In Primitive Culture Tylor sets out to reconstruct the history of human culture and immediately faces a major problem: How can humanity’s prehistoric, unwritten history be known? Tylor closely followed contemporary archaeological discoveries of stone tools and extinct mammals in Great Britain and France, but fragments of bone and stone were not enough to reconstruct the “complex whole” of culture or civilization. And so Tylor crafted his reconstruction on two principles: uniformitarianism and the concept of survivals. The condition of culture among the various societies of mankind, insofar as it is capable of being investigated on general principles, is a subject apt for the study of laws of human thought and action. On the one hand, the uniformity which so largely pervades civilization may be ascribed, in great measure, to the uniform action of uniform causes: while on the other hand its various grades may be regarded as stages of development or evolution, each the outcome of previous history, and about to do its proper part in shaping the history of the future. (Tylor 1958:1)
Uniformitarianism was derived from Charles Lyell’s multivolume Principles of Geology (1830–1833). Lyell argued that the geological processes observable today—erosion, sedimentation, and so on—were the same processes that shaped the earth in the past rather than spectacular, unique catastrophes like Noah’s
Flood. Observations of modern processes allowed for reconstructing the history of the earth because the same geological processes were at work then as now.
This was also true for culture, Tylor argued, because culture was created by universally similar human minds and governed by the same basic laws of cognition. “Surveyed in a broad view,” Tylor writes,
the character and habit of mankind at once display that similarity and consistency which led the Italian proverb-maker to declare “all the world is one country.” . . . To general likeness in human nature on the one hand, and to general likeness in the circumstances of life on the other, this similarity and consistency may no doubt be traced, and they may be studied with especial fitness comparing races near the same grade of civilization. (1958:6)
Setting aside for the moment the issue of “grade of civilization,” Tylor’s key point is that the processes of culture are similar for all people, regardless of where or when they lived, because human minds are similar (Tylor 1958:159). This is the central logic of Tylor’s uniformitarianism: culture or civilization consists of knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, customs, and other mental constructs; since human mental processes are universal, human societies have developed culture along similar trajectories, characterized by progress and expressed in the evolution of culture.
This has three implications.
- First, race does not explain cultural differences. Believing that it was “possible and desirable to eliminate considerations of hereditary varieties or races of man,” Tylor contended his study demonstrated “that stages of culture may be compared without taking into account how far tribes who use the same implement, follow the same custom, or believe the same myth, may differ in their bodily configuration and the colour of their skin and hair” (1958:7). Rather, if two societies have analogous cultural traits (pottery or monotheism or stock markets), it is because either (1) the trait has diffused from one society to another, or (2) because independent inventions have developed due to the similarly constructed human minds encountering similar situations.
- Second, it means that societies with similar cultural traits may represent analogous stages in the development of human culture. Citing Samuel Johnson’s fairly predictable insult “one set of savages is like another,” Tylor surprisingly exclaims, “How true a generalization this really is, any Ethnological Museum may show” (1958:6). Tylor quickly explains that these similarities are most pronounced in the realm of technology—the tools for hunting, fishing, fire making, cooking, and so on—although cross-cultural similarities also exist in mythology, kinship, and other aspects of social life. Such parallels reflect similar stages of cultural development among existing societies and also allow us to reconstruct prehistoric societies. Since the laws of mind are uniform, the patterns of contemporary “primitive” societies must be similar to those of extinct prehistoric peoples, a “hypothetical primitive condition [that] corresponds in a considerable degree to that of modern savage tribes, who in spite of their difference and distance, have in common certain elements of civilization, which seem remains of an early state of the human race at large” (Tylor 1958:21). Tylor essentially asserted, as Robert Ackerman states, that “human nature and development being relatively homogeneous, one might legitimately discover, in the behaviour of contemporary primitive peoples, living links in the evolutionary chain” (1987:78).
- Third, Tylor’s uniformitarianism allowed him to reconstruct the specific processes leading to a particular belief, moral, or set of cultural knowledge. Since culture was a cognitive construction created by similar human minds solving the problems of existence in a rational though often erroneous way, it was possible for Tylor to retrace the logical steps that led to a superstition, folk belief, or “irrational” practice.
Tylor’s reconstruction of the evolution of human culture relied on the comparative method and the doctrine of survivals. The comparative method is based on a straightforward logic: similar objects are historically related. Apes, monkeys, and humans have five digits because those animals are historically related. The words “no,” non, and nein are similar because English, French, and German share historical roots. By Tylor’s time the comparative method had produced major advances in different fields. The method was evident in Georges Cuvier’s (1769–1832) comparative zoology and in the major advances in comparative linguistics, particularly the discovery of a proto-Indo-European language reconstructed from linguistic fragments found in Sanskrit (Hoeningswald 1963).
