Anthropology

Anthropology by Franz Boas (1911)

Boas argues that anthropology studies the diversity of anatomical, physiological, and mental traits among groups of men shaped by geography, climate, food supply, contact between peoples, migration, and population density, and that explaining these differences requires biology and individual psychology even though anthropology retains its own unity through humanity's special interest in itself. He frames the field's two guiding questions as why tribes and nations differ and how present differences developed, positioning anthropology as reconstructing the unwritten early history of mankind, distinct from history's narrow focus on events shaping modern civilization; with growing specialization, he expects anthropology to become more a method used by other sciences than a self-contained science. Turning to physical anthropology, Boas notes biometric methods originating in anthropology have advanced race classification, though the genealogy of human types remains obscure despite quaternary and tertiary fossil finds. He identifies man as a domesticated animal, anatomically altered by regular feeding and reduced muscular use without deliberate selection, contributing to human variability. He describes two extreme types, the Negro race and the Mongoloid race, with the Negro race including African peoples and groups near Australia, affiliated with the dwarfish South African type and the Australian; the Mongoloid type affiliated with the Malay of southeastern Asia, the Ainu of northern Japan, and possibly the European. He proposes a broad division into the race of the Indian Ocean (Negroid) and the race of the Pacific Ocean (Mongoloid and affiliated types), suggesting the Pacific race migrated into America early and later reoccupied northern Asia after the ice retreated. He stresses that ancient remains from Europe and Egypt resemble modern populations, that hybrid types like the Semitic and Armenian in western Asia revert to parental forms rather than blending, and that no pure race exists since transitions between types are gradual. He also rejects claims that civilization has improved the nervous system or that any race's brain proves mental superiority, given that variability within races exceeds average differences between them. Boas then reviews the psychological and cultural side of anthropology, crediting Tylor, Bachofen, Morgan, and Spencer with applying Darwinian evolutionary theory to culture, positing a universal sequence from simple to complex civilization. He illustrates this with kinship systems (maternal versus paternal descent and residence customs), the development of stone implements into complex tools, and the evolution of decorative art from realistic pictographs, such as reindeer and mammoth images by cave-dwellers in France, toward conventional and esthetic motives, and religion's progression from anthropomorphic nature-worship to organized belief. He contrasts this evolutionary view with Bastian's theory of elementary ideas, which held that fundamental forms of thought recur everywhere regardless of historical sequence, a view Boas links to Dilthey's philosophy. Boas then critiques the evolutionary framework, showing that cultural elements spread across vast distances and continents, citing tobacco's rapid diffusion into Africa, the banana's spread through South America, Indian-corn, the horse, cattle, European grains, the use of milk across Europe, Africa, and western Asia, and shared folk-tales found among the Berber, Italians, Irish, Russians, and peoples of India, Tibet, Siberia, and North America. This transmission evidence undermines a strictly independent, parallel evolutionary sequence for each culture. He further challenges the assumption that culture always moves from simple to complex, noting that primitive languages and primitive music and decorative art often show greater grammatical or rhythmic complexity than modern forms, so simplicity does not always indicate antiquity. He extends Bastian's psychological approach through linguistic analysis, arguing that grammatical categories, unconscious to speakers, reveal fundamental types of thought paralleling philosophical systems, while conscious customs and beliefs are subject to secondary, rationalized explanations that obscure their true history. He notes that in primitive culture, social organization, religion, art, and science are emotionally fused in ways that civilized life has separated, comparing this to persistent emotionally-charged customs like manners in modern society, such as rules about hats indoors. Boas closes by describing anthropology's practical lessons: it teaches the relativity of civilization's values, reveals that people rationalize decisions reached emotionally, traces the historical growth of social units from small hostile groups toward larger units with greater individual freedom, and offers scientific methods useful for public hygiene, race-mixture, and eugenics, removing these questions from political dispute into calm investigation.

By Franz Boas · First published 1911 · Genre: Academic Essay, Natural Science, Ethnography · 7,881 words

First lines

In attempting to set forth briefly the principal results of anthropological research, I find my task beset with many difficulties. If the clear enunciation of the aims and methods of physical or biological science is not an easy matter, difficulties many times greater are encountered in an attempt to explain the present position of investigation dealing with mankind from the biological, geographical, and psychological points of view, -- subjects that seem to lack in unity, and that present a number of most divergent aspects. Owing to the apparent heterogeneity of method, it seems necessary to explain the aims that unify the many lines of anthropological research. I can then proceed to describe what little has been attained, and how we hope to make further progress.

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racial classification · biological anthropology · human types · human variation · cultural evolution · ethnology · social organization · kinship systems · language · grammatical categories · material culture · stone implements

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