Anthropology

89. The Couvade

The couvade is a custom to which the peasants of the Pyrenees adhered until a century or two ago. When a couple had a child, the wife got up and went about her daily work as well as she might, while the husband went to bed to lie-in in state and receive the visits of the neighbors. This was thought to be for the good of the baby.

The same custom is found among the Indians of Brazil. They believe that a violation of the custom would bring sickness or ill luck upon the child. They look upon the child as something new and delicate, a being requiring not only physical nurture but the superadded protection of this religious or magical practice.

The Basques of the Pyrenees and the Indians of Brazil are of different race, separate origins, and without any known historical contacts. The substantial identity of the custom among them therefore long ago led to its being explained as the result of the cropping out of an instinctive impulse of the human mind. Tylor, for instance, held that whenever a branch of humanity reached a certain hypothetical stage of development, namely, that phase in which the reckoning of descent from the mother began to transform into reckoning of descent from the father, the couvade tended to appear spontaneously as a natural accompaniment. The Basque peasants, of course, are a more advanced people than the cannibalistic Brazilian natives. But they are an old and a conservative people who have long lived in comparative isolation in their mountainous district; and thus, it might be argued, they retained the custom of the couvade as a survival from the earlier transitional condition.

According to this method of explanation, the occurrence of almost any custom, art, or belief among widely separated and unrelated peoples is likely to be the result of the similar working of the human mind under similar conditions. The cause of cultural identities and resemblances, especially among primitive or “nature” peoples, is not to be sought primarily in historical factors, such as common origin, migrations, the propaganda of religion, or the gradual diffusion of an idea, but is to be looked for in something inherent in humanity itself, in inborn psychological tendencies. This explanation is that of “Independent Evolution.” It is also known as the doctrine of “Elementary Ideas.”

Contrasting with this principle is that of borrowing—one people learning an institution or belief from another, or taking over a custom or invention. That borrowing has been considerably instrumental in shaping the cultures of the more advanced nations, is an obvious fact. People are Christians not through the spontaneous unfolding of the whole dogma and ritual of Christianity in each of them, nor even within their nation, but because of the historically documented spread of Christianity which is still going on. As a heathen people is converted by missionaries to-day, so our North European ancestors were converted by Romans, and the Romans by the Apostles and their followers. When historical records are available, cultural borrowing of this sort is generally easy to establish.

Borrowing can sometimes be shown as very likely even where direct evidence is lacking. If two peoples that possess an institution in common are known off-shoots one from the other, or if they have had numerous trade relations, it is hardly necessary to demonstrate the specific time and manner of transmission between them. Supposing that a religion, an alphabet, and perhaps a number of arts have passed from one nation to another, one would normally ask for little further evidence that a custom, such as the couvade, which they shared, had also been originated by one and borrowed by the other.

90. Proverbs

Even where contacts are more remote, the geographical setting of two peoples often makes borrowing seem likely. The custom of uttering proverbs, for instance, has a significant distribution. It seems astonishing that barbarous West African tribes should possess a stock of proverbs as abundant and pithy as those current in Europe. Not that the proverbs are identical. The negro lacks too many articles, and too many of our manners, to allude as we do. But he does share with us the habit of expressing himself on certain situations with brief current sayings of homely and instantly intelligible nature, that put a generality into specific and concrete form. Thus: “One tree does not make a forest”; “Run from the sword and hide in the scabbard”; “If the stomach is weak, do not eat cockroaches”; “Distant firewood is good firewood.”

The proverb tendency is a sufficiently general one to suggest its independent origin in Africa and Europe. One’s first reaction to the parallel is likely to be something like this: The negro and we have formulated proverbs because we are both human beings; the coining of proverbs is instinctive in humanity. So it might be maintained. However, as soon as the distribution of proverbs the world over is reviewed, it becomes evident that their coining cannot be spontaneous, since the native American race appears never to have devised a single true proverb. On the other side are the Europeans, Africans, Asiatics, and Oceanians who are addicted to the custom. Degree of civilization evidently has nothing to do with the matter, because in the Old World primitive and advanced peoples alike use proverbs; whereas in the New World wild hunting tribes as well as the most progressive nations like the Mayas have no proverbs. The only inference which the facts allow is that there must have been a time when proverbs were unknown anywhere—still “uninvented” by mankind. Then, somewhere in the Old World, they came into use. Perhaps it was a genius that struck off the first sayings to be repeated by his associates and then by his more remote environment. At any rate, the custom spread from people to people until it extended over almost all the eastern hemisphere. Some cause, however, such as geographical isolation, prevented the extension of the movement to the western hemisphere. The American Indians therefore remained proverbless because the invention was never transmitted to them. Here, accordingly, is a case of the very incompleteness of a distribution going far to illuminate the history of a culture trait. The lack of parallelism between the hemispheres disproves the explanation by instinctive independent origin. This negative conclusion in turn tends strongly to establish the probability that the custom was borrowed, perhaps from a single source, in the four eastern continents.

