PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY
NEW YORK
PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1949,
BY THE PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY, INC., OF
15 EAST 40TH STREET, NEW YORK, N.Y.
Printed in England
PREFACE
Almost seventy six years ago on February 24, 1871, to be exact Darwin published The Descent of Man, and so laid the foundation of our modern knowledge of man's origin. I grew up with the book and when a medical student became, as did so many of my contemporaries, an ardent Darwinist. The Descent of Man came of age in 1892, but three years before that I had begun to apply myself to the dissection of anthropoid apes and of monkeys the forms of life which were deemed most akin to man in structure. I became as much interested in the structural relation of one ape to another as in their combined relationship to the structure of man. For wellnigh a score of years I pursued my inquiries into the anatomy of man and ape, but after 1908 I became interested in the much more important problem: in what circumstances and by what means were the body and the brain of an ape transformed into those of a human being? When and where did this transformation take place? To permit such an evolutionary change to happen I conceived that two conditions were essential: first, that the Primates which were to undergo the change must have formed a social group; second, that the group must have been separated or isolated from all neighbouring groups. I was by no means the first to perceive that isolation was an essential condition of group evolution, but I think I was the first to detect the means by which such isolation was secured. My predecessors attributed isolation to physical barriers to mountain ranges, to wide seas, and to impassable deserts whereas I found the "machinery of isolation " to be resident in the mentality of ape and of man. When that idea came to me, I found I was in a position to solve many problems in human evolution which had formerly puzzled me.
From 1908 until the time at which I write (1947) not a year has passed without bringing "grist to my mill." Somewhere someone has discovered a fact, or conceived an idea, which cast a new light on the means and manner by which man had made his
V1 PREFACE
ascent. One year it was the discovery of fossil remains of man or of ape; another brought us more exact methods of dating the antiquity of such fossils. Our knowledge of the embryology of man and ape steadily advanced; our information concerning the mentality and habits of apes and of men has gone on increasing; our understanding of the manner in which the germinal inheritance of one generation is handed on to the next has grown ever more precise; the mode in which functional and structural changes were brought about became more apparent; and tidings of how primitive peoples live came steadily in from the most distant lands. In all of these ways new light has been, and is being, thrown on the problem of human origins. These forty years I have been standing, as it were, at the receipt of custom and, while pursuing my own inquiries, have gathered into my portfolios each fact or idea as it came along in the hope of gaining materials from which I might fashion a more precise theory of man's evolution. This book represents the harvest of a lifetime. I have bound my harvest into sheaves, for each essay represents a sheaf. And my sheaves, when built together, form a rick or theory; not a completed one I admit, but yet nearer completion than any that have gone before.
The appearance of A New Theory of Human Evolution was heralded in the volume of essays I published in 1946 under the title Essays on Human Evolution. In the preface to that volume I wrote:
"There are three main themes on which I believe I can throw light. The first theme relates to the manner in which the final stages of man's evolution or ascent was accomplished. Most anthropologists conceive a sort of Jacob's ladder up which mankind has ascended, rung upon rung, to reach his present estate; whereas I am convinced that the evidence is now sufficient to permit us to draw a reliable and circumstantial picture of the conditions in which mankind lived while its major evolutionary changes were taking place. My second theme relates to the current conception of Race and Nation. Most of my colleagues regard a nation as a political unit, with which anthropologists have no concern; whereas I regard a nation as an ' evolutionary unit,' with which anthropologists ought to be greatly concerned. The
PREFACE vii
only live races in Europe to day are its nations. My third theme relates to war 'the greatest evil of the modem world.'
The natural order in which my three themes should have been handled was to give first an exposition of my theory of human evolution; then to trace the origin of nations, of races, and of the varieties and sub species of mankind; and lastly to deal with the origin of man's morality and of war."
My preface then goes on to explain how I was tempted to reverse the "natural order" of my exposition and to deal first with the rise of man's morality, of his immorality, and to trace the scourge of war to its evolutionary roots. In this present volume I take up my other main themes my theory of man's evolution, the demarcation of mankind into its major divisions or varieties, the role played by "race" in evolution and the rise of nations. My previous volume was a superstructure; the present volume is an exposition of the fundamentals on which that superstructure is based.
Readers and critics, having looked at the first essay, in which my theory is outlined, having glanced at the synopses which preface each essay, and having read the summary given in the last essay may be moved to say: Why, this is not a new theory; it is simply Darwin's theory extended, modified, and brought up to date! With such a verdict I will not quarrel; the foundation on which I have built is that laid by Darwin. But the theory of human evolution expounded in my text differs in so many things, both great and small, from that outlined in The Descent of Man, that I think it is entitled to be called " new." At least it is a new rendering of the Darwinian theory.
In a work of this kind an author becomes indebted to hundreds of men, both living and dead. I have tried to be just to them in all my borrowings. I take this opportunity of acknowledging my great indebtedness to Mrs. Rupert Willis for the help she has given me in clarifying my text, and to Miss Gwen Williams for re typing my original script.
Downe, Kent, February 8, 1947.
ARTHUR KEITH
CONTENTS
ESSAY PAGE
I. A SUMMARY OF THE NEW OR "GROUP" THEORY. 1
II. HOW FAR THE GROUP THEORY DIFFERS FROM OTHER THEORIES OF MAN'S ORIGIN 10
III. EVIDENCE OF THE PARTICULATE GROUPING OF HUMANITY DURING THE PRIMAL PERIOD OF ITS EVOLUTION 19
IV. OWNERSHIP OF TERRITORY AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. 28
V. GROUP SPIRIT AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. 37
VI. PATRIOTISM AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. 46
VII. HOW CO OPERATION WAS COMBINED WITH COMPETITION TO SERVE AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. 55
VIII. MENTAL BIAS AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. 64
IX. RESENTMENT AND REVENGE AS FACTORS IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. 74
X. THE SEARCH FOR STATUS AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. 84
XI. HUMAN NATURE AS AN INSTRUMENT OF GOVERNMENT. 94
XII. LEADERSHIP AND LOYALTY AS FACTORS IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. 104
XIII. MORALITY AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. 114
XIV. THE MACHINERY OF EVOLUTION 125
XV. ISOLATION AND INBREEDING AS FACTORS IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 136
XVI. ENDOGAMY, EXOGAMY, AND MONOGAMY AS FACTORS IN HUMAN EVOLUTION. 147
XVII. THE CONTRASTED FATES OF MAN AND APE . 161
XVIII. SEX DIFFERENTIATION AND SEX HORMONES AS FACTORS IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 171
ix
CONTENTS
ESSAY
XIX. SEXUAL SELECTION AND HORMONAL ACTION AS FACTORS IN THE DIFFERENTIATION OF MANKIND INTO RACES 182
XX. FOETALIZATION AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 192
XXI. CROSSING THE RUBICON 'TWIXT APE AND MAN 202
XXII. THE ANTHROPOIDAL ANCESTORS OF MANKIND SPREAD ABROAD. 212
XXIII. MAN BECOMES A DENIZEN OF ALL PARTS OP THE WORLD 223
XXIV. THE FIVE MAJOR DIVISIONS OF MANKIND 234
XXV. THE AFRICAN THEORY APPLIED TO EXPLAIN THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE RACIAL TYPES OF MANKIND 245
XXVI. A NEW CONCEPTION OF THE GENESIS OF MODERN RACES 256
XXVII.ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE MODERN WORLD OP HUMAN EVOLUTION 267
XXVIII.THE ANTIQUITY OF VILLAGE SETTLEMENTS 278
XXIX. THE TRANSFORMATION OF VILLAGE UNITS INTO CITY UNITS 287
XXX. EGYPT AS THE OLDEST HOME OP NATION BUILDING 297
XXXI. EVOLUTION OF NATIONALITIES IN EUROPE ILLUSTRATED BY THAT OF SCOTLAND 308
XXXII. THE MAKING OF HUMAN RACES. 319
XXXIII.THE PEOPLES AND RACES OF EUROPE 329
XXXIV.NATIONALISM AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 341
XXXV. RACIALISM: ITS NATURE AND ITS PREVALENCE IN SOUTH AFRICA. 353
XXXVI. NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION ILLUSTRATED BY THE CASE OF THE IRISH FREE STATE. 364
XXXVII. THE JEWS AS A NATION AND AS A RACE 375
XXXVIII. THE JEWS AS A NATION AND AS A RACE (CONTINUED). ANTI SEMITISM: ZIONISM. 386
XXXIX. NATION BUILDING ON A CONTINENTAL SCALE 396
XL. THE RISE OF NATIONS IN BRITISH DOMINIONS 409
XLI. RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 421
ESSAY I
A SUMMARY OF THE NEW OR GROUP THEORY
Synopsis. Circumstances which led the author to formulate the " Group " Theory of Human Evolution. Hormones as part of the machinery of evolution. A search for the factors which prevent the swamping of new characters when they first appear. Such factors are found in the separate grouping of primitive peoples. A mosaic grouping was in existence among the higher Primates before the emergence of man's simian ancestry. Evolutionary units defined. The growth of such units from local groups to tribes, and from tribes to nations. A great number of small competing units favour rapid evolutionary changes. The original grouping was determined by territory, not by kinship. How evolutionary units are kept apart. The importance of a sense of community. The group theory assumes that in all stages of human evolution co operation has been combined with competition. The behaviour of evolutionary units has always been based on a two-fold code of morality; Such a code favours the rise of the " bad " as well as of the good components of human nature. Human nature is a product of evolution and is also concerned in the process of evolution. Extensive migratory movements belong to a late phase of human history.
LET me begin this essay by recounting the circumstances which led me to formulate a new scheme of human evolution to which I have given the provisional name of " Group " Theory.* In 1908, when I had entered my forty third year, I was placed in charge of the vast treasury of things housed in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Up to that time I had
* In the first draft of this book I used the term " Mosaic " to designate my theory because it involved a closely set mosaic of competing groups or tribes. Later I realized that it was not the closely set arrangement of groups that was the essential point of my theory, but the existence of separate competing units or groups. Hence the name " Group " Theory. Readers will find in my text traces of the name I used in the first draft.
I
2 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
occupied myself with an anatomical exploration of the bodies of man and ape with a view to determining the structural relationship of the one to the other. Soon after taking office at the College of Surgeons there was a shift in the main object of my inquiries; my chief interest became centered, not in the structural resemblances and differences between man and ape, but in the problem of how the many species of ape, and, in particular, the various races of mankind, had come by the forms in which we now find them. In short, I found myself in pursuit of what, in crude terms, may be described as the "machinery of human evolution."
At the time of which I write a fundamental addition was being made to our knowledge of the machinery of evolution by the discovery of substances to which Starling had given the name "hormones."(1) These substances, formed in the organs of the living body and circulating with the blood, served not only to harmonize the several functions of the body but, as Starling inferred, to co ordinate the development and growth of the organs and regions of the body, and so determine their form and features. To obtain a knowledge of the part played by hormones in the shaping of the human head and body, I applied myself to a close study of those disorders of growth which, we had reason to believe, were due to derangements of the hormone system - the Surgeons' museum being particularly rich in examples of such disorders.
I made a close study of the structural changes effected by an abnormal activity of the hormones emanating from the pituitary gland, as exemplified in the bodies of men and women who had become the subjects of that disorder of growth then known as acromegaly.(2) I noted with interest that in the skulls of such subjects all the features which were overgrown were just those which found such a robust development in the fossil skulls of an extinct race the Neanderthal race of Europe. It was therefore possible to explain many of the cranial features of Neanderthal man as being due to a vigorous action on the part of his pituitary system. From the study of the dead I passed to that of the living. I came across families which manifested by their large frames and exaggerated features of face a dominance of their pituitaries; I noted, too, that such features often passed from parent to child.
