Ethnology

ETHNOLOGY. - It is the science that studies the cultural manifestations of primitive populations.

I. Ethnology and Its Task

There has often been confusion among the terms anthropology, ethnography and ethnology, which in some nations are still used interchangeably and cause a confusion harmful to the discipline, which, as an independent science, is still young.

Anthropology studies man under the anatomical and physiological
and deals with the general
problems of the human
family connected with
this study: the origin,
the classification and the intermixture of the different
races. Anthropology belongs to the
natural sciences,
with which it has the
method in common.
Ethnography limits itself
to gathering information on the manifestations of the
psychic life of
peoples: economy,
sociology, religion, art, language, etc. The systematization and the comparison of these data, the study
of the formation of the various cultures, of their development
and of their fusion, that is, their history, constitute the
task of ethnology, as etymology also indicates: ἔθνος
= people, and λόγος = discourse, reasoning. In recent
decades ethnology has ever better defined
its object of study - the cultural manifestations
of living primitive populations -, has detached itself
from anthropology, to which it had been joined for
quite a long time, and tends to forge ever closer
ties with prehistory, which studies the primitive
populations that have disappeared. Ethnology and prehistory are
historical disciplines, because they study the spiritual
manifestations of man; to them the
method of the natural sciences is not applicable, but
only the historical method.

II. ETHNOLOGY UNITED WITH HISTORY, WITH GEOGRAPHY AND WITH
STUDY OF RACES. - Ethnology as an independent discipline
is rather recent, although ethnographic information,
often good and accurate, on the customs and habits of peoples
is already found in the ancient Chinese, Egyptian, Greek
and Latin writers.

The Middle Ages ignored classical Greek literature and
therefore most of the ethnological knowledge
acquired by the ancients. However, the missionaries who first evangelized
Europe and then pushed on into the other parts
of the world, left in the manuals for confession,
in sermons, in the acts of councils precious ethnographic
information.

The great geographical discoveries greatly widened in
extent the field of ethnology, but not equally in depth,
because travelers, often driven only by material
interests, were concerned above all with lands
and treasures and regarded the natives as a hindrance
and a burden that they sometimes eliminated in brutal fashion.

The Enlightenment and the encyclopedists of the 18th century,
especially Montesquieu and Rousseau, often sought
to base their theories on ethnology, but their dilettantism,
precisely because it was lively and ingenious, was particularly
harmful.

The suppression and secularization of religious
congregations in many nations interrupted for almost a
century the missionary activity and limited ethnographic
information to the accounts of travelers alone. Little was attempted
in this period (1800-39) to study the spiritual manifestations
of peoples. Ethnology turned predominantly to the
study and classification of races, but the documentation
available was still insufficient and was moreover reworked
with little preparation. Thus hasty
syntheses were reached: from the correct observation that the community of language is often united with the community of
customs, usages and beliefs, the community of language was erroneously
identified with that of race
and there was talk not of an Indo-European, Semitic race, but
even of a Germanic, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon,
Gallic race. In this period J. A. Gobineau laid the foundations of racism in his work Essai sur l'inégalité
des races humaines (4 vols., Paris 1853-55).

III. ETHNOLOGY AS AN INDEPENDENT SCIENCE

With 1859
a completely new period begins for ethnology: the theory of degeneration
definitively collapses and the application of biological evolutionism to the
historical and moral disciplines begins (v. EVOLUZIONISMO CULTURALE).
IV. L'INIZIO DELL'INDIRIZZO STORICO (RATZEL, PE-
SCHEL, SCHURTZ, WEULE). - Around 1880 materialism, at least in its cruder forms, began to decline, and it began to be recognized that the method of anatomy and physiology is not applicable to the study of the manifestations of the spirit. In Germany the study of man's reactions to the external environment (territory, climate, flora, fauna) was begun — reactions more passive than active, which form the object of anthropic geography founded by Fr. Ratzel and O. Peschel and continued by H. Schurtz.

Historical investigation has shown that cultural elements have a single origin, but when they migrate from one people to another they are modified, perfected and transformed; sometimes they undergo changes so great as to appear unrecognizable when compared with the initial phase. H. Schurtz had already recorded sixty different forms for the African throwing knife alone. Analogous observations could be repeated for all the weapons, implements and utensils of the primitives studied thus far, and they would be further reinforced by passing on to sociology and the other manifold manifestations of spiritual culture. Explorers and Ethnologists have demonstrated that songs, myths, and religious practices arise in a given place, created by a particularly gifted individual, are accepted or rejected by the members of the same tribe, who in turn transform them. Newly reworked, these creations pass from one tribe to another; sometimes they become the cultural heritage of one and even of several populations, at other times, after a short while, they fall into disuse. One cannot predict with absolute certainty what will become of a given cultural element: it may survive or disappear because man acts freely.

V. THE CULTURE-HISTORICAL SCHOOL: THE CONCEPT OF "MIGRATION" AND THE BASIC CRITERIA OF "QUALITY" AND "QUANTITY" (FROBENIUS, FOY, ANKERMANN, GRÄBNER, SCHMIDT, KOPPERS, FINARD DE LA BOULLAVE, VAN BULCK). - If the evolutionist method had definitively prevailed, ethnology would have failed because it would have had to renounce its essential characteristic as a historical discipline. Fortunately, first in Germany and then in the other nations, beneficial reactions arose that restored the discipline to its proper place.

Fr. Ratzel, already mentioned for the impulse he gave to anthropic geography, must be considered the founder of the theory of migration, an eminently historical concept that is the basis of modern ethnology. From the study of material culture he arrived at the observation that an object (for example, a weapon), often very widespread across the earth, sometimes continuously and sometimes not, had a single origin, and that cultural elements, now distant and separated, arose at a single point and from there spread to different regions. The same author established the first kinship between a particular form of bow from Melanesia and one from West Africa, based on the criterion of form, also called that of quality, that is, on characteristic similarities not determined by the nature of the weapon or by the material of which it is made. The two forms of bows are characterized by a stick with an oval cross-section wound toward one end with slender strips of woven plant material; the string is made with a strip of cane called rattan and fastened to the end of the stick by a round bulb. The arrows have the same notching. This first discovery, which remained famous, was destined to overturn the study of ethnology, because it demonstrated the necessity of first establishing the place of origin of a given object or institution and only afterward investigating the psychological reason for this origin. The psychological method, proper to evolutionism, which saw inventions everywhere, was replaced by the historical method; the theory of convergence was replaced by that of migration, on which modern ethnology is founded.

Ratzel's pupils applied the new method with success: H. Schuetz, already mentioned, studied the diffusion of the throwing knife in Africa, K. Weule the diffusion of arrows. Leo Frobenius developed the theory of migrations in an organic and systematic way: from the observation that generally a common cultural relationship is not limited to one object or to isolated elements (such as the mere concordance in the form of bows and of some other weapon or tool) but extends to sociology, mythology, and religion, that is, to a whole organic complex, he introduced the second basic canon of the discipline: the criterion of quantity, which is "the totality of resemblances independent both of one another and of the environment, presented by the elements that compose two or more cultures." The more numerous these resemblances are, the greater is the probability that the cultures compared have the same origin. The same author was the first to formulate the concept of the cultural cycle which, reworked later by other authors, can be defined as "the cultural complex that comprises all the essential and necessary manifestations of human culture: ergology (material culture: dwelling, tools, weapons, etc.), economy, society, customs, religion" (W. Schmidt). The territory over which this cycle extends is called a cultural area. Cultural cycles generally migrate as a whole. W. Foy, B. Ankermann, Fr. Gräbner, W. Schmidt applied the new approach with great success to the study of the cultures of Oce-

(from Festschrift, Publication d'hommage officiel zu p. W. Schmidt, Vienna 1875)
ETHNOLOGY - Father Wilhelm Schmidt (b. at Hürde in Westphalia on 15 February 1868, living). He is the most authoritative representative of the historical-cultural school, whose method he developed and perfected, having already been reworked organically by Gräbner.

of Africa and South America. Above all W. Schmidt extended his investigations also to linguistics, to mythology and later to the entire complex of the religion of the most archaic and inaccessible cultures.

