VIII 



TKIBAL SOCIETY 



THERE are three means of determining approximately 

 the characteristics of social life among prehistoric men : 

 first, a considerable mass of archeological remains; 

 second, the existence of survivals in the traditions of civil- 

 ized society indicating a time when the ancestors of these 

 peoples lived under very primitive conditions ; and third, 

 a general parallelism between some features of prehis- 

 toric cultures and some features of the culture of primi- 

 tive societies which exist to-day among the Australian 

 aborigines, the American Indians, and other savage peo- 

 ples. 



But this parallelism has certain important limitations 

 which must be remembered in any comparison we may 

 wish to make. Modern savage groups live in relatively 

 barren, inhospitable, inaccessible regions of the earth, 

 into which they have been crowded by stronger peoples. 1 

 Moreover, the spread of the European race with its 

 highly developed civilization has cut short the growth of 

 the existing independent germs of civilization among 

 these primitive peoples without regard to their mental 

 aptitude. 2 Thus the parallelism is not exact, for while 

 we cannot premise any marked intellectual superiority 

 of prehistoric man over existing savages in explaining 

 present cultural differences, we must recognize that ad- 

 vantage of some sort was possessed by the prehistoric 



iGiddinga, Principles of Sociology, p. 210. 2 Boas, op. cit., p. 17. 



233 