When I proceeded to speculate on how a new race could be
A SUMMARY OF THE NEW OR GROUP THEORY 3
fashioned out of such families I came up against what, at first sight, seemed to be an insurmountable difficulty. These families married into other families, thus scattering abroad their genetic inheritance their genes; outside marriages brought fresh genes among them. A new race could be fashioned only if such families lived in a small isolated community, inside which all marriages must be contracted. I, therefore, set out in search of such small isolated communities in the modern world, and found that they were still in existence in those parts of the earth which are inhabited by primitive peoples. The evidence gleaned while on thus inquiry into the grouping of primitive peoples convinced me that during the whole period of human evolution mankind had been divided into a vast number of isolated local communities, each inhabiting a delimited area or territory. I made the results of this inquiry the subject of the address I gave to the Royal Anthropological Institute, as its President, at the close of 1915.(3) My main thesis was that right down to the dawn of civilization the habitable earth formed a mosaic of separated territories and of peoples, and that such a grouping favoured rapid evolutionary change.
Seeing that the apes which show a structural affinity to man are divided into local groups or communities, we may presume that the mosaic pattern was already in existence when the simian ancestry of man began to spread abroad on the earth. The area of distribution was extended by older, successful local groups giving off broods which formed new groups or communities. The size of a local group depended on the natural fertility of its territory; in primitive peoples which still retain the original mosaic form a local group varies from fifty to 150 individuals - men, women, and children. Such local, inbreeding, competitive groups I shall speak of as "evolutionary units"; they represent the original teams which were involved in the intergroup struggle for survival. I am assuming that the earliest forms of humanity were already organized on a mosaic pattern when the human brain reached that stage of development which made speech possible. Far from speech tending to break down the barriers between local groups, it had an opposite effect, for we know that speech changes quickly when primitive peoples become separated.
Throughout the later stages of human evolution the tendency
4 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
has always been towards the production of larger and more powerful evolutionary units. In the continent of Australia, for example, where the native population has always been dependent on the natural produce of its territories, there remain only a few regions where local groups persist as separate evolutionary units; (6) in the greater part of the continent local groups have become federated into large, isolated, inbreeding, evolutionary units, or tribes. Tribes represent a second step in the production of evolutionary units. In Africa, south of the Sahara, all stages in the growth of units are still to be found, from the local groups of Bushmen to large tribal federations, groups under chiefs or kings. The evidence from the New World corroborates that which has been cited from Africa; in pre Spanish times every stage in the development of evolutionary units was represented; in the extreme south local groups still persisted among the Fuegians; in North America, among the Iroquois, for example, large tribal federations had come into being; in Mexico, and particularly in Peru, tribal grouping had almost reached a third stage, the national.
The conversion of tribal evolutionary units into the still more powerful national units belongs to a late stage of human evolution; indeed, national concentrations became possible only after agriculture and allied arts had made some degree of progress. When the written records of Europe begin, we find that continent divided into a multitude of tribal territories, many of which were of large size, and long before the end of the first millennium B.C. the process of tribal fusion and federation had made considerable headway. I shall not stay now to discuss the feudal stage which intervened between the tribal and national stages in many parts of Europe, because the question which is uppermost in my mind is this: When does a tribal unit become a national unit? It is when tribesmen forget their former loyalties and become conscious of being sharers in, and individual workers for, the common destiny of their new or national unit. Thus the group theory assumes that during the earlier stages of human evolution Nature's competing teams were represented by small, local evolutionary units; later the local units became fused into larger or tribal units; by the fusion and disintegration of tribal units national units came into existence.
In a later essay I shall discuss the effects which an increase in
A SUMMARY OF THE NEW OR GROUP THEORY 5
the size of a unit brings about in the rate of evolutionary change; meantime I may say that my main conclusion is that evolutionary change proceeds most quickly when the competing units are small in size and of great number. Such evidence as is afforded by the fossil remains of men who lived during the Pleistocene Age the latest of geological periods, the duration of which is estimated at 500,000 to 600,000 years suggests rapid structural changes. At the beginning of that period we find the poor brained fossil men of Java and of China, while towards the end of that period we can instance the rich brained Cro Magnon type of Europe.
Many anthropologists hold the opinion that the original grouping of mankind was by kinship, and that it was only when such groups settled on the land that the demarcation became territorial. My inquiries of 1915 left me in no doubt that a territorial group was primary; every one of the units I have specified local communities, tribes, and nations inhabited and claimed the sole ownership of a demarcated tract of country; all were bound to their homeland by a strong affection; and life was willingly sacrificed to maintain its integrity. I therefore came to regard the territorial sense a conscious ownership of the homeland, one charged with a deep emotion as a highly important factor in human evolution. Every such territory serves as an evolutionary cradle. In assigning priority to kinship, authorities have been misled by the exceptional case of the Children of Israel. They emerged from the desert divided into twelve tribes grouped according to kinship; only after their arrival in Palestine did they become territorial. Among the great people of modern times the only ones known to me who succeed in maintaining their identity without the aid of a territorial bond are the Jews. (See Essays XXXVII XXXVIII.)
A sense of territory helps to keep primitive communities apart; and when we dig into human nature we find a more potent machinery to secure the isolation of such communities. My grouping of 1915 led me to believe that the chief factors in securing isolation were (a) clannishness, a mental state which impels us to favour our kind and to be indifferent or averse to all outside our kind; and (b) the state of mind which Giddings(5) had named the " consciousness of kind." It is the latter factor that I would now emphasize, only I would speak, not of consciousness of kind, but of consciousness of community. Among
6 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
primitive peoples the range of sympathy is confined to their own community. Local communities, our primary social units, being small, every face in them was known to members, strangers being immediately detected and their presence resented. This consciousness of kind, this community sense, is a character not only of human social groups but of all animal societies whatsoever, be they ant or be they ape. On the other hand, a knowledge of blood relationship has been attained by man only, and could not have been reached until the human brain began to manifest its high faculties.
The group theory assumes that the social organization and mentality still displayed by primitive peoples were those which regulated the conduct of evolving groups of humanity in past geological ages. If this assumption is permitted, then we can give a reasonable explanation of how human races arose; if it is rejected, then we can neither explain the origin of humanity as it now is, nor can we understand the strange duality of man's mentality.
The process which secures the evolution of an isolated group of humanity is a combination of two principles which at first sight seem incompatible namely, co operation with competition. So far as concerns the internal affairs of a local group, the warm emotional spirit of amity, sympathy, loyalty, and of mutual help prevails; but so far as concerns external affairs its attitude towards surrounding groups an opposite spirit is dominant: one of antagonism, of suspicion, distrust, contempt, or of open enmity. The spirit of co operation helps to strengthen the social bonds of a group; the spirit of antagonism not only secures the isolation of the group but compels it to maintain its powers of defence and, if the group is to extend its dominion, its powers of offence.
In brief, I hold that from the very beginning of human evolution the conduct of every local group was regulated by two codes of morality, distinguished by Herbert Spencer as the " code of amity " and the "code of enmity."(6) There were thus exposed to "natural selection" two opposing aspects of man's mental nature. The code of amity favoured the growth and ripening of all those qualities of human nature which find universal approval friendliness, goodwill, love, altruism, idealism, faith, hope, charity, humility, and self sacrifice all the Christian
A SUMMARY OF THE NEW OR GROUP THEORY 7
virtues. Under the code of enmity arose those qualities which are condemned by all civilized minds emulation, envy, the competitive spirit, deceit, intrigue, hate, anger, ferocity, and enmity. How the neural basis of such qualities, both good and bad, came into existence during the progressive development of the human brain, we do not know, but it is clear that the chances of survival of a struggling, evolving group would be strengthened by both sets of qualities. These two sets of opposite qualities must be balanced to secure continuous, progressive evolutionary changes; an over development of the elements which subserve the code of amity would make its group vulnerable to its enemies; an overgrowth of those which support the code of enmity would lead ultimately to the destruction of the group.
It will thus be seen that I look on the duality of human nature as an essential part of the machinery of human evolution. It is the corner stone of my mosaic edifice. Human nature is both a product and a process. It has been built up as a product of man's evolution, but it has been developed so as to serve in the process of evolutionary change.
Besides the qualities in human nature which directly subserve one or other of man's two codes of morality, there are others which are of equal service to either code, and which work for the welfare of the evolutionary group. In the forefront I would place that quality of will known as courage; man can be courageous in ill doing as whole heartedly as in well doing. There is the inborn love of self, and yet a readiness to sacrifice self in causes both good and bad. There is that form of mental hunger known as curiosity; urged by this appetite, man discovers with equal zest things which kill and things which cure. There are the virtues of prudence and of temperance, which may be made the playthings of either code. Man may use his gifts of reason and of imagination to further good or bad ends. Loyalty rules among thieves as well as among honest men. If a group is to prosper, there must be within it a desire for children and a love of them. A love of knowledge is also advantageous. All these mental qualities have survival values. A love of beauty may also minister to the survival of a group.
The major obstacle to the acceptance of the group theory of human evolution is the belief, held by most of my contemporaries,
8 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
that from the very beginning mankind has been always on the move, jostling against and mixing with one another, and that there has been no long quiescent period when local groups were stationary such being an essential postulate of my theory. The belief that man has always been a migratory animal is based upon the happenings of a comparatively recent period of human history. Dawning history reveals vast movements of peoples in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in the New World, and in the islands of the Pacific. It is inferred that these movements of historical times were but a continuation of the movements of the earliest prehistoric period. I regard this view as a mistaken one, for two reasons. My first reason, a minor one, is based on the conditions under which our Pleistocene ancestors had to live. They were dependent on the natural produce of their territories; to gain a bare livelihood was a daily preoccupation. Lack of supplies made long range migratory movements impossible; incursions into neighbouring territories could have been of the nature of only local forays. It was only after domestication of animals and of plants had made some advance that there were sufficient stocks of food to make long range and extensive migratory movements possible.
My chief reason for disbelieving in early migratory movements is this. We have to account for the fact that each major racial type of mankind is confined to a single area of the globe; the Negro type to Africa, the Mongol type to Eastern Asia, the Caucasian type to Western Asia and Europe, the Australoid type to Australia and neighbouring islands. If the group theory is accepted, then we can explain such a distribution; a long period in which local groups were comparatively stationary would bring about such a distribution. If there had been, as has been maintained by distinguished authorities,(7) free migration and mixture in the human world from primordial times, then such distribution of types cannot be explained.
In this preliminary essay I have enumerated the chief points which make up my conception of the mode of man's evolution. To this conception I have ventured, with some degree of temerity, to give the name "Group" Theory. In the essays which make up the remainder of this book, evidence tn support of my thesis will be brought forward and discussed.
A SUMMARY OF THE NEW OR "GROUP" THEORY 9
REFERENCES
1. Bayliss and Starling, Proc. Roy. Soc., 1904, vol. 73, p. 310. See also Professor Starling's lecture on "The Chemical Correlations of the Functions of the Body," Lancet, 1905, vol. 2, p. 339.
2. Keith Sir A., ' An Enquiry into the Nature of Skeletal Changes in Acromegaly, Lancet, 1911, vol. I, p. 722. See also my Herter Lectures on "The Evolution of Human Races in the Light of the Hormone Theory," Johns Hopkins Hosp. Bull., 1922, vol. 33, pp. 155, 195.
3 Keith, Sir A., Certain Factors concerned in the Evolution of Human Races," Journ. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., 1916, vol. 46, p. 10.
4. Wheeler, G. C., The Tribe and Intertribal Relations in Australia, 1910.
5. Giddings, Franklin H., Principles of Sociology, 1898.
6. Spencer, Herbert, Principles of Ethics, 1892, vol. I, pp. 316, 471.
7 See Dixon, Roland B., The Racial History of Man, 1923 Haddon, A. C and Huxley, Julian S., We Europeans, 1935.
ESSAY II
HOW FAR THE GROUP THEORY DIFFERS FROM OTHER THEORIES OF MAN'S ORIGIN
Synopsis. The group theory assumes, in common with other theories of man's origin, that the human stem sprang from a simian root. Former authors who have assumed that primitive humanity was divided into numerous small groups or communities. Gumplowitz and Sumner as pioneers. Territorialism and patriotism have not been recognized previously as factors in human evolution. The importance of "group consciousness" recognized by Darwin. Competition and selection are accepted as factors. The combination of co operation with competition has also been recognized previously. How isolation of groups is secured. Group perpetuation. Inbreeding as a factor. The role of genes in evolution. Multiple small units are assumed to favour rapid evolutionary changes. Fertility has been the subject of most rigorous selection. Primitive groups normally remained fixed to their territories, yet under certain conditions movements took place. Group and individual selection went on hand in hand. Civilization brought about the formation of large groups. The effects of increase of group on evolutionary change. The group theory supplies a background for human evolution. The conception of human nature as a product of evolution is not new, but the contention that it plays an important role in evolution has not been made before.