91. Geographic Distribution

Thus it appears that it is not always easy to settle the origin and history of the phenomena of culture. Evidently, many facts must be taken into consideration: above all, geographic distribution. Because a habit is so well ingrained in our life as to seem absolutely natural and almost congenital, it does not follow that it really is so. The vast majority of culture elements have been learned by each nation from other peoples, past and present. At the same time there are unexpected limits to the principle of borrowing. Transmission often operates over vast areas and for long periods but at other times ceases.

Two reflections arise. The first is the discouraging but salutary one that the history of civilization and its parts is an intricate matter, not to be validly determined by off-hand guesses. A second conclusion is that the geographic distribution of any culture element is always likely to be a fact of prime importance about it. It is because the Basques and the Brazilian Indians are geographically separate that there is fair prima facie probability of the couvade being the result of independent origin. It is because of another geographic fact, that proverbs are known throughout one hemisphere and lacking from the other, that it must be inferred that they represent a borrowed culture trait.

In the following pages a number of culture elements will be examined from the point of view of their distribution with the aim of determining how far each of the two principles of parallel invention and of borrowing may be inferred to have been operative in regard to them. In place of “independent origin” the terms “parallelism” or “convergence” will be generally used. As an equivalent of “borrowing” the somewhat less metaphorical word “diffusion” will be applied. Well known historic cases of diffusion, such as those of Christianity and Mohammedanism, of Roman law, of the printing press and steam engine and of the great modern mechanical inventions, will not be considered. It is however well to keep these numerous cases in the background of one’s mind as a constant suggestion that the principle of diffusion is an extremely powerful one and still active. In fact, the chief reason why early anthropologists did not make more use of this principle seems to have been their extreme familiarity with it. It was going on all about them, so that in dealing with prehistoric times or with remote peoples, they tended to overlook it. This was perhaps a natural error, since the communications of savages and their methods of transmission are so much more restricted than our own. Yet of course even savages shift their habitations and acquire new neighbors. At times they capture women and children from one another. Again they intermarry; and they almost invariably maintain some sort of trade relations with at least some of the adjacent peoples. Slow as diffusion might therefore be among them, it would nevertheless go on, and its lack of rapidity would be compensated by the immense durations of time in the prehistoric period. It is certain that the simpler inventions of primitive man generally did not travel with the rapidity of the printing press and telegraph and camera. But on the other hand, instead of a generation or a century, there would often be periods of a thousand or five thousand years for an invention or a custom to spread from one continent to another. There is thus every a priori reason why diffusion could be expected to have had a very large part in the formation of primitive and barbarous as well as advanced culture.

92. The Magic Flight

There is one folk-lore plot with a distribution that leaves little doubt as to its diffusion from a single source. This is the incident known as the Magic Flight or Obstacle Pursuit. It recounts how the hero, when pursued, throws behind him successively a whetstone, a comb, and a vessel of oil or other liquid. The stone turns into a mountain or precipice; the comb into a forest or thicket; the liquid into a lake or river. Each of these obstacles impedes the pursuer and contributes to the hero’s final escape. This incident has been found in stories told by the inhabitants of every continent except South America. Its distribution and probable spread are shown in Fig. 27.

While no two of the tales or myths containing the episode of the Magic Flight are identical, there can be no serious doubt as to a common source of the incident because of the co-existence of the three separate items that make it up. If a people in Asia and one in America each knew a story of a person who to impede a pursuer spilt water on the ground which magically grew into a vast lake, it would be dogmatic to insist on this as proof of a historical connection between the two far separated stories. Belief in the virtue of magic is world-wide, and it is entirely conceivable that from this common soil of magical beliefs the same episode might repeatedly have sprouted quite independently. The same reasoning would apply to the incident of the transformation of the stone and of the comb, as long as they occurred separately. The linking of the three items, however, enormously decreases the possibility of any two peoples having hit upon them separately. It would be stretching coincidence pretty far to believe that each people independently invented the triple complex. It is also significant that the number of impeding obstacles is almost always three. In the region of western Asia and Europe where the tale presumably originated, three is the number most frequently employed in magic, ritual, and folk-lore. Among the American Indians, however, three is scarcely ever thus used, either four or five replacing it according to the custom pattern of the particular tribe. Nevertheless, several American tribes depart from their usual pattern and mention only three obstacles in telling this story.

