Chapter I: Preface

In the preparation of Chapters II, III, and VI of this book I have drawn on a University of California syllabus, “Three Essays on the Antiquity and Races of Man”; for Chapter VII, on an article “Heredity, Environment, and Civilization” in the _American Museum Journal_ for 1918; and Chapter V makes use of some passages of “The Languages of the American Indians” from the _Popular Science Monthly_ of 1911. In each case there has been revision and for the most part rewriting.

Whatever quality of lucidity the volume may have is due to several thousand young men and women with whom I have been associated during many years at the University of California. Without their unwitting but real co-authorship the book might never have been written, or would certainly have been written less simply.

A. L. K.

Berkeley, California, January 22, 1923.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF ANTHROPOLOGY 1

1. Anthropology, biology, history.—2. Organic and
social elements.—3. Physical anthropology.—4. Cultural
anthropology.—5. Evolutionary processes and evolutionistic
fancies.—6. Age of anthropological science.

II. FOSSIL MAN 11

7. The “Missing Link.”—8. Family tree of the Primates.—9.
Geological and glacial time.—10. Place of man’s origin and
development.—11. Pithecanthropus.—12. Heidelberg man.—13. The
Piltdown form.—14. Neandertal man.—15. Rhodesian man.—16. The
Cro-Magnon race.—17. The Brünn race.—18. The Grimaldi race:
Neolithic races.—19. The metric expression of human evolution.

III. LIVING RACES 34

20. Race origins.—21. Race classification.—22. Traits on which
classification rests.—23. The grand divisions or primary
stocks.—24. Caucasian races.—25. Mongoloid races.—26. Negroid
races.—27. Peoples of doubtful position.—28. Continents
and oceans.—29. The history of race classifications.—30.
Emergence of the three-fold classification.—31. Other
classifications.—32. Principles and conclusions common to all
classifications.—33. Race, nationality, and language.

IV. PROBLEMS OF RACE 58

34. Questions of endowment and their validity.—35. Plan
of inquiry.—36. Anatomical evidence on evolutionary
rank.—37. Comparative physiological data.—38. Disease.—39.
Causes of cancer incidence.—40. Mental achievement and
social environment.—41. Psychological tests on the sense
faculties.—42. Intelligence tests.—43. Status of hybrids.—44.
Evidence from the cultural record of races.—45. Emotional
bias.—46. Summary.

V. LANGUAGE 87

47. Linguistic relationship: the speech family.—48. Criteria
of relationship.—49. Sound equivalences and phonetic laws.—50.
The principal speech families.—51. Classification of language
by types.—52. Permanence of language and race.—53. The
biological and historical nature of language.—54. Problems
of the relation of language and culture.—55. Period of the
origin of language.—56. Culture, speech, and nationality.—57.
Relative worth of languages.—58. Size of vocabulary.—59.
Quality of speech sounds.—60. Diffusion and parallelism in
language and culture.—61. Convergent languages.—62. Unconscious
factors in language and culture.—63. Linguistic and cultural
standards.—64. Rapidity of linguistic change.

VI. THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION 137

65. Fossils of the body and of the mind.—66. Stone and
metals.—67. The old and the new stone ages.—68. The Eolithic
Age.—69. The Palæolithic Age: duration, climate, animals.—70.
Subdivisions of the Palæolithic.—71. Human racial types
in the Palæolithic.—72. Palæolithic flint implements.—73.
Other materials: bone and horn.—74. Dress.—75. Harpoons and
weapons.—76. Wooden implements.—77. Fire.—78. Houses.—79.
Religion.—80. Palæolithic art.—81. Summary of advance in the
Palæolithic.

VII. HEREDITY, CLIMATE, AND CIVILIZATION 180

82. Heredity.—83. Geographical environment.—84. Diet.—85.
Agriculture.—86. Cultural factors.—87. Cultural
distribution.—88. Historical induction.

VIII. DIFFUSION 194

89. The couvade.—90. Proverbs.—91. Geographic distribution.—92.
The magic flight.—93. Flood legends.—94. The double-headed
eagle.—95. The Zodiac.—96. Measures.—97. Divination.—98.
Tobacco.—99. Migrations.

IX. PARALLELS 216

100. General observations.—101. Cultural context.—102.
Universal elements.—103. Secondary parallelism in the
Indo-European languages.—104. Textile patterns and
processes.—105. Primary parallelism: the beginnings of
writing.—106. Time reckoning.—107. Scale and pitch of Pan’s
pipes.—108. Bronze.—109. Zero.—110. Exogamic institutions.—111.
Parallels and psychology.—112. Limitations on the parallelistic
principle.

