^■~'f^^ ^^^£3M''M 'm^m&^^^^^^ J/ ^-Ai>iL '•/>'/}7 ,^^'.^m ^^: m A fe^ ,.^ If; HISTORY OF THK MENTAL GT^OY^XH OF MANKIND. BY >^>*^^ > JOHN S: HITTELL. /^ ^rl VOLUME I. ♦ ♦ San Francisco: printe;d for the author. i88q. .H5 Entcred Accordinq to Act of Congress m the Year isse, by In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, d, C. PREFACE. The Delphic maxim, that " to understand man as he is, we must' know what he has been,"^ is not less true of him as a species than as an individual. In studying our- selves, we should take into account, not only what we thought and did as children, but also what our remote ancestors and relatives did, in the ruder phases of cult- ure. We cannot obey the Socratic command, "know yourself," without comparing ourselves with other men, not only those near us but also those far from us, in space, time, and intellectual condition. In so far as we do not understand other men, in so far we do not under- stand ourselves. Everything human interests us ; and all the main features of human life, even in the lowest savages and fiercest barbarians, are highly instructive to us. The aboriginal Australians, the Bushmen, the Fue- gians, and the Eskimos are our brethren, possessing the like feelings and passions with ourselves, and differing from us mainly in education, inherited drill, and property. They enable us to see what we might have been under different circumstances. The most repulsive customs, — constant warfare, torture and mutilation of prisoners, (3) PREFACE. cannibalism, human sacrifice, witch-burning, religious persecution, and driving slaves to death, — all these are the deeds of men constituted mentally as we are. And although we find many facts indicating that, on one side, we are near akin to the most ferocious brutes, yet on the other, we also encounter many evidences that our intel- lectual and moral nature stands alone in unapproached and sublime superiority, far above everything else in an- imated nature. All the glorious achievements of hu- manity are to be counted in the credits of every man. We appreciate their value ; perhaps, under the most fa- vorable circumstances, we, ourselves, might have origi- nated them, or made some material contribution to them. The inventions of articulate speech, edge tools, fire-kind- ling apparatus, tillage, pottery, weaving, and metallurgy, the domestication of animals, the discovery of letters, the discipline of armies, the organization of states, the production of immortal books, and the great triumphs of the industrial and ornamental arts, — all these should be passed in review to understand what man has been and what he is. The history of man as I conceive it, should give satis- factory replies to questions like these : Is the develop- ment of his species in culture a necessary result of his mental constitution ? Has it been continuous from his first appearance on the earth ? Has it shown itself in all the departments of life ? Has it been governed ex- clusively by natural causes and uniform law ? What PREFACE. § have been its chief features in different ages and coun- tries ? What relation in time and causative or develop- ing influence did tillage, pasturage, bronze, iron, print- 4 ing press, steam, slavery, nobility, despotism, constitu- tional freedom, fetichism, worship of ancestors, idolatry, polytheism, and monotheism, bear to general progress and to one another ? What did men eat ? How did they clothe themselves? What were their industrial arts ? What were their social and political institutions ? What were their moral and religious opinions ? How did the later grow out of the earlier phases of culture ?^ For what important contributions to culture are we in- debted to the various races, nations, and periods ? What influence have conspicuously famous men exerted on culture ? What departments of thought and occupa- tion have been cultivated with the most success in differ- ent ages and countries, and what have been their relative values to humanity? Into what categories should we divide universal history for the purpose of getting the clearest, most comprehensive, and most correct concep- tions of its character and development ?