanical
control affects the object.
These terms, convergence and di-
vergence, are as applicable in nature
as in human history and the paleon-
[64]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
tologist, the botanist, etc., constantly
use them. Outside of man conver-
gence is generally explained by a con-
stant environmental or mechanical
factor, or set of factors, acting upon
different things and slowly transform-
ing them. The same explanation will
serve in the case of man because hu-
man sensory organs are machines that
select for quality. Also similarities in
art are apt to arise independently be-
cause structure, as in textiles, acts as
a limit upon design. In other words
selection is controlled both in and out
of man's body. The general history of
the modification of tools, of designs,
etc., show that these are refined and
specialized in much the same way as
animals and plants in natural evolu-
tion.
Similarities in the patterns of social
organization, in ceremonial procedure,
in mechanical construction, in decora-
tive design etc., are all susceptible to
convergences and therefore cannot be
[65]
CULTURE
used without support to argue histori-
cal contact between widely separated
peoples, especially if we proceed on
the theory that men are approximately
equal in the matter of the mental and
bodily machine and that they all had an
approximately even start on the Neo-
lithic plane of culture.
Problems of cultural interrelations
on the civilized plane between the
Eastern and Western hemispheres
must be decided on basic arguments,
not on merely curious similarities. The
points used in the notorious Heliolithic
Theory of Smith and Perry are mostly
curioss without really important re-
lations to the matters of social life.
Agriculture, dealing with an entirely
different set of domesticated plants in
America than it does in Asia, Africa
and Europe, more than offsets the cou-
vade and other strange resemblances.
Pottery, weaving and metal working in
the archaeology of America rise from a
low to a high plane within spaces of
[66]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
time that can be accurately measured
and fixed in a system of world chro-
nology.
COMPARISONS OF AMERICAN AND OLD
WORLD AGRICULTURE
Two principal places of origin of
agriculture and domestic animals can
be distinguished in the Old World and
two more in the New World, as well
as a number of secondary centres es-
tablished in much later times. Of the
two focal points in each hemisphere the
older in each case corresponds to an
arid tropical or subtropical environ-
ment and the younger to a humid en-
vironment well within the tropics.
The basic civilizations rising out of
assured supplies of food may be classi-
fied as:
I. The Civilization of Wheat, with
its centre in Mesopotamia and the Nile
Valley and its principal extension east-
ward over northern India, the Tarim
[67]
CULTURE
Basin, and the plains of China. The
adjustment of wheat to the Persian
highlands and to Europe came long
after cultivation in the low hot valleys.
In the food complex of this civilization
we find wheat, barley, lentils, peas,
grapes, etc., with cattle, sheep, and goats
coming into use as sources of meat,
milk and butter. Rye, oats, cabbages,
etc., were comparatively late domesti-
cations on the northern fringe.
2. The Civilization of Maize, with
its original centre on the rather arid
highlands of Central America. In this
complex we find a strong vegetarian
diet with maize, beans and squashes
occupying first place. Domesticated
animals were few and relatively unim-
portant in the dietary; turkeys may be
mentioned. The two arid land agricul-
tural complexes have no factor in com-
mon, plants in the two sets not being
even remotely similar. That of the
Old World may be dated tentatively
as beginning about 5000 B.C. on the evi-
[68]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
dence of recent explorations near the
Red Sea, while the New World civi-
lization may be somewhat younger in
spite of the fact that the American
plants in general are more highly
domesticated than those of Asia (i.e.,
carried farther from the wild types and
adapted to a wider climatic range).
3. The Civilization of Rice. The
locus of this civilization was the humid
area of southern China, Indonesia, and
Bengal in India. In addition to rice,
other important plants were yams,
breadfruit, bananas and coconuts.
Pigs and chickens also appear to have
been domesticated here.
4. The Civilization of Manioc. The
corresponding civilization of the wet
tropics in America, inaugurated by the
Mayas, before 600 B.C. according to the
evidence of their calendar, was in con-
siderable part supported by maize,
beans, squashes, etc., modified to meet
humid conditions. But a number of
wet land plants were domesticated, in-
[69]
CULTURE
eluding cacao, sweet potatoes, and the
manioc root which furnishes tapioca
and cassava. The best lowland culture
of South America flourished near the
mouth of the Amazon, and this appears
to have been the original home of sev-
eral domesticated plants, including
manioc. In both the Old and New
Worlds the humid type civilizations
did not get under way till about the
time of Christ, with the first indications
of culture 500-1000 years earlier.
