the growth of civilization

Front matter

W.J.PERRY

Lenin

CAL STATE HAYWARD LIBRARY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW return 2 ae on the date due will nt of overdue :

Preface

HIS small book is intended as a com: panion volume to The Origin of Magic and Religion. Its aim is to tell, as simply and clearly as possible, the story of the origin and development of civilization and of the spread of culture throughout the world. It may seem impossible to achieve this task adequately within the limits of a book of this size, but as knowledge increases the historical process becomes relatively simple, and there emerge certain broad general principles which characterize its workings. At present there is a tendency to pay attention to the various products of the historical process, and to ignore the process itself. The story of civilization can well be told without names of kings or walriors, except as illustrations of the working of general “‘laws”’; and the discovery of these laws should be the main preoccupation of the historian. Although this book may perhaps contain errors of detail, the general principles enunciated init are, I am sure, valid, and capable of universal application without serious modification.

- Much of the material for this book has been drawn from my works on The Megalithic . v vi THE GROWTH OF CIVILIZATION

Culture of Indonesia and The Children of the Sun, but I have also used, especially in the later chapters, evidence not mentioned in those works. Anyone who is dissatisfied with my arguments on the ground that they are not sufficiently supported by facts is referred to the works just mentioned.

I am much indebted to Professor Elliot Smith of University College, London, to Professor G. Unwin of Manchester University, and to Miss W. M. Crompton of the Manchester Museum for much advice and help. I must also express my deep indebtedness to the Librarian of the Christie Library of Manchester University, and to his assistants, for the constant and devoted help that they have given me while at Manchester. It is a real pleasure to work in co-operation with such a. staff.

MANCHESTER W. J. PERRY June 28, 1923

NOTE TO SECOND EDITION

Y thanks are due to Mr. Sidney M Smith of the British Museum, and to

Mr. Gordon Childe for help in preparing this edition.

CHAPTER

Contents

PREFACE - - - « INTRODUCTION * « ~

Tue Foop-GATHERING STAGE OF CULTURE - - =

THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION = THE OPENING-UP OF EUROPE -

Chapter I Introduction

T is long since biologists have definitely I given up the idea of spontaneous genera-

tion. While they recognize the fact that certain organisms may, for some unknown reasons, become modified, and give rise to new species, yet they are profoundly convinced of the essential unity of all living organisms. Even when they are unable to demonstrate continuity they postulate it, and it is universally agreed that every living organism is related, ultimately, to every other.

For many years now it has been assumed, tacitly or avowedly, that the human mind works differently ; that it is capable of generating culture wholesale in spontaneous response to the actions of the environment, instead of proceeding by slow and painful steps from one stage to another. The great civilizations are often assumed to be independent products of development in isolation. We speak, for instance, of the civilization of Mexico, of China, of India, and often mean something belonging exclusively to the country in question.

I I

The doctrine of spontaneous generation of culture is, we are coming to see, false and misleading. Far from spontaneous development having taken place in all parts of the earth, all that is known of the growth and spread of culture goes to show that most communities in any part of the world which have advanced beyond the food-gathering stage of culture, and practise any of the fundamental arts andcrafts, owe their cultural capital to some other community. This means, as in the case of organized life in general, that every community in the food-producing stage of culture is related ultimately to every other community, by virtue of its possession of a share in the civilization that man has laboriously accumulated. This does not mean that members of any community may not invent some new thing. It simply means that the probabilities against two communities having independently come to elaborate a culture that possesses, say, pottery-making, weaving, and agriculture are so tremendous that it can be assumed with confidence that this has never taken place.

As in the case of biology, students are being forced more and more to believe in continuity, even where it cannot be demonstrated. Every community, with of course one exception, owes its culture to some other community ; hence if the process be followed far enough we shall find threads leading from all parts of the world to one centre, the source and fount of civilization. When a wide study of the facts is undertaken

INTRODUCTION 3 that is the conclusion to which the argument inevitably leads. Civilization is a thing in itself, with its own mode of development. That is the fundamental theme of this book.

To understand the mode of origin and growth of civilization it is necessary to take as wide views as possible. Only in this way can the idea of growth be appreciated. To help the reader to seize this idea Sketch Map No. 7 has been drawn. It brings into focus all stages of development of culture, and provides a graphic expression of the historical process as a whole.

