Volume 2, Slice 2 Part 17 (1/2)

In order to put this argument clearly before the reader, a few selected implements are figured in the Plate. The group in fig. 9 contains tools and weapons of the Neolithic period such as are dug up on European soil; they are evident relics of ancient populations who used them till replaced by metal. The stone hatchets are symmetrically shaped and edged by grinding, while the cutting flakes, sc.r.a.pers, spear and arrow heads are of high finish. Direct knowledge of the tribes who made them is scanty, but implements so similar in make and design having been in use in North and South America until modern times, it may be a.s.sumed for purposes of cla.s.sification that the Neolithic peoples of the New World were at a similar barbarous level in industrial arts, social organization, moral and religious ideas. Such comparison, though needing caution and reserve, at once proved of great value to anthropology.

When, however, there came to light from the drift-gravels and limestone caves of Europe the Palaeolithic implements, of which some types are shown in the group (fig. 10), the difficult problem presented itself, what degree of general culture these rude implements belonged to. On mere inspection, their rudeness, their unsuitability for being hafted, and the absence of shaping and edging by the grindstone, mark their inferiority to the Neolithic implements. Their immensely greater antiquity was proved by their geological position and their a.s.sociation with a long extinct fauna, and they were not, like the Neoliths, recognizable as corresponding closely to the implements used by modern tribes. There was at first a tendency to consider the Palaeoliths as the work of men ruder than savages, if, indeed, their makers were to be accounted human at all. Since then, however, the problem has pa.s.sed into a more manageable state. Stone implements, more or less approaching the European Palaeolithic type, were found in Africa from Egypt southwards, where in such parts as Somaliland and Cape Colony they lie about on the ground, as though they had been the rough tools and weapons of the rude inhabitants of the land at no very distant period. The group in fig. 11 in the Plate shows the usual Somaliland types. These facts tended to remove the mystery from Palaeolithic man, though too little is known of the ruder ancient tribes of Africa to furnish a definition of the state of culture which might have co-existed with the use of Palaeolithic implements. Information to this purpose, however, can now be furnished from a more outlying region. This is Tasmania, where as in the adjacent continent of Australia, the survival of marsupial animals indicates long isolation from the rest of the world. Here, till far on into the 19th century, the Englishmen could watch the natives striking off flakes of stone, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g them to convenient shape for grasping them in the hand, and edging them by taking off successive chips on one face only. The group in fig. 12 shows ordinary Tasmanian forms, two of them being finer tools for sc.r.a.ping and grooving. (For further details reference may be made to H. Ling Roth, _The Tasmanians_, (2nd ed., 1899); R. Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_ (1878), vol. ii.; _Papers and Proceedings of Royal Society of Tasmania_; and papers by the present writer in _Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute_.) The Tasmanians, when they came in contact with the European explorers and settlers, were not the broken outcasts they afterwards became. They were a savage people, perhaps the lowest in culture of any known, but leading a normal, self-supporting, and not unhappy life, which had probably changed little during untold ages. The accounts, imperfect as they are, which have been preserved of their arts, beliefs and habits, thus present a picture of the arts, beliefs and habits of tribes whose place in the Stone Age was a grade lower than that of Palaeolithic man of the Quaternary period.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE

FIG. 1. FIG. 2. FIG. 3 FIG. 4. FIG. 5. FIG. 6. FIG. 7. FIG. 8. FIG. 9.

FIG 10. FIG. 11. FIG. 12.]

The Tasmanian stone implements, figured in the Plate, show their own use when it is noticed that the rude chipping forms a good hand-grip above, and an effective edge for chopping, sawing, and cutting below. But the absence of the long-shaped implements, so characteristic of the Neolithic and Palaeolithic series, and serviceable as picks, hatchets, and chisels, shows remarkable limitation in the mind of these savages, who made a broad, hand-grasped knife their tool of all work to cut, saw, and chop with. Their weapons were the wooden club or waddy notched to the grasp, and spears of sticks, often crooked but well balanced, with points sharpened by tool or fire, and sometimes jagged. No spear thrower or bow and arrow was known. The Tasmanian savages were crafty warriors and kangaroo-hunters, and the women climbed the highest trees by notching, in quest of opossums. Sh.e.l.l-fish and crabs were taken, and seals knocked on the head with clubs, but neither fish-hook nor fis.h.i.+ng-net was known, and indeed swimming fish were taboo as food. Meat and vegetable food, such as fern-root, was broiled over the fire, but boiling in a vessel was unknown. The fire was produced by the ordinary savage fire-drill. Ignorant of agriculture, with no dwellings but rough huts or breakwinds of sticks and bark, without dogs or other domestic animals, these savages, until the coming of civilized man, roamed after food within their tribal bounds. Logs and clumsy floats of bark and gra.s.s enabled them to cross water under favourable circ.u.mstances. They had clothing of skins rudely st.i.tched together with bark thread, and they were decorated with simple necklaces of kangaroo teeth, sh.e.l.ls and berries. Among their simple arts, plaiting and basket-work was one in which they approached the civilized level. The pictorial art of the Tasmanians was poor and childish, quite below that of the Palaeolithic men of Europe. The Tasmanians spoke a fairly copious agglutinating language, well marked as to parts of speech, syntax and inflexion.

