Читать книгу Ancient Man in Britain - Donald Alexander Mackenzie - Страница 1

In his Presidential Address to the Royal Anthropological Institute this year the late Dr. Rivers put his finger upon the most urgent need for reform in the study of Man, when he appealed for "the Unity of Anthropology". No true conception of the nature and the early history of the human family can be acquired by investigations, however carefully they may be done, of one class of evidence only. The physical characters of a series of skulls can give no reliable information unless their exact provenance and relative age are known. But the interpretation of the meaning of these characters cannot be made unless we know something of the movements of the people and the distinctive peculiarities of the inhabitants of the foreign lands from which they may have come. No less important than the study of their physical structure is the cultural history of peoples. The real spirit of a population is revealed by its social and industrial achievements, and by its customs and beliefs, rather than by the shape of the heads and members of its units. The revival of the belief in the widespread diffusion of culture in early times has, as one of its many important effects, directed attention to the physical peculiarities of the mixed populations of important foci of civilization throughout the world. Such inquiries have not only enabled the student of human structure to detect racial affinities where he might otherwise have neglected to look for them, but on the other hand they have been able to give the investigator of cultural diffusion evidence of the most definite and irrefutable kind in corroboration of the reality of his inferences.

At the present time students are just awakening to the fact that no adequate idea of the anthropology of any area can be acquired unless every kind of evidence, somatic and cultural, be taken into account, and the problems of the particular locality are integrated with those worldwide movements of men and of civilization of which the people and culture of that locality form a part.

The great merit of Mr. Donald Mackenzie's book is due in the main to the fact that he has taken this wider vision of his subject and interpreted the history of early man in Britain, not simply by describing the varieties of head-form or of implements, customs and beliefs, but rather by indicating how these different categories of information can be put into their appropriate setting in the history of mankind as a whole. There is nothing of technical pedantry about Mr. Mackenzie's writing. He has made himself thoroughly familiar with the customs and beliefs of the whole world, as his remarkable series of books on mythology has revealed, and in the process of acquiring this mass of information he has not sacrificed his common sense and powers of judgment. He has been able to see clearly through this amazing jumble of confusing statements the way in which every phase of civilization in all parts of the world is closely correlated with the rest; and he has given luminous expression to this clear vision of the history of man and civilization as it affects Britain.

G. Elliot Smith.

The University of London.