514 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



that oue people may liave developed its culture in one direction and 

 uot in another, even retrograded in some respects while they advanced 

 in others, but no person is justified in assuming that, because one 

 ])rimitive people developed their civilization in a particular direction, 

 therefore all peoples did the same. The unity of human develop- 

 ment and civilization is a myth. AVe have but to look over the mod- 

 ern Avorld and to compare the peoples of historic times, some of them 

 of high civilization, to demonstrate this want of unity. It is sufficient 

 as an illustration to cite the different families of the Aryan race, which 

 originally had a single stock of language if they did not have a single 

 stock of blood ; then comx^are these families together and note the dif- 

 ferences in their civilization, the Greeks with the Eomans, and they 

 with the Celts, and the Celts with the Goths, and so on to the Lets and 

 the Slavs, and all these with the Zends and Persians. If this compar- 

 ison be somewhat difficult and not apparent at a glance, we may take 

 the descendants of these various peoples as they exist at the present 

 time; compare not simply the Latins with the Germanic peoples, but 

 the Latins with themselves; the differences between Italy and France, 

 and of France with Spain, or the ancient Saxon with the Anglo-Saxon 

 of England. These differences are almost as great as though there 

 never had been any relation between them; almost as great as it is 

 between these Aryan x)eoples and the Semitic, between whom there 

 has never been any racial relation. These differences apply to their 

 fundamental civilization and ramify through every fiber of the respec- 

 tive bodies politic. In sociology the distinctions in religion, mar- 

 riage, government, law, inheritance, is as great between Italy, France, 

 and Spain on the one hand, and Germany, Holland, and England on 

 the other, as it is between either or all these and the same institu- 

 tions in China and Japan. He would be a poor historian who, pro- 

 ceeding upon the theory of the similarity of human nature, and having 

 written a history of any one of the nations and peoples just men- 

 tioned, should assume that, therefore, he was in possession of knowledge 

 of the sociologic conditions of any other. It is useless to continue this 

 argument. Its only puri^ose has been to enter a protest against 

 this method of reasoning when applied to the prehistoric peojiles of 

 whom our only knowledge consists of such monuments, tombs, resi- 

 dence sites, implements, utensils, and objects as have been or may be 

 found on or in the earth. 



Ehythm was the first element of music. The drum and the rattle of 

 the savage give forth but one tone, and all their music consists in strokes 

 or shakes, repeated at greater or less intervals of time and with more 

 or less regularity and force. The earliest prehistoric whistles gave 

 but a single note, but were afterwards increased to two and five notes, 

 and while they could increase the force they were scarcely able to 

 make a melody except of the most simple kind. Brums and rattles 