This instance introduces a consideration that is of growing importance in culture history determinations. If a trait is composed of several elements which stand in no necessary relation to each other, and these several elements recur among distinct or remote peoples in the same combination, whereas on the basis of mere accident it could be expected that the several elements would at times combine and at other times crop out separately, one can be reasonably sure of the real identity and common origin of the complex trait. When a trait is simple, it is more difficult to be positive that the apparent resemblance amounts to identity. Such doubt applies for instance to isolated magical practices. A custom found among separate nations, such as sprinkling water to produce rain, may be the result of an importation of the idea from one people to another. Or again it may represent nothing more than a specific application of the assumed principle that an act similar to a desired effect will produce that effect. This magical belief is so broad, and so ramifying in its exemplifications, as to become almost impossible to use as a criterion. The essential basis of magic may conceivably have been developed at a single culture center in the far distant past and have been disseminated thence over the whole world. Or again, for all that it is possible to prove, magic beliefs may really be rooted instinctively in the human mind and grow thence over and over again with inevitability. There seems no present way of determining which interpretation is correct.

93. Flood Legends

This situation applies to many widely spread concepts in folk-lore. Flood myths of some sort, for instance, are told by probably the majority of human nations. In the early days of the science, this wide distribution of flood myths was held to prove the actuality of a flood, or to be evidence of the descent of all mankind from a single nation which had once really experienced it. Such explanations are too obviously naïve to require refutation to-day. Yet it is difficult to interpret the wide prevalence of flood myths, either as spontaneous growth from out the human mind, or as diffusion from a single devising of the idea. Much of the difficulty is caused by the fact that one cannot be sure that the various flood myths are identical. Some peoples have the flood come after the earth is formed and inhabited, and have it almost destroy the human race. Other nations begin their cosmology with a flood. For them, water was in existence before there was an earth, and the problem for the gods or creative animals was to make the world. This, according to some American Indian versions, they finally accomplished by having one of their number dive to the bottom and bring up a few grains of sand which were then expanded to constitute terra firma. The first type of story is evidently a true “flood” myth; the second might better be described as a concept of “primeval water.” The difficulty is enhanced by the fact that the two types are sometimes found amalgamated in a single mythology. Thus the Hebrew account begins with the primeval waters but subsequent to the formation of the earth the deluge covers it. So, according to some American tribes, the flood came after the earth, but the waters remained until after the diving. It is clear that flood stories are more shifting than the Magic Flight episode. They may conceivably all be variations of a single theme which has gradually come to differentiate greatly. But again, several distinct concepts—primeval water, flood, the diving animals, the ark—may have been evolved in different parts of the world, each developing in its own way, and traveling so far, in some cases, as to meet and blend with others. This last interpretation is favored by some of the facts of distribution: the prevalence of the diving concept in America, for instance, and the absence of flood myths from much of Africa.

There is a vast amount of folk-lore recorded, and much of it has lent itself admirably to the working out of its historical origins, so far as limited regions are concerned. Folk-lorists are often able to prove that one tale originated in India and was carried into mediæval Europe, or that another was probably first devised on the coast of British Columbia and then disseminated across the Rocky mountains to the interior tribes of Indians. When it comes to intercontinental and world-wide distribution, however, difficulties of the sort just set forth in regard to flood myths become stronger and stronger. While the most interesting mythical ideas are those which are world-wide, it is in these that uncertainty between origin by diffusion or parallelism is greatest. The Magic Flight therefore constitutes a grateful exception. It opens the door to a hope that more assiduous analysis and comparison may lead to the accurate determination of the source and history of other common and fundamental myths.

