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Outline of Universal History

G >> George Park Fisher >> Outline of Universal History




Ethnology is a branch of Anthropology, as this is a subdivision of
Zoölogy, and this, again, of Biology. Ethnography differs from
Ethnology in dealing more with details of description, and less with
rational exposition.

RACES OF MANKIND.--Authorities differ widely from one another in their
classification of races. _Prichard_ made seven, which were
reduced by _Cuvier_ to three; viz., _Caucasian, Mongolian,
Ethiopic. Blumenbach_ made five, and _Pickering_ eleven. It
is the Caucasian variety which has been chiefly distinguished in
history, and active in the building-up of civilization. None of the
numerous schemes of division, from a zoölogical point of view,
however, are satisfactory.

_Huxley_ has proposed a fourfold classification: 1. The
Australoid, represented by the Australians and the indigenous tribes
of Southern India. 2. The Negroid. 3. The Mongoloid. 4. The
Xanthochroi, or fair whites, among whom are comprised most of the
inhabitants of Northern Europe. To these are added a fifth variety,
the Melanochroi, to which belong a part of the Celts, the Spaniards,
Greeks, Arabs, etc.

Of the various methods of race-division, _A. van Humboldt_
says: "We fail to recognize any typical sharpness of definition, or
any general or well-established principle, in the division of these
groups. The extremes of form and color are certainly separated, but
without regard to the races which can not be included in any of
these classes." (_Cosmos_, i. 365.) For example, black skin,
woolly hair, and a negro-like cast of countenance, are not
necessarily connected together.

MONOGENISM.--Zoölogists, from the point of view of their own science,
now more generally favor the _monogenist_ doctrine, which traces
mankind to a single pair, than the polygenist, which assumed different
centers of origin. The present tendencies of natural science,
especially since Darwin, are favorable to the monogenist view.

"The opinion of modern Zoölogists, whose study of the species and
breeds of animals makes them the best judges, is against this view
of the several origins of man, for two principal reasons. First,
That all tribes of men, from the blackest to the whitest, the most
savage to the most cultured, have such general likeness in the
structure of their bodies and the working of their minds, as is
easiest and best accounted for by their being descended from a
common ancestry, however distant. Second, That all the human races,
notwithstanding their form and color, appear capable of freely
intermarrying, and forming crossed races of every combination, such
as the millions of mulattoes and mestizoes sprung in the New World
from the mixture of Europeans, Africans, and native Americans; this
again points to a common ancestry of all the races of man. We may
accept the theory of the unity of mankind as best agreeing with
ordinary experience and scientific research." (Tylor's
_Anthropology_, etc., pp. 5, 6.)

EVIDENCE OF LANGUAGE.--Languages, through marked affinities, are
grouped together into several great families, i. The _Aryan_, or
Indo-European, of which the oldest known branch is the Sanskrit, the
language in which the ancient books of the Hindus, the Vedas, were
written. With the Sanskrit belong the Iranian or Persian, the Greek,
the Latin or Italic, the Celtic, the Germanic or Teutonic (under which
are included the Scandinavian tongues), the Slavonian or
Slavo-Lettic. 2. The _Semitic_, embracing the communities
described in Genesis as the descendants of Shem. Under this head are
embraced, first, the Assyrian and Babylonian; secondly, the Hebrew and
Phoenician, with the Syrian or Aramaic; and thirdly, the Arabic. The
Phoenician was spread among numerous colonies, of which Carthage was
the chief. The Arabic followed the course of Mohammedan conquest. It
is the language of the northern border of Africa, and has strongly
affected various other languages,--the Persian, Turkish, etc. 3. The
_Turanian or Scythian_. This is an extensive family of
languages. The Finno-Hungarian, which includes two cultivated peoples,
the Fins and Hungarians; the Samoyed, stretching from the North Sea
far eastward to the boundary between Russia and China; and the Turkish
or Tartar, spreading from European Turkey over a great part of Central
Asia, are connected together by family ties. They spring from one
parent stock. Whether the Mongolian and the Tungusic--the last is the
language of the Manchus--are also thus affiliated, is a point not
absolutely settled.