Numeration was at a low level, based on counting fingers on one hand only, so that the word for man (_puggana_) stood also for the number 5.

The religion of the Tasmanians, when cleared from ideas apparently learnt from the whites, was a simple form of animism based on the shadow (_warrawa_) being the soul or spirit. The strongest belief of the natives was in the power of the ghosts of the dead, so that they carried the bones of relatives to secure themselves from harm, and they fancied the forest swarming with malignant demons. They placed weapons near the grave for the dead friend's soul to use, and drove out disease from the sick by exorcising the ghost which was supposed to have caused it. Of greater special spirits of Nature we find something vaguely mentioned.

The earliest recorders of the native social life set down such features as their previous experience of rude civilized life had made them judges of. They notice the self-denying affection of the mothers, and the hard treatment of the wives by the husbands, polygamy and the s.h.i.+fting marriage unions. But when we meet with a casual remark as to the tendency of the Tasmanians to take wives from other tribes than their own, it seems likely that they had some custom of exogamy which the foreigners did not understand. Meagre as is the information preserved of the arts, thoughts, and customs of these survivors from the lower Stone Age, it is of value as furnis.h.i.+ng even a temporary and tentative means of working out the development of culture on a basis not of conjecture but of fact.

_Conclusion._--To-day anthropology is grappling with the heavy task of systematizing the vast stores of knowledge to which the key was found by Boucher de Perthes, by Lartet, Christy and their successors. There have been recently no discoveries to rival in novelty those which followed the exploration of the bone-caves and drift-gravels, and which effected an instant revolution in all accepted theories of man's antiquity, subst.i.tuting for a chronology of centuries a vague computation of hundreds of thousands of years. The existence of man in remote geological time cannot now be questioned, but, despite much effort made in likely localities, no bones, with the exception of those of the much-discussed _Pithecanthropus_, have been found which can be regarded as definitely bridging the gulf between man and the lower creation. It seems as if anthropology had in this direction reached the limits of its discoveries. Far different are the prospects in other directions where the work of co-ordinating the material and facts collected promises to throw much light on the history of civilization. Anthropological researches undertaken all over the globe have shown the necessity of abandoning the old theory that a similarity of customs and superst.i.tions, of arts and crafts, justifies the a.s.sumption of a remote relations.h.i.+p, if not an ident.i.ty of origin, between races. It is now certain that there has ever been an inherent tendency in man, allowing for difference of climate and material surroundings, to develop culture by the same stages and in the same way. American man, for example, need not necessarily owe the minutest portion of his mental, religious, social or industrial development to remote contact with Asia or Europe, though he were proved to possess identical usages. An example in point is that of pyramid-building. No ethnical relations.h.i.+p can ever have existed between the Aztecs and the Egyptians; yet each race developed the idea of the pyramid tomb through that psychological similarity which is as much a characteristic of the species man as is his physique.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--J.C. Prichard, _Natural History of Man_ (London, 1843); T.H. Huxley, _Man's Place in Nature_ (London, 1863); and ”Geographical Distribution of Chief Modifications of Mankind,” in _Journal Ethnological Society_ for 1870; E.B. Tylor, _Early History of Man_ (London, 1865), _Primitive Culture_ (London, 1871), and _Anthropology_ (London, 1881); A. de Quatref.a.ges, _Histoire generale des races humaines_ (Paris, 1889), _Human Species_ (Eng. trans., 1879); Lord Avebury, _Prehistoric Times_ (1865, 6th ed. 1900) and _Origin of Civilization_ (1870, 6th ed. 1902), Theo. Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvolker_ (1859-1871), E.H. Haeckel, _Anthropogenie_ (Leipzig, 1874-1891), Eng. trans., 1879; O. Peschel, _Volkerkunde_ (Leipzig, 1874-1897); P. Topinard, _L'Anthropologie_ (Paris, 1876); _elements d'anthropologie generale_ (Paris, 1885); D.G. Brinton, _Races and Peoples_ (1890); A.H. Keane, _Ethnology_ (1896), and _Man: Past and Present_ (1899); G. Sergi, _The Mediterranean Race_ (Eng. ed., 1889); F. Ratzel, _History of Mankind_ (Eng. trans., 1897); G. de Mortillet, _Le Prehistorique_ (Paris, 1882); A.C. Haddon, _Study of Man_ (1897); J. Deniker, _The Races of Man_ (London, 1900); W.Z. Ripley, _The Races of Europe_ (1900, with long bibliography); _The Journal of the Anthropological Inst.i.tute of Great Britain_; _Revue d'anthropologie_ (Paris); _Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie_ (Berlin). See also bibliographies under separate ethnological headings (AUSTRALIA, AFRICA, ARABS, AMERICA, &c.). (E. B. T.)

ANTHROPOMETRY (Gr. [Greek: anthropos], man, and [Greek: metron], measure), the name given by the French savant, Alphonse Bertillon (b.

1853), to a system of identification (q.v.) depending on the unchanging character of certain measurements of parts of the human frame. He found by patient inquiry that several physical features and the dimensions of certain bones or bony structures in the body remain practically constant during adult life. He concluded from this that when these measurements were made and recorded systematically every single individual would be found to be perfectly distinguishable from others. The system was soon adapted to police methods, as the immense value of being able to fix a person's ident.i.ty was fully realized, both in preventing false personation and in bringing home to any one charged with an offence his responsibility for previous wrongdoing. ”Bertillonage,” as it was called, became widely popular, and after its introduction into France in 1883, where it was soon credited with highly gratifying results, was applied to the administration of justice in most civilized countries.

England followed tardily, and it was not until 1894 that an investigation of the methods used and results obtained was made by a special committee sent to Paris for the purpose. It reported favourably, especially on the use of the measurements for primary cla.s.sification, but recommended also the adoption in part of a system of ”finger prints”

as suggested by Francis Galton, and already practised in Bengal.

M. Bertillon selected the following five measurements as the basis of his system: (1) head length; (2) head breadth; (3) length of middle finger; (4) of left foot, and (5) of cubit or forearm from the elbow to the extremity of the middle finger. Each princ.i.p.al heading was further subdivided into three cla.s.ses of ”small,” ”medium” and ”large,” and as an increased guarantee height, length of little finger, and the colour of the eye were also recorded. From this great ma.s.s of details, soon represented in Paris by the collection of some 100,000 cards, it was possible, proceeding by exhaustion, to sift and sort down the cards till a small bundle of half a dozen produced the combined facts of the measurements of the individual last sought. The whole of the information is easily contained in one cabinet of very ordinary dimensions, and most ingeniously contrived so as to make the most of the s.p.a.ce and facilitate the search. The whole of the record is independent of names, and the final identification is by means of the photograph which lies with the individual's card of measurements.

Anthropometry, however, gradually fell into disfavour, and it has been generally supplanted by the superior system of finger prints (q.v.).

Bertillonage exhibited certain defects which were first brought to light in Bengal. The objections raised were (1) the costliness of the instruments employed and their liability to get out of order; (2) the need for specially instructed measurers, men of superior education; (3) the errors that frequently crept in when carrying out the processes and were all but irremediable. Measures inaccurately taken, or wrongly read off, could seldom, if ever, be corrected, and these persistent errors defeated all chance of successful search. The process was slow, as it was necessary to repeat it three times so as to arrive at a mean result.

In Bengal measurements were already abandoned by 1897, when the finger print system was adopted throughout British India. Three years later England followed suit; and as the result of a fresh inquiry ordered by the Home Office, finger prints were alone relied upon for identification.

AUTHORITIES.--Lombroso, _Antropometria di 400 delinquenti_ (1872); Roberts, _Manual of Anthropometry_ (1878); Ferri, _Studi comparati di antropometria_ (2 vols., 1881-1882); Lombroso, _Rughe anomale speciali ai criminali_ (1890); Bertillon, _Instructions signaletiques pour l'identification anthropometrique_ (1893); Livi, _Anthropometria_ (Milan, 1900); Furst, _Indextabellen zum anthropometrischen Gebrauch_ (Jena, 1902); _Report of Home Office Committee on the Best Means of Identifying Habitual Criminals_ (1893-1894). (A. G.)

ANTHROPOMORPHISM (Gr. [Greek: anthropos], man, [Greek: morphae], form), the attribution (a) of a human body, or (b) of human qualities generally, to G.o.d or the G.o.ds. The word anthropomorphism is a modern coinage (possibly from 18th century French). The _New English Dictionary_ is misled by the 1866 reprint of Paul Bayne on Ephesians when it quotes ”anthropomorphist” as 17th century English. Seventeenth century editions print ”anthropomorphits,” i.e. anthropomorphites, in sense (a). The older abstract term is ”anthropopathy,” literally ”attributing human feelings,” in sense (b).

