Explore "The Mind of Primitive Man" by Franz Boas on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
IN the last chapter I tried to show that the principal characteristics of the mind of primitive man occur among primitive tribes of all races, and that therefore the inference must not be drawn that these traits of the mind are racial characteristics. This negative conclusion, which is based entirely on the consideration of a few selected points that occur with great regularity in the description of primitive tribes, does not give us, however, proof positive of the lack of all correlation between mental life and racial descent, and we must direct our attention to those cases in which an immediate relationship between the two may be and has been claimed.
This has occurred particularly in regard to language and racial types. Indeed, the opinion is still held by some investigators that linguistic relationships and racial relationships are in a way interchangeable terms. An example illustrating this point of view may be seen in the long-continued discussions of the home of the "Aryan race," in which the blond northwest European type is identified with the ancient people among whom the Indo-European or Aryan languages developed.