WETEREIN does the group theory, outlined in the preceding essay, differ from other explanations of man's evolutionary origin? This essay is an answer to that question; in it I propose to discuss the points in which I am in agreement with other students of human evolution as well as those wherein we differ. Such a discussion should help my readers to obtain a clearer idea of the conception I have in mind when I speak of the group theory.
1 In one important point I am in agreement with all my predecessors, with those of the Darwin Huxley period and their
10
THE GROUP AND OTHER THEORIES OF MAN'S ORIGIN 11
successors namely, that the simian root or stock which gave origin to the monkeys of the Old World, and to anthropoid or man like apes, was also that which gave birth to humanity.
I regard the division of evolving humanity into a multitude of small, separate, competitive communities or societies as the chief feature of my theory, The following passage shows that Darwin was familiar with the idea: "Therefore, looking far enough in the stream of time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, the most probable view is that he aboriginally lived in small communities." Walter Bagehot (1826-77), who was the first to apply Darwinism to the problem of modern politics, describes man's early condition thus: "In the beginning of things . . . each was a parish race, narrow in thought and bounded in range."(2) Aristotle, speaking of the first appearance of governments, says: "The world was then divided into small communities." (3) The same idea was entertained by Archdeacon Paley,(4) and by Henry Home of Kames.(5) Writing of a comparatively late phase of human evolution, that of Paleolithic man, the late Prof Karl Pearson inferred that the social unit "could hardly have been larger than that of a family."(6) Thus there is nothing new in postulating that early mankind was divided into an exceedingly great number of small communities; what is new is that this mosaic of humanity endured throughout the entire period of man's major evolution and provided the most favourable circumstances for bringing about rapid changes in brain and in body.
Mention must be made here of two men who have preceded me and have realized very clearly that early mankind was separated into a very great number of small competitive communities or social units. One was Prof. Louis Gumplowitz of Graz (1838-1909), who spoke of "innumerable petty units", (7) the other, Prof. W. G. Sumner of Yale (1844 1910). "The conception of primitive society that we ought to form," wrote the latter, " is that of small groups scattered over a territory.... The size of the group is determined by the conditions for the struggle for existence."(8) Neither of these authors, however, perceived how favourable was the co existence of a multitude of separate, inbreeding, competitive social units for bringing about rapid, progressive evolutionary changes.
Sumner, in the passage just quoted, adds a feature to which I
12 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
attach great importance as a factor in human evolution namely, that of " territory." Each local group, or combination of local groups, lived within a demarcated area; a group claimed to own such a territory as its homeland; to this homeland, as to its fellows, a group was bound by that particular form of affection (or prejudice) known as patriotism. The role of patriotism in bringing about evolutionary change will form the subject matter of a separate essay. My present object is merely to emphasize the place given to it in the group theory of human evolution; so far as I know, the evolutionary significance of territorialism and of patriotism has not been recognized by previous writers on human evolution.
We now turn to examine the mentality of the small groups into which early mankind was divided. We may infer, from what we know of social animals, that the members of each human group were conscious of membership of their own particular community, and were equally aware that their group was different from all other groups. We may designate this mental trait as "group consciousness." It was not until Darwin came to write The Descent of Man (1871) that he perceived that social animals are actively conscious, not of their race or of their species, but only of the community or group to which they belong. " Sympathy" he noted "is directed solely towards members of the same community, and therefore towards known, and more or less loved members, but not to all the individuals of the same species."9 In another passage Darwin amplifies his meaning thus: "Primeval man regarded actions as good or bad, solely as they obviously affected the welfare of the tribe, not of the species."(10)
Herbert Spencer, Darwin's great contemporary, went still farther in defining the mentality of the groups into which primitive men were divided. Group consciousness induced a discrimination in the behavior of primeval mankind; their conduct towards members of their own group was based on one code the code of amity; while that to members of other groups was based on another code that of enmity.(11) As a result of group consciousness, which serves to bind the members of a community together and to separate the community from all others, "there arises," to use the words of Professor Sumner, " a differentiation between ourselves the ' we ' group or 'in'
THE GROUP AND OTHER THEORIES OF MAN'S ORIGIN 13
group and everybody else the 'out' group." (12) Thus in a wide field of evolving groups of early mankind there were two mental factors at work: one was "group consciousness"; the other, a dual code of behaviour. Both produce evolutionary results, and are thereforc included as elements in the group theory.
Into the group theory come those evolutionary factors which received their first impress from Darwin competition, selection, survival. Darwin knew that in the mosaic of primitive humanity competition acted chiefly by setting one social group against all neighbouring groups; selection or survival depended on "teamwork." Here are Darwin's own words: "And natural selection, arising from the competition of tribe with tribe, in some such large area . . . would, under favourable conditions, have sufficed to raise man to his high position."(13) The competition which Darwin had in mind was that of team against team; this was also the conception held by Russel Wallace.(14)
Two further extracts from Darwin will serve to give my readers a more exact idea of the evolutionary role of competition in a world of primitive humanity broken up into separate units. "When of two adjoining tribes one becomes less numerous and less powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery and absorption."(15) Here Darwin emphasizes the cruel side of competitive evolution, but the next extract and many more might be cited leads us to realize that he was quite aware, so far as concerns human evolution, that co operation was combined with competition:" When two tribes of primeval men, living in the same country, came into competition, the tribe including the greater number of courageous, sympathetic and of faithful members would succeed better and conquer the others." (16) Thus competition favoured the tribes which were rich in co operative qualities. It may be regretted that Darwin did not lay greater emphasis on the part played by co operation in his scheme of evolution. Kropotkin (17) went to the opposite extreme by exaggerating the part played by "mutual aid" and minimizing competition as a factor in evolution. In the group theory competition and co operation are regarded as twin factors which work together to bring about evolutionary change. Quite independently Dr. W. C. Allee came to the same conclusion.(18)
In the group theory isolation of competing groups is regarded
14 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
as a condition which must be present if effective, progressive evolutionary changes are to be brought about. Moritz Wagner (19) held that isolation was a cardinal factor in evolution, an opinion which was never fully accepted by Darwin. The most Darwin would admit was that "although isolation is of great importance in the production of new species, on the whole I am inclined to believe that largeness of area is still more important." (20) After Darwin's time G. J. Romanes (21) sought to restore isolation as a factor in evolution to the place given to it by Wagner. There is thus nothing new in giving isolation a leading place in my theory of human evolution; what is new is the mode by which isolation of competing groups is maintained. The isolating machinery is assumed to be embedded in man's mentality. In every region of the modern world, where tribes still exist as independent entities, we find two opposite dispositions at work one being group affection, which holds together the members of a community, and the other, group aversion, which keeps competing, evolving societies apart. These opposite dispositions are not confined to human societies; they are to be seen at work in the communities into which all social animals are divided. We may assume, therefore, that in the very earliest stages of man's evolution, even in his simian stages, "human nature" was already converted into an instrument for securing group isolation.
The group theory assumes that each of the many thousands of groups or communities into which early mankind was divided was the carrier and custodian of a particular assemblage of germinal seeds or genes; no two groups had exactly the same assemblage. If a group is to work out the evolutionary destiny inherent in its genes, it is necessary, not only that it should be isolated, thus preventing intercrossing, but that its integrity and its perpetuation should be maintained for a long succession of generations. Here again we find human nature called in to serve evolutionary ends. There are few desires more deeply ingrained in a man's nature than that which seeks for an endurance of his family, his kin, and his country. Thus, in the group theory, each unit of primitive humanity is regarded as a closed society, one in which mating is confined within the limits of the community; all were inbreeding societies.
Thus my theory gives inbreeding a high place among the factors which bring about evolutionary changes. If it should
THE GROUP AND OTHER THEORIES OF MAN'S ORIGIN 15
happen that among the genes circulating within the limits of a group there are those of a recessive or evil nature, then, if the inbreeding group be small, these recessive genes will soon be brought together in the course of conjugation. They will thus produce their evil results by bringing about defects in the development of the body, or irregularities in the growth of its parts, or deficiencies in one or more of its functions. Inbreeding, in the presence of defective genes, would thus lead to a speedy extermination of a group. But if it should be that a group's stock of genes were entirely healthy, prone to give rise to variations of a favourable, progressive nature, then inbreeding would tend to enhance their virtues and speed up the rate of evolutionary change. Thus it is assumed that a vast mosaic of competing, isolated units or groups provides the most favourable conditions for bringing about a rapid evolutionary advance.
The later stages of man's evolution seem to have been effected in a surprisingly short period of time. At the beginning of the last geological period the Pleistocene, with an estimated duration of little more than half a million years the human brain was relatively small and simple, as shown by discoveries made in Java, China, and England, whereas at the end of the period CroMagnon man presents us with the human brain at its zenith.
The theory I am postulating assumes that the character which underwent the most rigorous degree of selection during the small-group period was that of fertility. The tribe with the most and the best parents was the tribe which endured; if the fertility of a tribe failed, its end was soon in sight.
My theory assumes that the competing communities of primitive man were tied to their territories and were in a geographical sense stationary. This is also the opinion of Sir A. M. Carr Saunders.(23) There is very little evidence of tribal migration or of invasion of neighbouring territories in aboriginal Australia. Conditions during the small group phase of early man must have been less static than with the Australian aborigines, otherwise successful and progressive types would have been penned up within their territories for ever. The conditions which induce a tribe to spread beyond the limits of its territory are complex. An increase in numbers and in power are conducive to extension, but there must be also a profound change in the emotional mentality of the tribe which bursts its borders. Thus it is assumed
16 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
that a disposition to remain fixed and an opposite disposition to move have each of them a place in bringing about evolutionary change.
Although it is assumed that, during the most progressive stages of human evolution, the group or team was the unit on which selective agencies wrought their effects, yet it also recognizes that there was a constant selection of the individuals which made up a group or team. Individual and group selection went on hand in hand.
The group theory assumes that the segregation of mankind into a multitude of small units came to an end with the dawn of civilization. With the coming of agriculture evolutionary units began to grow, culminating in the multi millioned nations of modern times. What effect has the increase in size of unit had on evolutionary change? To answer this question requires knowledge and faculties beyond those at my disposal, but in a broad way I see that in large populations, crowded in cities, the result has been to render evolutionary changes diffuse, inchoate, and indeterminate, tending to produce a homogeneity of type rather than a number of sharply differentiated local types, as was the case when the evolutionary units were small. Besides, civilization is subjecting modern nations to hundreds of selective agencies of which early man knew nothing. The civilized mind condemns the naked manifestation of all factors which played a part in early evolution.(24)
My predecessors, in outlining their conceptions of man's evolution by means of diagrams, have omitted all reference to the actual background amid which evolutionary changes took place.(25) My theory supplies this background; it assumes that from the earliest to the latest stage of human evolution mankind existed as separated societies, all of them competing to a greater or less degree for their place in the living world. And as the conditions amid which the later stages of human evolution were effected still exist in tribal areas of the earth, we have opportunities of observing how far the assumptions made by the theory postulated here may be regarded as right or wrong. Anthropoid apes still exist as local groups. I am of opinion that a more extended study of anthropoid groups will provide information which will justify us in assuming that particulate grouping was also true of the simian stages of human evolution.
THE GROUP AND OTHER THEORIES OF MAN'S ORIGIN 17
The group theory makes two large assumptions in respect to human nature; first, that it has been built up and matured as man progressed from a simian stage to the full blown stage met with in modern man; second, that human nature is so constituted as to serve as a chief factor in controlling human evolution. Human nature, as we have seen, keeps the members of a group together; it serves also to keep groups apart; it urges groups to maintain their integrity and continuation; it imbues groups with their competitive spirit. The assumption that man's nature is a product of evolution is not new. We find Bagehot making this statement as early as 1869: " In those ages (of the primitive world) was formed the comparatively gentle, guidable thing which we call human nature." (26) Prof. Wm. McDougall also took an evolutionary view of human nature: "There can, I think, be no doubt, that the principal condition of the evolution of man's moral nature was group selection among primitive societies, constantly at war with one another".(27) Lastly a confirmatory statement by Wm. James:
"The theory of evolution is mainly responsible for this. Man, we have now reason to believe, has been evolved from infra human ancestors, in whom pure reason scarcely existed, if at all, and whose mind, so far as it can have any function, would appear to have been an organ for adapting their movements to the impressions received from the environment, so as to escape the better from destruction.... Our sensations are here to attract us, or to deter us, our memories to warn or encourage us, our feelings to impel, and our thoughts to restrain our behaviour, so that on the whole we may prosper and our days be long in the land." (28)
Thus it will be seen that most of the factors which go to make up the group theory have already been cited by students of human evolution. It is in the way in which these separate factors have been combined so as to co operate in bringing about evolutionary changes that my theory differs from other theories of human evolution.