^ If I mistake not, the study of the story of culture will prove conclusively that there is a steady growth of knowledge, thought, and ethical feeling, of industrial and ornamental arts, and of social and political institu- tions, accompanied by a correlative decrease of igno- rance, folly, prejudice, superstition, crime, war, and so- cial spite. The principle of this development is one of 6 PREFACE. the great natural laws, deserving in its irhportance to be classed with the laws of the inherence of force in matter^ the combination of the chemical elements in definite proportions, cosmic evolution, gravitation, biological evolution, the conservation of energy, and the correla- tion of the physical and psychical forces. The proof of this law of human advancement will carry with it the implications that our mental constitu- tion has innate capacities for endless development ; that progress is a natural and necessary product of human- ity ; that no limit can be fixed to the onward march of our race in any direction of thought ; that the achieve- ments of the past are mere trifles to those that are to en- rich the future ; that the discomforts of life will continue to diminish, and its enjoyments to increase ; and that the ennobling tendencies and influences will become more potent in every succeeding age. Although there is much reason for the dislike with which the literary community regards the disposition to needlessly coin new words and to give new definitions or new limitations of definition to old ones, still such coin- age and definition are sometimes required for the con- venience of readers as well as of writers, and under the impulse of what seems to be such a necessity, some def- initions, not recognized in our dictionaries generally, are here accepted. Cultui^e, the intellectual growth of mankind. All the German histories of mankind are called histories oi Kid- PREFACE. 7 tur. Progress has the same signification, but has other meanings, and therefore culture is the better word. It is aot here used in its Hmited sense of high refinertient.* Cultural^ relating to culture. Culturestep, a stage of culture, suggested by the Ger- man Kulturstufe. Culture-historical, relating to the history of culture, suggested by the German Kultur-historisch. Savagism, the lowest of the three main culturesteps, the general condition of men whose best edge tools are made of stone. The savages include the aboriginal Americans, north of the Aztec territory and south and east of that of the Quichuans, the Pacific islanders, most of the Malays, and the Africans south of. the Sahara. These Africans are in an impure savagism ; they possess metallic tools, but in social, political, and religious insti- tutions, and in mental development, they are savages. Savagism includes two subordinate or mmor culture- steps, the non-tilling and the tilling. Non-tilling culture, or non-tilling savagism, the con- dition of tribes which do not till the soil. Such are' the Australians, Tasmanians, Bushmen, Andamanese, Fue- gians. Lower Californians, and^ome other Western Amer- icans. Tilling culture, the condition of savages, who cultivate, the soil. Slave-tillage, tillage by slaves; Slave-tilling, adjective of slave-tillage. 8 PREFACE. Barbarism, the second of the three main culturesteps, the general condition in which we find nations possess- ing metallic tools with either hieroglyphics, hereditary priesthood, or caste. Barbarous are the Aztecs, Quich- uans, ancient Egyptians, Hindoos, Assyrians, Babylo- nians, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Jews, Persians, Etrus- cans, Gauls, Teutons, Tartars, and the modern Chinese, Japanese, Hindoos, and Mohammedan nations. Barba- rism includes the minor culturesteps of bronze and iron. Civilization, the highest of the three main culturesteps, including four minor grades. Greek civilization or culture, the condition of the an- cient Greeks and Romans from 530 b. c. till 450 a. d. MedicBval civilisation, the condition of Europe from 450 A. D. till 1450 A. D. Press culture, the condition of Europe from 1450, when the printing press came into use, till 1770 a. d. Steam culture, the fourth and last of the grades of civ- ilization, the condition of the Euraryans from 1770 a. d. until the present time. Since the word polygamy means plural marriage, and may indicate the marriage of one woman to several men, or of several women to one man, the word polygyny is here preferred, to signify a matrimonial system in which one husband has several wives. Euraryans, the Aryans in Europe and their descend- ants in other parts of the world. The Euraryans include the Celts, Teutons, Greeks, Latins, and Slavonians, and PREFACE. 9 exclude the Persians, Afghans, Armenians, Belooches, Hindoos, and other Asiatic Aryans. The Euraryan nations being near akin to one another in blood, speech, and culturestep, closely associated in business and polity, and possessing the present and prospective mastery of the earth, need some distinctive and comprehensive title. No other has been proposed. Industry, productive toil of all kinds, including com- merce, navigation, transportation of freight and passen- gers, banking, agriculture, mining, and metallurgy as well as manufactures. We have no other word for this comprehensive and important idea.* Industrialism^ the spirit of industry as defined in the preceding paragraph. The phrase, stone age or culturestep, means the con- dition of tribes which had edge tools of stone and not of bronze; the bronze age ended when iron came. The non-tilling culturestep ceased when tillage began ; the press culturestep when the steam engine became potent as a source of mechanical power. At no time after the introduction of tillage were all tribes or nations in the same state of culture, nor does the use of the term bronze age or iron age imply that they were. In recent years, much attention has been paid to the evolution of the universe, of the earth, and of animal and vegetable life, and to the language, literature, and religion of the ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Per- sians, Hindoos, and Hebrews. In each of these branches lO PREFACE. numerous important additions to our knowledge have been made within half a century. Not less interesting and instructive than the new information in these de- partments, is that acquired in reference to the history of culture, to which the attention of the reader is now in- vited. In 1875, I published "A Brief History of Culture," for school use ; and of that work, this may be considered an amplification ; but since in this I have not copied a par- agraph of that, and since the material and scope are dif- ferent, I have taken a new title. The notes have been placed at the end of the volume, where they will not distract the attention of the general reader, for whom they are not intended, and where they can be consulted without inconvenience by the scholar seeking verification of my statements, or for fuller infor- mation. Care has been taken to call attention to the best books and most suggestive passages relating to ev- ery branch of culture mentioned prominently in this work. J. s. H. San Francisco^ September gtJi, i8Sg. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. Section. Page. 1. Man's Antiquity 17 2. Simian Relations 20 3. Size, etc 23 4. Acute senses 24 5. Vitality 25 6. Habits 27 7. Savagism disappearing 27 8. Savage history 29 CHAPTER II. ETHNOLOGY. 9. Races 32 10. Australians, etc 34 11. Negroes, etc = 35 12. Malays 35 13. Polynesians 36 14. Americans 37 15. Mound-builders 38 16. Aleut Mounds 40 17. Pleistocene Europeans 44 18. Danish Mounds 46 19. Swiss Pile Dwellers 47 CHAPTER III. INDUSTRY. • 20. Fire 51 21. Non-tilling culture 52 22. Tilling savagism 54 23. Spear, bow, etc... 56 (11) 1 2 CONTENTS. Section. Page. 24. Clubs, etc 58 25. Omnivorous 61 26. Bread and meat 62 27. Daintiness 64 28. Salt and clay 65 29. Cannibalism 66 30. Cooking 70 31. Meals 73 32. Grinding 73 33. Water and milk 74 34. Beer, etc ^ 75 35. Narcotics 77 36. Hunting 79 37. Birds 80 38. Fishing 81 39- Bees 85 40. Villages 85 41. Huts 87 42. Furniture 90 43. Baskets and mats 92 44. Dogs 93 45- Pigs 94 46. Tillage 95 47. Implements 98 48. Milk-yielders 99 49. Boats 100 50. Pottery 104 51. Thread, cloth, etc 105 52. Leather : 107 53. Traffic 108 54. Metals 109 55. Industrial achievements no 56. Industrial development 118 ^7. Natural progress..* 118 CONTENTS. 13 CHAPTER IV. SOCIAL LIFE. Section. Page. 58. Promiscuous group 121 59. Relationship Nomenclature. 124 60. Feminine clan 126 61. Totem 128 62. Australian Exogamy 130 63. Feminine clan survivals 132 64. Masculine clan 136 65. Capture 138 66. Polyandry 139 67. Polygyny 141 68. Girl's position 142 69. Wife's position 142 70. Marriage, etc 145 71. Brother adoption 147 72. Couvade 149 73. Infancy 147 74. Son-in-law shyness 151 75. Womanhood 152 76. Modesty 152 77. Nudity 153 78. Clothing 154 79. Ornaments 156 80. Hair-dressing 157 81. Oil and paint 159 82. Tattoo 160 83. Mutilation 162 84. Social development 168 14 CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. INTELLECTUAL LIFE. Section. * Page. 85. Capacity 170 86. Preponderant present 175 87. Early maturity 176 88. Jollity 176 89. Politeness 178 90. Salutations 179 91. Education 182 92. Morality 184 93. Amusements 186 94. Poetry 187 95. Music , , , 189 96. Medicine, etc 193 97. Vocabulary 195 98. Sounds and signs 199 99. Grammar 203 100. Rapid change 204 loi. Intellectual development.... 205 CHAPTER VI. POLITY. 102. Headless group 207 103. Freedom 207 104. Unstable headship 210 105. Stable headships 211 106. Industrial chiefs 212 107. Assemblies, etc 212 108. Confederacies 213 109. Retaliation 215 no. Retaliation restricted •• 218 111. Despotic chiefs 220 112. Succession 221 113. Ordeals 222 114. Property 224 115. Slavery 226 116. Nobility 228 117. Political development 229 CONTENTS. 15 CHAPTER VII. MILITARY SYSTEM. Section. Page. 118. War 231 119. Battle * 233 120. Trophies . 236 121. Fortifications 237 122. Initiation 239 CHAPTER VIII. RELIGION. 123. Spirits 245 124. Imaginary world 247 125. Devout fear 250 126. Next life 254 127. Burial, etc 257 218. Mourning 259 129. Soul worship 262 130. Totemism 265 131. Fetishism 266 132. Ancestor worship 269 133. Offerings 270 134. Sacrifices 272 135. Human sacrifices 273 136. Gods 278 137. Idolatry 282 138. Divine intercourse 284 139- Worship 287 140. Priests 291 141. Sensitives, etc 295 142. Sorcerers 297 143. Sacerdotal functions 300 144. Areoi 302 145. Revenue, etc 304 146. Taboo 305 147. Omens 309 148. Temples 311 149. Religious development 316 jC CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. REVIEW. SECTION PAGE 150. Culture services ^ 319 151. Grades of culture...,. 320 152. Some characteristics... 322 153. Departmental relations 325 154. Queer customs 328 155. Benefits of war 330 156. Benefits of slavery, etc 333 157. Benefits of religion 334 158. Uses of evil 336 APPENDIX 338 Notes .. 339 List of authorities 373 A History of Mankind. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. Section i. Man's Antiquity. — Man has existed on the earth certainly forty thousand and perhaps two hundred thousand years.^ In the pleistocene era, when periods of subtropical warmth, continuing each for thousands of years, alternated with others of glacial cold in central Europe, he dwelt there. In the last of at least four warm interglacial periods of that era, the climate of the Northern Hemisphere was so mild that the vegetation in latitude 75° N. was about the same as that now found twenty degrees nearer to the equator ; and the lion, the hippopotamus, the kaffir cat, the hyena, and many plants of subtropical character lived as far north as England. The woolly elephant or mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros and the sabre-toothed tiger w^ere also there, but these animals, now extinct, may have been able to endure the severe winters of the northern temperate zone. The era or the last era of the subtropical mammals in northwest- ern Europe was followed by the reappearance of the great ice sheet, at which time the land there had a con- (17) 1 8 A HISTORY OF MANKIND. siderably higher elevation than now ; and then the land sank, the cUmate became milder and the ice melted, but the elephant, the hippopotamus, the rhinoceros, the lion, and the tiger did not return. Another subsidence of the land occurred and in the midst of this era, man, with pol- ished stone tools and presumably with tillage, made his appearance. Again the land in England rose, this time to an elevation about fifty feet above its present level, and numerous small glaciers appeared in the British and Scandinavian mountains. Still later the land sank to thirty feet below its present level, and then Europe took its present shape, but this occurred so long before our time that no record or tradition of the changes in the form and area of the continent has been preserved among its people. Geikie, Croll, Lyell, and other learned and able schol- ars who have written about the antiquity of mankind, believe that our species has existed on the earth at least two hundred thousand years. Some authorities who have investigated the history of oriental nations tell us that presumably not more than fifteen thousand and per- haps not more than ten thousand years have elapsed since the introduction of bronze tools began to lift men from savagism into barbarism. Not three thousand years have passed since some of the Greek states emerged from barbarism into civilization. All mankind spent perhaps one hundred and eighty thousand years in savagism ; and during part of the last twenty thousand years, a small proportion of our race has been in higher conditions of culture. The development of tilling from non-tilling culture was an achievement of greater difficulty and demanded more time than that of barbar- ism from savagism. SEC. I. MAN'S ANTIQUITY, I9 The earliest traces of men have been found in Europe and North America, because in those continents there has been the greatest amount of mining and excavation, under the inspection of highly educated men ; but it does not follow that the earliest men lived in those continents. On the contrary, there is reason to believe that the human race first appeared in the torrid portions of Africa or Malaysia,^ where the black race, the nearest human rela- tives of the highest brutes, the anthropoid apes — and pre- sumably older than the more highly developed yellow and white races, are indigenous. Reasoning from the changes observed in later ages, we infer that these primi- tive black men were smaller in body and brain, and more ape-like in their forms and faces, than the Africans of modern times. Of the men who lived more than twenty thousand years ago, it may be said that we know nothing save that they lived and had edge-tools of stone. We find their bones, their arrowheads, their flint knives or scrap- ers, and the marks of their tools or weapons on fossil wood or bone, and very little more. These remains fur- nish much material for remark to the archaeologist, but little for the historian. All men belong to one species. All races of humanity are indefinitely fertile in their crosses with one another. In all tribes and nations and in all stages of culture, man has the same general features of physical form and men- tal character. He has the same number of pulse beats and of inhalations in a minute, the same average temper- ature, the same wants, the same passions.^ In his most primitive condition he contained the potentialities of speech, industry, society, polity and religion, as they now appear. He was a struggling, toiling, reasoning animal. 20 A HISTORY OF MANKIND. with a capacity for and an irresistible impulse towards con- tinuous and unlimited mental progress. He was so con- stituted that he could enjoy keen plea^sures and endure bitter sorrows ; that his days should be fringed with- smiles and tears ; that life should be dear to him ; and that his attachment to it should increase as his genera- tions multiplied. By his physical and intellectual qualities, man isr. enabled to obtain his food, to preserve his life, and to make his permanent home in every zone, and in every continent. He can live where ether boils and where mercury freezes in the open air. The land animals, the birds, the aquatic mammals, and the fishes of every zone- furnish food nutritious to him. He can reach all parts of the earth's surface save those within a few degrees of the poles. He dominates over the globe, occupies most of it, and it is by his sufferance that many of the other occupants are permitted to live. Sec. 2. Shnian Relations. — The negro's skeleton is relatively heavier than that of the white man ; his skulL is thicker, and sometimes in Dahomy has no sutures.*" In fighting, black men often butt each other like rams,,, and they break a stick over the head rather than over the knee. The swords of the "Spaniards were often, broken on the heads of the aborigines in Jamaica.^ The Australians break sticks over their heads,^ and they have- duels, in which the combatants exchange alternate blows on the head with stout clubs, each standing still in his turn to give his enemy a fair chance, until one is stun- ned. Every blow would disable if not kill a European^ The tibia and fibula in the shin are sometimes united into* one bone through their whole length in the black and more rarely in the yellow man, as they always are in the SEC. 2. SIMIAN RELATIONS. 21 ape, Simla troglodytes. The arch of the negro's instep is low and his foot flat, resembling the foot of the ape and .suggesting the exaggeration of the burlesque song, '' The liollow of his foot makes a hole in the ground." His Tieel projects more than the white man's, so that he needs a different shoe.* Often when standing, instead of throw- ing his weight squarely on his flat sole, he rests on the outer edges of his feet, as do the large apes.^ The sesa- moidal bones at the joints of the thumb and great toe are found rarely in Europeans and often in negroes.^ The legs are shorter relatively in the savage than in the civilized man ;^ and in the African the lower arm and liand are longer. When standing upright he can touch liis knee-cap with the point of his middle finger, while the white man cannot come within two inches of it.^ In the civilized man the tibia is round ; in many savages, including Michigan mound-builders ^ and European cave