Chapter XVII: Appendix: Notes and Authorities

⁂ For the convenience of the reader, authorities are cited
whenever it is possible in an English form, and if not in an
English, in a French.

CHAPTERS I. AND II.

Christy and Lartet, _Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ_.
Davis and Thurnam, _Crania Britannica_.
Dawkins, _Cave Hunting_.
Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_.
Evans, _Stone Implements of Great Britain_.
Evans, _Bronze Implements of Great Britain_.
Geikie, _The Great Ice Age_.
Greenwell, _British Barrows_.
Keller, _The Lake-Dwellings of Switzerland_ (trs. Lee).
Lyell, _Antiquity of Man_.
Lubbock, _Pre-historic Times_.
Mortillet, _Origine de la Navigation et de la Pêche_.
Mortillet, _Promenades Préhistoriques à l’Exposition_.
Mortillet, _Le Préhistorique, L’Antiquité de l’homme_.
Montelius, _La Suède Préhistorique_.
Tylor, _Anthropology_.
Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_.
Tylor, _Primitive Culture_.
Troyon, _Habitations Lacustres_.
Worsaae, _The Pre-history of the North_ (trs. Simpson).

And numerous articles in the Archæological and Anthropological journals of England, France, and Germany.

Pp. 8, and 14-15. _Antiquity of Man._--The question concerning the history of Palæolithic man which presses the most immediately for solution, is that which has been just touched upon here: whether the variety of animal remains with which the remains of men are found associated, do really point to an immensely lengthened period of his existence, in this primitive state. We have said that human bones are found associated with those of the mammoth (_Elephas primigenius_), those of the woolly rhinoceros, and with the remains of other animals whose existence seems to imply a cold-temperate, or almost frigid, climate; at another place, or a little lower in the same river bed (the higher gravel beds are the oldest), we may find the bones of the hippopotamus, an animal which in these days is never found far away from the tropics. The conclusion seems obvious: man must have lived through the epoch of change--enormously long though it was--from a cold to an almost tropical climate. Some writers have freely accepted this view, and even gone beyond it to argue the possibility of man having lived through one of the great climatic revolutions which produced an Ice Age. (See the arguments on this head in Mr. Geikie’s _Ice Age_.) And in a private letter, written from the West Indies, Kingsley says that he sees reason for thinking that man existed in the Miocene Era. (See _Life of Kingsley_.)

On the other hand, these rather startling theories have not yet received their _imprimatur_ from the highest scientific authorities. There are many ways in which they clash with the story which the stone-age remains seem to tell of man’s primitive life. For instance, the civilization of the caves is to all appearance in advance of that of the drift-beds; and yet, as we have seen (p. 18), the cave men must have existed during the earlier part of the stone age, that of the mammoth. Here we see evidences of a decided improvement, an advance; whereas between the drift-remains associated with the mammoth and those associated with the hippopotamus are seen few or none.

P. 9. _Cave-drawings or carvings._--The best representations of these are to be found in the work of Christy and Lartet given above.

P. 19. The ideas which savages or primitive men associate with drawings or representations of things (as also with the _names_ of things) are sometimes exceedingly complex and difficult of apprehension--for us. This the following example may show:--

In the earliest Egyptian tombs the beautiful and realistic drawings have long attracted the attention of archæologists, both on account of their intrinsic merit, and from the curious contrast which they present to the more conventional religious drawing and sculpture of a later date. Though the drawings of the first class are found exclusively upon the walls of tombs, they have apparently no connection either with ideas of death or with religious observances. They seem to represent merely the earthly and secular life of the entombed man: here he is superintending his labourers at their work, here he is hunting, here he is reclining at the banquet and watching the performances of fools or dancing-girls. This is what a mere study of the drawings suggests. A more complete study of the inscriptions which accompany them have, however, convinced Egyptian archæologists that the object of these wall-paintings is not merely decorative or representative, in the sense in which drawings are representative to us. Their essential use is what we may call magical. They are believed to contain (and this is a universal savage belief as touching drawings or sculptures of any kind) some elements of the things they represent. Thus the tomb-paintings would be a kind of _doubles_ of the things which the deceased enjoyed in this life. And they would be placed in the tomb in order that the _double_ of the deceased (what the Egyptians called his _ka_) might enjoy the usufruct of them in the new state.

This is the simplest _magic_ use of the copies or representation of things in early Egyptian tombs. But the idea of the makers of these drawings seems often to be more complicated than this. The drawings by being placed in the tombs are supposed to give the _ka_ of the deceased (_not_ in the tomb, but far away in the land of shades) the enjoyment of the doubles of the things which he enjoyed in life. In this instance the drawings are not the actual possessions which the dead man has, but they correspond to, or influence, or in a certain sense create in the land of shades new possessions, the doubles of the old.

These subtle and complex notions are by no means to be expressed by the conventional words _magic_, _animism_, etc., loosely thrown about by anthropologists.