Besides these three great divisions, there are other languages, as the
_Chinese_, and the monosyllabic tongues of south-eastern Asia,
which possibly are connected lineally with it; the _Japanese_;
the _Malay-Polynesian_, a well-developed family; the
_Hamitic_ (of which the Egyptian or Coptic is the principal
member); the _Dravidian_ or _South Indian_; the _South
African_; the _Central African_; the _American Indian_
languages, etc.

On language and the divisions of language, W. D. WHITNEY,
_Language, and the Study of Language_ (1867), _Oriental and
Linguistic Studies_ (two series, 1872-74), _Life and Growth of
Language_ (1875); Art. _Philology_, in _Encycl. Brit_.,
vol. xviii.; Max Müller's _Lectures on the Science of Language_
(two series), and other writings by the same author.

ETHNOLOGY AND HISTORY.--History is generally written from the
political point of view. It is the history of nations considered
separately and in relation to one another. There are, also, histories
of culture. History, from a cultural point of view, without paying
regard to national boundaries, seeks to unfold the rise and progress
of arts and industry, of inventions, of customs, manners, and
institutions. It is the history of culture and civilization. History,
from the ethnological point of view, would describe the migrations and
experiences of the different races of men, and the formation of the
various nationalities by these races, through conquest and
intermixture. Following the divisions of linguistic science, we should
have, first, the _Egyptian_ race and their history. Then we
should have the _Semitic_ race, in the three eras of their
pre-eminence, and in their various branches. Then would come the
_Aryan_, or Indo-European family, whose power, except when
interrupted and partially broken by the Mohammedan conquests, has
continued to dominate in history since the rise of the ancient Persian
Empire.

There have been three periods of Semitic ascendency,--the era of the
Assyrian and Babylonian empires; that of the Phoenician cities and
of Carthage (a Tyrian settlement), with their colonies; and that of
the Arabic-Mohammedan Conquests. This last epoch falls within the
Christian era. In this course of Semitic history would be embraced
the narrative of the Israelites, and of their dispersion in ancient
and in modern times. The Indo-European, or Aryan family, follows
next in order. In recording its history, we should consider, first,
its oldest representative of which we have knowledge,--the Indian
race, with its literature, its social organization, and its
religions, Brahmanism and Buddhism. Then come the Persians, with
their religion founded by _Zoroaster_, and the Armenians. With
the fall of the Ancient Persian Empire, the center of power was
transferred from Asia to Europe, where it has since continued,
though still in the hands of the same Aryan race. The history of the
Greeks and of the Romans succeeds; then the history of the three
races,--the Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonian,--as they present
themselves at the threshold of authentic history. The forming of the
several nationalities of Europe would have to be traced: the
Slavonian, including Russia and Poland; the Teutonic, comprising
England, Holland, Germany, and the Scandinavian peoples (viz.,
Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland); the Romanic or Italic nations
(viz., Portugal, Spain, Provence, Italy, Wallachia, the Grisons of
Switzerland), which are the nations the basis of whose languages is
the rustic or people's Latin of the middle ages. Such, in brief
outline, is the method which history, from the point of view of race
affinities, as these are indicated by language, would adopt.

UNITY OF DESCENT.--Whether mankind are all descended from one
pair--the _Monogenist_ view, or spring from more than one center
of origin--the _Polygenist_ view, is a question which
philological science can not answer. The facts of language are
reconcilable with either doctrine. While cautious philologists are
slow in admitting distinct affinities between the generic families of
speech,--as the Semitic and Indo-European,--which would be indicative
of a common origin, they agree in the judgment, that, on account of
the mutability of language, especially when unwritten, and while in
its earlier stages, no conclusion adverse to the monogenist doctrine
can be drawn from the diversities of speech now existing, or that are
known to have existed at any past time. As far as science is
concerned, the decision of the question must be left to zoölogy. The
tendencies of natural science at present, as we have said above, are
strongly toward the monogenist view. The variety of physical
characteristics not only affords no warrant for assuming diversity of
species among men; they do not even imply diversity of parentage at
the beginning.

