SECTION C ETHNOLOGY 



(Hall 16, September 24, 3 p. m.) 



CHAIRMAN: Miss ALICE C. FLETCHER, President of the Washington Anthropo- 

 logical Society. 



SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR FREDERICK STARR, University of Chicago. 

 PROFESSOR A. C. HADDON, University of Cambridge. 

 SECRETARY: PROFESSOR F. W. SHIPLEY, Washington University. 



ETHNOLOGY AND ITS RELATIONS TO OTHER BRANCHES 

 OF ANTHROPOLOGY 



BY FREDERICK STARR 



[Frederick Starr, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago. 

 b. September 2, 1858, Auburn, New York. B.S. Lafayette, 1882; M.S. and 

 Ph.D. Lafayette, 1885. In charge of Department of Ethnology, American 

 Museum of Natural History, New York, 1891; Dean of Science Department, 

 Pomona College, Claremont, California, 1892-95j Registrar, Chautauqua Uni- 

 versity, 1890-91. Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, American Anthropological Association; Honorary Member, Fenelon 

 Society, London; Honorary Corresponding Member of the Italian Society of 

 Anthropology, Ethnology, and Comparative Psychology; Paris Socie'te' d'An- 

 thropologie. Author of Indians of Southern Mexico; Physical Characters of 

 Indians of Southern Mexico, etc.] 



INVITED, but a few days since, to take the place of a foreign 

 speaker, who is unable to be present, and with the time since fully 

 occupied with an unexpected burden of labor, I have been unable 

 to prepare for this occasion such a paper as should justly be ex- 

 pected. In the few moments which it will occupy, I shall ask your 

 attention to three points, which are either new or sadly neglected, 

 which seem to me worthy of consideration by ethnologists. 



First. In discussions in the history of culture, we are prone to 

 assume that primitive man had no experience and no accumulation 

 of knowledge gained from the experiences of the past ; that he had 

 to make the absolute beginnings in culture; that he was a being 

 capable of great things, but with nothing. This assumption has 

 been practically universal, and has met with no remonstrance. 

 It is, however, highly improbable; nay, impossible. Primitive 

 man, if the product from animal ancestors, must have inherited 

 many things from lower forms. Many habits, mental attitudes, 

 ideas, beliefs, must have been developed during prehuman exist- 

 ence. This suggestion gains force from two significant works 

 recently published Groos's Play of Animals and Atkinson's 

 Primal Law. The careful reading of Groos's work proves that 