The historical method was perfected more and more. The first organic systematization given to it by Gräbner in his classic work Die Methode der Ethnologie was followed by the works of H. Finard de la Boullaye, G. van Bulck, W. Koppers and W. Schmidt. The historical approach exercised a beneficial influence in ethnological circles of all nations; in Germany it is followed, at least as a method of study, by almost all cultivators of the discipline and applied with success also to prehistory, above all by O. Menghin. In America a historical current, to which the best-known ethnologists belong, began several decades ago. Even in England and in France, where the tradition of evolutionism was stronger than elsewhere, the new approach was viewed with favor also by ethnologists who had been trained in the old evolutionist school.

VI. CLARIFICATION OF THE TERM "PRIMITIVE"

The so-called primitives are not remnants of decadent civilizations, but peoples who have had a stasis in their development (v. PRIMITIVI).

The study of the conditions that have favored such an arrest in culture would lead us into subjects that are largely extraneous to ethnology. Let us note only that all geographical, environmental and psychological conditions that prevent the formation of numerous populations are obstacles to the development and diffusion of civilization.

Geographical and environmental factors contrary to development are small islands such as those of the Pacific Ocean, divided by great expanses of water, narrow valleys enclosed by mountains, poor soil such as that of the deserts of Africa and Asia, the tundras of northern Asia and northern America, the humid forests of central Africa and South America, that is, the regions that are still inhabited and were until recently inhabited by primitive populations or by populations poor in culture. Favorable geographical factors are fertile regions with easy communication, and above all countries irrigated by great rivers. The most ancient civilizations in fact developed along the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile and the great rivers of India and China.

Among the elements contrary to progress, wars are to be remembered in a particularly special way: they impoverish the population especially of young people, who are the subjects best suited to the founding and continuation of the family, and they produce an imbalance between the number of men and that of women. In small populations these losses are felt even more gravely than in numerous ones and favor the passage from original monogamy to polygamy. Even the great poverty caused by the soil and famine contribute to shaking the foundations of the family. Polyandry - an institution that allows a woman to have several husbands - is often due to the impossibility in which men find themselves of paying the dowry necessary for the acquisition of a bride. Even among primitives the great impulses toward progress are due to brilliant, bold and far-sighted individualities - men and women - who have exercised their influence in the economic, religious, political, social, medical and linguistic fields. The existence of these personalities is by now an established fact, and travelers, missionaries, colonial officials and ethnologists have been witnesses to the activity of these exceptional men.

But great individualities need masses that accept, conserve and transmit the innovations they bring; without the masses, progress would have little resonance and the small, slow but very numerous improvements that perfect an invention would be lacking; indeed, the very impulse to perfection would be lacking. Too often it is forgotten that the various inventions and radical changes among primitives, as among peoples with a great civilization, are few; very often cultural elements are handed down in a conservative manner and are subject only to slow and continuous variants that perfect them and not to abrupt changes; the history of cultural elements teaches us this. And it is good that it is so, because if every generation claimed to make a tabula rasa of the results reached by the preceding one and to begin again ab ovo, we would all still be at the dawn of civilization. Moreover, the smaller a people is, the less possibility it has of having strong individualities; it may even be that it has none at all, and if they arise, they find no resonance. Many primitive populations are few in number, weak, isolated, and therefore in conditions suited to becoming rigid. Ethnological investigation has moreover brought to light another fact of capital importance: that within the very civilization of a people progress has not been equal in all respects, but often progress has been made in only one direction and regression in another. Thus the matriarchate discovered and perfected agriculture, but in many cases destroyed the family; totemism developed to a very great extent the technique of hunting and without doubt contributed equally to the progress of science and art, but it too weakened the family and substituted magic for religion; nomadic herders were the first to domesticate and raise animals, but in some points of religious and social life they in turn represent a regression compared with primitive populations. These non-harmonious developments - a civilization should progress in all respects, including in the elements that cause duties and burdens, such as the family and religion - explain in large part the decadence of great civilizations that had developed predominantly only the elements from which they could derive enjoyment and suppressed or weakened those that cost sacrifices. Unbridled egoism is without doubt one of the factors most contrary to progress, because it undermines the family, diminishes the mass and hinders relations between peoples.

From what has been touched upon, certain conclusions emerge clearly - conclusions that the old evolutionist schools had completely neglected - on which, by contrast, one can never insist too much: 1) there are no absolutely primitive peoples, that is, entirely devoid of civilization or history; 2) the so-called primitives have had a stasis in their development; 3) it is not possible to place all primitives on the same level, but one must distinguish between more and less primitive; 4) the ethical, social and religious factors of a people do not necessarily progress with greater economic development.

It remains to determine which peoples constitute the object of ethnology. Some scholars have broadened the boundaries of the science so much as to include practically most of the great ancient civilizations as well. Insisting on this point is an error that generates a justified reaction on the part of Sinologists, Egyptologists, Semitists, etc. It is true that certain aspects of the great civilizations can be understood and explained only by recourse to ethnology, because they have deep roots in older cultural strata that elude the investigation of the archaeologist and the linguist: it is by now accepted that Egyptian art received a great impulse from totemism, and W. Koppers, in a series of works published over the last twenty years in the journal Anthropos, has explained through ethnology many aspects, hitherto unknown, of the culture and religion of the Indo-Europeans. Among the people, moreover, beliefs, usages and customs still persist almost everywhere that are survivals of cultures that have vanished, as a whole, centuries ago. A closer collaboration among scholars of the great ancient civilizations, of popular ethnography (folklore) and of ethnology would be useful to all these sciences. Each of them, however, has its own task and limits that it cannot overstep. Ethnology studies the cultures of those peoples that can still be called primitive, not in an absolute sense (which no longer exist), but in a relative one.

In several parts of the world (Sudan, Indonesia, Polynesia, India, China, Central and South America) there still exist, and traces recur, of populations that had reached a high cultural development. Several have had contacts with Islam, Lamaism, Confucianism, Brahmanism, Hinduism, which have been superimposed upon the original religions that we no longer know. From these mixtures new cultures have arisen in which, alongside manifestations proper to the great civilizations, many archaic elements still often live on vigorously.

It is therefore not easy, indeed it is impossible, to formulate an absolute criterion on the basis of which a population or a culture can be included in the concept of "primitive." Yet perhaps no invention has had so profound an influence on human thought and on the development of civilization as writing. It indicates the need to fix the knowledge handed down orally, annuls the distances of time and makes it possible to record more rapidly, more exactly and more completely the advances of the preceding generation and to transmit them to the following one. By fixing concepts more objectively than is possible with tradition alone, it sharpens the critical sense and reflection. Only with writing can there be a cultural development on a broad basis that makes use of the work already done by other generations. True progress is possible only when the cultural heritage for which previous generations labored with effort and tenacity is built up and completed in depth and breadth.

Writing was the invention that raised still-poor cultures to the level of great cultures, and it is the most comprehensive division that can be made of human civilization. To the first period belong peoples without writing, which we shall call primitive, characterized by a still naive thought; to the second, peoples with writing, characterized by critical and reflective thought. Ethnology studies the entire cultural complex of primitive peoples and those manifestations of the great civilizations that can be explained only through knowledge of primitive cultures.