Civilization is not a stable product; it is subject to periodic convulsions, such as we have lately experienced : and one of the most serious tasks of the student of society is to determine the causes that produce these convulsions. In the past great societies have come to ruin, and this process has been so widespread that it has been assumed that some law of growth and decay characterizes all social organisms. I have tried in this book to show that this is not the case, but that, when warfare is studied scientifically like any other social institution, it can be shown that mankind has undergone an education in organized violent behaviour. In its earliest stages human society was peaceful; warfare has developed as an accidental excrescence. Warfare has grown like a parasitic plant, until it now threatens to destroy the host on which it lives. If this book helps to turn men’s minds seriously to the consideration of this topic I shall be well rewarded.

Chapter II

THE FOOD-GATHERING STAGE OF CULTURE sk: world is tenanted by peoples in various stages of culture. At one end of the scale are societies, such as our own, with all the resources of civilization, with innumerable means of overcoming time and space, and of living a life of infinite complexity. At the other end of the scale are those that have made practically no progress in the arts and crafts, who still wander about seeking their food where they may get it. Such conditions still hold in the outlying parts of the earth, in the jungles of southern India, in the wilds of America, in southern Africa, and in other places. Between these two extremes there range a great number of communities whose culture forms a scale merging into that of either end. In any attempt to understand the nature of civilization it is imperative to include all stages of development in the survey.

The fundamental problem confronting any student of the growth of civilization is to explain two facts. It is evident that, at some remote age in the past, the whole world was occupied solely by peoples in the food-gathering stage of culture, who had not begun to cultivate food for themselves, or to domesticate animals in order to eat their flesh or to use their milk. We have to discover how and why it happened that, after an unknown time lived in this stage of culture, a period that must certainly have ranged over many thousands of years, men discovered how to cultivate food-plants and to breed food-animals, and thus entered the food-producing stage of culture. That is the first problem. The second is to explain why certain communities have not even yet made this step. In any scheme of development these food-gathering peoples cannot be ignored; they must form a permanent background for the drama of civilization, a control for all our reasoning about the manner in which man invented the arts and crafts and elaborated his different institutions. It is just as important to understand why certain peoples have not made any steps towards food-production as to understand why others have made the step. The one problem is the complement of the other.

It is natural to ask at once, What is the connexion between the existing food-gatherers and those of the days before food-production began? Is it found that the culture of these lowly peoples throws any light on the manner in which the first advances were made towards civilization? Such a comparison can only be made on the basis of the material arts and crafts, for we naturally know nothing whatever, except by inference, of other aspects of the lives of the earliest inhabitants, say, of Europe.

When we try to compare the food-gatherers that still live on the earth with those which have long disappeared there is but little available evidence ; for, curiously enough, the only food-gatherers who have left remains enough to enable us to study the development of their culture have been those who lived round the Mediterranean thousands of years ago. The food-gatherers of other parts of the world, with certain exceptions shortly to be mentioned, have left practically no trace of their history behind them.

We do not know, of course, how long the food-gatherers of Asia and other continents have lived in their present habitats. But there is good reason to believe that they represent, for all practical purposes, the earliest human occupants of the countries where they are found.

For the convenience of the reader a list is appended of the chief food-gathering peoples :

Africa. Asia.

Negrito. Veddas of Ceylon.

Bushmen. Pre-Dravidian tribes of southern India. Semang and Sakai of Malay Peninsula. Andamanese.

Kubu of Sumatra.

Punan of Borneo.

Tribe in Aru Islands.

Negritos of the Philippine Islands.

Oceania. America.

Australians. Eskimo.

Tasmanians Déné of Mackenzie Basin.

Californian tribes.

Certain of the Siberian tribes, such as the Samoyedes and Ostiak, who live by keeping reindeer, approximate closely to these tribes in culture, and can, for all practical purposes, be included among them (1).

Some of these peoples are low in the physical scale. For instance, the Negrito of Africa, the Semang of the Malay Peninsula, the Andamanese, the Negritos of the Philippines are all of the dwarf negro race, and certainly are the earliest known human occupants of the countries in which they live. The Australians represent an even more primitive stock. Therefore it can truly be said that an early type of Homo Sapiens,primitive enough for the present argument, still exists on the earth.

With one or two exceptions none of these peoples show any trace of development of arts and crafts. In some cases, of course, they have been influenced by neighbouring food-producing tribes. But when these known influences are subtracted, the only conclusion warranted by the facts is that these peoples have stagnated, culturally speaking, for untold thousands of years. It is only in the neighbourhood of the Mediterranean that any development of culture among food-gatherers can be witnessed. This is important, for, as will be shown in the next chapter, there is every reason to believe that practically the whole of civilization has been elaborated in that region. This focuses the argument upon a definite spot. Hence, when thinking of the development of civilization

= from its very beginnings, we shal] only have to think of one region of the earth, and shall not have to range far and wide for facts.