REFERENCES
1. The Descent of Man, ch. XX, p. 901, Murray's reprint of 2nd ed., 1913
2 Bagehot, W., Physics and Politics, 1896, p. 70.
3 Aristotle's Politics, bk. III, ch. XV, p. 99 in Everyman ed.
18 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
4. Paley, Wm., Moral and Political Philosophy, 1788, bk. VI, ch. I.
5. Home, Henry (Lord Kames), Sketches of the History of Man, 1813, vol. 2,
p. 18.
6. Pearson, Karl, Ann. of Eugenics, 1930, vol. 4, p. I.
7. Gumplowitz, Louis, Sociologie et Politique, Paris, 1898, p. 143.
8. Sumner, W. G., Folkways, 1906, p. 12.
9. The Descent of Man, Murray, 1913, p. 163.
10. Ibid., p. 182.
11. Spencer, H., Principles of Ethics, 1892, vol. I, pp. 316, 322.
12. Sumner, W. G., Folkways, p. 12.
13. The Descent of Man, Murray, 1913, p. 97.
14. Wallace, A. R., Anthrop. Rev., 1864, vol. 2, p. 158.
15. The Descent of Man, Murray, 1913, p. 282.
16. Ibid., p. 199.
17. Kropotkin, P., Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, 1902.
18. Allee, .W. C., Social Life of Animals, 1939, p. 35; Science, 1943, vol. 97,
p. 517.
19. Wagner, Moritz, Die Darwinische Theorie und des Migration Gesetz des
Organismen, 1868.
20. Origin of Species, 6th ed., 1885, p. 82.
21. Romanes, G. J., Darwin and after Darwin, 1897.
22. Origin of Species, p. 80.
23. Carr Saunders, Sir A. M., The Population Problem: A Study in Human
Evolution, 1922, p. 238.
24. Keith, Sir A., Essays in Human Evolution, 1946, p. 118.
26. Keith, Sir A., The Construction of Man's Family Tree, 1934.
28. Bagehot, W., Physics and Politics, p. 218.
27. McDougall, Wm., The Group Mind, 1920, p. 264.
28. James, Wm., Talks to Teachers, 1902, p. 24.
ESSAY III
EVIDENCE OF THE PARTICULATE GROUPING OF HUMANITY DURING THE PRIMAL * PERIOD OF ITS EVOLUTION
Synopsis. The need for the recognition of two periods in human evolution, primal and post primal. Evidence of a former tribal organization in Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, France, Germany, and Spain. Evidence of a tribal grouping among the early Romans. City States represent tribal entities. Tribalism in Ancient Greece, in the Balkans, in Hungary, and in Russia. Tribalism in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Tribalism in Asia Minor and in Arabia. The small nations of Biblical Palestine. The mosaic of peoples in the Caucasus, in Persia, in the western Himalayas, in Tibet, and Indo China. The tribes of Mongolia and Manchuria; the villages of China; the tribes and castes of India. Evidence from Australasia, from the islands of Timor and Celebes, from New Guinea, New Hebrides, and from Australia. The tribal grouping of the Indian population of the New World. Africa as a continent of tribes in all stages of evolution. The evidence of archaeology. Evidence of social grouping among the Primates. From the evidence cited, the author holds that the division of early, evolving humanity into a multitude of small social groups may be assumed as true.
IN this essay I propose to make a hurried circuit of the globe, noting as I pass from country to country the evidence for assuming that their populations are now, or were in former times,
* Students of human evolution are handicapped by the lack of a term to indicate the period of man's evolution before the dawn of civilization and the period which succeeded the dawn. Here I use the term "primal" to cover the very long first period and "post primal" to indicate the second the age of civilization. If we assume that 7000 B.C. marks the first glimmerings of civilization, then the post primal period would have a duration of about 9000 years, whereas we must attribute a duration of a million years or more to the primal period.
19
20 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
divided into separate groups or tribes. I shall begin my survey with the Highlands of Scotland, which is but meet for one who, by birth, is half a Highlander. At the end of the sixteenth century Highlanders were still grouped in clans; there were then forty-two of them, twenty two in vigorous health, twenty of them broken.(1) Each clan had its chief, its territory, its allegiances, and its enmities. Savage measures applied after the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 brought the clan system of the Highlands to an end. The clans of the eighteenth century may be regarded as the debris of an earlier tribal organization, for in the first century of our era Highlanders had been confederated into sixteen tribes, while the Lowlanders the population south of the Forth were arranged in five tribes.
At the corresponding period, the first century of the Roman occupation, the population of England had become confederated into fifteen large units or tribes. Wales, in the Roman period, could claim only three tribes, but there is evidence that these were compounded out of nearly fifty local groups, corresponding to the Scottish clans and Irish septs.(3) As for Ireland, the number of her tribes during the earlier centuries of our era is most uncertain, but Keating (4) was probably near the truth when he put the number of tribes or septs at 110. Prichard,(5) a very reliable authority, gives the number of Irish tribes as sixteen. The clan system in Ireland was stamped out by warlike measures adopted by Elizabeth, James I, and Cromwell, but the clan spirit remained, and remains, untamed. Gibbon counted thirty independent tribes or nations of the first century in Britain; if he had had the means of estimating the number of British tribal units a thousand years earlier, he would, in all likelihood, have had to multiply his estimate by ten.
We now turn to France as she was in the year 58 B.C., when Julius Caesar led his army against her tribal communities. The number of her tribal States is estimated variously, and no wonder, seeing that conquest and coercion were always altering estimates. Gibbon gives the number of her independent States as one hundred. Prichard (6) gives the number as seventy, while Hubert (7) is content with sixty, but states that these had been compounded out of some five hundred local clans or septs (Pagi). Hume (8) quotes Appian to the effect that there were four hundred nations in Gaul nations here meaning separate local communities. In
THE PARTICULATE GROUPING OF HUMANITY 21
any case, we cannot doubt that the Celtic inhabitants of Gaul were divided into hundreds of separate units, which, in the last century before our era, were being consolidated into larger tribal units. In ancient Germany, as in Gaul, the process of tribal amalgamation was also at work; when the Romans appeared on the Rhine, German tribes numbered about forty.(9) In Spain of the same period there were at least thirty five demarcated tribes.
I have failed to find any estimate of the number of separate peoples and tribes which occupied Italy in the year 753 B.C. the date traditionally assigned to the foundation of Rome. A little later there were then springing up city States in the Grecian south, and Etrurian confederations of cities were being formed in Etruria.(10) The founders of Rome were three confederated pastoral tribes.(11) South of them, in Latium, they were neighboured by some thirty townships, each representing a self governing community; in the mountainous country to the east there were numerous hill tribes. The founders of Rome, as they grew in numbers and expanded in territory, created new tribes, so that these ultimately numbered thirty five, but such were artificial, State devised tribes, quite different in nature from the independent, self governing tribes and peoples which had grown up in Italy in the course of past evolutionary events. By the beginning of the second century B.C. all the tribes and peoples of Italy had been stripped of their independence, their evolutionary destinies passing under the control of Rome.
Ancient Greece had an area of about 25,000 miles square - being rather smaller than Scotland. When the seven tribes, four Ionian and three Dorian, descended on that land towards the end of the second millennium B.C., they found its inhabitants divided into territorial tribal units; they also found a number of old-established city States. Coming as conquering, dominant peoples, one may infer that the invaders accepted the tribal divisions which were already in existence, merely imposing on the ancient tribes their persons, their will, and their tongues. The earliest records give four tribes to the State of Attica; these, I infer, represent the tribal units taken over and dominated by the conquerors. Later, in Athens as in Rome, tribes were reconstituted and artificial tribes created. The twelve tribes of Elis may also represent a pre Grecian division.(12) Paterson has
22 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
estimated that there were 150 independent sovereign States in Ancient Greece.(13)
When these States were being established in Ancient Greece, the inhabitants of that part of Europe which lies between the Adriatic and the Black Sea retained their tribal organization. It was so in Thessalia, Macedonia, and Thrace. In Thrace, according to Herodotus, there were fifty tribes grouped into twelve nations. Even in modern times the inhabitants of Montenegro are grouped into more than forty tribes.(14) The Magyars, when they invaded Hungary, were divided into 108 septs or clans.(15) In Russia of the thirteenth century there were sixty four independent States. Gibbon mentions that in early Russia there were 4,600 village communities, each being an independent entity. In the lands lying to the north of the Black Sea, extending from the Crimea to the mouth of the Danube, there were 129 separate dialects or tongues evidence of a multitude of peoples grouped in that area.(16)
Egypt carries her history into the past more reliably, and more completely, than any other country. Before the union of the Crowns (3200 B.C.) the population of Upper Egypt was grouped in tribal communities along the banks of the Nile. " Each of these tribes was recognized as possessor of its district, which was denoted by the name of some sacred animal." (17) The number of pre dynastic tribes, or Nomes, has been variously estimated; one authority gives twenty, another forty.(18) During periods of dissolution which overtook Egypt from time to time during the course of her long history one or more of the local communities reasserted their independence. The Berberines, who occupied the banks of the Nile south of Egypt, were also grouped in tribes. Thotmes of the eighteenth dynasty claimed to have conquered 113 of them. Major G. W. Murray states that fifty Bedouin tribes frequent the outskirts of modern Egypt.(19)
The city States which began to be established in the valleys of Tigris and Euphrates towards the end of the fifth millennium B.C. represented separate, independent tribal entities. Round the area of lands occupied by the city States the native peoples retained their original grouping that of small tribes. For example, when an early king of Agade carried war across the Persian Gulf, he met with, and conquered, thirty two petty
THE PARTICULATE GROUPING OF HUMANITY 23
kings; Tiglath pileser (1115 1102)(?) of Assyria prided himself on the conquest of forty two peoples.
Asia Minor is now, and always has been, a mosaic of peoples. The FIittites and Mitanni arose to power through a series of tribal confederations.(20) The modern Kurds are divided into more than three hundred tribes, speaking ten dialects.(21) The Vilayet of Mosul has been described as " a mosaic of races," each village having its own dialect. South of the area we have glanced at, from Syria in the north west to Oman in the south east, lies the vast mosaic of Arab peoples in all stages of tribal evolution. Dr. E. Epstein(22) has made a survey of the Arabs inhabiting the southern part of Palestine, known as the Negeb, which is little more than half the size of Yorkshire, and found them divided into five tribes and seventy five sub tribes. Palestine itself was occupied by seven independent nations at the time of invasion by the Children of Israel. In his conquest of Palestine, Joshua claims to have encountered and overcome "Kings thirty and one" (Joshua xii, 24).
Proceeding now farther towards the east, we may note as we go the "Babel of tongues and peoples" to be found in the valleys of the Caucasus and the Iliyats of Persia, formerly divided into seventy three tribes,(23) and so reach the valleys and uplands at the western end of the Himalayas. Here we find the most extensive paradise of robust, independent tribes in all the world.(24) Between the Indus and Afghanistan are five millions of people grouped in warlike tribes; in Afghanistan itself, and also in Baluchistan, the former tribal organization is still traceable; on the Pamir, and in the western valleys of the Himalayas, separate peoples and tongues are to be counted by the score. If we make our way to the Far East, crossing Tibet to reach the mountainous lands which lie to the south of China, we meet with a bewildering assortment of peoples and tongues; some have merely the status of a local group; many are separate village communities; others are tribes; while some have reached a status which may be called national. " From the north western Himalayas to the southeastern extremity of Farther India," wrote that most able anthropologist A. H. Keane,(25) "I have collected nearly a thousand names of clans, septs and fragmentary groups and am well aware that the list neither is, nor ever can be, complete, the groups being in a constant state of fluctuation."
c
24 A NEW THEORY OP HUMAN EVOLUTION
In the days of Jenghis Khan the Mongols were divided into 226 clans out of which forty confederacies had been formed. The Manchus at the time of their conquest of China were divided into sixty tribes. The early history of tribalism in China is unknown, but the strong spirit of localism manifested by her half-million village communities may be taken as evidence that the Chinese still retain a particularist mentality. In contrast to China, India still retains abundant evidence of a tribal distribution of her original population. The castes of India are self-governed, closed societies, tribal in their organization. Indeed, it is often difficult to say whether a particular community is to be called a caste or a tribe. There are 2,378 tribes and castes in India,(26) and 225 languages are spoken.