VII. THE MOST ARCHAIC CULTURES ACCESSIBLE TO US

Ethnology, as a historical discipline, must first of all study the problem of the age and succession of cultures and cultural cycles. In its investigation it does not presuppose the postulates of evolutionism (progress from the crudest to the most perfect, uniformity of evolution in all places), or of a particular historical and theological thesis, but proceeds like all historical disciplines: it concerns itself first of all with preparing good monographs devoted to individual peoples and regions and, where possible, to well-defined cultural periods. From this analytical work it then passes to synthesis and to the study of the relations that exist between the various cultural cycles, whether near or far.

Basing themselves on the data of anthropology and related sciences, some ethnologists of the historical school believe they can accept outright as a postulate (the only one they employ) the monogenesis of man; others, although likewise persuaded that the arguments in favor of monogenesis are much stronger and more convincing than those for polygenesis, but at the same time anxious to keep themselves free of any thesis, prefer not to give this premise the value of a postulate, but use it only as a provisional hypothesis to orient research and then to make use of the convergent conclusions of other sciences such as paleoanthropology, prehistory, linguistics, etc. (These conclusions have been set forth by M. Schulien, L'unità del genere umano alla luce delle ultime risultanze antropologiche, linguistiche ed etnologiche, 3rd ed., Milan 1947).

In primitive cultures still living or recently vanished, three or four very ancient cultural cycles can already be distinguished (which the present state of knowledge has not so far been able to reduce to a single cycle).

1. The central primitive culture, characterized in sociology by monogamy and local exogamy (v. ESMOGAMIA), to which belong the Pygmies and Pygmoids of central Africa, of southeastern Asia and of Oceania, that is, peoples who inhabit predominantly tropical regions, all south of the equator and therefore central.

2. The southern primitive culture, characterized in sociology by exogamy and sexual totemism, to which belong the Tasmanians (now extinct) and the Australians of the southeastern region. It seems that the Bushmen (southern Africa) and the Fuegians of South America (especially the Yahgan) constitute a transition from the central primitive culture to the southern one.

3. The northern or Arctic primitive culture, likewise patriarchal and exogamous, but with equal rights for husband and wife. To this culture belong certain peoples who inhabit the northernmost part of Asia and America (the Paleo-Siberians and the Caribou Eskimos, west of Hudson Bay). It seems that the most ancient populations of California, the Algonquians (North America) and the Gê-Tapuya (South America)

constitute a transition from the central primitive culture to the northern one.

4. The ancient Australian culture (also called the culture of the boomerang from the name of this weapon. The boomerang is a throwing weapon consisting of a very flat stick bent at an angle, a quality that facilitates its rotation in the air. If it is thrown well and has not struck the object or another obstacle, it returns to the thrower. This weapon is a characteristic of this culture). This culture has already undergone the influence of others no longer primitive. It is spread over almost all of Australia (where it includes populations that follow the second cultural cycle), in some parts of Africa (only remnants along the Nile: among the Shilluk and the Dinka and in the southern part), of North America (among the Algonquians and in central California) and perhaps also of South America.

All the populations belonging to these cultures occupy, in the individual continents, the most remote and isolated peripheral regions, difficult of access, without traces of more ancient inhabitants and without attractions for populations with higher cultures.

The Pygmies and Pygmoids inhabit mountainous territories of the southern or southeastern part of Asia; the Vedda, the forests of the mountains of the island of Ceylon; the Andamanese, the most isolated part of the Indian Archipelago; the Senoi, the Semang and the Negritos the mountainous part of the Malay Peninsula and of the Philippines. The remnants of these populations found in Oceania, still little known, inhabit mountainous regions of New Guinea and of the New Hebrides. The Negritos inhabit the virgin forest of central and southern Africa, at the limits of which the Bantu and the Hamites halted. The Bushmen have been driven back from better places as far as the Kalahari desert and occupy the southern and southwestern part of Africa.

Representatives of the southern culture in Australia are certain populations driven back to the edges of the continent: in the north (Cape York and others) and in the south (Kulin, Kurnai, and Yuin); the Tasmanians inhabited the southernmost part. The Paleo-Siberians (Samoyeds, Koryaks, Ainu, etc.) have been driven back into the northern and northeastern regions by the great agricultural and pastoral peoples who came from central and eastern Asia. In the northeastern region the Eskimos reached Greenland and served as a bridge of passage in America; they have been influenced by other cultures. The most primitive populations of North America consist of the most ancient stratum of the Algonquians, driven back to the extreme northwest of the continent, onto the nearby islands and the prairies, by the totemistic and matriarchal populations that came from the south and from the west.

Even the most primitive tribes of California (Hoka, Penuti and Yuki) have been driven back between the coast and the mountains. The Gê-Tapuya of Brazil were first driven back toward the coast and thence again into the interior by the Guarani-Tupi. And finally, in the southernmost region of the world, Tierra del Fuego, two very primitive populations still live, the Alakaluf and the Yahgan. The mere geographical position of these populations would already be a very strong element in favor of their great primitiveness. Their isolation has made them difficult to reach, has constituted, especially in the past, a serious difficulty for their study, and has been the cause of which have maintained their cultural characteristics and have remained free of external influences. Other elements as well confirm the great primitiveness of these peoples. They are all at the first stage of civilization; they live on what hunting, fishing and gathering provide, and are therefore called gathering peoples, and their cultures are (relatively) original, because they are the closest to the original culture (in an absolute sense) of humanity, which ethnology will never be able to reconstruct. The dwelling, the weapons, the tools, the ornaments, the constitution of the family of these peoples display great simplicity. They lack the elements that characterize the younger cultures surrounding them (totemism, agriculture, matriarchal succession, cattle-raising, pottery, weaving, metalworking, etc.). Moreover, there is not the slightest indication in favor of the supposition that these populations had in the past a higher culture. One may therefore conclude that each of the original cultural cycles (central, southern and northern), considered in isolation in the continent in which it is found, manifests itself as more archaic than all the other cultural cycles of the same continent, called primary (totemism, matriarchy, nomadic pastoralists). From this first conclusion a second follows: the ensemble of original cultures is older than the primary cultures.

VIII. COMPARISON AMONG THE MOST ARCHAIC CULTURES IN ORDER TO ESTABLISH WHICH IS THE CLOSEST TO THE ORIGINAL ONE

Given the elements of a geographical and cultural character that demonstrate the primitiveness of the original cultures, the investigation must still attempt to discover which is the oldest culture. In this research too, use is made of the comparative method and of the criteria of quality and quantity. In the study of the history of cultures, however, the further back one goes, the greater the difficulties become. For the application of the criteria of quality and quantity, if it is to be probative and to permit sure conclusions, must be based on a sufficient number of truly characteristic similarities. An element of material culture (e.g., a particular form of club) found identical in two separate cultures may be a good indication for beginning the comparison between them, but it can never, by itself, lead to the conclusion that the two cultures are related and were formerly united. To reach this conclusion, the cultural similarities must be characteristic and abundant.

The possibility of comparison and the certainty of conclusions are always greater the more the cultures being compared prove rich in elements. This is precisely the case with the younger cultural cycles, composed of elements coming from different cultures. But in the earliest stages of civilization, cultural elements are simple in form and limited in quantity. Moreover, the most primitive populations, composed of small isolated groups, have suffered in their evolution more losses of characteristic cultural elements than those suffered by younger populations. But the investigation to establish which is the oldest living culture (that is, the closest to the truly original culture of man) could not be abandoned merely because it was beset with difficulties. The problem has been solved through the comparative study of the (relatively) original cultures.