"Nothing," says Max Müller, "necessitates the admission of different
independent beginnings for the _material_ elements" [the
vocabulary] "of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of
speech." The same thing Müller affirms of "the formal elements"
[the grammatical structure] "of these groups of languages." "We can
perfectly understand how, either through individual influences or by
the wear and tear of speech in its continuous working, the different
systems of grammar of Asia and Europe may have been produced."
(_Lectures on Language_, 1st series, p. 340.) The same
conclusions are reached by Professor W. D. Whitney, who, while
disclaiming for linguistic science the power to prove that the human
race in the beginning formed one society, says, that it is "even far
more demonstrable" that it can "never prove the variety of human
races and origins." (_Life and Growth of Language_, p. 269.)

We know that nations can learn and unlearn a language. The Irish,
adopting the language of their English conquerors, is one of many
examples of the same sort in history. What effects upon language
took place, prior to recorded history, from the mingling of tribes
and peoples, it is impossible to ascertain. The consequences to
language, of mixture among different forms of speech, were like
those which must have been produced upon the physical man from the
mingling of diverse physical types in remote ages. Science, if it
has no decided verdict to render, does not stand in conflict with
the monogenist doctrine, which has generally been understood to be
the teaching of the Scriptures.


MYTHOLOGY.

The polytheistic religions are in themselves a highly interesting part
of the history of mankind. In the multiform character that belongs to
them we find reflected the peculiar traits of the several peoples
among whom they have arisen. The history of religion stands in a close
connection with the development of the fine arts,--architecture and
sculpture, painting, music, and also poetry. The earliest rhythmical
utterance was in hymns to the gods. To worship, all the arts are
largely indebted for their birth and growth. This, however, is only
one of the ways in which religion is interwoven with the rise and
progress of civilization.

By _mythology_; we mean the collective beliefs of any tribe or
nation respecting deities or semi-divine personages. Recent studies
in language, or the science of _comparative philology_, have
thrown light on the origin of mythology, and upon the affinities of
different polytheistic religions with one another. Among various
nations belonging to the same family (as, for example, the peoples
of the _Aryan_ race), names of gods, and, to some extent,
qualities and deeds attributed to them, have been identified. Myths
are found to have traveled in different guises from land to land. At
the same time, these discoveries have given rise to much unverified
theory and conjecture. Too much stress has been laid, by certain
writers, on _mistakes in language_ as a source of mythology. In
the primitive stage of language, all nouns had a _gender_,
either male or female; and verbs, even auxiliary verbs, it is
alleged, expressed _activity_ of some sort. On the basis of
these facts it has been inferred, that, at a later day, figurative
expressions, descriptive of natural changes, were taken as literal;
as if one should interpret the saying, "the sun follows the dawn,"
as meaning that one person pursues another. By this kind of
misunderstanding, it has been thought, a throng of mythological
tales arose. By some it is held that the names of animals, which had
been given to ancestors, were interpreted literally by their savage
descendants, or that traditions of having come from a certain
_mountain_ or _river_ caused these natural objects to be
mistakenly regarded as actual progenitors. These suggestions are of
very limited value in solving the problem of the origin of the
ethnic religions. Much, however, has been learned from observing the
rites and beliefs of existing savage nations. Not a few religious
notions and ceremonies, once in vogue among cultivated heathen
peoples, may be plausibly considered a survival from a more remote
and barbarous condition of society.

That mythology is the product of a mere exaggeration of actual
events, or is an allegorical picture, either of the operations of
nature or of human traits, is an untenable and obsolete view.

We shall not err in defining the main sources of the religions to
be, _first_, the sense of dependence, and the yearning for the
fellowship and favor of powers "not ourselves," by which the lot of
men is felt to be determined; _secondly_, the effort to explain
the world of nature above and beneath, and the occurrences of life;
and _thirdly_, the personifying instinct which belongs to the
childhood of nations as of individuals. This tendency leads to the
attributing of conscious life to things inanimate. A like tendency
may impel the savage and the child to ascribe mind to the lower
animals. The fact that language, in its earlier stage, was charged
with personal life and activity, is itself the work of the
personifying instinct. When nature is thus personified, where there
is no sense of its unity and no capacity to rise in faith to a
living God above nature, the result is a multitude of divinities of
higher and lower rank. _Myths_ respecting them are the
spontaneous invention of unreflecting and uncritical, but
imaginative, peoples. Thus they serve to indicate the range of
ideas, and the moral spirit of those who originate and give credence
to them.

