Man, Past and Present Part 29

[554] _Australasia_, 1894, II. p. 49.

[555] _The Bontoc Igorot_, Eth. Survey Pub. Vol. I. 1904. Further information concerning the Philippines is published in the _Census Report in 1903_, 1905; _Ethnological Survey Publications_, 1904- ; C. A.

Koeze, _Crania Ethnica Philippinica, ein Beitrag zur Anthropologie der Philippinen_, 1901- ; Henry Gannett, _People of the Philippines_, 1904; R. B. Bean, _The Racial Anatomy of the Philippine Islanders_, 1910; Fay-Cooper Cole, _Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao_, 1913.

[556] A. E. Jenks, _The Bontoc Igorot_, 1904, p. 41.

[557] _Op. cit._ p. 247.

[558] Girard de Rialle, _Rev. d'Anthrop._, Jan. and April, 1885. These studies are based largely on the data supplied by M. Paul Ibis and earlier travellers in the island. Nothing better has since appeared except G. Taylor's valuable contributions to the _China Review_ (see below). The census of 1904 gave 2,860,574 Chinese, 51,770 j.a.panese and 104,334 aborigines.

[559] Lit. "ripe barbarians" (_barbares murs_, Ibis).

[560] See facsimiles of bilingual and other MSS. from Formosa in T. de Lacouperie's _Formosa Notes on MSS., Languages, and Races_, Hertford, 1887. The whole question is here fully discussed, though the author seems unable to arrive at any definite conclusion even as to the _bona_ or _mala fides_ of the noted impostor George Psalmanazar.

[561] _Globus_, 70, p. 93 sq.

[562] "Les Races Malaques," etc., in _L'Anthropologie_, 1896.

[563] "The Aborigines of Formosa," in _China Review_, XIV. p. 198 sq., also xvi. No. 3 ("A Ramble through Southern Formosa"). The services rendered by this intelligent observer to Formosan ethnology deserve more general recognition than they have hitherto received. See also the _Report on the control of the Aborigines of Formosa_, Bureau of Aboriginal Affairs, Formosa, 1911.

[564] "Sprachen der Ureinwohner Formosa's," in _Zeitschr. f.

Volkerpsychologie_, etc., v. p. 437 sq. This anthropologist found to his great surprise that the Polynesian and Maori skulls in the London College of Surgeons presented striking a.n.a.logies with those collected by himself in Formosa. Here at least is a remarkable harmony between speech and physical characters.

[565] De Lacouperie, _op. cit._ p. 73.

[566] The natives of course know nothing of this word, and speak of their island homes as _Mattai_, a vague term applied equally to land, country, village, and even the whole world.

[567] "The Nicobar Islanders," in _Journ. Anthr. Inst._ 1889, p. 354 sq.

Cf. C. B. Kloss, _In the Andamans and Nicobars_, 1903.

[568] E. H. Man, _Journ. Anthr. Inst._ 1894, p. 21.

CHAPTER VIII

THE NORTHERN MONGOLS

Domain of the Mongolo-Turki Section--Early Contact with Caucasic Peoples--Primitive Man in Siberia--and Mongolia--Early Man in Korea and j.a.pan--in Finland and East Europe--Early Man in Babylonia--The Sumerians--The Akkadians--Babylonian Chronology--Elamite Origins--Historical Records--Babylonian Religion--Social System--General Culture--The Mongols Proper--Physical Type--Ethnical and Administrative Divisions--Buddhism--The Tunguses--Cradle and Type--Mental Characters--Shamanism--The Manchus--Origins and Early Records--Type--The Dauri--Mongolo-Turki Speech--Language and Racial Characters--Mongol and Manchu Script--The Yukaghirs--A Primitive Writing System--Chukchis and Koryaks--Chukchi and Eskimo Relations--Type and Social State--Koryaks and Kamchadales--The Gilyaks--The Koreans--Ethnical Elements--Korean Origins and Records--Religion--The Korean Script--The j.a.panese--Origins-- Const.i.tuent Elements--The j.a.panese Type--j.a.panese and Liu-Kiu Islanders--Their Languages and Religions--Cult of the Dead-- Shintoism and Buddhism.

CONSPECTUS.

#Present Range.# _The Northern Hemisphere from j.a.pan to Lapland, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Great Wall and Tibet_; _Aralo-Caspian Basin_; _Parts of Irania_; _Asia Minor_; _Parts of East Russia, Balkan Peninsula, and Lower Danube_.

#Hair#, _generally the same as South Mongol, but in Mongolo-Caucasic transitional groups brown, chestnut, and even towy or light flaxen, also wavy and ringletty_; _beard mostly absent except amongst the Western Turks and some Koreans_.

