The Sun.
London, England, 1865-02-22 00:00:00

E INOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

At the meeting of this society yesterday evening
—the president, Mr. Lubbock, in the chair—a long
and interesting paper, communicated by Mr. John
Crawfurd, was read " On the History of Cannibalism
in reference to Social Progress." The author of the
paper assumed the antiquity of (man to have been
coeval with the extinct elephant, cave bear, and other
animals, with the bones of which flint implements
have been found mingled in recent geological de-
posits. In that original state of existence he also
assumed man to have been but little raised from a
state of savage life above the lower animals, his only
superiority consisting in the possession of a pair of
hands and of a superior brain, the powers of which
were undeveloped. He had not constructed a lan-
guage, and his speech, like that of the lower animals,
consisted of interjections only. He had not acquired
the art of kindling a fire, and his only weapon was
a club—the branch of a tree torn off by the wind.
In this feeble and almost helpless state of his exist-
ence his food would, of necessity, consist of raw flesh
derived from the dead carcases of beasts, birds, and
fishes, assisted on the sea coast by shell-fish and sea
weeds, and in a few favoured localitiesby wild fruits.
He -was utterly naked. In that state of the world
the wild animals would be more abundant and tame,
aud there would be no deficiency of food. But as
man increased in numbers and the animals on which
he fed became fewer aud more difficult to capture,
his ingenuity would necessarily be stimulated to the
invention of new means of procuring food. Then
would be invented the weapon pointed with bone or
stone, the bow and arrow, the blow-pipe for dis-
charging arrows or pellets, the bone fish-hook,
the net, and eventually the canoe, with the
stone axe and knife for their fabrication. Men then
clothed themselves in the skins of the wild beasts,
the flesh of which they had devoured, and in this
stage a language would be formed, and the art of
kindling a fire discovered. This was the stone age,
and that in which he imagined that cannibalism be-
gan. In the struggle for existence, neighbouring
tribes would necessarily live in a state of hostility.
Their wars would be about hunting and fishing
grounds, and the carnivorous savage who lived ex-
clusively on flesh would draw no nice distinction
between that of the lower animals and that of his
enemies when this indulgence gratified at once his
revenge and appeased his hunger. Cannibalism, in
short, would be established. Mr. Crawford then
proceeded to cite authorities of historians and of
various travellers to different parts of the globe to
confirm his views, that all men in the progress from
the condition of a savage to that of a civilised being
became cannibals, and that as the arts increased and
the means-of obtaining food of various kinds were
more abundant, then the practice of eating human
flesh was discontinued. The conclusions at which
he arrived from an extended view of the progress of
savage nations and from the present condition of
many savage tribes now living in various countries
were as follow :

" Of the first stage, or of man's condition when
he first appeared on earth, with faculties as yet un-

developed by necessity, we can, of course, produce
no examples ; but what it must necessarily have

been is obvious. lie was more naked than the beasts

of the field, and in this respect came only to be on
an equality with them after he had robbed them of
their clothing. His food consisted of raw flesh or of
raw fish cast dead on the shore. To this he added

a few wild roots and fruits, also eaten raw. His

dwellings consisted of caves and the hollows of old
trees. In this matter, therefore, he was only on a
parity with the bear and the opossum, but far worse
accommodated than the beaver, or even the fox and
hyena. So must, in the beginning, have lived the
first parents of all the races of man. The second
stage of man's progress was produced by in-
crease of his own numbers, decrease in the number
of the lower animals which furnished him with food,

or increase in the difficulty of capturing his prey.

The superior qualities of his brain were now called

into exercise to enable him to surmount these ob-

stacles. Then were invented implements of stone
and bone, with fire to produce warmth in aid of
scarcity of clothing first,. and eventually to render
esculent, by cooking, articles that were uneatable
without it. This was the first period of the stone

age, that in which man lived almost exclusively by

hunting and fishing. In this stage of difficult. 8-111;1

sistence, and rancorous hatred of one tribe to an-

other contending for food, most probably began the
practice of eating one another's flesh. In the third

stage, the implements still of bone or stone, there
were probably added the net and the canoe, and a
few plants began to be cultivated, and in some places
a few animals to be domesticated. This was found
to be the state of society in the two great islands of
Hispaniola and Cuba, among the Antilles, when
first discovered, and of several of the islands of the
Pacific Ocean, in some of which cannibalism had

ceased, while it was continued in others. In Asia

and its islands we have no example of a people in
the stage just named, and we are only assured of
its once having existed in Europe through the dis-

coveries of modern science. The pile-builders of the
Swiss lakes appear to have been exactly in this
stage. They lived chiefly on game, fish, and wild
fruit, but they seem also to have domesticated the