As regards food plants it has already
been stated that the combined botani-
cal, archaeological and historical evi-
dence discloses no food plants common
to both the Old and New Worlds. It
is true that the botanical evidence in-
dicates that the coconut belongs to a
family nearly all of whose members are
American, nevertheless it is very cer-
tain that the domesticated coconut was
unknown here and that it was known in
the Old World. Some cases may ap-
pear doubtful if all opinions must be
[70]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
given equal weight. Thus some per-
sons, finding sweet potatoes widely
spread in China, the Philippines, New
Zealand, etc., have naively considered
them native of these parts. But in the
Philippines at least these roots still
bear the Aztec name, camote, while
yams were introduced into America
under the African name. One may
find statements that the banana existed
in America but the native names for it
are nearly all variants of the Spanish
platano and the record of introduction
is precise enough.
Indeed only one species of cultivated
plant appears to have been cosmopoli-
tan at the time of the discovery of
America, namely the common gourd,
well equipped to float its way around
the world. As for cotton, the wild
species have blown around the world
and are found on oceanic islands.
Three species in America and two m
the Old World have been reduced to
cultivation. The Old World species
[71]
CULTURE
are decidedly inferior. Also the archs-
ological specimens of American cotton
are much older than those of Assyria,
India or China.
In connection with American agri-
culture there are some extremely in-
teresting problems in the genetics of
plants. Archeology is able to restore
the lines of migration for domesticated
plants in America and the sequence of
climatic adjustments. This is impor-
tant because some of these plants, for
example maize, have wider adjustments
than the domesticated plants of the Old
World. In the Pueblo area the lowest
culture level shows a single type of
maize of the flint variety. In upper
levels we get flour corn of different
colors, beans, squashes, cotton, etc.
CERAMIC AND TEXTILE ARTS
The coordination in distribution
between ceramic art and agriculture is
quite exact in America if we omit the
[72]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
unbaked blood-cemented pottery of the
Eskimos. Some marginal tribes like
the Mandan and the Huron probably-
received pottery as part of the agri-
cultural complex. Nevertheless we
must also recognize that pottery is nat-
urally an art of sedentary peoples which
is of slight service to nomadic peoples.
Some of the western Algonquin tribes
on passing out of the agricultural area
used pottery to a slight extent and then
gave it up. Although records of pot-
tery manufacture exist for the Sho-
shone and some other tribes of the
Basin Area who had winter homes in
the valleys and summer camps on the
hills, it never was important among
them. Similarly there is a discontinu-
ance of pottery in South America when
we leave the limits of agriculture, ex-
cept for a marginal zone of sporadic
cases.
Pottery art delimits special cultures
by its full and permanent record of
decorative art. Frequently it is found
[73]
CULTURE
in stratified deposits which furnish evi-
dence of historical sequence. It may
give proofs of the interchange of
mechanical ideas between culture areas.
An example of this develops from the
distribution of the tripod support
which is a common character of pot-
tery from Colombia to central Mexico,
but is seldom met with in Peru and
never met with in the Pueblo area. An-
other example is the process of negative
painting after the fashion of the batik,
the design being put on with wax be-
fore the sizing colors are applied. This
process began in late Archaic pottery
in Mexico and extended as far as Peru.
The shapes of the objects decorated by
this process and the designs used were
local while the process was widely dis-
tributed.
The potter's wheel, known to the
earliest Eg>^ptians, was never invented
in America but for that matter neither
was the wheel in any of its other me-
chanical uses known in the New World.
[74]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
Glazing of a kind was used to a
limited extent. First there was a kind
of self-glazing pottery manufactured
in Salvador and southern Guatemala
from a clay which suffused under fire
owing to the presence of lead. Second
there was a true glaze paint used by
the Pueblo tribes of New Mexico, the
basis of which was galena. Colors on
the warm register, especially reds, were
widely used for sizing and also for
painted designs, being mostly founded
on the oxides of iron. In Costa Rica
there was a local use of manganese to
make a lustrous brown-purple. Light
bluish color, possibly from the purpura
shell fish, a species of Murex, is also
used here to a very slight extent. But
aside from this the only cold-register
paints are found in the Nasca and lea
pottery of Peru. Here the purplish
blue is of unknown origin.