X. THE ARCH AND THE WEEK 241

113. House building and architecture.—114. The problem of
spanning.—115. The column and beam.—116. The corbelled
arch.—117. The true arch.—118. Babylonian and Etruscan
beginnings.—119. The Roman arch and dome.—120. Mediæval
cathedrals.—121. The Arabs: India: modern architecture.—122.
The week: holy numbers.—123. Babylonian discovery of
the planets.—124. Greek and Egyptian contributions: the
astrological combination.—125. The names of the days and the
Sabbath.—126. The week in Christianity, Islam, and eastern
Asia.—127. Summary of the diffusion.—128. Month-thirds and
market weeks.—129. Leap days as parallels.

XI. THE SPREAD OF THE ALPHABET 263

130. Kinds of writing: pictographic and mixed phonetic.—131.
Deficiencies of transitional systems.—132. Abbreviation
and conventionalization.—133. Presumptive origins of
transitional systems.—134. Phonetic writing: the primitive
Semitic alphabet.—135. The Greek alphabet: invention of
the vowels.—136. Slowness of the invention.—137. The Roman
alphabet.—138. Letters as numeral signs.—139. Reform in
institutions.—140. The sixth and seventh letters.—141. The
tail of the alphabet.—142. Capitals and minuscules.—143.
Conservatism and rationalization.—144. Gothic.—145. Hebrew and
Arabic.—146. The spread eastward: the writing of India.—147.
Syllabic tendencies.—148. The East Indies: Philippine
alphabets.—149. Northern Asia: the conflict of systems in Korea.

XII. THE GROWTH OF A PRIMITIVE RELIGION 293

150. Regional variation of culture.—151. Plains, Southwest,
Northwest areas.—152. California and its sub-areas.—153. The
shaping of a problem.—154. Girls’ Adolescence Rite.—155. The
First Period.—156. The Second Period: Mourning Anniversary and
First-salmon rite.—157. Era of regional differentiation.—158.
Third and Fourth Periods in Central California: Kuksu and
Hesi.—159. Third and Fourth Periods in Southern California:
Jimsonweed and Chungichnish.—160. Third and Fourth Periods
on the Lower Colorado: Dream Singing.—161. Northwestern
California: world-renewal and wealth display.—162. Summary
of religious development.—163. Other phases of culture.—164.
Outline of the culture history of California.—165. The question
of dating.—166. The evidence of archæology.—167. Age of the
shell mounds.—168. General serviceability of the method.

XIII. THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION IN NATIVE AMERICA 326

169. Review of the method of culture examination.—170.
Limitations on the diffusion principle.—171. Cultural
ranking.—172. Cultural abnormalities.—173. Environmental
considerations.—174. Culture areas.—175. Diagrammatic
representation of accumulation and diffusion of culture
traits.—176. Representation showing contemporaneity and
narrative representation.—177. Racial origin of the American
Indians.—178. The time of the peopling of America.—179.
Linguistic diversification.—180. The primitive culture of
the immigrants.—181. The route of entry into the western
hemisphere.—182. The spread over two continents.—183. Emergence
of middle American culture: maize.—184. Tobacco.—185. The
sequence of social institutions.—186. Rise of political
institutions: confederacy and empire.—187. Developments
in weaving.—188. Progress in spinning: cotton.—189.
Textile clothing.—190. Cults: Shamanism.—191. Crisis rites
and initiations.—192. Secret societies and masks.—193.
Priesthood.—194. Temples and sacrifice.—195. Architecture,
sculpture, towns.—196. Metallurgy.—197. Calendars and
astronomy.—198. Writing.—199. The several provincial
developments: Mexico.—200. The Andean area.—201. Colombia.—202.
The Tropical Forest.—203. Patagonia.—204. North America: the
Southwest.—205. The Southeast.—206. The Northern Woodland.—207.
Plains area.—208. The Northwest Coast.—209. Northern marginal
areas.—210. Later Asiatic influences.