The comparative method forms the basis of a history of origins. Tylor presents his version of the comparative method as a natural history of human culture: “A first step in the study of civilization is to dissect it into details, and to classify these in their proper groups” (1958:7). For example, “myths” may be classified into myths about the sun, myths about eclipses or earthquakes, myths about the names of places, myths about the establishment of a tribe, and so on. Each of these, he argues, is a species of the genus “myth,” and ethnography becomes natural history. Tylor states, “The ethnographer’s business is to classify such details with a view of making out their distribution in geography and history, and the relations which exist among them” (1958:8).
Temporal and spatial distributions of cultural traits may reflect different processes. Some patterns could result from contacts between different cultures and the diffusion of cultural traits. Other patterns could represent parallel resolution of similar problems of existence: fishnets are similar worldwide because there are only certain ways you can catch fish, but patterns could also be reflections of earlier stages of human culture, traits that Tylor named “survivals.”
For example, throughout the United States you see signs like “Ye Olde Steak House” or “Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe” or (my personal favorite) “Ye Olde Pizza Parlor.” Most Americans will pronounce the word as “yee” and recognize it as an archaic English word but not know that “Y” was a symbol for the “th” sound
and thus that “Ye” is simply “The.” The symbol has survived, although its meaning is not really understood. “Ye” is a survival.
Tylor defines survivals as “processes, customs, opinions, and so forth, which have been carried by force of habit into a new state of society different from that in which they had their original home and they remain as proofs and examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved” (1958:16).
We say “God bless you” or “Gesundheit” when someone sneezes because it is a survival, not because we still believe the soul is leaving the body. We celebrate Halloween because it is a survival, not because we are placating the wild spirits on the night before All Souls’ Day. We shake hands as a form of greeting because it is a custom, not to show that we are unarmed. We frequently use words, gestures, sayings, and practices whose original meanings have been lost but in our daily encounters nonetheless survive. Survivals, Tylor argues, are not merely quaint customs, but are the vestiges of previous culture. “Children’s sports, popular sayings, absurd customs, may be practically unimportant, but are not philosophically insignificant bearing as they do on one of the most instructive phases of early culture” (1958:111). Such “relics of primitive barbarism” allow the ethnographer to reconstruct earlier cultural patterns and ultimately define the evolution of culture.
Human history, Tylor believed, was characterized by progress. In technology, the development of firearms showed a clear progression from matchlock to wheel lock to flintlock to percussion cap to automatic weapon. The order of technological change is obvious: one innovation leads to another. The crossbow is clearly derived from the longbow, and no one would doubt the relationship even without a written record (Tylor 1958:15). Similarly, other dimensions of culture can be seen as having a progressive relationship, demonstrating “that the main tendency from primaeval up to modern times has been from savagery towards civilization” (Tylor 1958:21).
At this point Tylor pursues a tenuous line of logic: just as specific cultural traits may be vestigial survivals of an earlier culture, entire societies may reflect earlier stages of human evolution. A society that in the late nineteenth century used stone tools was not simply a society without metal tools, but literally a vestige of prehistory, a “Stone Age” culture. The study of extant “primitive” societies is the investigation of “primaeval monuments of barbaric thought and life” leading to a reconstruction of the stages of evolution through which humans—at least some—have progressed (Tylor 1958).
At this point Tylor’s cautious argument swerves into essentially unreflective assumption and prejudice. Civilization, Tylor writes, may be looked upon as the general improvement of mankind by higher organization of the individual and society, to the end of promoting at once man’s goodness, power and happiness. This theoretical civilization does in no small measure correspond with actual civilization, as traced by comparing savagery with barbarism, and barbarism with modern educated life. So far as we take into account only material and intellectual culture, this is especially true. Acquaintance with the physical laws of the world, and the accompanying power of adapting nature to man’s own ends, are, on the whole, lowest among savages, mean among barbarians, and highest among modern educated nations. (1958:27)
Not surprisingly, Tylor’s “physical laws” are the principles of Western science; alternative epistemologies are merely error-filled remnants of prescientific barbarism. Based on a society’s mastery of “material and intellectual culture,” one can assign a relative rank on an evolutionary scale: “Thus, on the definite basis of compared facts, ethnographers are able to set up at least a rough scale of civilization. Few would dispute that the following races are arranged rightly in order of culture:—Australian, Tahitian, Aztec, Chinese, Italian” (Tylor 1958:27). Obviously many people would dispute this order, particularly Australians, Tahitians, Aztecs, and Chinese. How can any ranking of societies be untainted by prejudice? The violent convulsions of the past century make it difficult to assume that “modern educated nations” successfully promote
humanity’s goodness, power, and happiness. Most modern readers will stumble on the very ideas that Tylor took for granted.
Perhaps less obvious is the problem in considering entire societies as evolutionary survivals of earlier stages of human progress. The concept of a survival suggests that a cultural practice—“Ye” or “Gesundheit”—has been carried unchanged from the past into the present, and we can cite examples of such survivals. But it is another matter to assume that an entire human group has been static, a fossilized representative of an earlier cultural stage. Tylor had no reason to think that the histories of the Australians or Tahitians were either brief or static and no basis to believe that such societies reflected earlier forms of human culture rather than just different, contemporary patterns. Simply, this was justified by Tylor’s assumption of human progress.