1. The cultural cycle of the boomerang

In this cycle the economy is still based on hunting and gathering; the house has the form of a round beehive. The characteristic weapons and tools are: a) the boomerang, b) the shield, of a very rough form, called a club shield, or parry-club, because, more than a true shield, it is a simple club that serves to parry the blows of the club, c) in Australia there is already the hafted axe.

The first manifestations of tattooing done with scars begin. Monogamy predominates, but there are already cases of polygamy. The populations belonging to this cultural cycle therefore already has elements of younger cultures and moreover does not occupy the most isolated or least accessible territories but only those bordering on them. Therefore they cannot be the representatives of the most archaic cultures known to us.

2. The Paleo-Asiatic cultural cycle — that is, the most archaic stratum of northern culture — is already the adaptation of a primitive culture to the Arctic climate, as demonstrated by the economy and the entire complex of the ergology of the populations that compose it. a) The economy is founded almost exclusively on hunting and fishing (which is essentially a form of hunting). In the Arctic climate there are generally no plants, so gathering is not possible. Individual and family hunting — which is the most archaic form — is still widely practiced, involving few people, but collective hunting, a more recent and more evolved form, is also practiced. In both forms the dog is already used. With its help and with practice the hunter discovers beneath the snow the holes that the seal makes at the surface of the water in order to breathe, and strikes the animal with the harpoon as soon as it appears. The hunting of the reindeer is highly developed and done in groups. The Eskimos, with the help of dogs and with well-organized drives, push the wild herds into obligatory passages and strike them with arrows and with assegais. The sling and the fish trap also belong to this culture.

b) In relation to the Arctic environment, this culture has had to reduce the use of wood and has specialized more and more in the working of bone. Only later did it come to know the use of stone, worked with a technique similar to that of the Neolithic.

In the preparation of fire one finds an interesting case of this evolution. In the most archaic phase it was obtained by rubbing with the hands a small stick in a special hole of a rod or tablet beneath

(fire by fire-drill). In several points this form was replaced by the percussion of iron pyrites. Of wood are the bow, the shaft of arrows and lances, the snow-scraper, the snowshoes, parts of the sled, the glasses and the visor that serve to protect the eyes from the sun, some containers and a few other objects. Bone constitutes at least the essential part of weapons and the assemblage of many tools: arrow and lance points, pieces of the harpoon, fish spears, assegais with one or more points (even tridents), fish-hooks, parts of the sled, and even parts of the bow. Of it are also several other objects (pipes, carvings, etc.) which, however, belong to more recent cultures. Of stone are the lamps for lighting — absolutely necessary given the brevity of the polar day — and the cooking pots which the Eskimos heat on the lamps. The fire is fed with wicks of moss, soaked in seal fat. c) In the polar climate clothing and dwelling are very important. The clothing of the Eskimos is substantially the same in the two sexes. It consists of a closed jacket, slipped on over the head, with sleeves, hood and attached gloves, and of padded boots. These garments are almost all made from the skin of the reindeer, which is the warmest and lightest of polar furs and also the easiest to keep dry. In winter they wear a double garment and the under one is worn with the fur against the skin. From the seal they make boots padded with fur and waterproof overgarments. In the populations belonging to the most archaic cultural stratum the women tan the hides by chewing them, scraping them with a characteristic knife called an ulu — which has the shape of a crescent and is used only by them — and leaving them to soak in hot water and cold water or in urine. The most archaic dwelling has a round shape and consists of two parts: a lower one, underground or semi-underground, which is reached by means of a corridor, and an upper one which is culturally linked to the type of the round beehive hut. d) Burial too has undergone the influence of the environment. Since it is difficult to dig the grave in the frozen ground, the dead person is simply laid on the earth. This form is called platform burial. e) In sociology one already notes influences of more recent institutions such as totemism and especially matriarchy. f) And finally the Arctic tribes of America have, in comparison with the same Paleo-Asiatic cycle, a more recent cultural aspect, because, with the still very simple means of navigation at their disposal during their migrations, they reached the new land only by passing through the Arctic regions. Moreover, according to the most current opinion of Americanists, no people entered America before the beginning of the Neolithic, which is confirmed by the technique with which stone is worked.

From all the elements examined thus far, it follows that the Paleo-Asiatic cultural cycle presents itself in its entirety as an already secondary formation. Therefore it cannot be considered as the representative of the most archaic culture known to us. This does not exclude that it may still contain some very archaic cultural element, which has been lost in the other original cultures.

There now remain to be compared only the central primitive culture and the southern primitive culture, in their individual elements.

3. The Tasmanian cultural cycle and the pygmy cultural cycle

If these two cultural cycles were at some point in contact, one would have a sure criterion for establishing which of them is the older: it would suffice to study carefully at these points the mixtures, the superimpositions and the divisions. But so far no point of contact has been found because the two cycles are separated by very great distances.

The only criterion left to us is that of comparing the two cultures to see, from the intrinsic examination of the elements that compose them, which is the older.

A culture, even the simplest that can be imagined, must have had, from the beginning, expressions — a certain form of economic life (for example, gathering) and of family organization, a certain language, etc. — that distinguish the life of man (culture) from that of the animal (which has no culture). If, as seems obvious, the first manifestations of material culture were originated by necessity alone, they must naturally have been simple, dependent on the possibilities then at man's disposal, which were very limited and still devoid of any addition responding to a purely perfectionist criterion. Foy, for example, has demonstrated that from the round stick, as found in nature, the flat club developed. As regards the care of the body, man will not have begun straight away to practice forms of tattooing, mutilations and deformations. To the first elements new ones are successively added — due both to the internal progress of individual peoples and to their contact with others — which constituted cultural enrichment.

The criterion of which we spoke above is valid only when it is a question of material culture, and even in this case it must be applied with discernment, because it can easily lead one back into the preconception of materialistic positivism, according to which the development of humanity would have been in every field an ascent from the lowest to the most evolved forms.

From two weapons or tools or any object of material culture, one cannot immediately establish that man built first the one requiring less intelligence. Historical investigation has shown that sometimes the opposite occurred. Among the various examples furnished by ethnology, that of the bow is one of the most instructive. This weapon demonstrates a talent for invention and reflection undoubtedly far superior to that commonly manifested by other primitive weapons. Basing himself principally on this fact, some ethnologists have attributed it to more recent cultures, whereas accurate investigations have shown that it belongs, from its very origin, to the culture of the Pygmies, where it is generally still found in its simplest form, consisting of a round stick (as found in nature) smoothed and bent, to whose ends is attached a cord of vegetable substance, which serves to impart motion to the arrow. On the other hand, many of its refinements cannot have arisen immediately along with the bow, since they require tools and means that the original cultures do not yet possess. And indeed, these refinements are found only in the bow of more recent cultures. After having fixed the limits within which the criterion of intrinsic examination may be used, the aspect presented by the Tasmanian cultural cycle and that of the Pygmies is examined in particular, in order to establish which is the more archaic. These two cycles are the most primitive known and carry us back to the most archaic phase of human culture that ethnological investigation can reach. Although the beginnings of this culture are still very obscure, it can be affirmed that the cultural cycle which in the quality of its elements comes closest to the point of departure of human culture (that is, of original culture in the absolute sense) is without doubt the most archaic. In these investigations two methodological criteria formulated by Pinard and by Schmidt are particularly useful: "Every cultural element that presupposes another is necessarily more recent than the one it presupposes" (criterion of "necessary presupposition" enunciated by Pinard). "Of two cultural elements of the same order, the one that presupposes a change from the original state is more recent than the one that does not presuppose it" (Schmidt).

a) Circumcision of the body. — In original cultures, youths and girls who have reached puberty must perform special ceremonies, called initiations, whose purpose is above all to instruct the initiates, now close to marriage, in their future duties toward the family and the State. The candidates must abstain from certain preferred foods, but they are not subject to painful practices. Only later — under the influence of more recent cultures, in which initiations are by then practiced only for males — must the youths allow a tooth to be removed with a wooden chisel, without uttering the slightest lament. In an even later phase, circumcision (or the incision and subincision) of the initiates is introduced. Circumcision consists in the total excision or partial removal of the foreskin, or even in a simple incision of it. Subincision — which is performed about a year later with a stone knife or a very sharp shell — consists in cutting the skin of the penis along the course of the urethra from the urinary meatus to the junction with the scrotum. This operation is extremely painful; the English ethnologists who first spoke of it called it the terrible rite, an expression still used in ethnological works.