94. The Double-headed Eagle

An unexpected story of wandering attaches to the figure or symbol of the double-headed eagle. Like many other elements of civilization, this goes back to an Egyptian beginning. One of the great gods of Egypt was the sun. The hawk and vulture were also divine animals. A combination was made showing the disk of the sun with a long narrow wing on each side. Or the bird itself was depicted with outstretched wings but its body consisting of the sun disk. These were striking figures of considerable æsthetic and imaginative appeal. From Egypt the design was carried in the second millenium B.C. to the Assyrians of Mesopotamia and to the Hittites of Asia Minor. A second head was added, perhaps to complete the symmetry of the figure. Just as a wing and a foot went out from each side of the body or disk, so now there was a head facing each way. This double-headed bird symbol was carved on cliffs in Asia Minor. Here the pictures remained, no doubt wondered at but uncopied, for two thousand years. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries after Christ, the Turkish princes, feeling the symbol to be a fit emblem of sovereignty, began stamping it on their coins. The later Crusaders brought these coins, or the idea of the pattern, back with them to Europe, where the mediæval art of heraldry was flourishing. The double-headed eagle was a welcome addition to the lions and griffins with which artists were emblazoning the coats of arms of the feudal nobility. The meaning of sovereignty remaining attached to the figure, the device before long became indicative of the imperial idea. This is the origin of its use as a symbol in the late empires of Austro-Hungary and Russia.

Four hundred years ago Charles V was king of Spain and Austria and Holy Roman emperor of Germany. It was in his reign that Cortez and Pizarro conquered Mexico and Peru. Thus the symbol of the double-headed eagle was carried into the New World and the Indians became conversant with it. Even some of the wilder tribes learned the figure, although they were perhaps more impressed with it as a decorative motive than as an emblem. At any rate, they introduced it into their textiles and embroideries. The Huichol in the remote mountains of Mexico, who use the design thus, seem to believe that their ancestors had always been conversant with the figure. But such a belief of course proves no more than did the ignorance of European heraldists of the fact that their double-headed eagle came to them from Asia Minor and ultimately from Egypt. No pre-Columbian representation of the two-headed eagle is known from Mexico. The conclusion can therefore hardly be escaped that this apparently indigenous textile pattern of the modern Huichol is also to be derived from its far source in ancient Egypt of whose existence they have never heard.

95. The Zodiac

The foregoing example should not establish the impression that the main source of all culture is to be sought in Egypt. Many other ancient and modern countries have made their contribution. It is to the Chinese, for instance, that we owe silk, porcelain, and gun powder. The ancient Sumerians and Babylonians, on the lower course of the Tigris and Euphrates, moved toward definite cultural progress about as early as the Egyptians, and have perhaps contributed as many elements to the civilization of to-day.

One of these is the zodiac. This is the concept of dividing the path of the sun, moon, and planets around the heavens into twelve equal parts, each named after a constellation. The series runs: ram, bull, twins, crab, lion, virgin, scales, scorpion, archer, goat, water-carrier, fishes. Constellations, indeed, had begun to be named at a very early time, as is clear from the practice being common to all mankind. But the specific arrangement of these twelve constellations as a measure of the movement of the heavenly bodies seems to have made its first appearance among the Chaldæan Babylonians about a thousand years before Christ. From them the Persians, and then the Greeks, learned the zodiac; and with its introduction to the Roman Empire it became part of the fund of knowledge common to the whole of western civilization. It does not appear to have been accepted by the Egyptians until Roman imperial times. Knowledge of the zodiac also spread eastward to India. It seems to have been carried as far as China by Buddhist missionaries, but failed to be seriously adopted in that country until its reintroduction by Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century.

The Chinese long before had invented a series of twelve signs which has sometimes been called a zodiac, and gradually transmitted it to the adjacent natives of Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Turkistan, and Tibet. This seems to be of independent origin from the western or Babylonian zodiac. It appears to have been devised to designate the hours, then applied to other periods of time, and finally to the heavens. Its path through the sky is the reverse of the western zodiac; and its signs are specifically different: rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, serpent, horse, sheep, monkey, hen, dog, and pig. At most, therefore, it would seem that there might have penetrated to China from the west the idea of dividing time or space into twelve units and assigning to each of these the name of an animal. The working out and utilization of the idea were native Chinese.

Already in ancient times the pictures of the twelve constellations of the western zodiac began to be abbreviated and reduced to symbols. These gradually become more and more conventional, although evidences of their origin are still visible. The sign of the ram, for instance, as we employ it in almanacs, shows the downward curling horns of this animal; that for the ox, his rising horns; for the archer, his arrow, and so on. These cursive symbols, once they became fixed, underwent some travels of their own which carried them to unexpected places. The Negroes of the west coast of Africa make gold finger rings ornamented with the twelve zodiacal symbols in their proper sequence. They seem ignorant of the meaning, in fact do not possess sufficient astronomical knowledge to be able to understand the use of the signs. It also remains uncertain whether they learned the set of symbols from European navigators or from the Arabs that have penetrated the northern half of Africa. Nevertheless it is the true zodiac which they portray, even though only as a decorative pattern.