Early religion, among its many objects of wors.h.i.+p, includes beasts (see ANIMAL-WORs.h.i.+P), considered, in the more refined theology of the later Greeks and Romans, as metamorphoses of the great G.o.ds. Similarly we find ”therianthropic” forms--half animal, half human--in Egypt or a.s.syria-Babylonia. In contrast with these, it is considered one of the glories of the Olympian mythology of Greece that it believed in happy manlike beings (though exempt from death, and using special rarefied foods, &c.), and celebrated them in statues of the most exquisite art.

Israel shows us animal images, doubtless of a ruder sort, when Yahweh is wors.h.i.+pped in the northern kingdom under the image of a steer. (Some scholars think the t.i.tle ”mighty one of Jacob,” Psalm cx.x.xii., 2, 5, _et al_., [Hebrew: abir] as if from [Hebrew: avir] is really ”steer”

[Hebrew: abir] ”of Jacob.”) But the higher religion of Israel inclined to morality more than to art, and forbade image wors.h.i.+p altogether. This prepared the way for the conception of G.o.d as an immaterial Spirit. True mythical anthropomorphisms occur in early parts of the Old Testament (e.g. Genesis iii. 8, cf. vi. 2), though in the majority of Old Testament pa.s.sages such expressions are merely verbal (e.g. Isaiah lix.

1). In the Christian Church (and again in early Mahommedanism) simple minds believed in the corporeal nature of G.o.d. Gibbon and other writers quote from John Ca.s.sian the tale of the poor monk, who, being convinced of his error, burst into tears, exclaiming, ”You have taken away my G.o.d!

I have none now whom I can wors.h.i.+p!” According to a fragment of Origen (on Genesis i. 26), Melito of Sardis shared this belief. Many have thought Melito's work, [Greek: peri ensomatou theou], must have been a treatise on the Incarnation; but it is hard to think that Origen could blunder so. Epiphanius tells of Audaeus of Mesopotamia and his followers, Puritan sectaries in the 4th century, who were orthodox except for this belief and for Quartodecimanism (see EASTER).

Tertullian, who is sometimes called an anthropomorphist, stood for the Stoical doctrine, that all reality, even the divine, is in a sense material.

The reaction against anthropomorphism begins in Greek philosophy with the satirical spirit of Xenophanes (540 B.C.), who puts the case as broadly as any. The ”greatest G.o.d” resembles man ”neither in form nor in mind.” In Judaism--unless we should refer to the prophets' polemic against images--a reaction is due to the introduction of the codified law. G.o.d seemed to grow more remote. The old sacred name Yahweh is never p.r.o.nounced; even ”G.o.d” is avoided for allusive t.i.tles like ”heaven” or ”place.” Still, amid all this, the G.o.d of Judaism remains a personal, almost a limited, being. In Philo we see Jewish scruples uniting with others drawn from Greek philosophy. For, though the quarrel with popular anthropomorphism was patched up, and the G.o.ds of the Pantheon were described by Stoics and Epicureans as manlike in form, philosophy nevertheless tended to highly abstract conceptions of supreme, or real, deity. Philo followed out the line of this tradition in teaching that G.o.d cannot be named. How much exactly he meant is disputed. The same inheritance of Greek philosophy appears in the Christian fathers, especially Origen. He names and condemns the ”anthropomorphites,” who ascribe a human body to G.o.d (on Romans i., _sub fin_.; Rufinus' Latin version). In Arabian philosophy the reaction sought to deny that G.o.d had any attributes. And, under the influence of Mahommedan Aristotelianism, the same paralysing speculation found entrance among the learned Jews of Spain (see MAIMONIDES).

Till modern times the philosophical reaction was not carried out with full vigour. Spinoza (_Ethics_, i. 15 and 17), representing here as elsewhere both a Jewish inheritance and a philosophical, but advancing further, sweeps away all community between G.o.d and man. So later J.G.

Fichte and Matthew Arnold (”a magnified and non-natural man”),--strangely, in view of their strong belief in an objective moral order. For the use of the _word_ ”anthropomorphic,” or kindred forms, in this new spirit of condemnation for all conceptions of G.o.d as manlike--sense (b) noted above--see J.J. Rousseau in _emile_ iv. (cited by Littre),--_Nous sommes pour la plupart de vrais anthropomorphites_.

Rousseau is here speaking of the language of Christian theology,--a divine Spirit: divine Persons. At the present day this usage is universal. What it means on the lips of pantheists is plain. But when theists charge one another with ”anthropomorphism,” in order to rebuke what they deem unduly manlike conceptions of G.o.d, they stand on slippery ground. All theism implies the a.s.sertion of kins.h.i.+p between man, especially in his moral being, and G.o.d. As a brilliant theologian, B.