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Tylor's hypothesis, help to originate the conception of 'spirits. We defended the nature of our evidence, as before anthropologists, by showing that, for the savage belief in the supernormal phenomena, we have exactly the kind of evidence on which all anthropological science reposes.
Other early beginnings of the more elaborate decorative clothing are discerned by anthropologists in the scars made upon the arms and breast as in the case of the Australian black man, and in the figured patterns of tattooing, so remarkably developed by the natives in the islands of the South Pacific Ocean.
Again, far off in a distant corridor of the building, slowly rumbled to them: "knock, knock knock; knock, knock knock," and the twelve unfortunates, like so many automatons, gave token of their obedience. They had been warned to keep the secret. And so was foiled the attempts of the learned anthropologists to hold converse with these rudimentary beings.
Now the trouble with anthropologists is to find a working definition of religion on which they can agree. Christianity is religion, all would have to admit. Again, Mahomedanism is religion, for all anthropological purposes. But, when a naked savage "dances" his god when the spoken part of the rite simply consists, as amongst the south-eastern Australians, in shouting "Daramulun! Daramulun!"
Such a condition of things ought, if I am not mistaken, according to the theories of the anthropologists, to represent the maximum of idiocy and imbecility; but the decrees of anthropology are only relative: what it treats as stupidity among the ancient races of men is often neither more nor less than an extraordinary force of enthusiasm and intuition.
Kerner finds that there is a warm region midway up the mountain, lying between two colder zones above and below it. We have heretofore referred to a similar phenomenon in Indiana. It is remarked by anthropologists that differences of color are one of the most marked signs of race.
But in any case it is certain, as many anthropologists have pointed out, that customs, savage ideas, and primitive sentiments have continued to form an important part of our own culture down even to the present day. We are met thus with the necessity of reckoning with this inveterate element in our present thought and customs.
It is, of course, untrue to say that among primitive peoples there is anything that can fairly be called promiscuity. Historians and anthropologists have taught us that among all peoples, however barbarous, there are conventions, sanctions, tabus, by which the relations of men and women are regulated. The customs of such people may seem to us mere licence; but they are not so.
The Tertiary implements which have been at various times claimed in France, Italy, and Portugal are equally disputed; the remains which were some years ago claimed as Tertiary in the United States are generally disallowed; and the recent claims from South America are under discussion. Yet it is the general feeling of anthropologists that man was evolved in the Tertiary Era.
Throughout India there are stories of dwarf tribes descended from the monkey-God, or Hoonuman of the mythologic poems. In the works of Humboldt and Burgoa there is allusion to the tradition of a race of pygmies in the unexplored region of Chiapas near the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Central America. There is an expedition of anthropologists now on the way to discover this people.
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