There has been some assertion that the zodiac was known to the more advanced Middle American Indians between Arizona and Peru, but the claim has also been denied. There does appear to have been at least one series of animal signs used by the Mayas of Yucatan in an astronomical connection. It is not known that this series served the true zodiacal function of noting the positions of the heavenly bodies. Further, the Maya series consists of thirteen instead of twelve symbols, and the figures present only distant resemblances to the Old World zodiac. There is only one that is the same as in the Old World zodiac: the scorpion. The relationship of the Maya and Old World series is therefore unproved, and probably fictitious. The case however possesses theoretical interest in that it illustrates the criteria of the determination of culture relationships.

The Mexican zodiac would unquestionably be interpreted as a derivative from the Asiatic one, even though its symbols departed somewhat from those of the latter, provided that the similar symbols came in the same order. The Asiatic ram might well be replaced by a Mexican deer, the lion by a wildcat, and the virgin by a maize goddess. And if the deer, the wildcat, and the maize goddess came in first, fifth, and sixth place, it would be almost compulsory to look upon them as superficially altered equivalents of the Old World ram, lion, and virgin. It is conceivable enough that similar individual symbols might independently come into use in remote parts of the world. But it is practically impossible that a series of symbols should be put into the same arbitrary sequence independently. As a mere matter of mathematical probability there would be no more than an infinitesimal chance of such a complex coincidence. If therefore the sequential identity of the American series and the Old World zodiac should ever be proved,[14] it would be necessary to believe that this culture element was somehow carried into the Middle American regions from Asia, either across northern America or across the Pacific.

Identity of sequence failing, there might still remain an instance of partial convergence. It is within the range of possibility that the Mayas, who were painstaking astronomers and calculators, and who like ourselves named the stars and constellations after animals, arranged a series of these as a mnemonic or figurative aid in their calendrical reckoning. This, however, would be a case of only incomplete parallelism. The general concept would in that event have been developed independently, its specific working out remaining distinctive.

On accurate analysis of culture phenomena, this sort of result proves to be fairly frequent. When independent developments have occurred, there is a basic or psychological similarity, but concrete details are markedly different. On the other hand if a differentiation from a common source has taken place, so that true historical connection exists, some specific identity of detail almost always remains as evidence. It therefore follows that if only it is possible to get the facts fully enough, there is no theoretical reason why ultimately all cultural phenomena that are still hovering doubtfully between the parallelistic and the diffusionary interpretations should not be positively explainable one way or the other. This of course is not an assertion that such proof has been brought. In fact there are far more traits of civilization whose history remains to be elucidated than have yet been solved. But the attainments already achieved, and an understanding of the principles by which they have been made, encourage hope for an indefinite increase of knowledge regarding the origin and growth of the whole of human culture.

96. Measures

Another increment of civilization due to the Babylonians is a series of metric standardizations. These include the division of the circle into three hundred and sixty degrees, of the day into twenty-four (originally twelve) hours, of the hour into sixty minutes, of the foot into twelve inches, and the pound—as it survives in our troy weight—into twelve ounces. It is apparent that the system involved in these measures is based on the number twelve and its multiple sixty. The weights current in the ancient Near East also increased by sixties. On these weights were based the ancient money values. The Greek mina, Hebrew maneh, approximately a pound, comprised sixty shekels (or a hundred Athenian drachmas), and sixty minas made a talent. A talent of silver and one of gold possessed different values, but the weight was the same. This system the Greeks derived from Asia Minor and Phœnicia. Their borrowing of the names, as well as the close correspondence of the actual weight of the units, evidences their origin in Babylonia or adjacent Aramæa.

The duodecimal method of reckoning was carried west, became deeply ingrained during the Roman Empire, and has carried down through the Middle Ages to modern times. It would be going too far to say that every division of units of measure into twelve parts can be traced directly to Babylonia. Now and then new standards were arbitrarily fixed and new names given them. But even when this occurred, the old habit of reckoning by twelves for which the Babylonians were responsible, was likely to reassert itself in competition with the decimal system. Modern coinage systems have become prevailingly decimal, but it is only a short time ago that in south Germany 60 kreuzer still made a gulden; and the twelve pence of the English shilling obviously suggest themselves.