The exceptions to the rule that none of the food-gatherers have any cultural link with the past are two widely separated groups of peoples, the Bushmen of Africa and the Eskimo of North America and Greenland. It has been urged by Professor Sollas, in his work on Ancient Hunters and their Modern Representatives, that these tribes have in their culture elements in common with that of the early people of Europe. Apart from them, traces are lacking in the outlying parts of the earth of a development parallel to that of the food-gatherers of prehistoric times in the basin of the Mediterranean.

It is possible to study the activities of the food-gatherers of Europe, because they possessed a developed industry in stone, chiefly flint and chert, which they chipped into various implements. From the study of the different geological strata in which. these remains are found, and of the animals whose bones are found together with these stone artifacts, it is possible to gain much knowledge of how these early men lived. They lived in Europe, chiefly France, Spain, Germany, and Austria ; in North Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, and Pheenicia ; and, in certain stages, their industry ranged to South Africa and to Asia (2).

This Stone Age can be divided into two definite stages, corresponding to the type of man who lived in them. In the first stage, which Professor Elliot Smith would have us call the Palwoanthropic stage, the stage of the Old Men, the modern type of man had not yet appeared. He came on the scene in the next stage, which the same authority would call Neoanthropic, that of the New Men. These two stages can also be distinguished as the Lower and Upper Paleolithic Ages, the word Paleolithic meaning Old Stone.

From time to time archeologists, in France particularly, have discovered sites where implements made by men of the Old Stone Age have been made or left behind for some reason or other. It sometimes has happened that the discovery has revealed an entirely new form of stone-working, and this newly found phase of culture has usually been named after the place where typical specimens of the industry were first brought to light. Thus the Lower, or earlier, division of the Old Stone Age is divided into the pre-Chellean, Chellean, Acheulean, and Mousterian periods, all of these names, except the first, being derived from places in France where typical remains were found. In like manner the later, or Upper, period of the Old Stone Age is divided into Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian phases. Then comes a stage called Azilian, which marks a transition to the food-producing stage of culture. In northern Europe the Azilian developed into the Maglemosian and Tardenoisian phases of culture; or perhaps it would be less inexact to say the Azilian and the Maglemosian cultures were the two expressions in southern and northern Europe of a borrowed phase of culture. At the end of this phase we find Europe occupied by peoples in the full food-producing stage of culture.

As has been asserted already, the great development of the culture of the Old Stone Age is confined to a relatively restricted part of the earth’s surface. The different phases have not the same extension. For instance, implements of Chellean and Acheulean type, of the early stage of the lower paleolithic phase, are found not only in England, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, and Germany, but in Africa and India. When we come to the Mousterian phase the distribution is not so wide, it being mainly confined to Europe, North Africa, and western Asia. Except in the region of southern Siberia I am not aware of these implements elsewhere. In the upper phase of the Old Stone Age, the neoanthropic stage of Elliot Smith, the restriction is still very pronounced. The discoveries of this stage of culture are mainly confined to the region of western Europe. The exceptions are those cited by Professor Sollas (see page 8), and certain spots, such as southern Siberia and western China, where sites have lately been discovered. It is unlikely that many such spots will be found in the future. The earl peoples of India, for instance, although they had made stone implements of the earlier types, never succeeded in making any of the later forms. But they made pygmy flints in later times.

_The Solutrean phase of culture presents an important problem. For the technique of pressure-flaking, which characterises it, persisted, perhaps in Egypt, into food-producing times, and was subsequently transferred throughout the world, even as far afield as America. But evidence is lacking of the existence of the typical Solutrean stage of culture in Egypt.

The industry of the people of the Old Stone Age is notable. In the first place, the material used was chiefly flint. In some cases chert or quartzite were used, as in India; but this seems primarily to have been due to the absence of flint. What caused men to select flint in the first instance is still a mystery. The stone has certain obvious advantages, such as flaking readily to give a good cutting edge. But it is not the only stone that could so be used. Obsidian, so plentiful in certain parts of the world, could have been used, but it was not generally used until civilization was well under way. The choice of flint is remarkable when it is remembered that, in a later stage of culture, the neolithic, or New Stone Age, as it is termed, much use was made of hard, igneous rocks for implements, which were made by grinding the stone to a fine cutting edge. Why is it that men went for so many thousands of years without thinking of the adoption of this other form of implement? It certainly is an indication of the lack of inventiveness of mankind. It shows that an industry, once in existence, will tend to persist until something fresh comes to displace it.

