Anthropology and modern life / by Franz Boas.

  • Franz Boas
Date:
[1929]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Anthropology and modern life / by Franz Boas. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and South America; decorative designs from al- most every continent; musical instruments from Asia, the Pacific islands and America; head rests from Africa and Melanesia; the beginning of the art of writing in America and in the Old World; the use of the zero in America, Asia and Europe; the use of bronze, of methods of firemaking, from all parts of the world cannot be studied on the basis of their distribution by races, but only by their geographical and historical distribution, or as independent achievements, without any refer- ence to the bodily forms of the races using these inventions. Other aspects of cultural life are perhaps still more impressive, because they characterize the general cultural life more deeply than inventions: the use of standards of value in Africa, America, Asia, Europe and on the islands of the Pacific Ocean; analogous types of family organization, such as small families, or extended sibs with ma- ternal or paternal succession; totemic ideas; avoid- ance of close relatives; the exclusion of women from sacred ceremonials; the formation of age so- cieties ; all these are found in fundamentally similar forms among all races. In their study we are compelled to disregard the racial position of the people we study, for similarities and dissimilar- ities have no relation whatever to racial types. It does not matter how the similar traits in
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