Pp. 47 and 52. _Weaving._--The art of platting, which carries in it the germ of the art of weaving, is of immemorial, undiscoverable antiquity. There can hardly have been a time when men did not weave together twigs or reeds to form a rude tent covering--a primitive house. And one proof of the immense antiquity of this practice is given by the numerous names for twigs, reeds, etc., in different languages which are derived from words signifying to twist or weave. The word _weave_ itself (Ger. _weben_) is connected with a Sanskrit root _vê_, meaning much the same thing; and we find this same root _vê_ appearing again in the Latin, _vimen_ a twig, and _vitis_, a vine, the last so named from its tendrils, which we should judge were used for platting before they were used for producing grapes. From the same root, again, and for the same reason, are derived the Latin _viburnum_, briony; the Slavonic _wetle_, willow; the Sanskrit _vetra_, reed. The Latin _scirpus_, reed, and the Greek γρῖφος, a net, are allied; but these may not be instances quite in point.

Such rude platting as this is a very different thing from the elaborately woven cloths found among the remains of the lake-villages, whose construction involves also the art of _spinning_.

P. 54. The view put forward in this chapter concerning the race of the neolithic men in Europe, is that which seems to the writer most consistent with _all_ the facts known, concerning the distribution of pre-historic man. As was said in the Preface, the students in different branches of pre-historic inquiry have not begun yet to collate sufficiently the results of their researches, and their opinions sometimes clash. We have to reconcile the pre-historic anthropologist and the ethnologist with the student of comparative philology. Most of the former are agreed that the earliest inhabitants of this quarter of the globe were most allied in character to the Lapps and Finns; and were consequently of what we have distinguished (Chapter V.) as the yellow-skinned family. But they are far from agreed that the bronze-using men were not of the same race; and some (Keller for instance) are violently opposed to the notion that the substitution of metal for stone was a sudden transition, and due to foreign importation. In some instances there is evidence that the change was gradual.

But the evidence on the other side is stronger. The human remains found with the bronze weapons are generally clearly distinguishable (in formation of skull, etc.) from those associated with the implements of stone. The funeral rites of the bronze-age men were as a rule different from those of the stone-age men; for while the former generally buried their dead, the latter seem generally to have burnt theirs (see Grimm, _Ueber das Verbrennen der Leichen_). Now we have strong reason for believing that the Aryan races (see Chapters IV., V.) practised this sort of interment; and we have further reason for thinking that the use of metals was known to them before their entry into Europe (see Pictet, _Les Origines Indo-Européennes_ and Grimm, _Geschichte der deut. Sprache_). Moreover, these Aryans unless their original home were in Europe (see p. 99, _note_), must have come in at some time, and when they did come, they must have produced an entire revolution in the life of its inhabitants. No time seems so appropriate for their appearance as that which closes the age of stone.

This theory does not preclude the possibility of, in many places, a side-by-side existence of stone users and bronze users, or even a gradual extension of the art of metallurgy; and these conditions would be especially likely to arise in such secluded spots as the lake-dwellings. Therefore, Dr. Keller’s arguments are not impeached by the theory that the Aryans were the introducers of bronze into Europe.

CHAPTERS III. AND IV.

Bopp, _Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit Zend, etc._ (trs.).
Bréal, _Principes de Philologie Comparée_.
Geiger, _Contributions to the History of the Development
of the Race_ (trs.).
Grimm, _Geschichte der deutschen Sprache_.
Grimm, _Ueber den Ursprung der Sprache_.
Kuhn, _Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung_.
Müller, Max, _Lectures on the Science of Language_.
Müller, Max, _Sanskrit Literature_.
Peile, _Introduction to Greek and Latin Etymology_.
Pictet, _Les Origines Indo-Européennes_.
Sayce, _Introduction to the Science of Language_.
Wilson, _Introduction to the Rig Veda Sanhita_.

Agreeably to the plan enunciated in the first chapter (pp. 4-6) I have used up all the more generally admitted facts and theories to form what seemed to me a reasonable account of the growth of language; to form an account too which should subserve one great end of this volume, by stimulating the thoughts of the reader at the same time that it pointed out the nature of the evidence upon which conclusions are founded, thereby preparing the reader to pursue the enquiry upon his own account.

The science of Comparative Philology is, however, in too unripe a condition to allow us to speak with dogmatic assurance with regard to its inferences; even those which seem fundamental have been, and may again, be called in question. It is right here, therefore, to remind the reader that it is quite upon the cards that further research may end by upsetting the generally accepted theory of the growth of inflexions in language. Even now there is a school of philologists and anthropologists that denies the premise upon which this theory rests--the _radical_ origin of all language. This school maintains that, instead of speech beginning in monosyllabic root-sounds, as is generally supposed, it begins in extremely elaborate and complicated sounds which are in fact nothing else than sentences; that it is only by the wear and tear of use that the sentence has got split up into its component sounds, which have then taken the character of monosyllabic roots.

This theory was first set on foot by a writer (Waitz) who is an anthropologist rather than a student of language, and it might be distinguished as the anthropological theory of the origin of speech. We have no space here for a full discussion of its merits. It will be enough to indicate some _à priori_ arguments in its favour.

1. It would make the language of primitive man analogous to a state of things which many people think they have discovered as typical of the most primitive savages--namely, a state of society which, in its customs, marriage laws, etc., differs from modern society in being not more simple, but infinitely more complex.

2. This supposed original expressive sentence and its subsequent analysis would have considerable analogy to what we ourselves have just seen is the history of writing, which begins with a more or less elaborate picture; then the parts of the picture are split up, and by the wear and tear of frequent use these parts are added together in separate items to form picture-_writing_, which is quite a different thing from picturing, and which is the immediate parent of writing as we know it. An analogy of this kind cannot be without weight.

On the other hand, it must be pointed out that the strongest arguments in favour of this view are the _à priori_ arguments. True, we do not know enough of the languages of the world to speak with dogmatic assurance. But the history of all the languages which have been closely studied points away from the anthropological theory.

Again, the first argument in favour of Waitz’s theory is itself clearly founded upon a paradox. It can scarcely be seriously maintained that while we can trace the growth of implements, such as spears and knives, from the simplest possible form upwards, such implements as speech and social laws have been ready made in a highly complex form. Argument number two serves to expose the grossness of this paradox. It would be as reasonable to maintain that mankind had begun by drawing pictures before they learnt to draw the elements out of which the pictures were composed.

The whole theory, therefore, belongs to the category of theories which explain _obscurum per obscurius_. It may be, and no doubt is, practically impossible to explain in any _natural_ way how speech arose. But at all events it is easier to understand how it may have arisen in a simple form and grown to one more complex, than to imagine it beginning in a complex state and by detrition resolving into simple elements.

P. 68. _Consonantal and vowel sounds._--The fact that even in Aryan roots the consonants have more weight than the vowel sounds will be evident merely from the instances given in the course of this and the following chapter--_fly_, _flee_, _flew_ (_w_ is here a vowel sound); _night_, _Nacht_; _knight_, _Knecht_; _Raum_, _room_; _asmi_, _esmi_ (_eimi_), _sum_, etc. This general rule holds good for almost all languages, and seems necessarily to do so from the stronger character of the consonantal and the weaker character of the vowel sounds.

But the _relative_ importance of vowels and consonants is very different in different classes of language. In the Aryan tongues the essential root is made up of vowels and consonants, and the variations upon the root idea are _generally_ expressed by additions to the root and not by internal changes in it. In this way, as we saw, most grammatical inflexions are made: hom-o, hom-inis, am-o, am-abam, τύπτω, ἒτυτον, ἒτυψον, etc. But in Semitic languages the root consists of the consonants only, and the inflexions are produced by internal changes, changes of the vowels which belong to a consonant. For example, in Arabic the three consonants _k-t-l_ (_katl_) represent the abstract notion of the act of killing. From them we get _kátil_, one who kills; _kitl_ (pl. _aktal_), an enemy; _katala_, he slew; _kutila_, he was slain. From _z-r-b_ (_zarb_), the act of striking; _zarbun_, a striking (in concrete sense); _zarábun_, a striker; _zaraba_, he struck; _zuriba_, he was struck. Compare these with occido, occidi, occisor, or with τύπτω, τέτυφα, etc., and we see that in the Aryan tongues the radical remains almost unchanged, and the inflexions are made _ab extra_; but in the Semitic language the inflexions are made by changes of vowel sound within the framework of the root consonants.

The usual grammatical root in Arabic is composed of three consonants, as in the examples given above. Most of the Semitic languages are in too fully formed a state to allow us to see whether or no these roots, which are of course at the least dissyllabic, grew up out of single sounds; but a comparison with some languages of the Semitic family (_e.g._ Egyptian) which are still near to their early radical state, show us that they have probably done so.

The Coptic language, which is the nearest we can get to the tongue of the ancient Egyptians, is extremely interesting in that it displays the processes of grammar formation, as has just been said, in a more intelligible shape than we find in the higher Semitic tongues.

P. 98. We are here speaking, be it remembered, of families of _language_. The ethnology of a people is not necessarily the same as its language; so that when we speak of a family of language including the tongues of a certain number of races, we do not imply that they were wholly of the same ethnic family. This caution is especially necessary as regards the earliest great pre-historic nations who seem to have been what are called Cushites--anything but pure Semites (see Chapter V.)--but whose languages may properly be ranged in the Semitic family. The Egyptian, for instance, was more nearly monosyllabic than any other Semitic tongue (Chapter XIII.); yet such inflexions as it has show an evident relationship with Hebrew and other Semitic languages (see Appendix to Bunsen’s _Egypt’s Place in Universal History_).