The beginnings of the flint industry, in the pre-Chellean and Chellean stages, consisted of the chipping away of flakes from a nodule, so as to provide a cutting edge, the white crust of the original nodule being left behind to form a grip. The result looks like an implement of everyday use, such as is now made by the Seri Indians of California, something useful for grubbing up roots, for severing tendons, for cutting bark, and the like. Crude scrapers and awls were also made in the early phases of the industry.

This form of industry was not destined to persist, for a fresh development took place, namely in the use of flakes struck off from the original core, which could be made useful in different ways. In the Acheulean phase the so-called Levailois flake was invented. In the next phase the original Chellean and pre-Chellean implements disappeared for ever, and henceforth the flake reigned supreme in stone industry. These flakes were struck off, and then were chipped to giveanedge. They served many purposes, for they included side-scrapers, cutters, points, discs, awls, and blades, all of them obviously intended for industries of the domestic kind.

The industry of the early phase of the Old Stone Age was centred round stone of some sort, principally flint; these people did not regularly use bone or horn for any purpose.

Their minds evidently revolved in a limited orbit, for each phase of development is simply a modification of that which went before, some minor discovery having been made, such, for instance, as the use of flakes instead of the nodule.

The people of the early phase of the Old Stone Age knew of fire from very remote times, but they did not begin to live in caves or under rock-shelters until the Mousterian period. Before that they had evidently wandered about in the open, for their remains have been found only in river-beds, and analogous places. It is thought that the limestone caverns in which the Mousterian and later peoples lived had not yet been formed, or were not yet fit for habitation, because the rivers that formed them had not yet sufficiently dried up. However, in Mousterian times, and in those that followed, men lived in caves and under rock-shelters.

When the men of the later phase of the Old Stone Age, who are certainly of the same species as ourselves, came into Europe, they brought with them a culture, the Aurignacian, immensely in advance of that of their forerunners. Their stone industry was still that of flint, and flakes were invariably used; so in this respect they had profited by the discoveries made by their forerunners. But they had begun to use bone for various purposes, and had acquired a wonderful facility in artistic expression, many examples of which have already been discovered on the walls of caves in France and Spain. Where this form of culture was elaborated we do not yet know, but it reached its highest expression in France and Spain. The flint industry of these people betrays manifold traces of their activities, for many new types appear, all of them fit for use in sculpture and engraving. The minds of these men were evidently bound up with their cave art, with their sculpture, engraving, and painting, and they had invented many tools of flint to help them to express their ideas on the walls and ceilings of the caves in which they lived. Bone was used by these men for awls, needles, spatulz, and lance-points, as well as for a tool which probably was intended to straighten shafts of lances or arrows, if they had any. The technique of flaking flint was immensely superior to that of the preceding phase, the Mousterian. Not only were small semicircular flakes struck off, but pressure flaking had appeared—a technique almost impossible for us to reproduce, and a standing witness to the skill of these early men.

Their art centred mainly round the wild animals that they hunted for food. . They engraved, and then painted, on the walls and ceilings of the caverns where they lived, not in the entrance, but in deep, dark recesses, pictures of the bison, wild boar, cave bear, deer, and so on. It seems probable that this art was concerned with the food supply, that the representation of an animal desired for food helped, in some way, in its capture. Some such reason as this must be forthcoming to explain the localization of these paintings in the depths of these caves.

These people also practised sculpture, depicting boars and other animals that they chased ; but, in addition, they made sculptures of feminine form, with the maternal parts grossly exaggerated (3). These people buried their dead with certain ceremonial, surrounding the body—from Aurignacian times onwards, usually in a crouched position—with red ochre, and often adorning it with necklaces of shells, bits of bone, pebbles, and animals’ teeth and claws.

The Aurignacian stage of culture persisted in Europe for a long time, and in many places was succeeded directly by a food-producing civilization. But in certain parts of Europe, particularly in France and central Europe,

there appeared a phase of culture, called ' Solutrean, almost devoid of art, but characterized by a wonderful technique in the making of flint implements. Flakes were worked off the surface by pressure so as to produce an absolutely symmetrical effect, and thus were made some wonderful tools shaped like laurel and willow leaves. This Solutrean phase was followed, in some parts of Europe, particularly in France, by the Magdalenian phase, which was closely similar to the Aurignacian, but differed from it in possessing bone harpoons, which appeared towards the middle of this age. These harpoons show that the people were largely interested in fishing. The flint industry of the Magdalenian peoples was not on so high a plane as that of their predecessors, the Aurignacian and Solutrean folk: their flakes were just crude bits struck off from the original core, with little attempt at a secondary flaking to produce a fine edge.

