Читать книгу The Dot of Noah’s-Darwin’s: the Ark, evolution, totemism and interspecific wars. Correspondence with anthropological journals - Oleg Kot - Страница 3

The history of the study of Totemism began with a universally known error – the English soldier, at a later time the furs salesman and translator, John Long incorrectly interpreted the concept of “Ototem” in the full description of his travels (Long 1904 [1791]). The way to solve the problem for today is reliably closed. “In the past the theoretical discussion of totemism was almost entirely concerned with speculations as to its possible origin. <…> To be able to speak of an origin of totemism we must assume that all these diverse institutions that we include under the one general term have been derived by successive modifications from a single form. There does not seem to me to be a particle of evidence to justify such an assumption. But even if we make it we can still only speculate as to what this original form of totemism may have been, as to the enormously complex series of events which could have produced from it the various existing totemic systems, and as to where, when, and how that hypothetical original form of totemism came into existence” (Radcliffe-Brown 1952, p. 122).

The Editor of Current Anthropology Mark Aldenderfer, to the author’s of this article: “However, your manuscript remains speculative and presents little evidence for the hypothesis” (2018, CA MS 303267).

Historiography of the problem (Tokarev 1978; 1990, pp. 51—60, pp. 564—576; Khaitun 1958, pp. 108—142; Levi-Strauss [1962] 1994, pp. 38—47, pp. 108—110; Dmitriyeva 2014, pp. 263—283). The latter noted:

From the work of Ethnographers-Australologists it is clear, that at least in Australia the word “totemism” is sometimes called different and irreducible to each other phenomena. The problem is (and it’s common the bad penny of Ethnology), that these different phenomena traditionally have to be called the same term. <…> Therefore, the only thing that can contribute to mutual understanding in this case is a preliminary definition of the concepts “totemism” and “totem” (ibid, p. 280).

Actually it is the citation belongs to Gladys Reichard (1938, p. 430):

Too much has been written of totemism in its different aspects… to permit leaving it entirely out of the discussion… Since the manifestations are so varied in different parts of the world, since their resemblances are only apparent, and since they are phenomena which may occur in many settings not related to real or supposed consanguinity, they can by no means be fitted into a single category (Levi-Strauss [1964] 1991, p. 7).

The quotations above indicates that the fragments of observations, brought from field expeditions, were not amenable to complete comprehension – the roots of the phenomenon were absent and, accordingly, the conclusions based on these materials began to be critically interpreted. Starting with Goldenweiser and ending with the founder of the school of structuralism Levi-Strauss, a point of view on the totemic complex as on artificially created by the predecessors (from McLennan to Fraser), but actually consisting of completely dissimilar phenomena, was formed and maintained in the future. “The supposed totemism eludes all effort at absolute definition” (Levi-Strauss [1964] 1991, p. 5).

By an answer for inability of ethnography to explain this phenomenon became there is arises an perceptions of the emergence of totemic beliefs among Neanderthals – the ending of the Middle Paleolithic, the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, the culture of the Mousterian (Semenov [1966] 2002, pp. 427—430). But and this method has failed to bring decisive arguments in its favor.