Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/85

 BOOK REVIEWS 73

able Hahn's view that religious motives were instrumental in the primeval processes of domestication. Not that he postulates an inten- tional compulsory act: he rather reverts to occasional suggestions of Hahn himself relating to the corralling of game animals by hunting tribes (p. 992).

Schmidt's theory is expounded as follows (pp. 988, 1056). Graebner had assumed a bifurcation of cultural evolution from the primeval hunting state. As one branch he postulated a matrilineal moiety system corre- lated with the origin of horticulture through female effort; as another a patrilineal totemistic culture, from which he derived the civilization of pastoral peoples. It is this genetic connection between stock-breeding and totemism that Schmidt denies. In his scheme pastoral conditions represent a third independent post-primeval cultural province, that of northern Central Asia (southwestern Siberia). The marginal peoples whose culture represents that from which pastoralism evolved are the Eskimo, Lapps, Ainu, et al. Schmidt distinguishes three pastoral groups. The northeastern division embraces the bulk of Ural-Altaian stocks and the core of the cultural province; to these peoples must be credited the domestication of the reindeer, the horse, and the camel. The Indo-Europeans form the central group, their home being placed in northern Turkistan and southern Russia. As an as yet undifferentiated stock (als einheitliches Gesamtvolk) they adopted husbandry, though only in slight degree, from neolithic neighbors in Turkistan Finally Schmidt recognizes a southwestern division of Hamito-Semitic nomads, who only secondarily borrowed domesticated species from the two other groups.

A disturbing feature of Father Koppers' argumentation consists in the constant assumption of Graebner's cultural strata as definitely established historical facts. Yet it is quite possible to accept the notion of cultural stratification without recognizing in Graebner's totemistic and two-class cultures anything but speculative constructions. Apart from this important qualification, the reviewer gladly hails this paper not only as a learned and able essay on one of the most important aspects of material culture but also as embodying a number of eminently just

methodological apergus.

ROBERT H. LOWIE

POSTSCRIPT

Since writing the above I have had an opportunity of reading the first part of Father Koppers' study (Anthropos, vols. x-xi, 1915-16, pp. 611-651). It contains a number of interesting historical points. In opposition to Roscher, who ascribes the origin of the three-stage

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