Anthropogeography

“ Anthropology and Ethnography, the science of man and of race, are the running commentaries of Geography and Topography. The historian and the geographer work toward each other,—the historian going back from the acts of men to study the scenes which have conditioned their life, the geographer going forward from the study of the habitat of men to that of their deeds. ”

“ Geology was but just beginning to make good its claim to a place among the sciences. This unfolded to man the physical history of the world as read from the rocks, and deals with times so vast and profound that we speak no longer of years, but of ages. And with the aid of Geology grand secrets were wrung from the past, and new light was thrown on the manners and customs of primitive man. Thus the foundation for still another science was laid, called Archæology, or the science of Human Antiquities. ”

“ To see how, following a definite plan, the vast continents have grown to their present size and form; to see how animal and vegetable life have evolved successively higher and higher forms; to see where in this wondrous drama of creation, this strange unfolding of life, the first faint, indecisive traces of man’s presence are to be found; to learn what great changes in climate, in Geogony, and in life, had occurred before man’s appearance, let us pass in brief review the history of early geological periods. ”

“ This period, long as it appears, is very short as compared with the myriads of ages of geological development that preceded it, and represents only the last and the shortest of the geological periods. The question arises, How has the human race been able to spread itself over the whole surface of the globe? Is it the product of different and independent origins in the several continents, or have all men sprung from a common cradle, a "mother-region"? ”

“ In all these questions of former land connection, anthropo-geography follows the lead of bio-geography, whose deductions, based upon the dispersal of countless plant and animal forms, point to the paths of human distribution. ”

“ These examples of human handicraft, if wrought by beings similar to ourselves, found in the Post Pleistocene Formation, or Drift, as it is called, awaken the keenest inquiry, and prove to us that not Geology only, but Archæology and Ethnology, in their daily acquisition of new facts, have yet much to learn and much to teach us, of the history of our own race, and of the world on which we live. ”

“ As, however, the truths of geology became gradually formulated into a science, and men's minds got accustomed to apply the new methods of research to the elucidation of the origin and history of the human race, the sphere of prehistoric archæology became equally well defined. ”

“ Whether there be no human interest in geology; whether man did not exist on the earth during ages which have seen enormous geological changes, is becoming more and more an open question.
But meanwhile all must agree that there is matter enough for interest—nay, room enough for the free use of the imagination, in a science which tells of the growth and decay of whole mountain-ranges, continents, oceans, whole tribes and worlds of plants and animals. ”

“ Its unity of species points to some degree of communication through a long prehistoric past. Universal history is not entitled to the name unless it embraces all parts of the earth and all peoples, whether savage or civilized. To fill the gaps in the written record it must turn to ethnology and geography, which by tracing the distribution and movements of primitive peoples can often reconstruct the most important features of their history.
Anthropo-geographic problems are never simple. They must all be viewed in the long perspective of evolution and the historical past. ”

“ As the geologist traces in the rocks the clear record of the early beginnings of life on our planet, those first steps that have led through the succession of ever-developing forms of animal and plant life at last culminating in man and the world as we now see them, so does the anthropologist discover in the myths and legends of a people the dim traces of their origin and development till these come out in the stronger light of historical time. ”

“ Biology indicates isolation as one of the factors in the origin of the species. Anthropology derives the great races of mankind—the Caucasian, the Ethiopian, the Malay, the Mongolian, and the Indian—from geographical separation following an assumed prehistoric dispersion. A German scholar, Dr. Georg Gerland, has prepared an atlas which plots differences in physical traits, such as skin color and hair texture, as indicating the geographical distribution of races. ”

“ Hence the present tendency of anthropology is to return to the classification proposed by Linnæus, which, in a broad way, subdivides the human species with reference to the continental areas mainly inhabited by it in the earliest historic times. ”

“ Of course many of the questions which we are prompted to ask concerning the primitive and prehistoric races on this continent, as if it were a fresh and wholly independent field of inquiry, are problems equally for the dwellers on the old continents themselves, with all their histories and monuments. The theory of the development or evolution of the human race from a lower order of animal is to be subjected to the same tests, illustrated by the same analogies, and met by the same arresting difficulties and challenges wherever specimens of that race are found. ”

“ In these regions are the oldest historical monuments of our race; here geology finds the most ancient remains of human beings; here also seems to be the birthplace of the fauna and flora most useful and congenial to man; and here he attains to his highest pitch of mental and physical development. This, it is true, by no means accords with the methods of the derivationists. On their theory we should search for the origin of man rather in those regions where he is most depauperated and degraded, and where his struggles [374] for existence are most severe. ”

“ Illustrations of this are seen in the rise and rapid development of the comparatively modern science of Anthropology, and the successful cultivation of the assistant sciences, such as Archaeology, Ethnography, and Philology, which directly contribute materials for its use. The activity of geographical research in both hemispheres, and the large additions recently made to our knowledge of older and newer continents by the discoveries of eminent travellers and explorers, afford the anthropologist additional materials for his work. ”

“ This seems to call for a slight outline of Geology. The animal and vegetable tribes which have come and gone upon the earth, following each other like the shadows of passing clouds on a Summer’s day, have left their remains in the rocks which at that time were forming. A close investigation of these remains shows that they form the record book of nature, wherein we are permitted to read somewhat of her secrets. This had long been a sealed book to man; but science, as we have seen, constantly extending her domain, at length taught him the alphabet. ”