Both the Pygmy populations and those of southeastern Australia that belong to the most archaic cultural stratum do not practice circumcision, which is instead very widespread among all the other Australian tribes. Tooth avulsion, unknown to all Pygmies, is practiced by populations of southeastern Australia. Among the Pygmies only the Andamanese practice tattooing with scars, which is instead widespread among the tribes of southeastern Australia and Tasmania. No group of Pygmies practices the perforation of the nasal septum and of the upper lip to insert ornaments, as instead all the populations of Australia do (excluding Tasmania). And finally the various forms of ornament, considered as a whole, are much less widespread among the Pygmies than among the Australians and Tasmanians.

It follows therefore that: a) All the forms of ornament and tattooing that are lacking among the Australians and Tasmanians are lacking among the Pygmies. b) Several cultural elements relating to the care of the body, known to the populations of Australia (even the most archaic ones) and, to a lesser extent, to those of Tasmania, are instead lacking among the Pygmies. Considered from this point of view, the Pygmies represent a more archaic phase than that of the Australians and of the Tasmanians themselves.

b) The working of material: the eolithic and the paleolithic phase. - It is very probable that man began to use the objects of wood, bone, and shells that he found in nature, and that he could make them serve, almost without working, as weapons, containers and tools. He could in fact work wood with another harder wood or with sharp shells or bones, or with stones made pointed by nature itself. The true working of stone must have begun only later, as authoritative ethnologists and scholars of prehistory maintain with good arguments (Gräbner, Schmidt, Menghin, Breuil, Obermaier and several others).

With few exceptions, the weapons and tools of the Pygmies are all of wood, bone, teeth of large animals, shells. All the populations of Australia and Tasmania already work stone, especially in the form of flakes and blades. Therefore, from the aspect of the working of material, the Pygmies belong to a still eolithic cultural phase, more archaic than the paleolithic, which instead characterizes the populations of the southern culture. It is not possible to explain, as some scholar has attempted to do, this cultural characteristic with the unfounded assertion that the Pygmies do not have at their disposal workable lithic material, because it must be excluded a priori that stones are not to be found throughout the enormous expanse of territory of southern Asia and Africa in which the Pygmies live scattered. There is even evidence that decisively contradicts this assertion and proves instead that groups of Pygmies make use of those stones that they find in nature already suitable for working or that require only some retouching. Brown, for example, writes that in the territory of the Andamanese there is quartz and another quality of rock with which the natives make blades and flakes to shave hair and to practice tattooing. To obtain these instruments, they hold in the left hand a pebble of quartz or of the other rock and strike it a blow with another pebble of any suitable substance, hard and rounded; a flake thus detaches and falls into the palm of the left hand. If it is needed, it is used at once; otherwise it is thrown away and another is made. The flakes and blades are prepared only when they are needed and used as long as they keep the point or the cutting edge, then immediately thrown away. The woman who shaves a person's head may use up, one after another, even twenty blades, to obtain which at least twice as many flakes must be produced. The flakes of harder rock are obtained like those of quartz, but before being used they are left for some hours in the fire and then allowed to cool. The natives themselves confirm that they have never used, not even in the past, stone for cutting (except in the cases that have been mentioned) or for making the points of arrows. For the latter they used shells. Brown further brings various arguments against ancient authors who claim to have found some lithic industry among the Andamanese, and concludes that the most tenable hypothesis is that according to which this people has never worked stone, but has always made all its tools with wood, with bone and with shells. From what has been set out above, it follows that the scant working of stone is a characteristic of the culture of the Pygmies, which attests to the greater primitiveness of the central cultural cycle with respect to the southern one.

c) The production of fire. - The Andamanese Pygmies are the only population in the world that does not know how to produce fire; they therefore keep pieces of wood continuously alight. All the other Pygmies and Pygmoids, the Australians and the Tasmanians, obtain fire by the friction of two pieces of wood. The methods vary, however: a) The Tasmanians (now extinct) used "groove rubbing," that is, horizontal friction made with the point of one piece of wood in the longitudinal groove of another piece of wood. Since the Tasmanians have preserved several archaic cultural elements, which among the southeastern Australians have been lost or replaced by more recent ones, it may be held that groove rubbing is a more archaic form of obtaining fire than the others used by the southeastern Australians. b) The southeastern Australians twirl with their hands a small stick in a special hole of a rod or tablet beneath (fire by drill or simple rotation), or they saw one piece of wood with another: "saw friction." There are still two pygmy populations - one in Asia, the Semang, and the other in Africa. The Batua of the Congo - which obtain fire by means of the grooved friction stick. The presence of this form in each of the two main groups of Pygmies - the Asian and the African - and, moreover, in points so far from one another, attests to the persistence among these peoples of a cultural element more archaic than the corresponding one found among the southeastern Australians.

d) Weapons: the bow of the Pygmies. - The club and the spear are the characteristic weapons of the southern culture; the bow is the weapon of the Pygmies. The bow is a weapon whose essential parts consist of a long, thin and flexible stick or cane, to whose ends is attached a string of vegetable substance or a strip of skin or leather which serves to give momentum to the arrow. This is an integral part of the bow. In its most archaic forms it is provided with feathers or leaves and small pieces of skin that help to keep it in the direction in which it has been shot. In more evolved cultures the fletching disappears and is replaced by other refinements of the bow and arrow. Among primitive weapons the bow is perhaps the one that demonstrates the greatest talent for invention, reflection and refinement. This has led some authors (Gräber) to maintain that the Pygmies did not originally have this weapon but only the arrow, which they threw with their hands at the game. This hypothesis, however, is not confirmed by the facts, because among the Pygmies the bow and arrow are always associated.

