Folklore as an Historical Science Part 20

[286] Barrows, mounds, tumuli, stone circles, monoliths are generally admitted to belong to the Stone Age people before the Celts arrived, and when they are adequately investigated, as Mr. Arthur Evans has investigated Stonehenge (_Archaeological Review_, vol. ii. pp. 312-330), and the Rollright Stones (_Folklore_, vol. vi. pp. 5-51), the evidence of a prehistoric origin is unquestioned.

[287] I have worked out the evidence for this in the _Archaeological Review_, vol. iii. pp. 217-242, 350-375, and though I do not endorse all I have written there, the main points are still, I think, good.

[288] Wallace, _Darwinism_, cap. xv.

[289] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes of Australia_, 12, 272, 324, 368, 420.

[290] _Descent of Man_, i. cap. vii. 176.

[291] _Cf._ Topinard's _Anthropology_, part iii., "On the Origin of Man," pp. 515-535, for the details of the various authorities ranged on the sides of monogenists and polygenists.

[292] Keane, _Man, Past and Present_, discusses the important evidence obtained by Dr. Dubois from Java, and Dr. Noetling from Upper Burma, pp. 5-8. It is only fair to that brilliant scholar, Dr. Latham, to point out that without the evidence before him to prove the point, he came to the same conclusion that the original home of man was "somewhere in intra-tropical Asia, and that it was the single locality of a single pair."--Latham, _Man and his Migrations_, 248.

[293] The most recent example of this is Mr. Thomas's extraordinary treatment of the evidence of migration in Australia. It produces in his mind "novel conditions," but has effects which he cannot neglect, but which he strangely misinterprets. N. W. Thomas, _Kinship Organisations in Australia_, 27-28.

[294] Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, i. 18.

[295] Lord Avebury, _Prehistoric Times_, 586.

[296] _Man, Past and Present_, pp. 1, 8.

[297] Latham, _Man and his Migrations_, 155-6.

[298] The ethnographic movement is a very definite fact in anthropological evidence, though it has been little noted. Thus "the Coles are evidently a good pioneering race, fond of new clearings and the luxuriant and easily raised crops of the virgin soil, and have const.i.tutions that thrive on malaria, so it is perhaps in the best interest of humanity and cause of civilisation that they be kept moving by continued Aryan propulsion. Ever armed with bow, arrows, and pole-axe, they are prepared to do battle with the beasts of the forest, holding even the king of the forest, the 'Bun Rajah,' that is, the tiger, in little fear."--Col. Dalton in _Journ. Asiatic Soc., Bengal_, x.x.xiv. 9.

[299] Traditions of great migrations exist among most primitive races.

Some of these contain unexpected corroboration from actual discoveries.

Thus the natives of New Zealand had a tradition that their ancestors, when they arrived in their canoes some four centuries ago, buried some sacred things under a large tree. It is said that the tree was blown down in recent times and that the sacred things were discovered. Taplin records "a good specimen of the kind of migration which has taken place among the aborigines all over the continent" (_The Narrinyeri_, p. 4); and similar evidence could be produced in almost every direction. Mr.

Mathew in _Eaglehawk and Crow_ deals with "the argument from mythology and tradition" as to the origin of the Australians in a very suggestive fashion (pp. 14-22). Stanley has preserved an African native tradition of local groups spreading out from the parent home _(Through the Dark Continent_, i. 346).

[300] I am aware this is disputed by O. Peschel--_Races of Man_, 137 _et seq._--but I think the evidence is sufficient; and it must be remembered that there is direct evidence of the most backward races not using the fire they possess for cooking, but always eating their animal food raw, as, for instance, the Semang people of the Malay Peninsula.

(See Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, i. 112.) The Andaman Islanders could not make fire, though they possessed and kept it alive. This shows that they must have borrowed it and did not previously possess it.--Quatref.a.ges, _The Pygmies_, 108. Tylor, _Early History of Mankind_, cap. ix., should be consulted.

[301] The term political is, I confess, a little awkward, owing to its specially modern use, but it is the only term which, in its early sense, expresses the stage of social development represented by a polity as distinct from a mere localisation.

[302] It was one of the first efforts of the science of language to endeavour to trace out the original home of the so-called Aryas and their subsequent migrations. "Emigration," said Bunsen, "is the great agent in forming nations and languages" (_Philosophy of Hist._, i. 56); and Niebuhr, who has traced out most of the migrations of the Greek tribes, observes that "this migration of nations was formerly not mentioned anywhere" (_Anc. Hist._, ii. 212). Quite recently, Professor Flinders Petrie has worked at the question of European migrations in the Huxley lecture of 1907 (_Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, x.x.xvi. 189-232), his valuable maps showing "the movements of twenty of the princ.i.p.al peoples that entered Europe during the centuries of great movements that are best known to us" (204). In the meantime, the folklorist has much to do in this direction, and up to the present he has almost entirely ignored or misread the evidence. I do not know whether Mr.

