H.— ANTHROPOLOGY 163 



As to many simple actions and habits there is simply no analogy which 

 can teach us whether they are natural and inevitable to any human animal, 

 or whether they presume so much specialised intelligence that they could 

 only originate in some one place and time. I will choose a few instances. 



That man should seek shelter from the elements is so obviously natural, 

 and so like all other animals, that probably no one would argue that the 

 living in caves or the construction of a primitive shelter, analogous to an 

 animal's lair or a bird's nest, must presuppose any identity of race or 

 origin. Or again, may not any animal pile up stones ? And if so, at 

 what exact stage does the piling up of stones become such a complex action 

 that it can only be developed in one place ? After all, stones will only 

 hold together in certain shapes ; the existence therefore of simple cairns 

 in many parts of the world could be no valid evidence of a single mind at 

 work. Let us go one step further and suppose that a shelter of stones 

 has to be roofed. Is the laying of slabs, one overlapping the other so as 

 to form a corbel , so intricate a device that it might not be invented in many 

 places simultaneously .? It seems a very primitive process, even if it has 

 been developed with great skill in certain countries. 



Again, let the form of shelter be the very primitive form of boughs or 

 saplings placed in a circle and tied together at the top. If this simple 

 trick is found amongst many peoples living thousands of miles apart, 

 must we argue that they all learned it from the same source ? Take again 

 the wattle-hut : birds know how to weave a nest and to plaster it with 

 mud — is homo sapiens less intellectual than the hedge sparrow } 



This last example may carry us to another line of thought. It has 

 sometimes been suggested that the discovery of the uses of burned clay, 

 and consequently of baked pottery, may have been due to the accidental 

 firing of a wattled hut. If so, it is difficuh to maintain that the invention 

 of pottery could only happen in one place, unless the use of fire was 

 limited to one little spot on the earth. 



Even with regard to burial customs, though many probably will dis- 

 agree with me, I think it is unwarrantable to suppose that simple customs 

 found half the distance of the globe apart must have a common origin. 

 There are many methods of disposing of the dead, but they fall into two 

 main classes : those which aim at preserving the body and those which 

 aim at destroying it. Are all races which destroy, or even those which 

 destroy by the same general methods of exposure or burning, necessarily 

 derived from the same stock or necessarily learning from one another .? 

 It is not even convincing to say that races which preserve the body must 

 have learned the idea from each other unless their methods are intricate 

 and all the intricacies are identical. 



These apparently elementary questions go to the root of the whole 

 matter. Whatever answer an archzeologist might give — and I person- 

 ally would give no answer at all in such cases — he could not persuade 

 by logical means any opponent who chose to disagree with him. He 

 would be obliged when driven into a corner to say ' I am convinced ' of 

 this or that, but the conviction would express nothing more than his own 

 temperament and psychology. 



To apply logic at all then, we need to find our material in hghly 