XIV. THE GROWTH OF CIVILIZATION: OLD WORLD PREHISTORY AND ARCHÆOLOGY 393

211. Sources of knowledge.—212. Chronology of the grand
divisions of culture history.—213. The Lower and Upper
Palæolithic.—214. Race influence and regional differentiation
in the Lower Palæolithic.—215. Upper Palæolithic culture
growths and races.—216. The Palæolithic aftermath:
Azilian.—217. The Neolithic: its early phase.—218. Pottery and
the bow.—219. Bone tools.—220. The dog.—221. The hewn ax.—222.
The Full Neolithic.—223. Origin of domesticated animals and
plants.—224. Other traits of the Full Neolithic.—225. The
Bronze Age: Copper and Bronze phases.—226. Traits associated
with bronze.—227. Iron.—228. First use and spread of iron.—229.
The Hallstadt and La Tène Periods.—230. Summary of Development:
Regional differentiation.—231. The Scandinavian area as an
example.—232. The late Palæolithic Ancylus or Maglemose
Period.—233. The Early Neolithic Litorina or Kitchenmidden
Period.—234. The Full Neolithic and its subdivisions
in Scandinavia.—235. The Bronze Age and its periods in
Scandinavia.—236. Problems of chronology.—237. Principles of
the prehistoric spread of culture.

XV. THE GROWTH OF CIVILIZATION: OLD WORLD HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY 440

238. The early focal area.—239. Egypt and Sumer and their
background.—240. Predynastic Egypt.—241. Culture growth
in dynastic Egypt.—242. The Sumerian development.—243.
The Sumerian hinterland.—244. Entry of Semites and
Indo-Europeans.—245. Iranian peoples and cultures.—246. The
composite culture of the Near East.—247. Phœnicians, Aramæans,
Hebrews.—248. Other contributing nationalities.—249. Ægean
civilization.—250. Europe.—251. China.—252. Growth and spread
of Chinese civilization.—253. The Lolos.—254. Korea.—255.
Japan.—256. Central and northern Asia.—257. India.—258.
Indian caste and religion.—259. Relations between India and
the outer world.—260. Indo-China.—261. Oceania.—262. The East
Indies.—263. Melanesia and Polynesia.—264. Australia.—265.
Tasmania.—266. Africa.—267. Egyptian radiations.—268. The
influence of other cultures.—269. The Bushmen.—270. The West
African culture-area and its meaning.—271. Civilization, race,
and the future.

INDEX 507

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURE PAGE

1. The descent of man: diagram 12

2. The descent of man, elaborated 14

3. The descent of man in detail, according to Gregory 16

4. The descent of man in detail, according to Keith 17

5. Antiquity of man: diagram 20

6. Fossil and modern skull outlines superposed 25

7. Measurements made on fossil skulls 31

8. Relationship of the races: diagram 47

9. Family tree of the human races 48

10. Map: distribution of primary racial stocks 50

11. Map: circumpolar distribution of the races 51

12. Map: linguistic families of Asia and Europe (_facing_) 94

13. Map: linguistic families of Africa 97

14. Map: principal linguistic families of North America 99

15. Map: principal linguistic families of South America 101

16. Map: type stations of the Palæolithic periods 153

17. Earliest prehistory of Europe: diagram 156

18. Palæolithic flint implements, illustrating the principal
techniques 159

19. Flint core with reassembled flakes 163

20. Aurignacian sculpture: human figure 173

21. Magdalenian sculpture: horse 174

22. Magdalenian engraving of a mammoth 175

23. Magdalenian engraving of a herd 176

24. Magdalenian engraving of a browsing reindeer 177

25. Growth of civilization during the Palæolithic: diagram 178

26. Culture distribution and history in the Southwest: diagram 191

27. Map: diffusion of the Magic Flight tale 201

28. Maya symbols for zero 230

29. Map: types of exogamic institutions in Australia 233

30. Map: the spread of alphabetic writing (_facing_) 284

31. Map: culture-areas of native California 297

32. Map: the growth of rituals in native California 308

33. Distribution of culture elements indicative of their
history: diagram 328

34. Map: culture-areas of America 337

35. Occurrence of elements in the culture-areas of
America: diagram (_facing_) 340

36. Development of American civilization in time, according
to Spinden: diagram (_facing_) 342

37. Map: Europe in the early Lower Palæolithic 399

38. Map: Europe in the Aurignacian and Lower Capsian 401

39. Map: Europe in the Solutrean, Magdalenian, and Upper Capsian 403

40. Map: Europe in the Azilian and Terminal Capsian 409

41. Prehistoric corbelled domes in Greece, Portugal, and Ireland 420

42. Growth and spread of prehistoric civilization in Europe,
according to Müller: diagram 436

ANTHROPOLOGY