Convergences in textile art of the
Old and New Worlds are seen in
machines, form of weaving and de-
[75]
CULTURE
signs. The controlling factors are
clearly discernible and explanations of
the independent inventions and the
numerous convergences are not far to
seek. While the first immigrants to
America doubtless had mats and bas-
ketry and knew how to twist string, it
is not likely that they were acquainted
with flexible weaving. At least it is
pretty certain that the loom and spin-
dle whorl were invented independently
in America. Also several fiber plants
were domesticated and several splendid
dyes brought into use. If it is impos-
sible for a stream to rise higher than
its source, how can persons who wish
to derive all worthwhile American
achievements from the Old World ex-
plain the wonderful perfection of the
textile art in Peru? For in variety of
construction, fineness of weave and
brilliancy of coloring Peruvian textile
products are without rival an>^vhere.
The warp-weighted loom— if indeed
this clumsy machine deserves the name
[76]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
of loom — does occur on both sides of
the North Pacific among the Ainu of
Japan and the Chilcat of Alaska. If
the Scandinavians brought looms to
Greenland they were doubtless of
this type. But there is no suspicion of
the warp-weighted loom in Mexico
and Peru. The true loom principle
emerges from basketry manipulation
when some sort of harness is devised to
move a whole set of warp threads in a
single act — that is, when a shed is pro-
duced. In America the loom — with
warp beams, harness, comb and batten
sword — was distributed from Colorado
to Argentine, following closely the dis-
tribution of cotton cultivation.
Practically all kinds of cloth were
developed in America, plain weaving,
twilling, tapestry, brocade, gauze,
double cloth, etc. Also we find designs
applied in a great many different ways,
among which tie-dying in the warp
and in the finished cloth may be men-
tioned. As regards dyes we have
[77]
CULTURE
American indigo, distinct from Asiatic
indigo, also the cochineal insect which
was domesticated, and a purple dye
drawn from a species of Murex. Here
is a nice example of the independent
seizing of similar resources in nature.
The American Murex differs in species
from the Mediterranean and Indian
ones, and could not have been trans-
ported.
THE METAL AGES DO NOT APPLY
IN AMERICA
Another basic comparison between
the civilizations of the two hemi-
spheres can be made on metals. In Old
World archeology we have bronze and
iron giving their names to well defined
levels of human culture with the like-
lihood that some usage of gold and of
native copper preceded the true Age
of Bronze. This age may begin as
early as 3200 B.C., while iron came into
fairly common use about 800 B.C.
[78]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
Metals are unduly emphasized during
the grandiose stages of civilization in
Egypt, Assyria and China and the use
of bronze strikes a cultural horizon
from Ireland to Japan.
In the New World, on the other
hand, there was probably no very an-
cient use of metals, but several inde-
pendent areas in which a late and par-
tial use must be noted. Native copper
was hammered in shape for tools, etc.
in regions adjacent to supply, as in
southern Alaska, along the Copper-
mine River, in northern Canada, and
in Victoria Land. In the area south of
the Great Lakes there was a similar
use not only of native copper, but also
of gold, native silver and some meteoric
iron. Although the Mound-builders
made excellent repousee designs on
sheets of hammered copper, they never
learned the art of smelting ore or cast-
ing molten metals.
In South America, the West Indies,
Central America and Mexico the
[79]
CULTURE
knowledge of metals was practically
continuous except over the South
American lowlands and those parts of
Argentine and Chile lying beyond the
influence of the Peruvian civilization.
In the West Indies the gold apparently
came from local sources in Porto Rico
and Santo Domingo. Perhaps metal
art among the Arawacks was derived
from the mainland of Venezuela where
rare specimens are found. For the rest
of the great area boasting metal work
we can draw a line as regards tech-
nique across southern Colombia.
North of this is found the pseudo-fili-
grane method of casting from wax
models built up in thread-like details.