e) As has already been seen, in manufacturing the weapons and tools necessary for daily life, man cannot have started from perfected and complex forms, but must necessarily have started from the material that he already found almost prepared in nature: to obtain the stick of a bow it was enough for him to smooth and bend a branch or a cane, which always grow in a more or less round form. In nature itself he also found abundantly vegetable fibers and cane with which to make the string. Therefore the oldest form of the bow is, in all probability, the one that has the round stick O and the string of vegetable substance. The stick of this bow breaks easily but is not very flexible; the string of vegetable substance is weaker and exerts less friction than one made of skin or leather, and therefore it easily tears and slips along the stick. This drawback could be remedied in two ways: by thickening the ends of the bow with a broader support (in the shape of a cushion, ring, knot, little ball) on which to fasten the string; or by making on those same ends a step-shaped cut that would make the tips smaller than the rest of the stick and thus prevent the string from slipping. To the first expedient, which would already be an indication of relief sculpture, the Pygmies could not yet attain, since they lack this form of plastic art, even in its simplest expressions. They could do nothing but make the tips smaller than the rest of the stick. But small tips easily break; therefore in this form the stick is more flexible, but also weaker. The base form of the bow, from which the others are derived, has as its characteristic the stick with a circular cross-section, with the tips notched in a step shape. The string is made with a strip of cane called rotang or of bamboo. This type predominates among the African Pygmies and is also found among the Negritos of the Philippines. β) The great majority of Asian Pygmies and some group of African Pygmies use the bow with a semicircular cross-section with the convex part on the outside and the flat part on the inside O (the bow is always indicated according to its cross-section. The part facing the string is called inner and the opposite part outer. By convention the outer part is always indicated above and the inner below. E.g.: O = bow with semicircular cross-section with the convex part on the outside and the flat part on the inside; O = bow with semicircular cross-section convex on the inside and flat on the outside). The simplest way to obtain this form is to split a common stick longitudinally in half. This bow is much more flexible than the one with a circular cross-section and keeps the convex part, which is the most comfortable for the grip, facing outward. In this form the step-shaped cut at the tips is maintained, which can indeed be broader, given that the splitting allows the use of thicker sticks. The string is always of vegetable substance - however no longer of cane or rotang or bamboo - but of fibers. The reason for this substitution perhaps lies in the fact that the string, being more flexible, can be fastened more easily to the stick than to a cane. But the bow with a semicircular cross-section, when it is drawn, can break more easily and has less propulsive force than the round bow. To remedy this drawback, the Pygmies and African Pygmoid peoples situated near Lake Kivu and along the Uele River apply on the inner and flat part of the bow a small wooden rod that increases the tension of the stick, weakened by the longitudinal section. Throughout Africa this bow - called composite - is found only among the Pygmies. The rotang string is joined to the bow indirectly with sturdy vegetable fibers. With these two types of bow, which are the simplest known, the simplest forms of arrow fletching are also associated. The crudest consists in simply inserting a leaf or a small piece of skin or a feather into a cut made in the longitudinal section of the arrow. This form - which some authors do not yet consider a true fletching - is characteristic of the bow with the round stick (type e) and of the composite one, probably derived from the first. Another form consists in fastening to the little shaft only the ends of one or more feathers, so that the rest is not adherent to the little shaft itself. This fletching - called "tangent" because the feather forms a tangent with the circumference of the arrow - is associated with the bow with a semicircular cross-section with the convex part on the outside and the flat part on the inside (type β) and with certain forms of semi-reflex bow of the New Hebrides. γ) Groups of Asian Pygmies (Semang and especially Negritos) replace the semicircular bow, O, with another still round on the outside but triangular on the inside O. From this form, made ever more flattened on the outside and round on the inside, O, another was derived, again semicircular - convex on the inside and flat on the outside O, that is, reversed with respect to the first.

This bow acquires a much greater propulsive force, but, like the round bow, it is not very flexible. The string is therefore again made of rattan. In certain regions (Melanesia, West Africa) it is fastened to the bow on supports shaped like pads, rings, discs or little balls, carved or woven onto the stave. In Further and Hither India, however — where the culture to which this bow belongs probably originated — the step-like support was initially retained at the ends of the stave, to which the rattan — which breaks more easily than a string — is joined with an arrow made of a more flexible material. This bow is also found outside the area of the Pygmies; indeed it is characteristic of the later matriarchate (a culture widespread especially in Melanesia, Indonesia and Further India but also represented in West Africa and America). δ) The Andamanese have a much more perfected bow, similar to that of Melanesia: large, very broad at both ends, with the upper limb curved toward the archer and the lower one slightly in the opposite direction. To make it they choose a stave that is already bent while it is still in the ground and encourage its curvature as it grows. Then they fashion the bow, which at the center, where it is gripped by the fist, has a circular cross-section and then immediately widens on both sides, which however again end in a point. When the archer bends the bow, he pulls the string toward himself, that is, in the direction opposite to the upper limb, which, as soon as the string is released, springs back with doubled force. In the resting position it has the shape of an S; when it is bent it takes on a uniform curvature. It is therefore already a "semi-reflex" bow and has the advantage of not subjecting the stave to a very different tension in its various phases of movement. The Northern Andamanese further increase the potential of this bow by keeping the bent side continually suspended over a weak fire that contracts its fibers. The Andamanese bow retains the step-carved tips. The string, of vegetable fibers, is wound like a ring around the ends of the stave. e) The Semang have a true "reflex" bow, which they make from a stave, already curved in its natural state, on which they make another curve opposite to the first. The bow is strung in the direction contrary to that of the natural curve. The nomadic pastoral peoples of northern and central Asia have a bow with a semicircular section which is even more perfected. In the resting position, the convex part is on the outside and the flat part on the inside ⊖, but when the bow is strung the convex part passes to the inside, the flat part to the outside ⊖. The tension is further increased by very elastic material, intimately joined to the stave. This bow is at the same time "composite and reflex". At its ends deep notches are cut in which a stout cord is fixed. The making of this bow requires much time and much labor. This type is completely absent among the Pygmies and is found instead in the great civilizations (China, India, Persia, the classical world) which received it from the culture of the nomadic pastoralists. With the bow of semicircular section, convex on the inside and flat on the outside ⊖, are associated more perfected forms of fletching in which the feathers, by means of a more or less tight stitching, adhere to the arrow along their entire length. Sometimes the fletching is completely absent, but these evolved forms of the bow and arrow are characteristic of the later matriarchy and substantially foreign to the culture of the Pygmies.

From what has been set forth, it appears that the forms of the bow and arrows that prevail among the Pygmies (type α, β) are the most primitive known, because they are the closest to the forms found in nature itself. Therefore the presence of this weapon among the Pygmies cannot be invoked against their great ethnological antiquity. Its perfections are due both to the nature of these peoples — who are not rigid but capable of improvement, as the ethnologists who have studied them on the spot attest — and to external influences. The strongest differences are in fact noted between the African and the Asian group, separated by the greater distance. Nor is the hypothesis of some ethnologists tenable, according to which the Pygmies would have received the bow and arrow from more evolved cultures and in particular from the later matriarchy; on the contrary, there are numerous indications in favor of the opposite thesis, namely that the bow and arrow migrated from the culture of the Pygmies to that of the later matriarchy, which subsequently perfected this weapon. That forms α, β are the most primitive is confirmed by the fact that they, outside the culture of the Pygmies, are used (alone or with other more perfected ones) only by peoples who still belong to the original cultures and have had contacts neither with the nomadic pastoralists nor with the more recent matriarchy. The "cotendo" bow (type α) is still used by the Ainu, who represent the most archaic cultural stratum of northern Japan, by the Gé-Tapuya of eastern Brazil who belong, together with other neighboring populations, to the most archaic cultural cycle of those regions, which has many similarities with that of the Pygmies. The bow of semicircular section with the convex part on the outside and the flat part on the inside is still used by the Ainu, by the Paleo-Asiatic peoples (Koryaks, Chukchi, Aleuts and several groups of Eskimos), by Indians along the northwestern coast of America as far as California inclusive, and by very archaic populations of South America (Chaco and the southern Amazon).

The Paleo-Asiatics apply wood and elastic substances to the inside and outside of the stave which increase its tension and thus make a composite bow: the other populations have predominantly, and some exclusively, the simple bow. The cord, always of vegetable fibers, is generally fixed to the bow by means of the usual cut and step, a characteristic of the bow of primitive cultures, which then disappears in the more recent ones. Alongside this form there are others (limited, however, to some isolated population or to individual groups) in which either a small hole or a notch or a rest is made. The arrow always has tangential fletching.