Certain of these metric units became fixed more than two thousand years ago and have descended to us by an unbroken tradition. The Babylonian degrees, minutes, and seconds, for instance, became an integral part of the ancient astronomy, were taken up by the Greeks, incorporated by them in their development of the system of astronomy known as the Ptolemaic, and thus became a part of Roman, Arab, and mediæval European science. When a few centuries ago, beginning with the introduction of the Copernican point of view, astronomy launched forward into a new period of progress, the old system of reckoning was so deeply rooted that it was continued without protest. Had the first truly scientific beginnings of astronomy taken place as late as those of chemistry, it is extremely doubtful whether we should now be reckoning 360 degrees in the circumference of the circle. The decimal system would almost certainly have been applied.

The last few examples may give the impression that cultural diffusion takes place largely in regard to names and numbers. They may arouse the suspicion that the intrinsic elements of inventions and accomplishments are less readily spread. This is not the case. In fact it has happened time and again in the history of civilization that the substance of an art or a knowledge has passed from one people to another, while an entirely new designation for the acquisition has been coined by the receiving people. The English names of the seven days of the week (§ 125) are a case in point. If stress seems to have been laid here on names and numbers, it is not because they are more inclined to diffusion, or most important, but because their diffusion is more easily traced. They often provide an infallible index of historical connection when a deficiency of historical records would make it difficult, perhaps impossible, to prove that the common possession of the thing itself went back to a single source. If historical records are silent, as they are only too often, on the origin of a device among a people, the occurrence of the same device at an earlier time among another people may strongly suggest that it was transmitted from these. But the indication is far from constituting a proof because of the theoretical possibility that the later nation might have made the invention independently. It is chiefly when the device is complex and the relation of its parts identical that the probability of diffusion approaches surety. If however not only the thing but its name also are shared by distinct nations, doubt is removed. It is obvious that peoples speaking unrelated languages will not coincide one time in a thousand in using the same name for the same idea independently of each other. The play of accident is thus precluded in such cases and a connection by transmission is established. In fact the name is the better touchstone. An invention may be borrowed and be given a home-made name. But a foreign name would scarcely be adopted without the object being also accepted.

97. Divination

One other Babylonian invention may be cited on account of its curious history. This is the pseudo-science of predicting the outcome of events by examination of the liver of animals sacrificed to the gods. A system of such divination, known as hepatoscopy, was worked out by the Babylonian priests perhaps by 2,000 B.C. Their rules are known from the discovery of ancient clay models of the liver with its several lobes, each part being inscribed with its significance according as it might bear such and such appearance. In some way which is not yet wholly understood, this system was carried, like the true arch, from the Babylonians to the Etruscans. As there are definite ancient traditions which brought the Etruscans into Italy from Asia, the gap is however lessened. The Etruscans, who were evidently addicted to priestly magic, carried on this liver divination alongside another method, that of haruspicy or foretelling from the flight or actions of birds. Both systems were learned from them by the Romans, according to Roman tradition itself.

With the spread of Christianity, hepatoscopy and haruspicy died out in the west. But meanwhile they had been carried in the opposite direction from their Babylonian source of origin, and became established in eastern Asia and finally, in somewhat modified form, among remote uncivilized peoples. The pagan priests of Borneo and the Philippines even to-day are foretelling the future by observing the flight of birds and examining the gall bladder—an organ intimately associated with the liver—of sacrificial animals. If these primitive Malaysian peoples had always remained uninfluenced by higher cultures, their divinatory customs might be imputed to independent invention. They live, however, at no great distance from the Asiatic mainland, and are known to have been subjected to heavy cultural influences from China, Arabia, and especially India. Four centuries ago, to cite only a few specific instances, the Philippine chieftains went under the title of rajah, the Hindu word for king. In the southern Philippine islands there are “sultans” to-day. In all parts of the Philippines as well as Borneo, even among the rude tribes of the interior mountains, Chinese jars imported centuries ago are treasured as precious heirlooms. With these streams of higher culture flowing into the Malaysian islands, the only reasonable conclusion is that the arts of liver and bird divination were also imported. In fact, it seems probable that the broader custom of sacrificing animals to the gods and spirits, a custom to which the pagan Malaysians still adhere, is a part of the same wave of influence from the Orient which has so deeply stamped the Homeric poems and the Old Testament. Although theoretically it is not surprising that hepatoscopy and haruspicy still flourish among some backward and marginally situated peoples, yet, in the concrete and at first blush, it is striking to find that an institution which was active in Babylonia three or four thousand years ago should still maintain an unbroken life in Borneo. Evidently the diffusion principle reaches far and long.