Sketch Maps Nos. 1 and 2 show, roughly, the distribution of the men of the Old Stone Age in Britain and Europe, so far as it is known at present. It is often thought that these early men lived where they found supplies of food; but there is little to warrant this supposition. For instance, although early types of stone implements have been found in South Africa, yet their makers have not survived, in spite of the fact that the region possessed, until recently, abundance of game. Further, the Bushmen only began to hunt the game of this area when they were forced there by the advancing Bantu, who came down from the north-east. The Bushmen were always few in number, and they must always, when uninterrupted, have had ample supplies of game to hunt. In Europe and Asia it is found that the remains of paleolithic man are not scattered haphazard all over the country, but are confined to a few relatively restricted spots. The same spot on the Somme, for instance, at St. Acheul, — has been visited by paleolithic man from the earliest times down to the end of the age. The place inhabited by these successive races of men was a flint workshop, and that, beyond doubt, is why it was visited so constantly. The successive occupations of the same site is

N aeetaeilic aa characteristic of the Old Stone Age wherever it is found, and these sites are invariably sources of flint, chert, or quartzite, or else localities with caves, usually of limestone, in which the people could dwell. Sketch Map No. 1 shows that the districts round Brandon in Suffolk, round Dunstable, and in other parts of the chalk region, where flint is to be found, were thickly tenanted in those days; likewise Sketch Map No. 2 shows that particular districts of France and Spain, for instance the valleys of the Somme, Marne, Seine, and Dordogne, certain districts of the Pyrenees and of northern Spain, were favoured; hence caves like that of the Mas d’Azil in the department of Arriége contain traces of successive occupations. The men of the Old Stone Age in Europe had become industrialized, and this had an important effect on their selection of places for habitation. It is, of course, open for anyone to claim that implements of this age may yet be found in quantities in places far from sources of flint, chert, or quartzite (allowing for the possibility of transference of, implements from a flint locality to a cligrt locality, as has actually happened in England, where flint implements of Mousterian form.have been found in a chert district in Yorkshire along with chert implements), but the fact remains that no finds of the kind have as yet. been made in Europe, or elsewhere. The food-gatherers of other parts of the world, such as those of Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula, and Borneo, do not seem to 2 be tied down to any particular locality, any more than were the Bushmen, except in so far as each family group keeps to its own hunting ground and does not trespass on those of the others.

They seem to wander about more or less at will, seeking food here and there. But throughout the regions where men made implements relative fixation of settlement seems to have been therule. In England, for instance, stone implements are found in places with chalk pits that yield flints, such as round Brandon in Suffolk, Dunstable, on Salisbury Plain, in the London boulder clay, and so forth. We do not find them on granite formations, or on the old red sandstone. In Palestine and Pheenicia, again, we are told that the settlements of men of the Old Stone Age were in- » variably situated near flint workshops, no implements having been found elsewhere (4). Egypt, another important country in the Old Stone Age, is rich in flint. In India, too, the late Mr. Bruce Foote says definitely that paleolithic implements are found only on those geological formations that yield quartzite and other stones that were used for the manufacture of implements (5). Social life, therefore, in the Old Stone Age, seems to have moved from one source of raw material to another, and therefore the problem of determining the course of development of this form of culture is relatively restricted in nature. We know, more or less, where to seek for our information; we must look to places affording the raw materials used in this age.

There are certain signs of intercourse in this age. In some of the burials of France there are shells that must have been brought from a distance. In some cases these shells probably came from another part of the country. But one instance is more striking. In a cave near Mentone there have been found, associated with a characteristic Mousterian industry, Cassis rufa shells that must have come from the Indian Ocean (6) These shells are eloquent witnesses to intercourse of some sort or other in those far-off days between widely separated parts of the earth. Elliot Smith has shown, in his work on The Evolution of the Dragon, why shells were so valued in such remote ages. They were supposed to have life-giving powers. It is fascinating to think of the men of those early times carrying shells for such great distances. ‘They must indeed have valued them highly to have gone to such trouble.

France and the East can be connected in yet another way. While it is possible that future discoveries will reveal further extensions of the industry of the Old Stone Age, it seems probable that the continent of Europe was the main theatre of events in that stage of culture, the chief countries being France and Spain. One other country seems to share with France the honour of being the scene of the most intense activity in palzolithic times, and that country is Egypt.. From Chellean to Magdalenian times it is possible to parallel the industries of France and Egypt: