Chapter 12
Thus the atolls and the encircling reefs furnish us with clear, though indirect, evidence of changes in the physical geography of large parts of the earth's surface; and even, as my lamented friend, the late Professor Jukes, has suggested, give us indications of the manner in which some of the most puzzling facts connected with the distribution of animals have been brought about. For example, Australia and New Guinea are separated by Torres Straits, a broad belt of sea 100 or 120 miles wide. Nevertheless, there is in many respects a curious resemblance between the land animals which inhabit New Guinea and the land animals which inhabit Australia. But, at the same time, the marine shell-fish which are found in the shallow waters of the shores of New Guinea, are quite different from those which are met with upon the coasts of Australia. Now, the eastern end of Torres Straits is full of atolls, which, in fact, form the northern termination of the Great Barrier Reef which skirts the eastern coast of Australia. It follows, therefore, that the eastern end of Torres Straits is an area of depression, and it is very possible, and on many grounds highly probable, that, in former times, Australia and New Guinea were directly connected together, and that Torres Straits did not exist. If this were the case, the existence of cassowaries and of marsupial quadrupeds, both in New Guinea and in Australia, becomes intelligible; while the difference between the littoral molluscs of the north and the south shores of Torres Straits is readily explained by the great probability that, when the depression in question took place, and what was, at first, an arm of the sea became converted into a strait separating Australia from New Guinea, the northern shore of this new sea became tenanted with marine animals from the north, while the southern shore was peopled by immigrants from the already existing marine Australian fauna.
Inasmuch as the growth of the reef depends upon that of successive generations of coral polypes, and as each generation takes a certain time to grow to its full size, and can only separate its calcareous skeleton from the water in which it lives at a certain rate, it is clear that the reefs are records not only of changes in physical geography, but of the lapse of time. It is by no means easy, however, to estimate the exact value of reef-chronology, and the attempts which have been made to determine the rate at which a reef grows vertically, have yielded anything but precise results. A cautious writer, Mr. Dana, whose extensive study of corals and coral reefs makes him an eminently competent judge, states his conclusion in the following terms:--
"The rate of growth of the common branching madrepore is not over one and a half inches a year. As the branches are open, this would not be equivalent to more than half an inch in height of solid coral for the whole surface covered by the madrepore; and, as they are also porous, to not over three-eighths of an inch of solid limestone. But a coral plantation has large bare patches without corals, and the coral sands are widely distributed by currents, part of them to depths over one hundred feet where there are no living corals; not more than one-sixth of the surface of a reef region is, in fact, covered with growing species. This reduces the three-eighths to _one-sixteenth_. Shells and other organic relics may contribute one-fourth as much as corals. At the outside, the average upward increase of the whole reef-ground per year would not exceed _one-eighth_ of an inch.
"Now some reefs are at least two thousand feet thick, which at one-eighth of an inch a year, corresponds to one hundred and ninety-two thousand years."[1]
[Footnote 1: Dana, "Manual of Geology," p. 591.]
Halve, or quarter, this estimate if you will, in order to be certain of erring upon the right side, and still there remains a prodigious period during which the ancestors of the existing coral polypes have been undisturbedly at work; and during which, therefore, the climatal conditions over the coral area must have been much what they are now.
And all this lapse of time has occurred within the most recent period of the history of the earth. The remains of reefs formed by coral polypes of different kinds from those which exist now, enter largely into the composition of the limestones of the Jurassic period; and still more widely different coral polypes have contributed their quota to the vast thickness of the carboniferous and Devonian strata. Then as regards the latter group of rocks in America, the high authority already quoted tells us:--
"The Upper Helderberg period is eminently the coral reef period of the palaeozoic ages. Many of the rocks abound in coral, and are as truly coral reefs as the modern reefs of the Pacific. The corals are sometimes standing on the rocks in the position they had when growing: others are lying in fragments, as they were broken and heaped by the waves; and others were reduced to a compact limestone by the finer trituration before consolidation into rock. This compact variety is the most common kind among the coral reef rocks of the present seas; and it often contains but few distinct fossils, although formed in water that abounded in life. At the fall of the Ohio, near Louisville, there is a magnificent display of the old reef. Hemispherical _Favosites_, five or six feet in diameter, lie there nearly as perfect as when they were covered by their flower-like polypes; and besides these, there are various branching corals, and a profusion of _Cyathophiyllia_, or cup-corals."[1]
[Footnote 1: Dana, "Manual of Geology," p. 272.]
Thus, in all the great periods of the earth's history of which we know anything, a part of the then living matter has had the form of polypes, competent to separate from the water of the sea the carbonate of lime necessary for their own skeletons. Grain by grain, and particle by particle, they have built up vast masses of rock, the thickness of which is measured by hundreds of feet, and their area by thousands of square miles. The slow oscillations of the crust of the earth, producing great changes in the distribution of land and water, have often obliged the living matter of the coral-builders to shift the locality of its operations; and, by variation and adaptation to these modifications of condition, its forms have as often changed. The work it has done in the past is, for the most part, swept away, but fragments remain; and, if there were no other evidence, suffice to prove the general constancy of the operations of Nature in this world, through periods of almost inconceivable duration.
VII.
ON THE METHODS AND RESULTS OF ETHNOLOGY.
Ethonology is the science which determines the distinctive characters of the persistent modifications of mankind; which ascertains the distribution of those modifications in present and past times, and seeks to discover the causes, or conditions of existence, both of the modifications and of their distribution. I say "persistent" modifications, because, unless incidentally, ethnology has nothing to do with chance and transitory peculiarities of human structure. And I speak of "persistent modifications" or "stocks" rather than of "varieties," or "races," or "species," because each of these last well-known terms implies, on the part of its employer, a preconceived opinion touching one of those problems, the solution of which is the ultimate object of the science; and in regard to which, therefore, ethnologists are especially bound to keep their minds open and their judgments freely balanced.
Ethnology, as thus defined, is a branch of anthropology, the great science which unravels the complexities of human structure; traces out the relations of man to other animals; studies all that is especially human in the mode in which man's complex functions are performed; and searches after the conditions which have determined his presence in the world. And anthropology is a section of zoology, which again is the animal half of biology--the science of life and living things.
Such is the position of ethnology, such are the objects of the ethnologist. The paths or methods, by following which he may hope to reach his goal, are diverse. He may work at man from the point of view of the pure zoologist, and investigate the anatomical and physiological peculiarities of Negroes, Australians, or Mongolians, just as he would inquire into those of pointers, terriers, and turnspits,--"persistent modifications" of man's almost universal companion. Or he may seek aid from researches into the most human manifestation of humanity--language; and assuming that what is true of speech is true of the speaker--a hypothesis as questionable in science as it is in ordinary life--he may apply to mankind themselves the conclusions drawn from a searching analysis of their words and grammatical forms.
Or, the ethnologist may turn to the study of the practical life of men; and relying upon the inherent conservatism and small inventiveness of untutored mankind, he may hope to discover in manners and customs, or in weapons, dwellings, and other handiwork, a clue to the origin of the resemblances and differences of nations. Or, he may resort to that kind of evidence which is yielded by history proper, and consists of the beliefs of men concerning past events, embodied in traditional, or in written, testimony. Or, when that thread breaks, archaeology, which is the interpretation of the unrecorded remains of man's works, belonging to the epoch since the world has reached its present condition, may still guide him. And, when even the dim light of archaeology fades, there yet remains paleontology, which, in these latter years, has brought to daylight once more the exuvia of ancient populations, whose world was not our world, who have been buried in river beds immemorially dry, or carried by the rush of waters into caves, inaccessible to inundation since the dawn of tradition.
Along each, or all, of these paths the ethnologist may press towards his goal; but they are not equally straight, or sure, or easy to tread. The way of palaeontology has but just been laid open to us. Archaeological and historical investigations are of great value for all those peoples whose ancient state has differed widely from their present condition, and who have the good or evil fortune to possess a history. But on taking a broad survey of the world, it is astonishing how few nations present either condition. Respecting five-sixths of the persistent modifications of mankind, history and archaeology are absolutely silent. For half the rest, they might as well be silent for anything that is to be made of their testimony. And, finally, when the question arises as to what was the condition of mankind more than a paltry two or three thousand years ago, history and archaeology are, for the most part, mere dumb dogs. What light does either of these branches of knowledge throw on the past of the man of the New World, if we except the Central Americans and the Peruvians; on that of the Africans, save those of the valley of the Nile and a fringe of the Mediterranean; on that of all the Polynesian, Australian, and central Asiatic peoples, the former of whom probably, and the last certainly, were, at the dawn of history, substantially what they are now? While thankfully accepting what history has to give him, therefore, the ethnologist must not look for too much from her.
Is more to be expected from inquiries into the customs and handicrafts of men? It is to be feared not. In reasoning from identity of custom to identity of stock the difficulty always obtrudes itself, that the minds of men being everywhere similar, differing in quality and quantity but not in kind of faculty, like circumstances must tend to produce like contrivances; at any rate, so long as the need to be met and conquered is of a very simple kind. That two nations use calabashes or shells for drinking-vessels, or that they employ spears, or clubs, or swords and axes of stone and metal as weapons and implements, cannot be regarded as evidence that these two nations had a common origin, or even that intercommunication ever took place between them; seeing that the convenience of using calabashes or shells for such purposes, and the advantage of poking an enemy with a sharp stick, or hitting him with a heavy one, must be early forced by nature upon the mind of even the stupidest savage. And when he had found out the use of a stick, he would need no prompting to discover the value of a chipped or wetted stone, or an angular piece of native metal, for the same object. On the other hand, it may be doubted whether the chances are not greatly against independent peoples arriving at the manufacture of a boomerang, or of a bow; which last, if one comes to think of it, is a rather complicated apparatus; and the tracing of the distribution of inventions as complex as these, and of such strange customs as betel-chewing and tobacco-smoking, may afford valuable ethnological hints.
Since the time of Leibnitz, and guided by such men as Humboldt, Abel Remusat, and Klaproth, Philology has taken far higher ground. Thus Prichard affirms that "the history of nations, termed Ethnology, must be mainly founded on the relations of their languages."
An eminent living philologer, August Schleicher, in a recent essay, puts forward the claims of his science still more forcibly:--
"If, however, language is the human [Greek: kat ezochhên], the suggestion arises whether it should not form the basis of any scientific systematic arrangement of mankind; whether the foundation of the natural classification of the genus Homo has not been discovered in it.
"How little constant are cranial peculiarities and other so-called race characters! Language, on the other hand, is always a perfectly constant diagnostic. A German may occasionally compete in hair and prognathism with a negro, but a negro language will never be his mother tongue. Of how little importance for mankind the so-called race characters are, is shown by the fact that speakers of languages belonging to one and the same linguistic family may exhibit the peculiarities of various races. Thus the settled Osmanli Turk exhibits Caucasian characters, while other so-called Tartaric Turks exemplify the Mongol type. On the other hand, the Magyar and the Basque do not depart in any essential physical peculiarity from the Indo-Germans, whilst the Magyar, Basque, and Indo-Germanic tongues are widely different. Apart from their inconstancy, again, the so-called race characters can hardly yield a scientifically natural system. Languages, on the other hand, readily fall into a natural arrangement, like that of which other vital products are susceptible, especially when viewed from their morphological side.... The externally visible structure of the cerebral and facial skeletons, and of the body generally, is less important than that no less material but infinitely more delicate corporeal structure, the function of which is speech. I conceive, therefore, that the natural classification of languages is also the natural classification of mankind. With language, moreover, all the higher manifestations of man's vital activity are closely interwoven, so that these receive due recognition in and by that of speech."[1]
[Footnote 1: August Schleicher. Ueber die Bedeutung der Sprache für die Naturgeschichte des Menschen, pp. 16-18. Weimar, 1858.]
Without the least desire to depreciate the value of philology as an adjuvant to ethnology, I must venture to doubt, with Rudolphi, Desmoulins, Crawfurd, and others, its title to the leading position claimed for it by the writers whom I have just quoted. On the contrary, it seems to me obvious that, though, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, unity of languages may afford a certain presumption in favour of the unity of stock of the peoples speaking those languages, it cannot be held to prove that unity of stock, unless philologers are prepared to demonstrate, that no nation can lose its language and acquire that of a distinct nation, without a change of blood corresponding with the change of language. Desmoulins long ago put this argument exceedingly well:--
"Let us imagine the recurrence of one of those slow, or sudden, political revolutions, or say of those secular changes which among different people and at different epochs have annihilated historical monuments and even extinguished tradition. In that case, the evidence, now so clear, that the negroes of Hayti were slaves imported by a French colony, who, by the very effect of the subordination involved in slavery, lost their own diverse languages and adopted that of their masters, would vanish. And metaphysical philosophers, observing the identity of Haytian French with that spoken on the shores of the Seine and the Loire, would argue that the men of St. Domingo with woolly heads, black and oily skins, small calves, and slightly bent knees, are of the same race, descended from the same parental stock, as the Frenchmen with silky brown, chestnut, or fair hair, and white skins. For they would say, their languages are more similar than French is to German or Spanish."[1]
[Footnote 1: Desmoulins, "Histoire Naturelle des Races Humaines," p. 345. 1826.]
It must not be imagined that the case put by Desmoulins is a merely hypothetical one. Events precisely similar to the transport of a body of Africans to the West India Islands, indeed, cannot have happened among uncivilized races, but similar results have followed the importation of bodies of conquerors among an enslaved people over and over again. There is hardly a country in Europe in which two or more nations speaking widely different tongues have not become intermixed; and there is hardly a language of Europe of which we have any right to think that its structure affords a just indication of the amount of that intermixture.