This process was used over Colombia,
Panama, etc., to Mexico. South of the
division line, in Equador and Peru, the
pseudo-filigrane technique is not ap-
parent, although the lost-wax process
was known. The finest pieces of
Equadorian and Peruvian metal work
are ornamented with repousee.
[80]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
On both sides of the technical divid-
ing line we find a common knowledge
of gold, silver, copper and various
alloys. Tin and copper were mixed to
make bronze, but no definite formula
seems to have been reached. Platinum
was used in western Colombia and
Equador, and lead was pretty certainly
known in Mexico.
Now although the evidence is very
clear that metal working came into
Mexico from the south, it is also just as
certain that there was no knowledge
of it in the Maya area at the time of the
First Empire, the dated monuments of
which run from about loo B.C. to about
630 A.D. No specimens of metal and
no metal stains have been observed at
Copan, Quirigua, etc., nor are metal
objects represented on the early Maya
sculptures as details of the dress, al-
though shells and jade objects are
clearly drawn. The ruin of Las Que-
bradas, belonging to the same age as
Quirigua, is situated upon the richest
[81]
CULTURE
placer mine in Guatemala. Although
most of this site has been excavated
and many pieces of pottery and jade
recovered, not one specimen of v^-^orked
metal has come to light.
Under the Toltec kings, Huetzin,
Ihuitimal and Quetzalcoatl, tribute in
metals was collected in Guatemala.
Most of the gold sacrificed in the
Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza in
Yucatan during this, the Toltec period,
was imported from Costa Rica and
Panama and some came from as far
away as the middle Cauca valley.
From these facts we may conclude
that the metal age in Central America
and Mexico began between 600 and
1 1 00 A.D.
THE CALENDAR
A considerable number of papers
bearing on possible relations between
the civilizations of the New and Old
Worlds attempt to draw parallels in
[82]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
the systems of counting time and argue
derivation of the Central American cal-
endar from Chinese zodiacs, etc. Of
course time-counts must take notice of
facts in nature. The zodiac, as the
path of the planets, is an observable
thing, as is the length of the month or
year. Time observations of some kind
or other are universal.
Natural calendars of the sidereal
year type, without months, are appar-
ently the lowest, existing in Australia,
South Africa and the South American
lowlands. In this type the heliacal
rising of constellations in correspond-
ence with the seasons is noted. Next
follows the type with twelve months in
a year, or thirteen when necessary.
This luni-solar calendar is found pretty
widely over the world — in parts of
Africa, practically all of Asia and
Europe as well as North America.
Mathematical calendars where the
month becomes a more or less formal
part of the year come in with high
[83]
CULTURE
civilization, very often on the formula
12X30 + 5 = 365.
The Central American calendar is
built on a system that finds no parallel
in the Old World. It is 18 X 20 + 5
combined with a permutation of 13 X
20=260. The dates are the number of
elapsed days from a mundane era
which equals October 14, 3373 B.C. in
the backward projection of our present
Gregorian calendar. The time-count
began to function on August 6, 613 B.C.
The writing out of the Maya calendar
involved place-value a thousand years
before it was known anywhere in the
Old World and an eral count of days
300 years before the first eral count of
years in the Old World (The Era of
the Seleucidae, October i, 312 B.C.).
In other words, an analysis of the
science of ancient America shows prod-
ucts of high originality and this fact
relieves us from the necessity of ex-
plaining intellectually and artistically
advanced features of New World
[84]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
civilizations by diffusion from Europe
or Asia.
The conformity of natural time
cycles which the Greeks reached in the
Cycle of Meton was 19 years = 235
months = 6940 days. This is reached
by the Mayas as i Katun (7200 days)
minus i Tzolkin (260 days)^6940
days. The Egyptian Sothic Cycle is
an attempt at a natural cycle reached
in marvelous fashion by the Mayas.
The Egyptian Sothic Cycle is 146 1 X
365^ 1460 X 365.25, that is 1461 cal-
endarical years equal 1460 years ac-
cording to the Julian formula. But
here the Nile flooded in accordance
with the tropical year and the dog star
rose in accordance with the sidereal
year. These elements are really incom-
patible, the error being about 12 days
in one cycle. In the Mayan arrange-
ment, 29 permutation rounds of 52
calendarical years each equal 1507
tropical years. The error here is a
small fraction of a day. The Mayan
[85]
CULTURE
calculations on eclipses, planetary rev-
elations and tropical years are mar-
velously accurate and are expressed in
a peculiar kind of mathematics associ-
ated with a peculiar kind of hiero-
glyphs.
