STONE AOE P.ASIS FOR OKIENTAT, STTTDY.* 



By Prof. E. B. Tylor, F. K. S. 



It seems si suitable iutrodiictiou to the work of this section to sur- 

 vey broadly the races belonging to the vast Oriental region and to 

 examine the information now available as to the order of their stages 

 of civilization. In the large definition adopted by this Congress, the 

 Oriental world reaches its extreme limits. It embraces the continent 

 of Asia, stretching through Egypt over Africa, and into Europe over 

 Tnrke^, and Greece, while extending in the far East from group to 

 gr p of ocean islands, where Indonesia, ^Melanesia, Micronesia, and 

 Polynesia lead on to the continent of Australia and its outlier, Tas- 

 mania. Immense also is the range of time through which the culture- 

 history of this Oriental region may be, if often but dimly, traced. His- 

 tory illuminates its comparatively later periods. The earlier can only 

 be inferentially reconstructed by com[»arison of the still representative 

 races and languages, and their renniins materially i)reserved in the vsoil 

 and intellectually in culture; that is, in the arts, institutions, and beliefs 

 which have lasted on from the ancient world. On the maps which 

 represent the Oriental world, as known to history, we see a band of 

 civilized nations stretching from Egypt through Phenicia, Babylonia, 

 Assyria, Medo-Persia, India, China. This compact culture band is 

 underlaid by traces of former barbarism and geographically skirted by 

 barbaric border-lands, while a savage region is either actually met with 

 beyond these limits, or its former existence inferred inside as well as 

 outside them. In agreement with recognized principles of the develop 

 ment of culture, it may, I think, be taken that the low culture extending 

 widest, represents the earliest platform of culture over the whole regign ; 

 that an inner but still vast inlying district rose to the barbaric level, 

 and that within this again the higher cultitre area was formed. Indeed, 

 the terrace-temple of Babylonia, where terraces narrower, but more 

 lofty, rise one above another, seems to my mind a suggestive model of 

 these stages of culture : where the higher- degree covers the smaller area. 



* Inaugural address of the president of the section of authropolouy aud mythology, 

 Niutli International Congress of Orientalists, Loudon, Septeiulier, 1892 ; Tt-ansactions, 

 vol. n. 



701 