Nutt would still adhere to his conclusion that the myth embodied in the Celtic expulsion-and-return formula is undoubtedly solar (_Folklore Record_, iv. 42), but a restatement of Mr. Nutt's careful and elaborate a.n.a.lysis would lead me to trace the myth to the migration period of Aryan history, just as I agree with von Ihering that the _ver sacrum_ of the Romans is a rite continued from the migration period to express in religious formulae, and on emergency to again carry out, the ancient practice of sending forth from an overstocked centre sufficient of the tribesmen and tribeswomen to leave those who remained economically well-conditioned (_The Evolution of the Aryan_, 249-290). Pheidon's law at Corinth, alluded to by Aristotle (_Pol._, ii. cap. vi.), could only be carried out by a sending out of the surplus. See also Aristotle, _Pol._, ii. cap. xii.; and Newman's note to the first reference, quoting similar laws elsewhere. Both the "junior-right" traditions and customs take us back to the same conditions. The occupation of fresh territories is an observable feature of the Russian mir (Wallace, _Russia_, i. 255; Laveleye _Primitive Property_, 34), and Mr. Chadwick has recently called attention to the corresponding Scandinavian evidence (_Origin of the English Nation_, 334).

[303] Mr. J. R. Logan long ago pointed out that "the further we go back, we find ethnic characteristics more uniform," and further concluded that certain facts observed by himself "lead to the inference that the Archaic world was connected."--_Journ. Indian Archipelago_, iv. 290, 291.

[304] _Descent of Man_, pp. 590, 591.

[305] _Studies in Ancient History_, i. 84.

[306] _History of Human Marriage_, cap. ii.

[307] _Ancient Society_, p. 10.

[308] _Secret of the Totem_, p. 32.

[309] N. W. Thomas, _Kinship Organisation in Australia_, 4.

[310] _Folklore_, xii. 232.

[311] Both Dr. Haddon and myself made the same point on a criticism of Mr. Fraser's _Golden Bough_, mine being from the Aricia rites, and Dr.

Haddon's from the savage parallels thereto. See _Folklore_, xii. 223, 224, 232.

[312] Sproat's _Scenes and Studies of Savage Life_, 19. The use of the term "tribe" in this quotation is, of course, descriptive only. There is no tribal const.i.tution among the Ahts, and "group" would have been the preferable term.

[313] Dr. W. H. Rivers' recently published work on the Todas is the best authority.

[314] Rivers, _op. cit._, 432, 455.

[315] Rivers, _op. cit._, cap. xxi. 504, 517.

[316] Rivers, _op. cit._, 452-456.

[317] Latham, _Descriptive Ethnology_, ii, 137.

[318] Bucher, _Industrial Evolution_, 56.

[319] Rev. George Taplin, _The Narrinyeri; South Australian Aborigines_, 40. _Cf._ Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-east Australia_, 710-720; Grierson, _The Silent Trade_, 22.

[320] _Cf._ Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Tribes of Malay Peninsula_, i, 10.

[321] Graham, _Bheel Tribes of Khandesh_, 3.

[322] Herodotos, iv. 180.

[323] _Journ. Asiatic Soc., Bengal_, xiii. 625.

[324] Major Gurdon, _The Khasis_, 76, 82.

[325] N. W. Thomas, _Kinship Organisations in Australia_, 124.

[326] Fustel de Coulange's _Cite Antique_, cap. xiv. and xv., is, however, the most exaggerated example of this point of view.

[327] Lang, _Social Origins_, 1. The latest exponent of anthropological principles affirms that "the family which exists in the lower stages of culture, though it is overshadowed by the other social phenomena, has persisted through all the manifold revolutions of society."--N. W.

Thomas, _Kinship Organisations in Australia_, 1.

[328] Jevons' _Introd. to Hist. of Religion_, 195.

[329] See also Prof. Geikie in _Scottish Geographical Mag._ (Sept.

1897).

[330] _Early Hist. of Mankind_, 303; MacCulloch, _Childhood of Fiction_, 396; Gould, _Mythical Monsters_.

[331] Mr. Westermarck has collected excellent evidence as to the economic influences upon savage society (_Hist. of Human Marriage_, 39-49), and we may quite properly a.s.sume the same conditions for earliest man.