. .
goat, the sheep, the dog, the hog, and the ox, while
they cultivated wheat and barley. Neither they nor
their immediate predecessors can be shown to have
been cannibals, but the great probability is that both
were so, unless they differed wholly from other races
of man in other regions that are satisfactorily shown
to have been so. In the lowest stage of the
Spain, and i baanlid s
inf
same category must be includedc_tihareacat,encrienist
exmCale-
donians of Caithness, as their 1
bited by the curious and instructive discoveries of
Mr. Laing. The fourth and last period com-
mences with the discovery of the metals, bronze
and iron, and their substitution for bone and stone.
The progress of society then became rapid, and we
ohnayseurn e abundantsufficient
historical examples
evidence.it
in
years i
It sta-vwe, raysbtlei.glet'hsamte
mostt,./igs,
ces cognotilneuaedlll,l
society in France, Germoaocnroifiy,
iciiavidlicseeadsepertbouftßhrtuitnaainn2sa,
France and Britain to a hideous extent. With the
exception that they did not partake of the flesh of
their victims, the ancestors of most of the present
civilised nations of Europe were in the same state as
are
r nowne o, theaue B
allowancea tak s o f
beingS
atra, and the Dayaks of
made for the vast supe-

Ziesze.

riority of the race the belonged ti. ittis—oioti-
,
that the progress made by man towards civilisation
and the abolition of cannibalism must depend on
the quality of the race and the conditions, favour-
able or unfavourable, in which his lot had been cast,
and their means of receiving instruction from people
more advanced than themselves. The two last con-
, ditions were totally wanting to the Australians and
New Zealanders, and hence they were savages and
_ anthropophagi, and left to themselves must have
ever continued to be so. In the islands of the Pacific,
- and in the greater part of the American continent,
the conditions existed, but very partially and ini7
perfectly, but to the extent to which they did they
were a considerable improvement on the Australians
and New Zealanders, yet still without producing the
general extinction of cannibalism. The conditions
of physical geography, including fertility of soil and
the possession of animals amenable to domestication
i i
nn i bgael i sr
earl ndena animated
of plants of cultivation, were highly favourable
in Italy, Greece, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, India, and
China, and in these civilisation is of high antiquity,
the progress made by each varying with the quality
of the race. In northern and western Europe, the
quality of the race of man was of the highest order,
but the conditions under which he was placed was
unpropitious, and his advance proportionally slow,
and would have been still slower had he not been
aided by the instruction of the oldest civilisations of
Europe. It was in this quarter of Europe that can-
ernaolbonabglesy,ma,nd human sacrifices certainly,
dof disthecus paper.sion ensued at the conclusion
of Atlli le
hii
g
Mr. MARKHAM Considered that cannibalism is not
so universal a stage of progress as Mr. Craw-
furd asserted. lie said the incentives to cannibalism
were hatred, love, and necessity, and he mentioned
various tribes in South America in exactly the same
condition in other respects, some of whom were
cannibals and others were not. He regarded can-
nibalism as an exceptional condition, and not as a
necessary stage of progress.

Mr. CHRISTIE took the same view of the subject,
and mentioned some exceptional instances of canni-
balism among the Esquimaux, who generally
abhorred the practice.
Mr. WALLACE coincided in the opinion that can-
nibalism was exceptional.
Mr. L. BURKE considered cannibalism opposed to
natural instinct, and that it could not therefore have

been general. No animals eat their own species,
_ _

and the same instinct that is implanted in the lower

animals would prevent even savage men from eat-
ing their fellows except from necessity, or from some

perversion of their natural feelings.
The PRESIDENT defended the ancient inhabitants
of the Swiss lakes from the charge of being canni-
bals, for none of the human bones found 'in the
lacustrine deposits indicated that the flesh had been
used as food.

Mr. GALTON and Mr. NASH also dissented from
some of the views taken by Mr. Crawfurd, who
replied generally to the remarks on his paper, and
the meeting adjourned.