“ Among the obscure problems in the history of mankind a foremost place must be given to the question of the origin and distribution of the various races of men. Undoubtedly two main factors in the differentiation of these races have been climate and geography. ”

“ Now, all history and all tradition, so far as they throw light on the question at all, agree in showing that the centre in which the human species originated must have been somewhere in the temperate regions of the East, not far distant from the Caucasian group of mountains. ”

“ FINDS, a term recently applied by English archæologists to deposits of objects connected with human life, and sometimes associated with human remains, but of prehistoric or unknown origin. The chief aim of scientific research in regard to them is to ascertain the historical relation and condition of the human beings which they represent. As the development of civilization is not a uniform process, the discovery of a few objects made and used by a prehistoric tribe is not a sufficient index to the exact place of that tribe in history. ”

“ Like the successive geological formations, the tribes of [Pg 500] mankind may be arranged, according to their relative conditions, into successive strata. When thus arranged, they reveal with some degree of certainty the entire range of human progress from savagery to civilization. A thorough study of each successive stratum will develop whatever is special in its culture and characteristics, and yield a definite conception of the whole, in their differences and in their relations. When this has been accomplished, the successive stages of human progress will be definitely understood. ”

“ In the present condition of our knowledge and of our methods, one verdict—"not proven, and not provable"—must be recorded against all the grand hypotheses of the palaeontologist respecting the general succession of life on the globe. The order and nature of terrestrial life, as a whole, are open questions. Geology at present provides us with most valuable topographical records, but she has not the means of working them into a universal history. ”

“ If, as above seen, the study of human origins is largely a geological problem, the investigation of the later developments, during the Metal Ages and prehistoric times, belongs mainly to the field of Archaeology. ”

“ We are thus enabled to trace the history of lakes and rivers, of forests and mosses: we can follow the succession of animals that have wandered over the land, and many of which had died out ere the days of history began: we can dimly perceive the conditions of life amidst the earliest human population of the country: we can recover abundant evidence of the extraordinary vicissitudes of climate which, since these ancient times, have affected not this land only, but the whole northern hemisphere. ”

“ In all ways we thus recognise, amid diversities of race, climate, and other external circumstances, many minute analogies between the men of palæolithic and neolithic ages of Europe, and those of the new world’s more recent centuries, in regions apart from its singular centres of a native civilisation. ”

“ In that primeval transition of the ethnologist in which geology draws to a close, and archæology has its beginning, amid all the rudeness of palæolithic art, we may still recognise the rational lord of creation, the being endowed, not with physical but moral supremacy; in whom intelligence and accumulated experience were to prove more than a match for all the brute force of those gigantic mammalia so familiar to us now in fossil disclosures of the drift-gravels and cave-earth. ”

“ In other words, the foundation was being laid, now in 1833, for the next great advance in geological science, the contemporaneity of man and several extinct species of mammals, indicating, of course, the antiquity of the human race. ”

“ If, however, the isolated individuality of the elder nations of the world's history confers on each of them an interest which we seek for in vain in those of the medieval era of transition, man also has a peculiar individuality which gives a value to the most perishable relics he casts behind him in his brief lifetime. To the geologist one perfect example is a certain type of its species, and hence a complete geological collection is a conceivable thing ”

“ Its truths have as yet only been revealed to the favoured few; but the day will doubtless come when the study of geology will be considered as essential to a good education as is the study of geography or history. It is now admitted that geology is the basis of geography; and it cannot be questioned that the physical history of any country has had an important bearing on the history and character of its inhabitants ”

“ To begin with, it must be premised that geological conditions were of comparatively less importance in very primitive times, and have increased in their practical relation to humanity with every additional step in general culture. ”

“ In Geology, which is Natural History extended over all ages, this principle has a still wider scope,—embracing not merely the characteristics and conditions of the beings which now exist, but of all, so far as we can learn regarding them, which have ever existed, and involving the consideration of not merely their peculiarities as races placed before us without relation to time, but also of the history of their rise, increase, decline, and extinction. ”

“ The last point that I think necessary to bring forward here, is the information which geology gives as to the locality of the introduction of man. There can be no hesitation in affirming that to the temperate regions of the old continent belongs the honour of being the cradle of humanity. ”

“ That a complete American history ought to employ and combine all the materials afforded by geology, geography, physics, chronology, physiology, ethnology, archeology, philology, on America, with all the traditions of the Americans.
3. Geology and physical geography indicates the cradles and ancient settlements of mankind, the revolutions of nature, the places unfit for population, the means of access, probable route of colonies, &c. ”

“ There the geologist looks with a longing eye, and hopes ultimately to unravel, not only the hidden mystery of the birth-place of his race, but also, how or through what natural process he sprang into existence. ”

“ In the Recent epoch the progress of man in language, in social organization, in the arts of life, in morals and religion, has left ample records which are for other sciences than ours to read; here, therefore, geology gives place to archaeology and history. ”

“ From the broad and guiding outlines of theory thus sketched we have now advanced amid ever-widening multiplicity of detail into a fuller and nobler conception of the origin of scenery. The law of evolution is written as legibly on the landscapes of the earth as on any other page of the Book of Nature. Not only do we recognise that the existing topography of the continents, instead of being primeval in origin, has gradually been developed after many precedent mutations, but we are enabled to trace these earlier revolutions in the structure of every hill and glen. ”