Reise der Osterreichischen Frigatte “Novara” um die Erde, in den Jahren 1857–58–59, unter den Befehlen des Commodore B. von Wüllerstorf-Urbair

Abstract

THIS important work scarcely appears to have attracted the attention it deserves, and we propose referring to a few of the more interesting facts it contains. The object of ethnography, Dr. Müiler observes, is not to regard man as an individual, but as a member of a family, and hence to consider him by such light as can be gained from the investigation of his speech, his thoughts, his feelings, and his entire mode of living. He thinks the classification of the different races of man in accordance with the colour of the skin and the characters of the hair, extremely unsatisfactory, though adopted by many of the best anthropologists of modern times, as Linnaeus, Elumenbach, Cuvier, Pickering, &c., nor less so the method of Retzius, who attended exclusively to the form of the skull and face. Race and language, or form of speech, on the other hand, he thinks, are associated by the closest and profoundest ties. The persistence of some of the races whose contours have been handed down to us by the artists of the ancient Egyptians and Persians may, he considers, at a low estimate, be placed at 8,000 years, since it is likely that they had endured at least as long previously to their being fixed in stone as they have done since. Everything, he thinks, serves to show the persistence and invariability of race. But if we pass from man regarded from an anthropological to an ethnographical point of view, his unchangeability is no longer perceptible. The form of the land, the climate, the Flora and Fauna by which he is surrounded, all exert a powerful influence upon him. The low grade of mental development on which the Australian stands, may easily be attributed to the singular dearth of useful plants and useful animals by which he is surrounded; and the Polynesian would undoubtedly have advanced to a higher level, if the plants and animals around him had been appropriate objects to stimulate and extend his intellectual faculties. The views here expressed, it will be seen, are curiously in accordance with those expressed by Buckle.

Reise der Osterreichischen Frigatte “Novara” um die Erde, in den Jahren 1857–58–59, unter den Befehlen des Commodore B. von Wüllerstorf-Urbair.

Anthropologische Theil. Bearbeitet von Dr. Fried. Müller. (Vienna. 1868.)