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قراءة كتاب Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898

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‏اللغة: English
Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898

Scientific American Supplement, No. 1178, June 25, 1898

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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another in the winter; they must follow the game and the fruits; and in that condition, therefore, of unstable life it is not possible for a nation or a tribe to gain any great advance. You observe, therefore, that when the food supply is drawn from this source it does entail a general depravity of culture everywhere.

Above that would come the food supply which is obtained from other sources. There is one which is not universal but still widely extended, and that is the pastoral life. There are many tribes (as, for instance, in southern Africa and in India and throughout the steppes of Tartary and elsewhere) who live on their herds and drive their herds from one pasture to another in order to obtain the best forage. This nomadic and pastoral life extended very widely over the old world in ancient times, but existed nowhere in the new world, for the simple reason that they had no domesticated animals. Our own remote ancestors—both the Aryans and the Semites—all the early ancestors of the white race so far as known, were pastoral or nomadic; and the Aryans of central Europe remained so until after the fall of Rome, when, for the first time, they became practically sedentary. This nomadic and pastoral life is a very great advance over the mere hunting and fishing stage. It requires considerable care and attention to domesticate the wild animals in any sufficient quantity to form a reliable source of food. Moreover, the attention which it was necessary to give to the rearing and training and the looking after domestic animals was to a certain extent, humanizing. When a man found that it was necessary to be careful about his animals, he would also be careful about his neighbors. We would say that the same sense which enabled him, or directed him, to look after the welfare of the herd would justify and, in fact, impel him to look after that of man also; so that the nomadic and pastoral life, although not stable nor favorable to the development of cities, nor the great extension of commerce, was nevertheless a decided advance over the ruder hunting and fishing stage. So far as we know, neither Aryan nor Semite ever depended upon a hunting and fishing stage. They doubtless did, but not in the time of any history that we know. The Bedouins, etc., wandering tribes to-day, and, among the Semitic, the Tuaregs of the Sahara, are a purely nomadic or pastoral race; yet are very much above the negroes of the south, who depend upon hunting and fishing.

Above it, however, and a very great improvement upon it, is the agricultural stage, where the main source of the food supply is the harvests. You observe, at once, that that means a sedentary life. When a man sows corn, he must wait thereabout and tend it and till it and finally reap it and store it and thrash it and then preserve the grain and build granaries for it; and it involves, in fact, the remaining in one place all the whole year; and then the regularity of that life led very distinctly to making men regular, generally, in their habits. They wanted to defend their homes—defend these grain fields of theirs, or starvation would result; therefore, they built towers and strong-walled cities; and they took great care in the selection of the best men among them to do the fighting, while others looked after the crop. We find that agriculture began at a very, very early period in both continents. In our own continent we cannot tell when agriculture was first in use—the main crop being the maize, or Indian corn. It was raised by the more advanced tribes from the extreme north, where its profitable culture invited, to the extreme south, from about the northern line of Wisconsin in North America to the latitude of southern Chile in South—extending, therefore, over some seven to eight thousand miles of linear distance.

In the old world (going back to the time of the lake dwellers) we know they had barley, rye and a species of millet; and later on they were introduced to oats and wheat and a variety of others. Rice was of the very earliest of our cereals, in the extreme east of the old world. Wherever we find a very ancient civilization we also find that it is intimately connected with some important cereal, and it has been said that all you have to do is to study botany—the history of botany—and you will find the history of human culture; and much there is that could be said for that.

Fourth, and finally, those who divide human culture according to the food supply consider that the highest stage is reached through commerce. Commerce brings to all the great centers of human life the food essential to their sustenance. It would be absolutely impossible—obviously so—to have a city like Philadelphia in existence for a month without constant and ceaseless commerce brought here the food for its inhabitants. It is quite likely that, were Philadelphia shut off at once from all connection with the world, within ten days there would be an absolute famine here—so closely do we depend upon our commercial supplies for our subsistence. These supplies are not drawn from any one locality; were we to draw a radius of five hundred miles around our great city of a million inhabitants, we should still find that the greater part of our food supply comes from a wider distance from us than that; and there is no one of us that will go to his table this evening but will see upon that table food products drawn from every quarter of the world. Thus it is that commerce enables man to reach an indefinite degree of consolidation; and it is through consolidation—through the more and more intimate relationship, and the closer and closer juxtaposition of man—that his real benefit and progress may be derived.

These, therefore, are the four stages of culture, as depending upon food supply: the hunting and fishing stage, the nomadic or pastoral, the agricultural and the commercial. These have been generally adopted by English writers, and they are so adopted to-day; and you will probably find them in many of the text books.

The American writers have, in many instances, followed the principles laid down and defined most clearly by Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, a distinguished ethnologist of the last generation. He divides (or accepted the division and largely defined it) the progress of man into a series of stages: beginning at the lowest point with savagery; then barbarism, semi-civilization, civilization, and fifth, enlightenment.

I may briefly refer to what he would include in these and the main criteria which he gives for each of them. He would place the savage condition as being that of the lowest tribes known to us. They have little or no agriculture; their commerce is very inchoate and rude: they have no knowledge of the metals as such; their best weapon is the bow and arrow, or the throwing stick; and their best tool is the stone hatchet and the stone spade. This is very much like the lowest condition of the "wild people" to whom I referred.

Above that he would place the condition of barbarism. In the stage of developed barbarism he would place such inventions as, for instance, pottery, the art of weaving (which is a very primitive art) and the taming of a certain number of domestic animals, some for food, some for amusement and hunting, and also the beginnings of the development of agriculture. A type of such a nation of barbarism would be the Indians who used to live here—the Algonkian—the Delaware Indians. When the first Europeans came to the shores of the Delaware River they did not find absolutely rude savages. The Delaware Indians had moderately stationary villages surrounded by pickets, the houses being built of strong timber; they had large fields of maize, pumpkins, squashes and beans, which they cultivated diligently during the summer and stored the food for their winter's supply. They depended largely, to be sure, upon hunting and fishing also; but along with that they had these simple arts: From the rushes which grew below Philadelphia, in a place called the "Neck," they used to weave mats for protecting the floors and also for

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