As Dr. Latham has well said:--
"It is certain that the language of England is of Anglo-Saxon origin, and that the remains of the original Keltic are unimportant. It is by no means so certain that the blood of Englishmen is equally Germanic. A vast amount of Kelticism, not found in our tongue, very probably exists in our pedigrees. The ethnology of France is still more complicated. Many writers make the Parisian a Roman on the strength of his language; whilst others make him a Kelt on the strength of certain moral characteristics, combined with the previous Kelticism of the original Gauls. Spanish and Portuguese, as languages, are derivations from the Latin; Spain and Portugal, as countries, are Iberic, Latin, Gothic, and Arab, in different proportions. Italian is modern Latin all the world over; yet surely there must be much Keltic blood in Lombardy, and much Etruscan intermixture in Tuscany.
"In the ninth century every man between the Elbe and the Niemen spoke some Slavonic dialect; they now nearly all speak German. Surely the blood is less exclusively Gothic than the speech."[1]
[Footnote 1: Latham, "Man and his Migrations," p. 171.]
In other words, what philologer, if he had nothing but the vocabulary and grammar of the French and English languages to guide him, would dream of the real causes of the unlikeness of a Norman to a Provençal, of an Orcadian to a Cornishman? How readily might he be led to suppose that the different climatal conditions to which these speakers of one tongue have so long been exposed, have caused their physical differences; and how little would he suspect that these are due (as we happen to know they are) to wide differences of blood.
Few take duly into account the evidence which exists as to the ease with which unlettered savages gain or lose a language. Captain Erskine, in his interesting "Journal of a Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific," especially remarks upon the "avidity with which the inhabitants of the polyglot islands of Melanesia, from New Caledonia to the Solomon Islands, adopt the improvements of a more perfect language than their own, which different causes and accidental communication still continue to bring to them;" and he adds that "among the Melanesian islands scarcely one was found by us which did not possess, in some cases still imperfectly, the decimal system of numeration in addition to their own, in which they reckon only to five."
Yet how much philological reasoning in favour of the affinity or diversity of two distinct peoples has been based on the mere comparison of numerals!
But the most instructive example of the fallacy which may attach to merely philological reasonings, is that afforded by the Feejeans, who are, physically, so intimately connected with the adjacent Negritos of New Caledonia, &c., that no one can doubt to what stock they belong, and who yet, in the form and substance of their language, are Polynesian. The case is as remarkable as if the Canary Islands should have been found to be inhabited by negroes speaking Arabic, or some other clearly Semitic dialect, as their mother tongue. As it happens, the physical peculiarities of the Feejeans are so striking, and the conditions under which they live are so similar to those of the Polynesians, that no one has ventured to suggest that they are merely modified Polynesians--a suggestion which could otherwise certainly have been made. But if languages may be thus transferred from one stock to another, without any corresponding intermixture of blood, what ethnological value has philology?--what security does unity of language afford us that the speakers of that language may not have sprung from two, or three, or a dozen, distinct sources?
Thus we come, at last, to the purely zoological method, from which it is not unnatural to expect more than from any other, seeing that, after all, the problems of ethnology are simply those which are presented to the zoologist by every widely distributed animal he studies. The father of modern zoology seems to have had no doubt upon this point. At the twenty-eighth page of the standard twelfth edition of the "Systema Naturae," in fact, we find:--
I. PRIMATES.
_Dentes primores incisores: superiores IV. paralleli, mammae pectorales II._
1. HOMO. Nosce te ipsum. Sapiens. 1. H. diurnus: _varians cultura, loco._ _Ferus_. Tetrapus, mutus, hirsutus.
* * * * *
_Americanus_ [Greek: a]. Rufus, cholericus, rectus--_Pilis_ nigris, rectis, crassis--_Naribus_ patulis--_Facie_ ephelitica: _Mento_ subimberbi. _Pertinax_, contentus, liber. _Pingit_ se lineis daedaleis rubris. _Regitur_ Consuetudine.
_Europaeus_ [Greek: b]. Albus sauguineus torosus. _Pilis_ flavescentibus, prolixis. _Oculis_ caeruleis. _Levis_, argutus, inventor. _Tegitur_ Vestimentis arctis. _Regitur_ Ritibus.
_Asiaticus_ [Greek: g]. Luridus, melancholicus, rigidus. _Pilis_ nigricantibus. _Oculis_ fuscis. _Severus_, fastuosus, avarus. _Tegitur_ Indumentis laxis. _Regitur_ Opinionibus.