From what has been set forth it appears that: the forms of the bow prevailing among the Pygmies are the most primitive known in the whole world, therefore they cannot have been taken from other cultures; the bow and arrow, always associated, constitute the characteristic and often the only weapon of the majority of the Pygmy tribes; since no cultural cycle more archaic than or contemporary with that of the Pygmies is known that uses the arrow alone, as a throwing spear, one must conclude that the Pygmies invented the bow in its technical entirety and from the beginning associated it with the arrow (N. Schmidt).

c) Art. - It would be pure a priori reasoning to maintain that man did not have, from the very dawn of civilization, a certain aesthetic sense that he could express through gestures and movements of the body. Equally unfounded, however, would be the assertion that he was immediately able to construct musical instruments, paint, sculpt, etc. a) Music. The few string and wind instruments that are used here and there by some Pygmy tribe betray their character of importation from neighboring populations, so that one can affirm that the culture of the Pygmies has no musical instruments. The same can be said of the Tasmanians; the Australians, on the other hand, already know how to produce sounds by striking sticks. The Pygmies have no form of drum that marks the rhythm, whereas in Australia this instrument already appears, albeit in a very crude form: the women stretch a skin over the thigh and beat it. In their ceremonies the Australians produce a certain noise by whirling a wooden tablet called, because of its shape, a "bull-roarer". This instrument, widespread among all Australians, is instead completely absent among the Pygmies. It follows therefore that, as regards musical instruments, the Pygmies are at a more archaic cultural stage than the Australians. β) Figurative art. No Pygmy population knows relief sculpture even in its simplest expressions. Only the Andamanese scratch or paint geometric figures on tools and on containers. The Andamanese and the Semang paint themselves according to ornamental patterns. The Semang trace geometric figures on combs and spoons to which they sometimes associate a magical meaning. But both the figures and their meaning were imported from their neighbors, the Ple, a population with cultural elements of a matriarchal character. Even less can be said of the figurative art of the African Pygmies. Only the Bushmen — who, it seems, constitute a transition from the central primitive culture to the southern one — have produced a great rock art of a realistic character, which has close relations with that of the European Upper Paleolithic (caves of Cogul, Alpera, Tortesilla in Spain) and is the result of the mixture of a primitive culture with a totemist one, therefore more recent. Art is not the only point in which the Bushmen differ from the Pygmies. The Australians already have some manifestation of carving and relief sculpture. Therefore also from the aspect of figurative art the Pygmies are more primitive than the Australians.

f) Totemism. - The basis of totemism is the belief in a magical relation between a social group (clan) or a single individual or a sex and a determined animal species (more rarely vegetable and even more rarely an element of nature: sun, moon, water), a relation generally founded on the belief in a common ancestor. There are three different aspects of totemism: the social, the individual and the sexual. The southeastern Australians already have elements of social totemism, taken from neighboring populations belonging to more recent cultures, and a rather developed individual and sexual totemism (concerning the Tasmanians, who are extinct, there is no trustworthy information). Manifestations of totemism are also found among the Pygmies, but they are far fewer and less important than among the Australians. Therefore, from this sociological standpoint, the Pygmies belong to a more archaic phase than that of the populations of southeastern Australia.

g) Funeral customs. - The funeral customs of the Paleo-Australians have certain complicated elements that the Pygmies lack, such as: α) the chewing of some part of the flesh of the deceased and the anointing of the relatives' bodies with the fluids secreted by the corpse; β) the extraction of the intestines and other mutilations of the corpse; γ) magical practices carried out with the intent of discovering who caused the death — which are proper to more recent cultures that attribute death only to magical influences — in order to exact vengeance. Therefore, even in this cultural respect, the Pygmies are more archaic than the Paleo-Australians.

From the comparison of the two cultural cycles it has been seen that: α) in both cycles there are elements that belong to the same ethnological age; β) there are then several other characteristic cultural elements which, among the Pygmies, have a more archaic character than among the Paleo-Australians, while no contrary case occurs. From the whole

(de M. Guaiade, Die Yamana, Mollina prima Vicina 1927, 8p. 59, p. 1129)
ETHNOLOGY - Burial and funerary rites. Signs of mourning among the Yamana (Tierra del Fuego).

From these facts it can be concluded that the cultural cycle of the Pygmies is more archaic than that of the Paleo-Australians.

IX. CONCLUSION

The origin and formation of the earliest cultures can be summarized as follows:

1. From the truly original ancient culture, which seems to have to be placed in eastern Asia, there broke off, even before the beginning of the Stone Age, the peoples belonging to the central culture (Pygmies), who soon divided into two main branches: the Asiatic and the African. Despite notable differences, these two groups still constitute, taken together, a true cultural cycle, the most archaic known in ethnology. From the anthropological point of view, it seems that the Pygmies belong to the oldest race, not in the sense that they must be considered the progenitors of all or even of many races, but rather as a branch that detached itself very early from the main trunk, a branch that did not undergo the great subsequent evolutions of the other races and did not give origin to any, not even to negroid ones. (W. Schmidt).

2. Subsequently there broke off the peoples who make up the northern or Arctic culture — whose most archaic stratum is still alithic — and those of the southern culture, who are already Paleolithic.

3. Still later the culture of the Fuegians (Tierra del Fuego) was formed, and they occupied the southernmost part of America.

These cultures, having remained for millennia almost completely isolated, slowly adapted to the new environment and therefore underwent a different specialization: enriching themselves especially in material culture (but not only in that) with new elements, but also losing others that they already possessed, because they were no longer suited. Therefore none of these cultures can be called original in an absolute sense. The reconstruction of the original phase of humanity was perhaps the most arduous task undertaken and, as far as was possible, solved, by the ethnologists of the historical-cultural school.

It is obvious that this reconstruction cannot consist merely in the sum of the elements that make up the most archaic cultures still accessible to ethnology; on the contrary, proceeding backwards, one must discard one by one, as more recent, all the elements due to specialization and external contacts. In this comparative work it is absolutely necessary to consider all the most archaic cultures still accessible to ethnology and to prehistory, because the fact that one culture is more recent than another does not mean that all the elements of the first are more recent than the corresponding elements of the second. Ethnological investigation has in fact shown that some element - undoubtedly very archaic - probably already belonging to the truly original culture - currently missing [in] Pigorini has been preserved in the ancient Arctic culture or in the Tasmanian one. But even after having eliminated all the more recent elements, ethnology could not presume to have recomposed the truly original culture of humanity in its entirety, because certain manifestations, in the long and almost complete isolation of the central, northern and southern cultures, have fatally become rigid, causing impoverishment in the culture. It has always happened thus for all isolated and closed cultures, great or small as they were. And there is no reason to hold that there was an exception for the most primitive ones.

This loss occurred above all in spiritual manifestations.

Therefore ethnology is very skeptical of being able to reconstruct in all its fullness the truly original culture of humanity.

Similar observations could be made for anthropology, linguistics and prehistory when they directly confront the problem of origins. This observation, in itself very bitter, must not diminish interest in these sciences, which have given proof of being able to reconstruct, if not all, at least much of the history of humanity that seemed definitively lost.

Ethnology in particular has cast beams of light on the first manifestations of man's economic, social and religious life. - See plates XLV-XLVII.

Evolutionist authors: J. J. Bachdan, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart 1861; J. Lubbock, Prehistoric times, London 1865; Ital. trans. Turin 1875; A. Giraud-Taulon, Les origines de la famille, Geneva-Paris 1874; H. L. Morgan, Systems of consanguinity and affinity of the human family, Washington 1871; id., Ancient society, London 1877; J. Ferguson-Mc Leeman, Studies in ancient history, London 1876; E. B. Tylor, Primitive culture, 2 vols., 3rd ed. Turin 1891; id., Sopra un metodo per investigare lo sviluppo delle istituzioni sociali applicato alle leggi del matrimonio e della discendenza, in Archivio per l'antropologia e la e., 19 (1880); H. Spencer, Principi di sociologia, trans. by A. Salandra, I, Turin 1881; Ch. Latourneau, L'évolution de la morale, Paris 1887; id., L'évolution du mariage et de la famille, ibid. 1888; J. H. King, The supernatural, its origin, nature and evolution, London-Edinburgh-New York 1892; R. R. Marrett, Pre-animistic religion, in Palli-fore, 11 (1900); A. E. Post, Giurisprudenza etnolica, trans. Bonfante and Longo, Milan 1906; H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Méloques d'histoire des religions, Paris 1909; J. G. Frazer, Totemines and exogamy, 4 vols., London 1910; id., The golden bough, 12 vols., London 1911-15, trans. by L. Da Bozia, Il ramo d'oro, 3 vols., Rome 1925; R. Pettazzoni, Dia.

formazione e sviluppo del monotismo nella storia delle religioni, I: L'essere sciente nelle credenze dei popoli primitivi, Rome 1922; id., Saggi di storia delle religioni e di mitologia, ibid. 1946; id., Mitti e leggende, I, Turin 1948; E. Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, 2nd ed., Paris 1925; W. Wundt, Elemente der Völkerpsychologie, trans. E. Aschieri, Elementi di psicologia dei popoli, Turin 1920; M. Mauss, Manuel d'ethnographie, Paris 1947.

Historico-cultural authors: Fr. Grishner, Methode der Ethnologie, Heidelberg 1911; id., Ethnologie, in Paul Himmels, Die Kultur der Gegenwart, part 3, sect. 5, Leipzig and Berlin 1923; H. Pinard de la Boulaye, L'étude comparée des religions, 3rd ed., 4 vols., Paris 1925; G. van Bulck, Beiträge zur Methodik der Völkerkunde, in Wiener Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik, 2 (1931); id., Philosophie, le religion et cycles culturels en Afrique, in Congo, 1936; id., Où en est l'application des cycles culturels dans l'ethnologie africaine, in Zaire (Brussels 1949); W. Koppers, Le principe historique et la science comparée des religions, in Annuaire de l'Institut de philologie et d'histoire orientale et slavee, 4 (1936); W. Schmidt, Handbuch der Methode der kulturhistorischen Ethnologie, Münster in West 1937, trans. L. Vannicelli, Manuale di metodologia etnolica, Milan 1949; M. Schulich, Nuovi orizzonti in campo di e. e. di storia delle religioni, in Acta Pontificia Academiae Romanae S. Thomas, 4th, et religionis catholicae, new series, 7 (1941); B. Benardi, Religione e religioni, in N. Turchi, Le religioni del mondo, Rome 1946; R. Boccassino, L'etudini di A. C. Blanc ed i risultati moderni dell'e., in Bulletino di paleontologia italiana, new series, 8 (1946), part 2; id., La religione des primitives (with an extensive bibliographical introduction), in P. Tocchi Venturi, Storia delle religioni, I, 3rd ed., Turin 1949, pp. 35-105.

Monographs, manuals, treatises, encyclopedias: F. Ratzel, Le razze umane, 2 vols., Turin 1891-96; id., Geografia dell'uomo, ibid. 1914; W. Schmidt, Die Stiftung der Psychoanwaltschaft in der Entwicklungsgeschichte des Menschen, Stuttgart 1910; E. Westermarck, The history of human marriage, 2nd ed., 3 vols., London 1911 (It. trans. by De Rossi, Storia del matrimonio umano, Pistoia 1864, from an earlier edition now antiquated); F. Graebner, Die melancholische Bogenkultur und ihre Verwandten, in Anthropos, 4 (1910), pp. 726-780, 809-1032; Th. Mainage, Les religions de la philosophie, l'âge paléolithique, Paris 1921; R. H. Lowie, Primitive society, London 1921; A. A. Goldenweiser, Early civilization, London 1922; G. Buschan, Illustrierte Völkerkunde, 2nd ed., 4 vols., Stuttgart 1922; W. Schmidt and W. Koppers, Völker und Kulturen, Regensburg 1924; W. Schmidt, Familie, in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften III, 4th ed., Jena 1926; E. Flor, Haustiere und Hirtenkultur, in Wiener Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik, 1 (1930); O. Menghin, Weltgeschichte der Steinzeit, Vienna 1931; F. Trilles, Les Pygmées de la forêt équatoriale, Paris-Münster 1932; A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, The Andaman Islanders, Cambridge 1933; G. Montandon, Traité d'ethnologie cyclo-culturelle, Paris 1934; R. Thurnwald, Die menschliche Gesellschaft, 5 vols., Berlin-Leipzig 1931-34; various authors, Die Indogermanenund Germanenfrage, in Wiener Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik, 4 (1936); W. Koppers, Der Totemismus als menschengeschichtliches Problem, in Anthropos, 35 (1936); K. Th. Preuss, Lehrbuch der Völkerkunde, Stuttgart 1937 (see the extensive review of this work by R. Boccassino, in Annali Lateranensi, 2 (1938), pp. 364-68 and in Il pensiero missionario, 10 (1938), pp. 250-57); J. Haeckel, Über Waren u. Ursprung des Totemismus, in Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 69 (1939); H. A. Bernatzik, Die grosse Völkerkunde, 3 vols., Leipzig 1939; id., Afrika, 2 vols., Innsbruck 1947; E. Volhard, Kannibalismus, Stuttgart 1939, trans. by G. Cogni, Il cannibalismo, Turin 1949; E. Bächler, Das alpine Paläolithikum der Schweiz, Basel 1940; W. Schmidt, Das Eigentum auf den ältesten Stufen der Menschheit, 2 vols., Münster in Westfalen 1937-40; H. Baumann, R. Thurnwald, D. Westermann, Völkerkunde von Afrika, Essen 1940; R. Biasutti, Le razze e i popoli della terra, 5 vols., Turin 1941; O. Falsirol, Il totemismo e l'animalismo dell'anima, Naples 1941; F. Cavazza, Intorno alla origine dell'umano sociabilico, in Annali Lateranensi, 5 (1941), pp. 9-119; W. Schmidt, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee, 5 vols., Münster in Westfalen 1936-49; id., Manuale di storia comparata delle religioni, 4th ed., Brescia 1944; M. Ebert, Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte, 14 vols. plus one of indexes, Berlin 1924-32.

Periodicals: Africa, London; The American Anthropologist, New Haven; Annali Lateranensi, Vatican City; Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; L'Anthropologie, Paris; Anthropos, Fribourg (Switzerland); Archiv für Anthropologie, Braunschweig; Archivio per l'antropologia e la e., Florence; Baessler-Archiv, Berlin; Bulletin of the bureau of American ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; Ethnos, Stockholm; Folklore, London; Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie, Leiden; Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, London; Man, London; Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien (from 1947 Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für

Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Prähistorie), Vienna: Primitive man, Washington; Rivista di antropologia, Rome: Südtiroler Meddebundere (so far 2 issues, almost all in English). Stockholm: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Berlin: Zeitschrift für Missionskunde und Religionswissenschaft, Münster in Westfalen: Wiener Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte und Linguistik, Vienna: Semaines internationales d'ethnologie religieuse, 5 vols., 1st session, Louvain 1912; 2nd, ibid. 1913; 3rd, Tilburg 1922; 4th, Milan 1925; 5th, Luxembourg 1929.

Renata Boccassino