#Colour#, _light or dirty yellowish amongst all true Mongols and Siberians_; _very variable (white, sallow, swarthy) in the transitional groups (Finns, Lapps, Magyars, Bulgars, Western Turks), and many Manchus and Koreans_; _in j.a.pan the unexposed parts of the body also white_.

#Skull#, _highly brachycephalic in the true Mongol(80 to 85)_; _variable (sub-brachy and sub-dolicho) in most transitional groups and even some Siberians (Ostyaks and Voguls 77)_. #Jaws#, #cheek-bones#, #nose#, _and_ #eyes# _much the same as in South Mongols_; _but nose often large and straight, and eyes straight, greyish, or even blue in Finns, Manchus, Koreans, and some other Mongolo-Caucasians_.

#Stature#, _usually short (below 1.68 m., 5 ft. 6 in.), but many Manchus and Koreans tall, 1.728 m. to 1.778 m. (5 ft. 8 or 10 in.)_. #Lips#, #arms#, #legs#, _and_ #feet#, _usually the same as South Mongols_; _but j.a.panese legs disproportionately short_.

#Temperament#, _of all true Mongols and many Mongoloids, dull, reserved, somewhat sullen and apathetic_; _but in some groups (Finns, j.a.panese) active and energetic_; _nearly all brave, warlike, even fierce, and capable of great atrocities, though not normally cruel_; _within the historic period the character has almost everywhere undergone a marked change from a rude and ferocious to a milder and more humane disposition_; _ethical tone higher than South Mongol, with more developed sense of right and wrong_.

#Speech#, _very uniform_; _apparently only one stock language_ (#Finno-Tatar# _or_ #Ural-Altaic Family#), _a highly typical agglutinating form with no prefixes, but numerous postfixes attached loosely to an unchangeable root, by which their vowels are modified in accordance with subtle laws of vocalic harmony_; _the chief members of the family (Finnish, Magyar, Turkish, Mongol, and especially Korean and j.a.panese) diverge greatly from the common prototype_.

#Religion#, _originally spirit-worship through a mediator_ (Shaman), _perhaps everywhere, and still exclusively prevalent amongst Siberian and all other uncivilised groups_; _all Mongols proper, Manchus, and Koreans nominal Buddhists_; _all Turki peoples Moslem_; _j.a.panese Buddhists and Shintoists_; _Finns, Lapps, Bulgars, Magyars, and some Siberians real or nominal Christians_.

#Culture#, _rude and barbaric rather than savage amongst the Siberian aborigines, who are nearly all nomadic hunters and fishers with half-wild reindeer herds but scarcely any industries_; _the Mongols proper, Kirghiz, Uzbegs and Turkomans semi-nomadic pastors_; _the Anatolian and Balkan Turks, Manchus, and Koreans settled agriculturists, with scarcely any arts or letters and no science_; _j.a.panese, Finns, Bulgars and Magyars civilised up to, and in some respects beyond the European average (Magyar and Finnish literature, j.a.panese art)_.

#Mongol Proper.# _Sharra (Eastern), Kalmak (Western), Buryat (Siberian) Mongol._

#Tungus.# _Tungus proper, Manchu, Gold, Oroch, Lamut._

#Korean#; #j.a.panese# _and_ #Liu-Kiu#.

#Turki.# _Yakut; Kirghiz; Uzbeg; Taranchi; Kara-Kalpak; Nogai; Turkoman; Anatolian; Osmanli._

#Finno-Ugrian.# _Baltic Finn; Lapp; Samoyed; Cheremiss; Votyak; Vogul; Ostyak; Bulgar; Magyar._

#East Siberian.# _Yukaghir; Chukchi; Koryak; Kamchadale; Gilyak._

By "Northern Mongols" are here to be understood all those branches of the Mongol Division of mankind which are usually comprised under the collective geographical expression _Ural-Altaic_, to which corresponds the ethnical designation _Mongolo-Tatar_, or more properly _Mongolo-Turki_[569]. Their domain is roughly separated from that of the Southern Mongols (Chap. VI.) by the Great Wall and the Kuen-lun range, beyond which it spreads out westwards over most of Western Asia, and a considerable part of North Europe, with many scattered groups in Central and South Russia, the Balkan Peninsula, and the Middle Danube basin. In the extreme north their territory stretches from the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific with j.a.pan and parts of Sakhalin continually westwards across Korea, Siberia, Central and North Russia to Finland and Lapland. But its southern limits can be indicated only approximately by a line drawn from the Kuen-lun range westwards along the northern escarpments of the Iranian plateau, and round the southern sh.o.r.es of the Caspian to the Mediterranean. This line, however, must be drawn in such a way as to include Afghan Turkestan, much of the North Persian and Caucasian steppes, and nearly the whole of Asia Minor, while excluding Armenia, Kurdestan, and Syria.