The time-counts of Central America
give a shaft of accurate chronology in
the centre of the New World and by
taking note of trade specimens and link-
ing features in decorative arts, cere-
monies, etc., we can establish far-reach-
ing horizons in archeology.
DISEASES
Diseases caused by parasites invad-
ing the human body have local origins
and are distributed by man himself.
The chance that the same parasitical
ailment might originate spontaneously
in different areas is negligible. Of
course the organisms of disease are
vastly older than man. The human
host may be the last of a series of hosts
[86]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
for the parasite. Nevertheless the his-
torical record pretty clearly shows that
disturbances of this sort have a con-
tinuous history of dissemination from
an original pathological adaptation to
man. Since the conditions of the body
vary but slightly according to climates
the pathological agents tend to become
cosmopolitan.
Parasitic diseases could hardly main-
tain themselves among men without
reasonably dense populations. We
may assume that the men coming into
America were free from most if not all
such diseases. After the independent
inventions of agriculture some kinds of
disease arose in America and others in
the Old World, both in regions of con-
centrated population, made possible by
the improvement in food supply.
The principal New World diseases
were yellow fever and syphilis, the
former practically limited to the
humid tropics and the latter more
widely spread over highlands as well as
[87]
CULTURE
lowlands among nearly all the agri-
cultural populations of America. The
story of the dissemination of this latter
affection over the rest of the world be-
gan with the return of Columbus and
ended with the discovery of the last
island groups in the Pacific. It was
the introduction of this ailment to the
Hawaiian Islanders by the sailors of
Captain Cook that led to the murder of
that gallant explorer on his return
from Alaska.
The introduction of small-pox,
measles, typhoid, cholera, etc., into
America is fully authenticated. It
does not appear that a single impor-
tant disease of parasitic type was com-
mon to the New and Old Worlds at
the time of the discovery of America
and its colonization by Europeans.
OTHER COMPARISONS
It would be possible to go much
farther in these comparisons, for re-
[88]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
markable similarities and differences —
the former no more significant than
the latter — exist between the intellec-
tual structures of man in the two hemi-
spheres. There is the independent de-
velopment of priestcraft and statecraft
devoted to a more plastic material than
potter's clay, namely the group mind
of any and every society of human be-
ings. There are the parallelisms and
divergences in all the arts, including
graphic and plastic decoration and
representation, music, dancing, and the
prosaic and poetical use of words.
Then there are numerous cases of adap-
tation and invention which contribute
to the proofs of inventive genius among
ancient Americans. There is the prep-
aration of bark cloth and paper, and
the preparation of rubber from the
coagulated latex of the Castilla elastica.
This substance was made into balls for
a special game. It was also used to tip
drum sticks, to make capes and other
parts of dress impervious to water, etc.
[89]
CULTURE
Then there was the burning of lime-
stone to make a mortar for architectural
purposes, and there was even a use of
brick and tiles. These are all parallel
to developments in the Old World but
with a factor of originality.
But there are also notable absences.
For instance, the wheel as a mechanical
device appears nowhere in the New
World. Even an imperfect correla-
tion emphasizes the inventiveness of
man and supports the logical position
that the ancient Americans achieved by
far the greater portion of their culture
in the New World without occult help
from the dominant civilization of the
Old World.
And yet it is apparent that man did
reach the New World from the Old.
He did this, according to the prosaic
anthropologist, not by crossing the
broad Atlantic and the still broader
Pacific but by taking advantage of an
ancient land bridge between the con-
tinents which likewise served as a high-
[90]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
way for other animals. This land
bridge extended from Siberia to
Alaska and at the present time is
sunken less than lOO feet below the sea.
But there was a still more ancient land
bridge across the North Atlantic which
may have served for the precursors of
man.