Another method of foretelling, which has spread equally far, although its flow has been mainly from the east westward, is scapulimancy, divination from the cracks that develop in scorched shoulder blades. This seems to have originated in ancient China with the heating of tortoise shells; had spread by the third century after Christ to Japan, where deer shoulder blades were employed; and is found to-day among the Koryak and Chukchi of northeasternmost Siberia, who utilize the same bones from seals and reindeer respectively. Elsewhere domestic animals, above all the sheep, furnish the proper shoulder blade. All the central Asiatic nations as far south as the Tibetans and Lolos are addicted to the custom, which had official status with the Mongol rulers in the thirteenth century, but must have been older, since it was in vogue among the Byzantine Greeks two hundred years earlier. The practice spread over practically all Europe, where it flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and still lingers among belated rural populations; to Morocco and perhaps other parts of north Africa; and in Asia to South Arabia, Afghanistan, and westernmost India. Scapulimancy was not known to the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans; it seems not to have penetrated far into India and not at all into the countries and islands to the east of India, which are sheepless regions; and it did not obtain a foothold in North America, where sheep and other tame animals were also not kept. It appears therefore that the custom, after a period of somewhat wavering formation in eastern Asia, crystallized into an association with the domesticated sheep, forming a true culture “complex,” and was then diffused almost as far as this animal.

98. Tobacco

The speed with which inventions sometimes diffuse over large areas is in marked contrast to the slowness with which they travel on other occasions. The art or habit of smoking originated in tropical America where the tobacco plant is indigenous. From this middle region the custom spread, like agriculture, pottery, and weaving, in both directions over most of north and south America. Originally, it would seem, a tobacco leaf was either rolled on itself to form a rude cigar, or was stuffed, cigarette fashion, into a reed or piece of cane. Columbus found the West Indians puffing at cigars. In the Southwestern United States, the natives smoked from hollow reeds. Farther into the United States, both to the east and west, the reed had become a manufactured tube of wood or stone or pottery. This tubular pipe, something like a magnified cigarette holder, has the bowl enlarged at one end to receive the tobacco. It has to be held more or less vertically. This form has survived to the present day among the California Indians. As the tubular pipe spread into the central and eastern United States, it was elaborated. The bowl was made to rise from the top of the pipe, instead of merely forming its end. This proved a convenience, for the pipe had now no longer to be pointed skyward to be smoked. Here then was a pipe with a definite bowl; but its derivation from the straight tubular pipe is shown by the fact that the bowl was most frequently set not at the end of the stem, as we “automatically” think a pipe should be, but near its middle. The bowl evidently represented a secondary addition which there seemed no more reason to place at the end than in the middle of the pipe; and the latter happened to become the fashion.

All this evolution took place at least a thousand years ago, probably much longer. Elaborate stone pipes have been discovered in the earthworks left by the Mound Builders of the Ohio Valley, a people whose very existence had been forgotten when the whites first came. Californian stone pipes occur well down toward the bottom of shell mounds estimated to have required three or four thousand years to accumulate.

Here and there this slow diffusion suffered checks. In the Andean region of South America tobacco came into competition with coca, a plant whose leaf was chewed. The effect of the contained alkaloid is to prevent fatigue and hunger. Of the two, coca triumphed over tobacco, possibly because its action is more drug-like. In North America, on the other hand, tribes that had not adopted maize and bean agriculture, sometimes tilled tobacco patches. With them, tobacco cultivation had outstripped the spread of so important an institution as food agriculture. In the extreme parts of North America, climatic factors checked the growth of tobacco, either wild or cultivated. Where the supply was scarce, it was either diluted with pulverized tree bark, as by many tribes of the central United States, or it was eaten, as by a number of groups on the Pacific coast. To these latter, tobacco seemed too precious to set fire to and lightly puff away. They mixed it with lime from burnt shells and swallowed it. Taken in this form, a small quantity produces a powerful effect. In the farthest north of the continent, even this device had not obtained a foothold. The development of intertribal trade was too slender and intermittent for anything but valuables, let alone an article of daily consumption, to be transported over long distances. The result was that the Eskimo, when first discovered, knew nothing of tobacco or pipes.