Nor is it to be supposed that even within these limits the North Mongol territory is everywhere continuous. In East Europe especially, where they are for the most part comparatively recent intruders, the Mongols are found only in isolated and vanishing groups in the Lower and Middle Volga basin, the Crimea, and the North Caucasian steppe, and in more compact bodies in Rumelia, Bulgaria, and Hungary. Throughout all these districts, however, the process of absorption or a.s.similation to the normal European physical type is so far completed that many of the Nogai and other Russian "Tartars," as they are called, the Volga and Baltic Finns, the Magyars, and Osmanli Turks, would scarcely be recognised as members of the North Mongol family but for their common Finno-Turki speech, and the historic evidence by which their original connection with this division is established beyond all question.

In Central Asia also (North Irania, the Aralo-Caspian and Tarim basins) the Mongols have been in close contact with Caucasic peoples probably since the New Stone Age, and here intermediate types have been developed, by which an almost unbroken transition has been brought about between the yellow and the white races.

During recent years much light has been shed on the physiographical conditions of Central Asia in early times. Stein's[570] explorations in 1900-1 and 1906-8 in Chinese Turkestan, the Pumpelly Expeditions[571] in 1903 and 1904 in Russian Turkestan, the travels of Sven Hedin[572] in 1899-1902, and 1906-8, of Carruthers[573] in N.W. Mongolia, and the researches of Ellsworth Huntington[574] (a member of the first Pumpelly Expedition) in 1905-7 all bear testimony to the variation in climate which the districts of Central Asia have undergone since glacial times.

There has been a general trend towards arid conditions, alternating with periods of greater humidity, when tracts, now deserted, were capable of maintaining a dense population. Abundant evidence of man's occupation has been found in delta oases formed by snow-fed mountain streams, or on the banks of vanished rivers, where now-a-days all is desolation, though, as T. Peisker[575] points out, climate was not the sole or even the main factor in many areas. In some places, as at Merv, the earliest occupation was only a few centuries before the Christian era, but at Anau near Askhabad some 300 miles east of the Caspian, explored by the Pumpelly Expedition, the earliest strata contained remains of Stone Age culture. The North Kurgan or tumulus, rising some 40 or 50 feet above the plain, showed a definite stratification of structures in sun-dried bricks, raised by successive generations of occupants. H. Schmidt, who was in charge of the excavations, was able to collect a valuable series of potsherds, showing a gradual evolution in form, technique and ornamentation, from the earliest to the latest periods. One point of great significance for establishing cultural if not physical relationships in this obscure region is the resemblance between the geometrical designs on pots of the early period and similar pottery found by MM. Gautier and Lampre[576] at Mussian, and by M. J. de Morgan[576] at Susa, while clay figurines from the South Kurgan (copper culture) are clearly of Babylonian type, the influence of which is seen much later in terra-cotta figurines discovered by Stein[577] at Yotkan.

With the progress of archaeological research, it becomes daily more evident that the whole of the North Mongol domain, from Finland to j.a.pan, has pa.s.sed through the Stone and Metal Ages, like most other habitable parts of the globe. During his wanderings in Siberia and Mongolia in the early nineties, Hans Leder[578] came upon countless prehistoric stations, kurgans (barrows), stone circles, and many megalithic monuments of various types. In West Siberia the barrows, which consist solely of earth without any stone-work, are by the present inhabitants called _Chudskiye Kurgani_, "Chudish Graves," and, as in North Russia, this term "Chude" is ascribed to a now vanished unknown race which formerly inhabited the land. To them, as to the "Toltecs" in Central America, all ancient monuments are credited, and while some regard them as prehistoric Finns, others identify them with the historic Scythians, the Scythians of Herodotus.

There are reasons, however, for thinking that the Chudes may represent an earlier race, the men of the Stone Age, who, migrating from north Europe eastwards, had reached the Tom valley (which drains to the Obi) before the extinction of the mammoth, and later spread over the whole of northern Asia, leaving everywhere evidence of their presence in the megalithic monuments now being daily brought to light in East Siberia, Mongolia, Korea, and j.a.pan. This view receives support from the characters of two skulls found in 1895 by A. P. Most.i.tz in one of the five prehistoric stations on the left bank of the Sava affluent of the Selenga river, near Ust-Kiakta in Trans-Baikalia. They differ markedly from the normal Buryat (Siberian Mongol) type, recalling rather the long-shaped skulls of the South Russian kurgans, with cephalic indices 73.2 and 73.5, as measured by M. J. D. Talko-Hryncewicz[579]. Thus, in the very heart of the Mongol domain, the characteristically round-headed race would appear to have been preceded, as in Europe, by a long-headed type.