This is not the place to consider the question, What was the
primitive religion of man? The earliest deities that history brings
to our notice were not fetiches, but heavenly beings of lofty
attributes. Whether the religions of savage tribes, in common with
their low grade of intelligence, are, or are not, the result of
_degeneracy_, is a question which secular history affords no
means of deciding with confidence,

It may be added, that, in historic eras, the mythopoeic fancy is not
inactive. Stories of marvelous adventure clustered about the old
Celtic King Arthur of England and the "knights of the Round-Table,"
and fill up the chronicles relating to Charlemagne. Wherever there
is a person who kindles popular enthusiasm, myths accumulate. This
is eminently true in an atmosphere like that which prevailed in the
mediaeval period, when imagination and emotion were dominant.


PREHISTORIC TIMES.

PREHISTORIC RELICS.--Within the last half century, in various
countries of Europe, and in other countries, also, which have been,
earlier or later, seats of civilization, there have been found
numerous relics of uncivilized races, which, at periods far remote,
must have inhabited the same ground. Many of these antiquities are met
with in connection with remains of fossil elephants, hyenas, bears,
etc.,--with animals which no longer live in the regions referred to,
and some of which have become wholly extinct. Dwelling-places of these
far-distant peoples--such as caves and rock-shelters, and the remains
of the lake-habitations that were built on piles, in Switzerland and
elsewhere--sepulchers, camps, and forts, and an immense number of
implements and ornaments of stone and metal, have been examined. The
most ancient of these monuments carry us as far back as the era called
by geologists the _Quaternary_ or _Drift_ period.

THE THREE STAGES.--But there are marked distinctions in the relative
age of the various relics referred to. They indicate different degrees
of knowledge and skill; and this proof of a succession of peoples, or
of stages of development, is confirmed by geological evidence. The
prehistoric time is divided into _the Stone Age_, _the Age of
Bronze_, and _the Age of Iron_, according as the implements in
use were of one or another of these materials. But the Stone Age
includes an _earlier_ and a _later_ sub-division. In the
first and most ancient section, the weapons and utensils, mostly of
flint, were very rude in their manufacture. This was the
_Paleolithic Age_, where there are no signs of habitations
constructed by the hand, or of domesticated plants and animals. Men
lived in caves, and their vestments were the skins of beasts. Yet,
among their implements are found fragments of bone, horn, ivory, and
stone, on which are carved in outline, often with much skill,
representations of the reindeer, the bear, the ox, and of other
animals. In the _Neolithic_ period, there was a decided
advance. Implements are better made and polished. There were domestic
animals and cultivated plants. The lake-dwellings in Switzerland were
well contrived for shelter and defense. Every hut had its hearth. It
is probable that most of them were furnished with a loom for
weaving. Fragments of pottery are found, and flax was grown and made
into cord, nettings, etc. Stalls were constructed near the huts for
the ox, the goat, the horse, sheep, and pigs. The lake-dwellers
cultivated wheat and barley. The _Bronze Age_, when implements
were made of copper or of a mixture of copper and tin, exhibits proof
of decided improvement in various directions; and the _Age of
Iron_, a still more marked advance. In the Swiss remains referred
to are distinct traces of a transition from the Stone Age to the Age
of Bronze, and then to the Age of Iron. The kitchen-middens, or
shell-mounds, of Denmark belong exclusively to the Neolithic
period. Where the transition was made from the Stone Age to the Age of
Bronze, it apparently occurred in some cases by degrees, and
peacefully; but sometimes by the incoming of an invading people more
advanced. It should be observed that the lines of division between
these periods are not sharply drawn: implements of stone continued to
be used after the Bronze and even the Iron periods had been
introduced. Nor were these several ages in one region contemporaneous
with like conditions in every other. Moreover, it is not possible to
find in all countries once civilized proofs of a passage through these
successive eras. In Egypt, the evidences of a Stone Age are
scanty. The most ancient human remains show that man in his physical
characteristics was on a level with man at present.