A few instances will serve to show the multi partite distribution of the peoples of Australasia. In the small island of Timor, Dr. H. O. Forbes found, when he visited it in 1884,(27) that forty languages were spoken. In the eastern half of the island, under Portuguese rule, there were forty seven independent States, each under its Rajah. Evidently the number of States and tongues has undergone a reduction, for in a Report issued in 1944,(28) Dr. Mendes Correa gives the number of separate tongues as eight, and the number of dialects as fifteen, while he makes no mention of separate States. In the small compass of the northern peninsula of the island of Celebes a conglomeration of separate tribes is kept apart by having twelve different tongues. No census has yet been made of the social units of the great island of New Guinea; they must run into hundreds; some are tribes, others are separate village communities. "In the New Hebrides and in New Caledonia," as J. Macmillan Brown reported in 1916,(29) "each village has its own dialect" - evidence that these communities keep apart. We are also ignorant of the number of tribes into which the aborigines of Australia were divided before the white settlement began. If we accept 300,000 as the number of aborigines in virgin Australia, which is the customary estimate, and assign 150 to the average tribe, the original number of tribes would have been about 2,000; probably an underestimate.
A few examples from the New World will suffice to illustrate the tribal constitution of its pre Columbian population. In the census of the United States for 1910, Prof. R. B. Dixon prepared a detailed Report on the Indian population, which at that time
THE PARTICULATE GROUPING OF HUMANITY 25
numbered 305,000. The tribes represented by this population numbered 280; of these, seventy seven had a membership of five hundred or more; forty two were reduced to a following of ten or less. What is now the State of California gave a home to 101 tribes; Alaska had sixty six, besides forty "local groups" of Eskimo. Some of the Indian tribes were very large the Cherokees - for example, numbering over 30,000 but the average was about 2,000. As with Rome and Greece, so with Ancient Mexico and Peru; in all four cases there is clear evidence of an early tribal constitution. Regarding South America, I shall content myself with citing the list of tribes inhabiting the basin of the Amazon, prepared by Sir Clements Markham in 1910.(30) After purging his list of synonyms, the final number he reached, for this area, was 485. In the extreme south, in Tierra del Fuego, the native Yahgans still live in separate local groups, as do the Eskimo in the extreme north. Thus, in the native population of the New World every stage in the evolution of human groups was represented, from local communities to organized States.
Africa is a continent of tribes, but it would take me too far afield to attempt a systematic survey of them.(31) In 1930 the population of Tanganyika Territory, numbering five millions was divided into 117 tribes.(32) In Northern Rhodesia eighty one tribes have been enumerated. Dr. W. Hambly (33) gives a list of 117 tribes in the Congo basin and another of sixty three for tribes in Uganda and Nyasaland. According to Keane there were 108 Sudanese tribes; the Berber tribes of the High Atlas number twenty (Prichard). The Dutch on their first arrival in South Africa came in contact with the Hottentots and Bushmen " The original Hottentots," Prichard has noted,(34) "were a numerous people, divided into many tribes . . . with flocks and herds." The numbers in a tribe varied from several hundreds to a couple of thousand.(35) Bushmen, on the other hand, were distributed in local groups, thus retaining what I suppose to be the original organization of mankind. Some of the peoples living in the more remote parts of Uganda appear also to have retained a separate local grouping.(36) Even when confederated into kingdoms, as in modern Uganda, or in the kingdoms which arose in the region of Lake Chad in the fifteenth century, the African peoples retain a tribal organization. Thus in modern Africa we
26 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
find every stage in tribal evolution from the local group to a federal tribal kingdom.
We have now completed a hurried circuit of the globe, and the evidence we have met with supports the contention that all living peoples are now, or were originally, divided into small separate units or groups. The conditions of life in the primal period, when mankind depended on the natural produce of the soil for a subsistence, made the existence of large local groups an impossibility. The evidence we have gathered, then, is in conformity with the postulates of the group theory.
There is one source of evidence bearing on the particulate distribution of the early races of mankind which is only now becoming available namely, that provided by the excavation of ancient sites of habitation. Archaeologists are finding that the distribution of stone tools and other remains of human culture in such sites are definitely localized.(37) This should be so if early mankind was separated into local groups. So far all the discoveries of fossil remains of early men favour a differentiation into local types.(38)
The new theory requires proof that mankind was divided into social groups, not only during the earliest stages of human evolution, but in its pre human or simian stage. Darwin inferred it had been so when he wrote: " Judging from the analogy of the majority of the Quadrumana, it is probable that the early ape like progenitors of man were likewise social."(39) The leading authority on this matter, Dr. C. R. Carpenter,(40) has declared that "all types of Primates which have been adequately studied in the field have been found to show the phenomenon of territorialism." Territorialism implies division into groups, each group occupying its own area of forest or jungle. Professor Hooton has recently summarized the evidence bearing on the group organization of the higher Primates.(41)
Such, then, is a summary of the evidence on which I rely when I assume that mankind, during the primal period of its evolution, was divided into an exceedingly great number of isolated social communities.
REFERENCES
1. Johnston, T. B., and Robertson, J. A., A Historical Geography of the Clans of Scotland 1899; Browne, Jas., A History of the Highlands and of the Clans of Scotland vol. 4, 1852.
THE PARTICULATE GROUPING OF HUMANITY 27
2. Skene, Wm. F., Celtic Scotland, 1876.
3. Brooke, F. A., The Science of Social Development, 1936.
4. O'Dwyer, Sir Michael, The O'Dwyers of Kilnamanagh, 1933.
5. Prichard, J. C., Physical History of Mankind, 1841, vol. iii, p. 138.
6. lbid., p. 67.
7. Hubert, Henri, The Greatness and Decline of the Celts, 1934, p. 3
8. Hume, David, Essays and Treatises, 1772, vol. I, p. 457.
9. Gibbon, E., Decline and Fall, Everyman ed., vol. I, p. 228.
10. Whatmough, J., The Foundations of Roman Italy, 1937.
11. Alton and Golicher, Spencer's Descriptive Sociology: The Romans, 1934.
12. Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 3rd ed., 1891.
13. Paterson, W. R., Introduction to The Peoples of all Nations (Harmsworth), vol. I, 1922.
14. Durham, M. E., The Burden of the Balkans, 1905; Jour. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., 1909, vol. 39, p. 85.
15. Latham, R. G., The Ethnology of Europe, 1852, p 243
16. Niederle, L., La Race Slav, 1911, p. 24.
17. Myres, Sir John, The Dawn of History, p. 58.
18. Newberry, P. E., Nature, 1923, vol. 112, p. 940; Murray, G. W., Sons of
Ishmael, 1935.
19. Murray, G. W., see under reference 18.
20. Garstang, J., The Hittite Empire, 1929. Harmsworth's Universal History, ch. 23.
21. Sykes, Mark, Jour. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., 1908, vol. 38, p. 451.
22. Epstein, E., Palest. Explor. Quart., 1939, vol. 71, p. 59.
23. Prichard, J. C., Physical History of Mankind, 3rd ed., vol. iv, p. 57.
24. Keane, A. H., Man: Past and Present, new ed., 1920, p. 543.
25. Ibid -p. 185.
26. O'Malley, D. S. S., Indian Caste Customs, 1932.
27. Forbes, H. O., Jour. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., 1884, vol. 13, p. 402.
28. Correa, A. A. Mendes, Timor Portuge's, 1944.
29. Brown, J. Macmillan, Man, 1916, p. 113.
30. Keane, A. H., Man: Past and Present, new ea., 1920, p. 347.
31. Keith, Sir A., Jour. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., 1916, vol. 46, p. 10.
32. Handbook, issued by the Govt. of Tanganyika Territory, 1930
33. Hambly, W. D., Source Book for African Anthropology, Field Museum,
1937.
34. Prichard, J. C., Physical History of Mankind, vol. I, p. 180.
35. Theal, G. McCall, History and Ethnography of Africa South of the Zambesi,
1907.
36. Wayland, E.J., Jour. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., 1931, vol. 61, p. 187; Roscoe, Rev. J., ibid., 1909, vol. 39, p. 181.
37. Childe, V. Gordon, The Dawn of European Civilization, 2nd ea., 1938; Daniel, G. E., An Essay on Anthropological Method, 1943.
38. McCown and Keith, The Stone Age of Mount Carmel, vol. 2, 1939
39. Darwin, C., The Descent of Man, Murray, 1913, p. 166.
40. Carpenter, C. R., Trans. N.Y. Acad. Sc., 1942, ser. II, vol. 4, p. 254.
41. Hooton, Professor E. A., Man's Poor Relations, 1942, p. 156.
ESSAY IV
OWNERSHIP OF TERRITORY AS A FACTOR IN
HUMAN EVOLUTION
Synopsis. Attitude of anthropologists to tribe and territory in 1921. Later it was recognized that territorialism occurs not only among primitive peoples, but pervades the animal world, and was therefore in existence long before man appeared. Evidence from Dr. Heape. Man, the frontier maker. Trespass and territory. The bonds which bind a group to its territory. Ancestral spirits as a bond. Although tribes are normally soil bound, an urge to emigrate may arise. In the primal world of mankind we must assume that groups were both static and dynamic. The soil bond is acquired, but its acquisition depends on an inborn aptitude. There is also a universalist disposition. The part played by territory in the machinery of human evolution. Darwin's observations among the Fuegians. Anthropoid apes have a sense of territory. Archeological evidence of localism. Nomadic peoples have circumscribed bounds. A sense of territory is much older than a knowledge of kinship.
MY inquiries of 1916(1) left me convinced that early mankind had been separated into small social units or groups; another surmise also proved true namely, that each group, so far as information was available or could be obtained, lived on a delimited area of territory of which it counted itself the eternal owner. Why did I make this surmise? It was because I had conceived that if a group were to work out its evolutionary destiny, to develop its germinal potentialities, it must not only be kept from other groups, but must remain anchored to its homeland for a continuity of generations. Ownership of territory would provide both these conditions.
How far my fellows were from sharing in my beliefs may be illustrated by an extract from an address given in 1921 by one of the leading anthropologists of my time Sir Baldwin Spencer: (2)
28
OWNERSHIP OP TERRITORY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 29
"The extraordinary number of tribes (of Australia), each with its own dialect and occupying its own country, is one of the most difficult things to explain in Australian ethnology." The conditions which my colleague found so difficult to explain were just those which I had been in search of in 1916; they are essential parts of the machinery of group evolution.
At the time this is written (February, 1945) naturalists throughout the world recognize that group ownership of homeland - territorialism is not a human prerogative, but pervades the whole of the animal kingdom. Early interest in this subject was certainly stimulated by Howard's observations on bird territories.(3) Our present knowledge of this subject, as far as animals in general are concerned, has been summarized by Dr. Julian Huxley,(4) and by Professor Allee,(5) so there is no need for me to touch on it, save to give one instance which illustrates the close similarity there is in the arrangement of bird and human territories: "Chaffinches in the southern U.S.S.R. can be distinguished solely on the basis of variation in song; they are divided into well-defined populations, each confined to a given area." (6) I am tempted to correlate variations of song in bird groups with variations of dialect in human groups.
My friend Dr. Walter Heape (1855 1929), who made many important additions to our knowledge of the sexual processes in animals, became interested in his later years in their migrations, hoping to trace a connection between the migratory impulse and the state of the sexual system. His inquiries led him to study the opposite of the migratory impulse the tendency of animals to cling to their homelands. After his death in 1929 at the age of seventy four, the data he had collected were edited and published by Dr. Marshall.(7) Two extracts from this work will put readers in touch with Dr. Heape's main conclusions: "What I aim at emphasizing is the fact that within the area over which a species is distributed, separate bodies or, as I shall call them, colonies of that species, occupy definite parts of that area, and rarely, if ever, leave that territory " (p. 30). The above extract relates to animals in general; the next bears on the law of territory as it affects man: "In fact, it may be held that the recognition of territorial rights, one of the most significant attributes of civilization, was not evolved by man, but has ever been an inherent factor in the life history of all animals " (p. 74).
30 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
I may usefully supplement these quotations, with which I am in complete agreement, with observations made by various authors bearing on the delimitation of tribal territories. Canon Pythian Adams, describing the Arab tribes of the region of Mount Sinai, reports: "Even to day the limits of tribal territory are laid down with remarkable clearness." (8) Spencer and Gillen, in their account of The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), record "that from time immemorial the boundaries of the tribes have been where they are now fixed.'' After noting the diversity of the dialects spoken by the native tribes of Tasmania, Mr. Norman Walker adds: "Groups kept to their own territory; trespass meant war." (9) The following quotation from Malinowski refers to the village communities of the Trobriands: "The roaming grounds of every group are subject to exclusive, although collective, rights of this group." (10) The identification of a tribe with its territory is shown by the Arab custom of using the same name for territory as for tribe; the ancient Greeks had a similar custom.(11)
Man is the only animal that surrounds his territory by a delimited frontier; a frontier is, to him, a matter of life and death; he regards it with a sentiment which is almost religious in its intensity. " To infringe boundaries of a neighbouring tribe," writes Keane, "is to break the most sacred law of the jungle and inevitably leads to war." (12) Every tribal boy has to learn from his elders the limits within which he may roam and hunt, but there is something inborn in a boy's nature which makes him eager for such learning. At what point of his evolution man turned a frontier maker we can only guess; certainly his faculties of conscious observation and of reasoning must have made a considerable advancement towards their present degree of proficiency. Anthropoid apes, although they confine their wandcrings within a locality, have no sense of frontiers. The street dogs of Constantinople are said to have had a sense of territory and to have resented trespass; wolf packs are also credited with a similar partiality.(13) Baboons resent intrusions on the places where they sleep and breed,(14) but this is rather a manifestation of a sense of " home " than of territory. The robin resents the rival who trespasses on his " home " territory.(15)
The penalty inflicted on an uninvited or unaccredited stranger who crossed a tribal frontier of aboriginal Australia was death;
OWNERSHIP OF TERRITORY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 31
all authorities are agreed on that. It was also the law in primitive tribal communities in other parts of the earth. One can understand why a tribe should resent and repel invasion of its territory by another tribe; if it did not, then independent tribal life came to an end. That a tribe should seek to protect its game and the natural produce of its land is also understandable; if it did not, it would starve. But why this resentment against a single intruder? Here, I think, we are dealing, not with a trespass of territory, but with a trespass on the tribe or community. We shall see, when we come to deal with the manifestations of "group consciousness," that animal communities of all kinds resent the advent of "gate crashing" strangers. It is to this ancient category of instinctive animal reaction that I would assign the practice of the Australian aborigine towards strangers. A group that was destitute of this reaction would be liable to germinal contamination.
What are the bonds which bind a primitive group to its territory? Every group, being surrounded by other groups, each jealous of its territory, may be said to be hemmed in, and thus confined to its territory. This is a negative bond, but there are also those of a positive nature. There are mental bonds; a deep affection binds a group to its soil. Radcliffe Brown, who visited and studied the tribes of Western Australia,(16) has this to say about the attachment of a native to his locality: "Just as the country belonged to him, he belonged to it . . . wanted to die in it." So with the Bushman of South Africa; " he is strongly attached to his territory." (17) Malinowski described these bonds in purely objective terms. "The Australian tribe," he wrote, " is bound to its territory by tradition, totemic cult, and initiation ceremonies." (18) Now, these terms are true as far as they go, but they leave out the main element of the bond the ready, passionate response made by the Australian lad to his elders when they expound to him the sacredness of their soil. Love of one's native soil is the basal part of patriotism, and will be dealt with when that subject is considered. Affection for locality of birth is instinctive in all social animals.
Tribes are bound to their territory by a peculiarly human bond. Spencer and Gillen (19) note that Australian tribes never invade the territory of a neighbour, and explain their behaviour thus: " No such idea ever enters the head of the Central
32 A NEW THEORY OP HUMAN EVOLUTION
Australian, because he believes that every territory is the home of the spirit ancestry of its original owners and is therefore useless to any one else." The belief that gods and ancestral spirits are endemic in their soil is held by tribal peoples in many parts of the world in Melanesia, in North Burma, in India, and in West Africa such peoples being thereby bound to their territories. There is a well known Biblical record of this belief: " The nations which thou [the king of Assyria] has planted in the cities of Samaria know not the manner of the God of the land. (20) The Marquis of Halifax (1633 95) touched the same theme when he declared there was a" divinity in the soil of England."
So far I have been giving my reasons for believing that in the primal world human groups were rooted to the soil. If that had been the case as it appears to have been in aboriginal Australia - then an enterprising group, multiplying in numbers and in power, would have had no advantage over its static neighbour. It was otherwise among the tribes of Gaul and ancient Germany; tribes were normally bound to the soil, but from time to time a different and dynamic mood arose in them, which compelled them to pull up their roots and, by conquest, win a new abode. For progressive evolutionary change both moods are needed: the steadfast mood which anchors a group to its territory, and the impetuous mood which urges change. I assume that both of these moods had their place in the primal world of mankind. The exodus of a people had a likeness to the mass migration of animals, a subject in which Dr. Heape was greatly interested and of which he wrote: (21) . "There is surely some nervous excitement attending the proceeding, both during the preparation for exodus and during the progress of the journey. In some cases it would seem that a condition of hysteria is reached."
In support of the soil bond I might cite Walter Scott's patriotic lines:
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
But were I to bring Scott forward as a witness, I know that there are hundreds who would answer that, not only was their "soul dead," but, so far as concerned their native land, it had never been alive.(22) Patriotism, they declare, is an acquired passion. I agree with them. If I had been born in Ireland, I
OWNERSHIP OF TERRITORY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 33
would have been a patriotic Irishman; if in France, a patriotic Frenchman. But I could have been neither unless I had been born with that in me which answers the call of the soil.
Yet I know that such is not the whole truth of this matter. Many of those who decry patriotism are moved by the high ideal that seeks the union of all peoples in a universal whole. There is, I admit, imbedded in human nature, a vague longing to lift the spirit of fellowship above the narrower limits of tribe, nation and race, and this feeling seeks to replace the patriotic spirit. Human nature, as we shall try to prove in a future essay, is dual, and in patriotism versus universalism we have a contradiction which man's dual mentality makes possible. I ought to add that the spirit of patriotism love of the soil may die of starvation in the hearts of those born in great cities.
I have been placing before my readers the grounds for believing that the primal world, inhabited by evolving mankind, was a chequerboard of territories on which the great game of evolution was played. We have now to inquire more minutely into the part played by territory in that game. Let us begin with a modern instance. In 1933 gold was discovered in the native territory of Kenya, and natives were evicted in order that the gold might be mined. A writer in Nature (23) rightly protested against the eviction, and on the following grounds: (a) The land owned by a tribe is necessary for its subsistence; (b) it is equally necessary for the solidarity of the tribe; © dissolved from its territory a tribe's organization, its automatic form of government, falls to pieces; and (d) the territory is the home of the living spirits of the ancestors of the evicted natives. Here, then, in a modern instance, we have brought home to us the part played by territory in securing the independent and continued existence of a tribal group; without territory a separate community could not work out its evolutionary destiny. Here, too, we have an illustration of the way in which civilization clears native inmates from their chequerboard territories to make room for larger units.
It has always seemed to me a curious thing that Darwin, who was the first to observe the limitation of groups of primitive humanity to definite tracts of land, should never have attributed an evolutionary significance to his observations. His studies were made in December, 1832, when the Beagle landed in their native habitats three young Fuegians who had wintered in
34 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
England to learn the ways of civilized man.(24) "The different tribes," wrote Darwin, then in his twenty fourth year, "have no government or chief, yet each is surrounded by other hostile tribes, speaking different dialects, and separated from each other only by a deserted border or neutral territory.... I do not know anything which shows more clearly the hostile state of the different tribes than these wide borders or neutral tracts." These observations relate, not to organized tribes, but to local groups of humanity, living under the most primitive conditions, and reflects what I assume to have been the universal state in man's primal world.
In the preceding essay I gave a quotation (p. 26) from Dr. Carpenter (25) to the effect that territorialism existed in all kinds of Primates which had been examined for this condition. We may presume, I think, that all the genera which emerged from the primate stem were subjected to group evolution, and that territorialism was in existence long before the differentiation of mankind. " The chimpanzees," records Dr. Heape (p. 67), " are, in fact, home loving like all apes, and do not forsake the place in which they were born unless under special stress of circumstances." Dr. Carpenter also noted the fact "that gibbons are intolerant of trespass by other gibbons" evidence that this anthropoid has a sense of territory. Professor Hooton of Harvard is one of the few writers who have discussed the possibility of a relationship between territorial grouping and evolution. After a review of the group distribution of Primates, he adds the following passage:
"It would appear that this primate tendency to maintain territoriality must be closely bound up with the differentiation of races, and varieties, and even species, by selection and inbreeding.... Further, it would seem necessary to postulate some such innate or acquired habit . . . to account for the early differentiation of the physical varieties of races of mankind." (26)
I quote this passage as evidence of the large measure of agreement there is between Professor Hooton and myself as to the part played by territory in the process of evolution.
When dealing with the division of primitive mankind into small groups, in the preceding essay, I alluded to the light that archae
OWNERSHIP OF TERRITORY IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 35
ologists are throwing on this problem (p. 26). Here I would add other instances where excavation of ancient sites provides evidence of localism and, presumably, of territory. For example, Mr. T. T. Paterson when examining stone industries (Clactonian, Ievallois) which have an antiquity of perhaps 100,000 years found evidence of local industrialism. (27) Leslie Armstrong, in his investigation of tools of caveman of the Upper Paleolithic period observed that " industries display local differences." (28) Hubert records that in Loraine tribal fortification of the early Iron Age can still be detected; (29) and several other instances might be cited.
At the beginning of this essay I noted the fact that my contemporaries were reluctant to accept the idea that primitive societies were small and stationary. (30) They were impressed by the migratory tendencies which have pervaded so many peoples during historical times, and they assume that this had also been the case with early men. I have indicated my reply to this objection in an earlier essay (p. 8). They were also impressed by the belief that nomadic peoples knew no bounds. As regards this matter Dr. Heape came to the same conclusion in 1929 as I did in 1916. "The great majority of nomadic peoples and nomadic animals," he affirmed, "roam only over a definite territory " (p. 16).
Perhaps the chief obstacle to the acceptance of my doctrine was the belief that then prevailed among anthropologists namely, that the original groups of mankind were formed on the basis of kin of blood relationship and that it was at a later date that territory became a bond. The advocates of the priority of kin had the powerful support of Sir Henry Maine, Durkheim, Andrew Lang, Marett, and of many others.(31) On the other hand, men like Haddon and Rivers, who based their opinions on observations made in the field and among primitive peoples, were convinced that, from the first, human groups were based on territory. From the evidence now available we cannot any longer doubt that the bond of territory is infinitely older than that of kin. The anthropoid mother knows her young child; there is some evidence that she even recognizes her children until they reach a certain age, but man is the only animal that can trace blood relationships and is therefore capable of constructing genealogies. Man must have reached a considerable degree of mental capacity before he became genealogist. I would hazard the guess that
36 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
man marked out frontiers before he constructed genealogies. And yet the fact remains that there are peoples in the world of to day who are devoid of territory and yet maintain their solidarity. Such peoples will come up for consideration when the evolution of races is discussed (Essay XXXVII).
REFERENCES
1. Keith, Sir A., Jour. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., 1916, vol. 46, p.10.
2. Spencer, Sir Baldwin, Presid. Add. Austral. Ass. Adv. Sc., 1921.
3. Howard, Eliot, Territory in Bird Life, 1920.
4. Huxley, Julian, Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, 1942, ch. V.
5. Allee, Prof. W. C., The Social Life of Animals, 1939, ch. V.
6. Huxley, Julian, Nature, 1940, vol. 146, p. 43.
7. Heape, Walter, Emigration, Migration, and Nomadism, edited by F. H. A.
Marshall, 1931.
8. Pythian Adams, Canon, Palest. Explor. Quart., 1930, vol. 62, p.192.
9. Walker, N., Man, 1931, p.51.
10. Malinowski, B., Nature, 1925, vol. 116, p. 928.
11. Thomson, Geo., Aeschylus and Athens, 1941.
12. Keane, A. H., Man : Past and Present, new ed., 1920, p.161.
13. Reade, Carveth, The Origin of Man, 1920, p. 43.
14. Marais, Eugene N., My Friends the Baboons, 1939.
15. Lack, D., The Life of the Robin, 1943.
16. Radcliffe Brown A. R., Jour. Roy. Anthrop. Inst., 1913, vol. 43, p. 143.
17. Theal, G. McCail, History and Ethnography of Africa South of the Zambesi,
vol. I, 1907.
18. Malinowski, B., Family Life among the Australian Aboriginies, 1913, p.153.
19. Spencer and Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 1904, p.30.
20. 2 Kings XVII, 25.
21. Heape, Walter, see reference 7, p.21.
22. Fyfe, Hamilton, The Illusion of National Character, 1940.
23. Nature, 1933, vol. 131, p.37.
24. Darwin, C., The Voyage of the Beagle, ch. X, p. 216.
25. Carpenter, C. R., Trans. N.Y. Acad. Sc., 1942, ser. II, vol. 4, p.248.
26. Hooton, E. A., Man's Poor Relations, 1942, p. 331.
27. Paterson, T. T., Proc. Prehist. Soc., 1937, vol. 3, p.87.
28. Armstrong, A. Leslie, Mem. & Proc. Manchester Lit. Phil., 1939, vol. 83,
29. Hubert, Henri, The Greatness and Decline of the Celts, 1934.
30. Hawkes, C. F. C., Man, 1942, p. 125; Poynter, C. W. M., Amer. Anthro;., 1915, vol. 17, p.509; Stone, J. F. S., Proc. Prehist. Soc., 1941, vol. 7, p. 114.
31. The evidence was summarized by Moret and Davy in From Tribe to Empire, trans. by V. Gordon Childe, 1926.
ESSAY V
GROUP SPIRIT AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION
Synopsis. Group spirit defined. Sympathy, which is the basis of the group spirit, is confined to communities of a species, and does not extend to the species as a whole. This is true of human and of animal groups, and is presumably true of the primal groups of humanity. Consciousness of kind: its various applications. "Like will to like " examined. Man's social appetite as a driving force. Primal groups were "closed" societies. Aversion to strangers: a genetical explanation. How far the group spirit is inborn, and how far acquired. The dual spirit generates a dual code of morality. Group formation leads to group selection. Evolution in the primal world of humanity was mainly a group or team selection. There was no colour bar in the ancient world. The group spirit was evolved from the family spirit.
I AM seeking to build up a picture of the life led by mankind during the primal age, the age which saw man attain his manhood. In the two preceding essays evidence has been given for believing that mankind was then divided into small groups, and that each group occupied its own tract of land. In this essay we are to inquire into the means which keep members of a group together and, at the same time, keep them apart from surrounding territorial groups. These means, we shall find, are embedded in man's mental nature. There is a disposition or spirit in every man which leads him to extend his sympathy, his goodwill, and fellowship to the members of his group; he is also conscious of his membership and feels that his own life is part of that of his group. To this bundle of mental traits, which gives unity to a group and separation from other groups, I am applying the term "group spirit," which has thus much the same connotation as "esprit de corps." Group spirit induces a certain form or pattern of behaviour; this form of behaviour I shall speak of as "clannishness."
37
38 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
Having thus defined the terms I am to use, I now turn to the evidence which permits us to assume that a group spirit prevailed in the small communities of primal man. As usual, Darwin supplies the most telling evidence. " Sympathy," he notes, "is directed solely towards members of the same community, and therefore towards known, and more or less loved members, but not to all individuals of the same species." (1) Primitive groups being small, their members were known to one another by personal contact. Darwin was of the opinion that "the confinement of sympathy to the same tribe" was one of the chief causes of the low morality of savages.(2) In this instance Darwin viewed tribal life from the point of view of a civilized observer. Two further quotations from Darwin will throw additional light on group mentality. "Primeval man regarded actions as good or bad, solely as they obviously affected the welfare of the tribe not that of the species, nor that of an individual member of the tribe." (3) Writing of living tribal peoples he notes that " the virtues are practiced almost exclusively in relation to the men of the same tribe," while the corresponding vices "are not regarded as crimes" if practiced on other tribes.(4) Darwin's observations have been confirmed over and over again by travelers who have studied primitive groups of mankind at first hand. On such evidence we have grounds for assuming that the small communities of early man were also swayed by a group spirit.
When that evidence is supported by the knowledge that all social animals whatsoever, be they ants or be they apes, are subjects of the group spirit, we may assume with a high degree of assurance that man's simian ancestors and the earliest forms of man were also its subjects. In the following passage Darwin refers to social animals:
"For the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them and to perform certain services for them . . . but these feelings and services are by no means extended to all the individuals of the same species, only to those of the same association." (5)
Darwin was by no means the first to note that mutual sympathy did not extend to all members of a species, but was limited to groups of a species. A wise and observant Scottish judge, Henry
GROUP SPIRIT AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 39
Home of Kames (1696 1782), noted that in animals "affections are limited to a community " and not to the species. " Every species," he continues, "is divided into small tribes . . . which do not associate," and then he proceeds to cite examples he had observed. He also makes the pertinent remark that the size of a group is determined by two circumstances: it must be big enough for its defence and not too big for its provender.(6) Later, he continues: " The social appetite in man comprehends not the whole species but a part only, as among animals. One of moderate extent invigorates every manly virtue ... nature has
wisely limited the social appetite." (7)
Thus we find that every species of social animal is divided into independent groups; that each group is dominated by a separatist, self regarding group spirit; that competition, selection, and survival involve a struggle, not between species, but between groups of the same species. Such, we must assume, was the state of evolutionary conditions on the chequerboard of primal humanity.
The group theory, then, assumes that in all social animals - and man is eminently such there is an instinctive or inborn urge to the formation of social groups. Group spirit is the mental machinery involved in group formation. As a label for this machinery Prof. Franklin Giddings,(8) towards the end of the nineteenth century, gave the name "consciousness of kind," intending to give a more precise meaning to the term "sympathy" as used by Adam Smith.(9) Giddings's use of this term will best be made clear by quoting one of his illustrations: "The southern gentleman who believed in the cause of the Union, none the less threw his fortune with the Confederacy, if he felt himself to be one of the southern people and a stranger to the people of the North." The southern gentleman was pitting reason against his inborn sympathy, and his "consciousness of kind, or group spirit, won. Professor Giddings cites the social groups or communities which were formed as civilization spread westwards across the United States, groups containing representatives of many European nations. In such cases association made unlike kinds into compact social groups. A group was formed, not because its members were conscious of kind, but because all were inheritors of the group spirit of early man.
It is important to note that Professor Giddings applies his term
40 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
to a much wider field than is included under the term group spirit. He applies it to the recognition which members of the same species display towards one another, as dog to dog, or cat to cat, or man to man. Now, such recognition is quite different from that which leads a member of a group to recognize fellow members. Social sympathy, even among animals, is confined to fellow members, and one may assume it was also so among the groups of primitive, evolving humanity.
Our main concern in this essay is with the mentality which controlled group organization in man's primal world. There are, however, in modern mankind certain mental exhibitions of a group forming tendency which will repay consideration here. "Like will to like" is a truism which has come down to us from the ancient Greeks. We see this aphorism illustrated in the cities of the East, where each nation or sect occupies its own quarter. We see it again in the cities of the New World, where immigrants from the Old World seek out groups of their fellow nationals. Like has sought out like, and in such instances we may attribute such preferences to "consciousness of kind" or to group spirit. But in the following instances of like seeking out like we move into another class of phenomena. Darwin records instances of animals of a particular breed, or those possessing certain markings, preferring mates of the same breed or markings.(10) Julian Huxley gives an instance of a similar preference in a human community.(11) Among the Indians of the Panama there is a community of albino or " white " natives; the surrounding coloured Indians have "a feeling against marrying, white"; so the whites are left to mate together. " Here in man himself," adds Dr. Huxley, " is a case showing with almost diagrammatic clarity how evolutionary change may originate." Darwin's examples, and Huxley's, are cases of sexual selection apparently based on a recognition or consciousness of kind, but the purpose served has nothing to do with the formation and maintenance of social groups.
There is one circumstance underlying the group spirit which is in need of emphasis. This spirit assumes the existence of man's social appetite and the need of satisfying that appetite by seeking its gratification in the company of his fellows; without that appetite there could be no group formation. This is true of all social animals, and we may therefore assume it to hold for the
GROUP SPIRIT AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 41
most primitive of men. It is only when human beings are deprived of all contact with their fellows that they learn what the compelling force of social starvation really is. We may safely assume that our most remote ancestors were thus constituted, and that the member who strayed from his group was urged back to it by social hunger; and so groups were kept intact.
There is another assumption which may be made with a high degree of safety as regards the primal groups of mankind namely, that each group formed a "closed society," the only entrance into it being by birth, although entrance by adoption cannot be altogether excluded. Farmers know very well that their field herds resent the introduction of strangers and seek to exclude them from their midst, even strangers of exactly the same breed. If, however, the original herd is turned on fresh pastures, previously unknown to it, and before the strangers are added, the strangers will be more readily accepted, which suggests that a sense of territory may also be concerned.(12) Dr. Carpenter, who has made a special study of monkey groups, observed that intruding strangers were forcibly expelled, although he did see one persistent young male ultimately accepted by a group.(13) The native colony of Gibraltar apes, having become depleted in numbers, was reinforced by animals of the same species introduced from Africa. All the introduced apes, save a strong male, were killed by the original colonists.(14) A female gibbon that had been some time in captivity was released by her owner in her native forest in Java near a group of her own species; she was driven off by the group. Seeing how prevalent an antipathy to strangers is among primate groups, it is highly probable that it was also a trait of the earliest human groups.
"No propensity," asserts Lord Kames, " is more general in human nature than aversion to strangers." (15) He then asks a question: "What good end can this perversion promote?" The question can be put in another form: Why are the groups formed by social animals in a state of nature maintained as closed societies? An explanation can be given on genetic grounds. If we regard a group as having been separated from other groups in order to inbreed, and so to work out the evolutionary potentialities of its genes, then we can see why it should resent instinctively the intrusion of outsiders bringing with them strange genes. The rejection of strangers might also be explained on
42 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
social grounds: if they came in numbers they would disrupt the automatic government of the group. Epinas was in the right when he averred that " hatred of strangers is an index of tribal consciousness." (16) He might well have added that the friendly reception of strangers could be used as an indication of the degree to which the "old Adam" of the group spirit has been eradicated from man's nature by civilization.
We come now to a question of the highest importance. Is the group spirit which we are attributing to primitive communities of mankind, and which pervades the modern world under the name of "race consciousness," an instinct born in a child's nature, or is it acquired as the child grows up? Darwin's answer is equivocal. He emphasized the limitation of sympathy to the members of a group, and added, "Sympathy, although gained as an instinct, is also strengthened by exercise and habit." (17) Now, every social group, whether simian or human, is a school in which the young absorb the traditions, the customs, the habits, the prejudices, and modes of behaviour of the group. A child sees the group spirit at work as it grows up, and accepts a clannish behaviour as part of its heritage. Mr. J. H. Taylor, (18) Dr. Raymond Firth,(19) Julian Huxley,(20) and many more, regard the manifestations of the group spirit or race consciousness as the result of what the young learn in the school of the tribe. Bring a white boy up in a Bantu tribe, and the boy will have the group spirit of a Bantu tribesman. Those authors, in my opinion, have considered only one side of the problem namely, the direction or complexion taken by the group spirit. They have concentrated their attention on the product and forgotten the producer, which is an inborn disposition. Can it be said that sympathy, which is a disposition to suffer with, and to aid others, and which is the basis of the group spirit, is an acquired quality of human nature? The disposition to sympathize is certainly inborn, but, as Darwin contended, it can be strengthened by example and practice.