In East Siberia, and especially in the Lake Baikal region, Leder found extensive tracts strewn with kurgans, many of which have already been explored, and their contents deposited in the Irkutsk museum. Amongst these are great numbers of stone implements, and objects made of bone and mammoth tusks, besides carefully worked copper ware, betraying technical skill and some artistic taste in the designs. In Trans-Baikalia, still farther east, with the kurgans are a.s.sociated the so-called _Kameni Babi_, "Stone Women," monoliths rough-hewn in the form of human figures. Many of these monoliths bear inscriptions, which, however, appear to be of recent date (mostly Buddhist prayers and formularies), and are not to be confounded with the much older rock inscriptions deciphered by W. Thomsen through the Turki language.

Continuing his investigations in Mongolia proper, Leder here also discovered earthen kurgans, which, however, differed from those of Siberia by being for the most part surmounted either with circular or rectangular stone structures, or else with monoliths. They are called _Kuruktsur_ by the present inhabitants, who hold them in great awe, and never venture to touch them. Unfortunately strangers also are unable to examine their contents, all disturbance of the ground with spade or shovel being forbidden under pain of death by the Chinese officials, for fear of awakening the evil spirits, now slumbering peacefully below the surface. The Siberian burial mounds have yielded no bronze, a fact which indicates considerable antiquity, although no date can be set for its introduction into these regions. Better evidence of antiquity is found in the climatic changes resulting in recent desiccation, which must have taken place here as elsewhere, for the burials bear witness to the existence of a denser population than could be supported at the present time[580].

Such an antiquity is indeed required to explain the spread of neolithic remains to the Pacific seaboard, and especially to Korea and j.a.pan. In Korea W. Gowland examined a dolmen 30 miles from Seul, which he describes and figures[581], and which is remarkable especially for the disproportionate size of the capstone, a huge undressed megalith 14-1/2 by over 13 feet. He refers to four or five others, all in the northern part of the peninsula, and regards them as "intermediate in form between a cist and a dolmen." But he thinks it probable that they were never covered by mounds, but always stood as monuments above ground, in this respect differing from the j.a.panese, the majority of which are all buried in tumuli. In some of their features these present a curious resemblance to the Brittany structures, but no stone implements appear to have been found in any of the burial mounds, and the j.a.panese chambered tombs, according to Hamada, Professor of Archaeology in Kyoto University, are usually attributed to the Iron Age (fifth to seventh centuries A.D.[582]).

In many districts j.a.pan contains memorials of a remote past--sh.e.l.l mounds, cave-dwellings, and in Yezo certain pits, which are not occupied by the present Ainu population, but are by them attributed to the _Koro-pok-guru_, "People of the Hollows," who occupied the land before their arrival, and lived in huts built over these pits. Similar remains on an islet near Nemuro on the north-east coast of Yezo are said by the j.a.panese to have belonged to the _Kobito_, a dwarfish race exterminated by the Ainu, hence apparently identical with the Koro-pok-guru. They are a.s.sociated by John Milne with some primitive peoples of the Kurile Islands, Sakhalin, and Kamchatka, who, like the Eskimo of the American coast, had extended formerly much farther south than at present.

In a kitchen-midden, 330 by 200 feet, near Shiidzuka in the province of Ibaraki, the j.a.panese antiquaries S. Yagi and M. Shinomura[583] have found numerous objects belonging to the Stone Age of j.a.pan. Amongst them were flint implements, worked bones, ashes, pottery, and a whole series of clay figures of human beings. The finders suggest that these remains may have belonged to a h.o.m.ogeneous race of the Stone Period, who, however, were not the ancestors of the Ainu--hitherto generally regarded as the first inhabitants of j.a.pan. In the national records vague reference is made to other aborigines, such as the "Long Legs," and the "Eight Wild Tribes," described as the enemies of the first j.a.panese settlers in Kiu-shiu, and reduced by Jimmu Tenno, the semi-mythical founder of the present dynasty; the _Ebisu_, who are probably to be identified with the Ainu; and the _Seki-Manzi_, "Stone-Men," also located in the southern island of Kiu-shiu. The last-mentioned, of whom, however, little further is known, seem to have some claim to be a.s.sociated with the above described remains of early man in j.a.pan[584].