_Dr. Daniel Wilson_, speaking of the age of the Flint-folk,
says: "It is of no slight importance to perceive that the interval
which has wrought such revolutions in the earth" [involving great
geological changes and mutations of climate] "as are recorded in the
mammaliferous drift, shows man the same reasoning, tentative, and
inventive mechanician, as clearly distinguished then from the
highest orders of contemporary life of the Elephantine or Cave
periods, as he is now from the most intelligent of the brute
creation.... The oldest art-traces of the paleotechnic men of
central France not only surpass those of many savage races, but they
indicate an intellectual aptitude in no degree inferior to the
average Frenchman of the nineteenth century." (_Prehistoric
Man_, pp. 33, 34.)

Literature.--Wilson, _Prehistoric Man_, etc. (2 vols., 1876);
Joly, _Man before the Metals_ (1883); Keary, _The Dawn of
History_. The writings of E. B. Tylor, _Primitive Culture_
(2 vols.), _Anthropology, Early History of Mankind_; his
Art. _Anthropology, Encycl. Britt_.; Lubbock's _Prehistoric
Times_, and his _Origin of Civilization_; Argyll, _The
Unity of Nature _(1884); J. Geikie, _Prehistoric Europe_
(1881); Lyell, _The Antiquity of Man_; W. E. Hearn, _The
Aryan Household_; L. H. Morgan, _Ancient Society_.


THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.--Science does not furnish us with the means of
fixing the date of the first human inhabitants of the earth. But its
various departments of investigation concur in pronouncing the
interval between the creation of man and the present to be far longer
than the traditional opinion has assumed. For the growth of language
and its manifold ramifications; for the development of the different
races of mankind, physically considered; for the geological changes
since the beginning of the Stone Age in the regions where its relics
are uncovered; for the rise of the most ancient civilization in Egypt
as well as in Babylon and China,--it is thought that periods of very
long duration are indispensable.

As to the date of the Neolithic man, or of the last section of the
Stone Age, Professor J. Geikie writes: "Any term of years I might
suggest would be a mere guess; but I have written to little purpose,
however, if the phenomena described in the preceding chapters have
failed to leave the impression upon the reader, that the advent of
Neolithic man in Europe must date back far beyond fifty or seventy
centuries." (_Prehistoric Europe_, p. 558.)

The chronology gathered from Genesis has been supposed to place the
date of man's creation at a point far less remote. Usher's
calculation, attached to the authorized English Version of the
Bible, sets this date at 4004 B.C. The discussion of these questions
of Scriptural chronology belongs to theology and biblical
criticism. It may be observed here, however, that of the three forms
in which Genesis is handed down to us,--the Hebrew text, the
Samaritan Pentateuch, and the Septuagint, or ancient Greek
translation,--no two agree in the numbers on which the estimate is
founded. Hence Hales and Jackson, following the larger numbers in
the genealogies of the Septuagint, place the date of the creation at
a point about fourteen hundred years prior to that fixed upon by
Usher.


ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY.

The periods of history are not divided from one another by merely
chronological limits, according to intervals of time of a definite
duration. Such a classification may be of use to the memory, but it is
arbitrary in its character. The landmarks of history are properly
placed at the turning-points where new eras take their start, whether
the intervals between them are longer or shorter.

Of these natural divisions, the most general and the most marked is
that between ancient and modern history. Ancient history not only
precedes modern in time: it is distinguished from the latter as
relating to a by-gone state of things. Modern history, on the
contrary, deals with an order of things now existing. Between the two
there is this line of demarkation.

History (with the exception of China and India, which require distinct
consideration, as standing apart) begins with Egypt, and flows down in
a continuous stream, until, in the fourth century A.D., the Roman
Empire, into which the ancient civilized peoples were incorporated,
was broken up. Then the new nations, especially the tribes of the
Germanic race, took power into their hands; Christianity was
established among them; out of the chaos of elements there emerged the
European nations, with their offshoots,--the peoples at present on the
stage of action. Ancient history had its center in the
Mediterranean. It embraced the peoples who dwelt on the shores of that
sea, in the three continents, and the nations that were brought into
relations with them. The Roman Empire, the final outcome of ancient
history, was "the monarchy of the Mediterranean." With the breaking-up
of the Empire, new races, new centers of power, a universal religion
in the room of national religions, and a new type of culture and
civilization, were introduced. Invaluable legacies were handed over
from the past, surviving the wreck of ancient civilization. There is,
however, a unity in history: the transition from the ancient to the
modern era was gradual.

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