The use of tobacco was quickly carried to the Old World by the Spaniards, and before long all Europe was smoking. Throughout that continent, irrespective of language, the plant is known by modifications of the Spanish name tabaco, which in turn seems based on a native American name for cigar. By the Spaniards and Portuguese, and later also by the Arabs, the habit of smoking was carried to various points on the shores of Africa, Asia, and the East Indies. Thence it spread inland. Native African tribes, and others in New Guinea, who had never seen a white man, have been found not only growing and smoking tobacco, but firmly believing that their ancestors from time immemorial had done so. This is a characteristic illustration of the short-livedness of group memory and the unreliability of oral tradition.

In northeastern Siberia, where the Russians introduced tobacco, a special form of pipe came into use. It has a narrow bowl flaring at the top. Seen from above, this bowl looks like a disk with a rather small hole in the center. In profile it is almost like a capital T. It is set on the end of the pipe-stem. This stem may be straight or flattened and curved. This form of pipe, along with tobacco as a trade article, crossed Behring Strait and was taken up by the Alaska Eskimo. That this pipe is not of Eskimo origin is shown by its close resemblance to the Chukchi pipe of Siberia. The fact that it is impossible for the Eskimo to grow tobacco corroborates the late introduction, as does the Alaska Eskimo name: tawak. In short, smoking reached the Eskimo only after having made the round of the globe. Originating in Middle America, the custom spread very anciently to its farthest native limits without being able to penetrate to the Eskimo. As soon as the Spaniards appeared on the scene, the custom started on a fresh career of travel and rolled rapidly eastward about the globe until it reëntered America in the hitherto non-smoking region of Alaska.

A second invasion of America by a non-American form of pipe occurred in the eastern United States. The old pipe of this region, as already stated, had its bowl set well back from the end of the stem. The whole object thus had nearly the shape of an inverted capital T, whereas the European pipe might be compared to an L laid on its back. After the English settlers had become established on the Atlantic coast, a tomahawk pipe was introduced by them for trade purposes. This was a metal hatchet with the butt of the blade hollowed out into a bowl which connected with a bore running through the handle. One end of the blade served to chop, the other to smoke. The hatchet handle was also the pipe stem. The combination implement could be used as a weapon in war and as a symbol of peace in council. This doubleness of purpose caused it to appeal to the Indian. The heads of these iron tomahawk pipes were made in England for the Indian trade. They became so popular that those natives who were out of reach of established traders, or who were too poor to buy the metal hatchet-pipes, began to imitate them in the stone which their forefathers had used. In the Missouri valley, a generation ago, among tribes like the Sioux and the Blackfeet, imitation tomahawk pipes, which would never have withstood usage as hatchets, were being made of red catlinite together with the standard, native, inverted-T pipes. One of the two coexisting forms represented a form indigenous to the region since a thousand years or more, the other an innovation developed in Europe as the result of the discovery of America and then reintroduced among the aborigines. Diffusion sometimes follows unexpectedly winding routes.

99. Migrations

It may seem strange that with all the reference to diffusion in the foregoing pages, there has been so little mention of migration. The reason is that migrations of peoples are a special and not the normal means of culture spread. They form the crass instances of the process, easily conceived by a simple mind. That a custom travels as a people travels with it, is something that a child can understand. The danger is in stopping thought there and invoking a national migration for every important culture diffusion, whereas it is plain that most culture changes have occurred through subtler and more gradual operations. The Mongols overran vast areas of Asia and Europe without seriously modifying the civilization of those tracts. The accretions that most influenced them, such as writing and Buddhism, came to them by the quieter and more pervasive process of peaceful penetration, in which but few individuals were active. We are all aware that printing and the steam engine, the doctrine of evolution and the habit of riming verses, have spread through western civilization without conquests or migrations, and that each year’s fashions flow out from Paris in the same way. When however it is a question of something remote, like the origin of Chinese civilization, it is only necessary for it to be pointed out that the early forms of Chinese culture bear certain resemblances to the early culture of Mesopotamia, and we are sure to have some one producing a theory that marches the Chinese out of the west with their culture packed away in little bundles on their backs. That is far more picturesque, of course, more appealing to the emotions, than to conceive of a slow, gradual transfusion stretching over a thousand years. In proportion as the known facts are few, imagination soars unchecked. It is not because migrations of large bodies of men are rare or wholly negligible in their influence on civilization that they have been touched so lightly here, but because we all tend, through the romantic and sensationalistic streak in us, to think more largely in terms of them than the sober truth warrants. It is in culture-history as in geology: the occasional eruptions, quakings, and other cataclysms stir the mind, but the work of change is mainly accomplished by quieter processes, going on unceasingly, and often almost imperceptible until their results accumulate.