EARLY MAN IN AMERICA
We are accustomed to think of the
Old World as the place of origin for
the primates, the highest order of life,
and the order leading to man. The ac-
cumulating data on the Eocene fauna
of New Mexico, Wyoming and other
western states indicate that the home
of the primates may have been in
North America and that such primi-
tive lemuroids as the Notharctidae in
middle Eocene age rose out of such
primitive insectivores as Nothodectes
in the lower Eocene, or Paleocene as it
is sometimes called. The Tarsius
[91]
CULTURE
group under Lemuroidias is also found
in America and this is supposed by
paleontologists to be near the direct
line of man's development. The Noth-
arctidcE of the New World are tied
into the available paleontological rec-
ord in a better way than the contem-
porary Adapids of Europe.
In this connection it should be kept
in mind that the extent of Eocene land
m North America was much greater
than in Europe. The North Atlantic
land-bridge across Labrador, Green-
land, Iceland, the Faroes, etc., was then
above water serving as a highway for
land animals between the two hemi-
spheres under favorable climatic con-
ditions. It now lies below a shallow
sea. Also Europe at that time was cut
off by wide water masses from Asia and
Africa. In other words North Amer-
ica and Western Europe were parts of
one continent.
The present American monkeys are
higher than the lemuroids of either
[ 92 ]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
hemisphere and may have arisen out
of the Notharctids. There is a break
in the paleontological record in Amer-
ica from Eocene to Pliocene or Pleis-
tocene and if the present American
monkeys are not considered descend-
ants of the geologically early forms
then we must imagine an invasion from
Asia via the Siberia- Alaskan bridge be-
cause the North Atlantic isthmus was
submerged before the Miocene.
If the single tooth from a late Plio-
cene formation in Nebraska, assigned
to a large anthropoid called Hesper-
opithicus, is vindicated as belonging to
an upper primate we may have a real
problem of the anthropoidal precur-
sors of man for America. Previous to
the finding of this tooth evidence of
anthropoid apes and of archaic types
of man was wanting in America.
Various animals contemporary with
archaic man found their way into
America from Asia.
Nevertheless nearly a century of
[93]
CULTURE
search has failed to furnish satisfactory
proof of man in America before or
during the last advance of the glaciers,
and the weight of evidence now lies
heavily against the assumption that
paleolithic man was, in fact, present.
An examination of the most primitive
marginal t^'pes of Indian culture dis-
closes the smooth stone celt and other
characteristic products of the Neolithic
period. Indeed it appears that the
final dissemination of man beyond the
limits of the Old World cluster of con-
tinents took place on this horizon, since
the Australian likewise has smooth
stone implements. The most primitive
tribes of the world seem to be safely
Neolithic, but on the nomadic-hunting
rather than the sedentary-agricultural
stage.
Man probably entered America on
the early Neolithic horizon before the
invention of agriculture or the domes-
tication of any animal except possibly
the dog. The earliest possible date of
[94]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
his coming would depend on the re-
treat of the ice sheet from the road
leading to the Siberia-Alaskan land
bridge. It is believed that the glacial
stages were roughly contemporaneous
for all parts of the Arctic continental
mass, yet criteria of age relating to
the advent of man into America are of
the vaguest sort. The archaeological
record in Mexico and Central Amer-
ica can hardly be pushed back beyond
3000-4000 B.C. for sedentary culture.
Before this date and after the retreat
of the ice are some ten thousand or
more years.
The present differentiation in lan-
guage and physical type among Amer-
ican Indians is supposed to be sufficient
to cover a large part of this interval.
The difficulty here is that the original
stream of immigration was doubtless
already mixed. Of course it is per-
fectly obvious that some correlation
expressing the gist of history must be
efifected in America between the
[95]
CULTURE
present incompatible classifications of
culture, language and physical rvpe.
Properly speaking, language is a
social convention and therefore a part
of culture. It seems to be by far the
most persistent part since the evidence
indicates that the sundered members of
the Athabascan stock, for instance,
have but a small ingredient of common
usage outside the forms of speech.
Obviously the Aztecs and the Sho-
shone at opposite ends of the area oc-
cupied by the Uto-Aztecan stock, and
at opposite ends of the social scale,
must be brought into an original con-
formity, and the same problem remains
for other far-flung language groups.
Physical anthropology has demon-
strated the absence of archaic t}-pes of
man in the known American record
and it has demonstrated that there is
considerable fluctuation about a normal
race standard. But it has not demon-
strated a concordance at any stage with
language. To say that physical classi-
[96]
PROSAIC VS. ROMANTIC
fications of American Indians cannot
be correlated with cultural and lin-
guistic classifications is merely to in-
sist that physical characters are mobile
and without value as historical criteria,
except possibly in large averages. It
is absurd for physical anthropologists
to insist, in extenuation of their failure,
that linguistic evidences of social unity
can be neglected on the grounds that a
physical entity in population may lose
its language and other elements of cul-
ture. It would not lose these without
some marks of the struggle and without
some mixture of blood with the con-
queror.
CONCLUSION
From all points of view, then, it ap-
pears there are no sound reasons for
the interpretation of history demanded
by the romantic school in the science
that studies the origin of man and his
institutions. It is safe to file a general
[97]
CULTURE
demurrer against mummification, the
couvade, helioliths, lost continents,
African jargon, elephant trunks and
all the other sensational arguments
which have formed the basis for theo-
ries of occult migrations and forgotten
conquests. One might as well have
distribution of culture by telepathy
and intellectual osmosis. The one
real opportunity that Europe had to
influence America was when the
Norsemen lived for 400 years in
Greenland: yet no evidence of influ-
ences emanating from them have been
found even among the neighbouring
Eskimos. What likelihood, then, is
there of the PhcEnician galleys or
Chinese junks having planted the seed
of civilization in Mexico or Peru?
[98]
THE
DIFFUSION CONTROVERSY
By Alexander Goldenweiser
Lecturer on Anthropology at the Neia School of
Social Research, Neio York
Differences in scientific views are
wholesome. In a problem such as the
diffusion of culture, with its many the-
oretical tangles and objective com-
plexities, differences in point of view-
are not only pardonable but inevitable
and necessary. Unfortunately, how-
ever, the gladiatorial combat suffers
both from misrepresentation of the
views of opponents and from lack of
clarity as to the real issues at hand.
When Professor Elliot Smith writes
that "the theory maintained by the vast
majority of anthropologists to-day is
that in any community civilization can
and did grow up and develop quite
[99]
CULTURE
independently of similar events hap-
pening elsewhere in the world," one
may well ask for the names of the
anthropologists who constitute this
"vast majority." Being one of the
tribe myself, after a fashion, I ex-
perience difficulty in mentioning even
a single anthropologist who holds such
a view. All but the most dogmatic of
the old-time evolutionists would have
hesitated to exclude "all considerations
of contact or prompting directly or in-
directly" when similarities in beliefs
and customs among different peoples
are concerned. Tylor, for example,
went out of his way repeatedly to re-
pudiate such an attitude, to say nothing
of modern ethnologists, including the
"vast majority" of Americanists, to
whom the tracing of culture contacts
is ever of uppermost concern.
Again, when the famous anatomist
writes: "It is utterly unjustifiable to
assume, as modern ethnological the-
ories implicitly do, that human be-
[ loo]
DIFFUSION CONTROVERSY
haviour was totally different before
writing was devised. There is not a
scrap of evidence to suggest that our
unliterary predecessors had a remark-
able aptitude for invention far tran-
scending that of modern man. Nor
again is there anything to justify the
even more reckless assumption that this
imaginary aptitude found expression
in a stereotyped form in every place
where ancient civilization developed,"
against whom is this broadside di-
rected? Surely not against American
anthropologists, nor, for that matter,
any anthropologist of any account any-
where in the scientific world to-day.
For no such fabulous aptitude for in-
vention is attributed to primitive man
by any modern student of the subject;
ethnologists assume most emphatically
that human behaviour in primitive
times was much the same as it is to-
day; as to the "stereotyped form"
in which "ancient civilization de-
veloped," no one could outdo the mod-
[lOl]
CULTURE
ern ethnologist in his zeal to point out
and appreciate the kaleidoscopic va-
riety of patterns assumed by civiliza-
tion in early days.
Having paved the way for the pres-
entation of his theory in this question-
able fashion, Professor Smith devotes
the rest of his essay to citing attested
instances of diffusion. But here also
one cannot but feel that his efforts are
being wasted. For no one doubts the
reality of diffusion nor its importance
in the building up of culture com-
plexes.
Thus we reach the end of the au-
thor's study without reading one word
about the real issues: Is there such a
thing as independent invention? And,
if so, is it frequent or exceptional?
Also: is it always easy or even pos-
sible to determine whether similar cus-
toms or beliefs in two or more places
are to be attributed to independent de-
velopment or to the operation of dif-
fusion in the course of historic contact?
[ 102]
DIFFUSION CONTROVERSY
In his reflections upon "The Life of
Culture" Dr. Malinowski raises the
discussion to a higher level of fairness
and realism. We believe w^ith him
that "in the case of every modern in-
vention, we know that it is invariably
made and remade time after time in
different places, by different men along
slightly different roads, independently
of one another," and accept with him
the truth that "every cultural achieve-
ment is due to a process or growth in
which diffusion and invention have
equal shares." We share Dr. Mali-
nowski's repudiation of a purely me-
chanical view of dilTusion as a mere
transfer of this or that from one place
to another, and heartily endorse his
insistence on the much more compli-
cated nature of the facts of adoption
and adaptation of cultural features.
Dr. Malinowski is emphatically right
in stressing the significance of biologi-
cal and psychological factors which
express themselves in similar urges and
[ 103]
CULTURE
wants, and inevitably lead to similar
solutions, at least in man's initial ad-
justments to nature and to culture.
On the other hand, when the author
declares that "culture is not conta-
gious," that "it has neither been in-
vented nor diffused, but imposed by the
natural conditions which drive man
upon the path of progress with in-
exorable determinism," our sympathy
is no longer aroused. For natural con-
ditions do not drive man anywhere ex-
cept to the extent that he must meet
them; moreover, what is "the path of
progress" and is it a path of progress,
always? And where is the evidence
for an "inexorable determinism"? Nor
are we illumined when reading that
"the remedy for anthropology lies not
in conjuring up one conjecture in the
place of another, but in giving the
Science of Man a foundation of real
fact open to observation, in making it
bear upon the practical and vital is-
sues of the day." Facts as such will
[ 104]
DIFFUSION CONTROVERSY
not settle the issues before us— are not
facts "scarcest raw material"?— for the
problem is one of interpretation and
analysis; nor is it at all clear by what
magic the theoretical issues of diffusion
and independent invention can be made
to bear "upon the practical and vital
issues of to-day," nor why the "remedy
for anthropology" should be sought in
this direction.
Instead, it should have been made
clear— as neither of the authors has
done— that the study of children and
the analysis of cultural situations
where the facts and processes are
known, bring irrefutable evidence of
man's creativeness or inventive ca-
pacity; that cultural diffusion and
adaptation are as omnipresent and sig-
nificant as invention; that there are
instances of cultural similarities of
such complexity (as would be, for ex-
ample, a Gothic cathedral in Aus-
tralia) that diffusion can be decided
upon without hesitation; that in other
[105]
CULTURE
instances, where a cultural feature is
relatively simple and widespread (such
as animism), repeated independent in-
vention is equally obvious; that in an
enormous number of cases, on the
other hand, no such facile decision is
possible; and that it is here that care-
ful analysis and a thorough estimate
of geographical and historical prob-
ability and evidence must be called
into consultation. Also, when all this
is done, a sufficiently large number of
cases will remain where no safe or
even tentative conclusion can be
reached as between diffusion and in-
dependent invention. And, in honesty
and fairness, this also must be ad-
mitted.
[io6]
PSYCHE
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Culture : the diffusion controversy / 1^'
CB155 .S6 1927 K199 'jj
( llilliillii I
V Smith, Grafton Elliot, W
NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA (SF)
G. ELLIOTT SMITH, D.Sc.
BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI, D.Sc.
HERBERT J. SPINDEN, Ph.D.
ALEXANDER GOLDENWEISER, Ph.D.
IS CULTURE CONTAGIOUS?
WAS the center of original invention and
culture Egypt, and was its civilization
diffused into Europe, Asia and to Amer-
ica? Or did civilization develop in separate com-
munities quite independently of similar events
happening elsewhere?
At the present time, scholars disagree and in
this book four scientists — an Englishman, a Pole,
and two Americans — present the conflicting
views as to which process has played the essen-
tial part in the history of mankind.
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