It may be asked in reply: why is sympathy and the group spirit limited to a community? Is that not a result of tuition or example? Let us see what we can learn of this matter by noting the action of this spirit in herds of cattle. When Darwin was on the Beagle, he visited a large ranch in Uruguay, so that he might acquaint himself with the management of large herds of cattle. When feeding, the animals formed groups, each group
GROUP SPIRIT AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 43
having a membership varying from forty to a hundred; the membership of each group was constant; the cattle discriminated between their own and other groups. "During a stormy night," adds Darwin, " the cattle all mingle together, but next morning the tropillas (or groups) separate as before; so that each animal must know its fellows out of ten thousand others." (21) Here, then, we see the group spirit at work among social animals, controlled by an innate disposition or instinct and not by a taught or acquired tradition. May we not assume, then, that the group disposition or spirit was also inborn in the most primitive forms of humanity? In them, we must presume, it was moulded and biased by the tradition and the teaching of the groups.
It will thus be seen that the group spirit implies a discrimination between groups. A tribesman's sympathies lie within the compass of his own tribe; beyond his tribe, begin his antipathies; he discriminates in favour of his own tribe and against all others. This means also that the tribesman has two rules of behaviour, one towards those of his group and another to the members of other groups. He has a dual code of morality. a code of " amity "for his fellows; a code of indifference, verging into "enmity," towards members of other groups or tribes. Seeing, then, that all social animals are subject to the group spirit, and that it brings about a dual code of morality, may we not assume that on the chequerboard of the primal world the same spirit animated evolving groups of mankind ?
The question now arises: Why was primitive humanity divided into small, separate, contending groups? My answer is that which both Darwin and Wallace gave namely, that men who were arranged in groups or teams, each dominated by a spirit of unity, would conquer and outlive men who were not thus grouped. In brief, human evolution was, and is, a process of team production and team selection. No doubt, in our primal world there was individual selection within each team or group, but it was the team worker rather than the strong individualist who was favoured. In this way the group spirit played a leading role as a factor in human evolution.
In this essay I have kept flitting between the ancient and modern world of humanity, carrying facts and assumptions from the one to throw light on the other. Continuing my argument along these lines, I would now call attention to the fact that, in the
44 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
modern world, at the time history begins, each large area was inhabited by its own physical variety of mankind. If we take the area of Mongolian distribution, for example, and beginning on the Arctic shores with our steps turned in a southward direction, we shall meet as we proceed no sharp break in the physical type until we reach the shores of Australia. The type with which we begin is very different from that with which we end, yet the change is so gradual that nowhere can we distinguish one local community from another by physical criteria. Now, I assume that the distribution of mankind in the ancient world was similar. Adjacent local groups were of the same physical type; their differences were cultural; each group had its dialect, its customs, its traditions; each had its own spirit. Nowhere was there a colour bar; only in recent times have communities of black and white been brought into juxtaposition. When such communities are brought to live side by side, the community spirit is apt to assume a new fierceness and receives another name, " race consciousness." To this aspect of the group spirit I shall return when I come to deal with the evolution of races (see Essay XXXV). The turbulent group or tribal spirit is here aggravated by the fact that the contestants have been fitted out by Nature in different physical uniforms.
One other point concerning man's group spirit deserves consideration before this essay is brought to a close. Can any rational explanation be given of how it became a constituent element in human nature? I regard it as an extension of the family spirit, the spirit or disposition which leads the members of a human family, both parents and children, to discriminate between their own and other families. The members of a normal family are prejudiced in favour of one another. Their attitude towards their own family is different from that which they hold to other families. They resent the intrusion of strangers to a place in the family circle. When children graduate from parental control to take their place in the life of their group, the family feeling or spirit expands so as to embrace all the members of a group, as if the group had become their family. As Darwin and many others have maintained, the mental bonds which hold a family together gave rise to those which unite members of a social group or tribe.
GROUP SPIRIT AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 45
REFERENCES
1. Darwin, C., The Descent of Man, Murray, 1913, ch. IV, p. 162.
2. Ibid., p. 183.
3. Ibid., p. 182.
4. Ibid., p. 179.
5. Ibid., p. 150.
6. Home, Henry (Lord Kames), Sketches of the History of Man, new. ed.
1813, vol. 2, p. 12.
7. Ibid., p. 21.
8. Giddings, Franklin H., The Principles of Sociology, 1898, p. 17.
9. Smith, Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, sect. I, ch. I V.
10. Darwin, C., Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. 2, ch. XIV
11. Huxley,Julian, Nature, 1924, vol. 114, p. 464.
12. Hunter, John, Essays and Observations, edited by Sir Richard Owen, 1861,
vol. I, p. 51.
13. Carpenter, C. R., Trans. N.Y ; Acad. Sc., 1942, ser. II, vol. 4, p. 248.
14. The Field, Feb. 8, 1913, p. 283.
15. Home, Henry, see under reference 6, pp. 23, 30.
16. Epinas, Alfred, Des Socie'te's Animales, 1877, new ed. 1925.
17. See under ref. 1, p. 934.
18. Taylor, J. G., Popular Psychological Fallacies, 1938, p. 243
19. Firth, Raymond, We, The Tikopia, 1936, pp. 129, 342
20. Haddon, A. C. and Huxley Julian S., We Europeans, 1935, p. 233
21. Darwin, C., A Naturalist's Voyage round the World, ch. VIII, p. 144.
ESSAY VI
PATRIOTISM AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION
Synopsis. Group spirit and patriotism compared. Patriotism considered under three heads: (a) its relationship to group territory; (b) its relationship to the life of the group, to the fighting spirit, and to loyalty; © its relationship to group status. Qualities which have been ascribed to patriotism. Patriotism as a factor in evolution. Patriotism is made up of two elements: the one is mental and is inbred; the other is educative and is acquired. Patriotic feelings may remain latent. Patriotism is an expansion of the individual instinct of self preservation. The relation of fear to patriotism. Patriotism has a kinship with religion. Group spirit and patriotism are based on partiality a congenital warping of the judgment. Patriots obey a dual code of morality. It may be said that evolutionary procedure is based on injustice. Chauvinism.
IN the preceding essay we examined the mental machinery which breaks social animals into groups or communities, and which serves to maintain each group as a separate unit. Seeing that this mental machinery, the group spirit, is of ancient origin, we have presumed that the groups of early humanity were also under its sway. In this essay we are concerned with another set of mental activities namely, those which serve to safeguard and protect the group which, when danger threatens from without, or from within, muster forces for the defence of the group. This set of mental activities, which automatically arms the members of a group in its defence, is known as patriotism. Since such defensive mental reactions are to be observed in social animals of all kinds, we may safely presume that patriotism had a place among the primal communities of mankind.
Patriotism is an exaggerated and prejudiced form of affection which is manifested by members of a group or tribe in at least three directions. First, it leads to the development of special
46
PATRIOTISM AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 47
bonds of affection between a group and its home territory, and so anchors it to its homeland. The homeland may be bare and barren, but, in the eyes of the native, patriotism turns it into the best and most desirable of all lands. The alchemy of love, working in the fevered brain of Don Quixote, turned a plain country wench into a princess. So the alchemy of patriotism, working in the brain of a tribesman, converts a moorland into a paradise. The more a man loves a thing the more ready is he to defend it, to fight for it, and, if need be, to sacrifice his life to save it. Thus is the territory of a group safeguarded and the integrity of the group preserved. Patriotism provides the group with a mental armour for the defence of its homeland. Seeing that all social animals manifest a predilection for their native habitat, we may presume that the primal groups of humanity had a special attachment to their homelands and were in this sense patriotic. The blackbird which risks her life to save her nest and brood from the maw of a prowling cat gives an exhibition of blind patriotism.
A tribesman's patriotic bias is not confined to the care of his homeland; it extends to his group or tribe and to everything connected with the tribe to its welfare, to its prosperity, to its safety, and to its good name and fame. The tribal totem, or god, he regards as more powerful than other totems or gods; his tribal speech, customs, manners, and ways of life are superior to all others. In times of peace the patriotic feeling or spirit is more or less at rest. But when the life of the tribe is threatened, these feelings rise to fever heat; they become a violent passion which takes control of the tribesman's will and forces it blindly on to action. Next door, as it were, to the feelings which support the patriotic impulse are those which sustain man's fighting spirit, which supplies the physical force needed in defence of the group. Thus man's patriotism lies at the root of war. As every group or community of social animals is provided with a mental machinery for its defence, we may safely assume that the very earliest groups of humanity were not destitute of it. The male gorilla manifests patriotic feelings when his group is in danger, for he then turns on, and attacks, the assailant, and kills or is killed, so that his group may live.
There is an aspect of patriotism which deserves special consideration. We have already noted that it involves a strong and
48 A NEW THEORY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
constant partiality in a man for everything connected with his group. This is especially true of his attitude to the elders or leaders of his group, or, if leadership has passed into the care of chief or king, then to chief or king. The leaders being at the centre of group defence, we should expect patriotic devotion to go out to them in special measure. So it does, only it takes a peculiar form the form known as fidelity or loyalty. Loyalty is a blind, prejudiced, unswerving, unreasoned attachment to those in command. Yet I do not regard loyalty as a constituent part of patriotism. In this I am in opposition to a very clear thinker, Prof W. G. Sumner, who defined patriotism as "loyalty to one's group." (1) Loyalty is akin to patriotism and, like the fighting spirit, is a close adjunct to it. Loyalty finds its natural place in the leadership and organization of a group, and will come up for further consideration when these subjects are discussed in a later essay. (See Essay XII.)
There is a third aspect of patriotism to which I attach a high importance. It imbues the members of a group with a sense of pride in their membership; it fosters the conviction in their minds that their group is the paragon of groups. This was the aspect of patriotism which caught Darwin's attention in the person of Jimmy Button, a Fuegian lad who was carried back to his native land on board the Beagle. "He was of a patriotic disposition," Darwin notes, "and he liked to praise his own tribe and country, in which he truly said there were plenty of trees, and he abused all the other tribes; he stoutly declared there was no devil in his land." (2) An Australian aborigine has the conviction that his tribe is the hub of the universe. Westermarck (3) found this type of tribal exaltation among all native peoples, so we may venture to ascribe it to the groups of humanity which peopled the world in primal times.
It will have been noted that Jimmy Button's patriotic feelings gave vent, not only to praise of his own tribe, but led him on to decry all neighbouring tribes. Patriotism leads on to emulation, to jealousy, to competition between neighbouring tribes, and is thus a source of contempt and of strife. No tribesman, or band of tribesmen, will remain unmoved if they hear any aspersion cast on their tribe. The good faith of a tribe, its honour, its status or place among other tribes. and the superiority of its god or totem are sacrosanct;
such convictions must not be questioned by any
PATRIOTISM AS A FACTOR IN HUMAN EVOLUTION 49
one outside the tribe or even within it. Thus patriotism incites an unending contest for tribal status. "Patriotism," said the late J. M. Robertson, " is pride of power . . . a banal pride." (4) certainly pride of power moves the heart of the modern patriot and one may suspect that power or prowess was equally potent in ancient days. Patriotism gives to a tribe a feeling of invincibility, a valuable asset for any human community involved in the struggle for survival.
McDougall describes patriotism as " a master sentiment," (5) and seeing that in the throes of war it can and does overcome the strongest of man's instincts, that of self preservation, this description must be regarded as valid. Hankins regards it as " the most powerful of social forces." (6) " The supreme value of patriotism," wrote Martin Conway, " is not in provoking hostility, or resisting the rivalry of other countries, but in its unifying, nation making force." (7) George Orwell says of patriotism that " as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it." (8) Gibbon regarded patriotism as " a public virtue," and as " a source of strength in war." (9) I look on patriotism as an heirloom which has come down to modern man from a very remote past.
We have now to seek for an answer to the importa