Abstract
AT the annual meeting of the Anthropological Institute on o January 27, the president, Dr. E. B. Tylor, delivered the anniversary address. He compared the present state of the science with that of a generation ago, as shown in the addresses of 1847–8 delivered by Dr. Prichard to the newly-formed Ethnological Society. In those days it was still commonly believed that the broad-skulled tribes, whose remains are found in our early stone-age burial-mounds, were of the Keltic race; in fact, the so-called Ancient Britons. How backward comparative iphilology then was is shown by the fact that so eminent a scholar as Colebrooke fancied that Tamil and other Dravidian languages of South India were mere degraded dialects of Sanskrit. Prichard was the founder of English anthropology, but between his time and ours lie two events which have transformed it, namely, the development theory, which has rationalised the study of the jaces of mankind and the discovery of quaternary man, which has extended human antiquity to a period long enough for the development-theory to work in. Dr. Tylor next proceeded to give an account of the Anthropological Society of Berlin, which, founded ten years ago, has, under the presidencies of Professors Virchow and Bastian, steadily risen to over 400 members, and has done admirable work. Its financial arrangements differ much from thos of the English Sftciety, it being housed by the State, and receiving an annual grant from the Minister of Public Worship, through which, aid the members receive publications exceeding in value their moderate subscription. Among the contents of its publications for the last few years, special mention was made of the accounts of anthropoid apes in the Zoological Gardens of Germany. The life of Mafuka, who lived some time at Dresden, is among the most instructive of ape-biographies, as illustrating the approach of the anthropoid to the human mind. Knowing how to unlock her cage with the key, she stole and hid it for future use; she took tike carpenter's bradawl and bored holes with it through her own table; when pouring drink from at jug into her cup, she would carefully stop short of overfilling it. Her death had an almost human pathos: she threw her arms round the neck of the director, Herr Schopf, kissed him, and then putting her hand in his, lay down and died. Mention was made of Dr. Kulischer's paper on sexual selection in primitive times, which collects more fully then has been done by previous writers, the evidence thait a pairing time like that of the lower animals prevailed in held human society, taking effect espeeially in festivals held in spring and autumn, as the occasions the returning warmth and pletrty. On these occasions the great feature is the courting-dance, the often-unrestrained proceedings of which are not to be looked on as abnormal orgies, but as simply and undisguisedly natural, forming, indeed, part and parcel of the marriage-system of rude communal society. The courting-dance, though becoming more decorous with advancing culture, has held on with extraordinary tenacity through the history of society. In the middle ages it fully kept its connection with the season-festivals to which it especially belonged, curious relies of which still remain in European villages, for instance, the Ascension-Day festival near Gotha, where the dance under the lindenrtree-still marks the union of the peasant couples. Dr. Tylor added that the dances of the modern ball-room, however refined and ceremonious, show clear traces of descent from these ruder performances, not only in form, but in actual purpose.
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Recent Progress in Anthropology . Nature 21, 380–381 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/021380a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021380a0