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Technical Methods in the Prehistoric Age
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
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There has often been criticism of the use which was made by certain sociologists toward the beginning of the century (Lévy-Bruhl in particular) of the adjective “primitive” to characterize the level of culture of peoples whom we formerly called “savage.” The term “archaic” perhaps creates fewer difficulties, but its etymology nevertheless involves the inconvenience of intimating that the societies in question might be closer to the origins than ours. Certain anthropologists, attempting to find an objective criterion which would permit us to draw a line of demarcation between the so-called primitives and ourselves, use the term “peoples without writing” to designate the former—that is, they refer to a technique. It is true that there might be good grounds for specifying this criterion. Indeed, graphic representation can consist of rudimentary signs such as one sees on the messagesticks of the Australians or in the sketched stories, such as those with which the North American Indian covered animal skins. We can speak of writing from the moment that definite characters of precise conventional meaning appear; but from the pictogram to the abstract sign there are still many transitions. For example, in the pre-Columbian epoch, the writing system of the Aztecs “constituted a compromise between the ideogram, phonetism, and simple drawing.” Egyptian hieroglyphics were not yet totally freed from their pictographic origins. In the evolution which led to our modern system, the first step was taken when syllabic representation was adopted. But writing ceased to be reserved for specialists and truly became a widespread institution when the alphabet was invented; and that discovery, made no doubt toward the year 1800 b.c. by the Semitic peoples, came more than three thousand years after the first step. In general, the term “peoples without writing” does not in itself specify that it must be understood as meaning “peoples without an alphabet”; thus there is some doubt about civilizations like that of the Aztecs, endowed with a rather elaborate pictographic system. There would be good reason, moreover, to ask ourselves if the technique of writing really constitutes a reliable criterion for establishing a distinction between societies which stagnate in archaism and those which open up to history. Certain writers, such as Marcel Griaule or M. Gurvitch, would be inclined to refute it and to seek other technical criteria, such as the use of machines or reference to creative characteristics.
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- Copyright © 1959 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1. Cf. J. E. Lips, Les Origines de la culture humaine (Paris: Payot, 1951), pp. 206-10, and A. L. Kroeber, Anthropology (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1948), pp. 510-11.
2. J. Soustelle, La Vie quotidienne des Azteques (Paris: Hachette, 1955).
3. See, among others, C. S. Coon, Histoire de l'homme (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1958), p. 180.
4. Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), p. 371. In his Manuel d'ethnographie (Paris: Payot, 1947), we find the definition of techniques as "traditional acts combined to produce a mechanical, physical, or chemical effect, acts which are known to be such" (p. 22). See also n. 34 below.
5. Mauss, "Les Techniques du corps," Journal de psychologie (1936), reprinted in Sociologie et anthropologie, pp. 363-86.
6. Mauss, Manuel d'ethnographie, pp. 22-68.
7. Leroi-Gourhan, "L'Homme et la nature." Encyclopedie française, VII (1936), 10:3-12:4.
8. Leroi-Gourhan, L'Homme et la matiere (Paris: Albin Michel, 1943).
9. Leroi-Gourhan, Milieu et techniques (Paris: Albin Michel, 1945). It should be noted that the distinction between techniques of production and techniques of acquisition had been made by Plato, which shows clearly that it was already being used at a time when technique was still rather close to archaism (see P. M. Schuhl, "Remarques sur Platon et la technologie," Revue des etudes grecques, XLVI [July-December, I953], 465— 72).
10. G. Bachelard, La Terre et les reveries de la volonte (Paris: J. Corti, 1946), p. 46.
11. Ibid., p. 52.
12. Plato made very clear distinctions, among the techniques of acquisition by capture, between those which are governed by struggle and those which procede by trickery. In the first, that is, in the area of violent acquisition, he placed war, hunting, and fishing (Schuhl, op. cit.).
13 Cf. Kroeber, op. cit., p. 629.
14. Andre Varagnac, in De la prehistoire au monde moderne (Paris: Plon, 1954), pp. 47-49, has aptly emphasized the importance of tradition in technical progress.
15. Marcellin Boule and Henri V. Vallois, Fossil Men (trans. Michael Bullock from the 5th French ed. of Les Hommes fossiles [London: Thames & Hudson, I957]), p. 149.
16. Varagnac, op, cit., p. 59.
17. Lips, op. cit., p. 12.
18. Pre-Columbian metallurgy in America did not play a determining role in the whole development of techniques.
19. E.g., the classification of Menghin in Weltgeschichte der Steinzeit (Vienna, 1941), which establishes a parallelism between the pre-Chellian culture and that of the Veddahs; between the Mousterian culture and that of the Tasmanians; etc.
20. G. Lucien Febvre, "La Terre et l'évolution humaine," in L'Evolution de l'humanité (Paris: Albin Michel, 1922), pp. 291 ff.; C. D. Forde, Habitat, Society, and Economy (London, 1934), p. 461; M. J. Herskovits, Man and His Works (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1948), p. 247.
21. Singer, Holmyard, and Hall.
22. Lips, op cit., pp. 81-82.
23. Geiger, Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Menscheit (Stuttgart, 1871).
24. Reubeaux, Cinematique, trans. Debise (Paris, 1877), p. 77.
25. R. Hubert, Manuel élémentaire de sociologie (Paris, 1935), p. 127.
26. Ruyssen, "Technique et religion," Revue philosophique, October-December, 1948, P. 436.
27. J. G. Frazer, Mythes sur l'origine du feu (Paris: Payot, 1931), pp. 131, 273, 276.
28. Ch. Lecoeur, Le Rite et l'outil (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1939), p. 20.
29. J. Cazeneuve, Les Rites et la condition humaine (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958).
30. R. Caillois, Le Mythe et 1'homme (Paris: Gallimard, 1938), p. 28.
31. An inventory of these will be found in Frazer's Tabou, les perils de l'ame (Paris: Geuthner, 1927), pp. 190 ff.
32. Cf. G. Gurvitch, Essais de sociologie (Paris: Recueil Sirey, 1938), pp. 202 ff. (dif ference between the magical mana and the religious-sacred, based on the the opposition between immanence and transcendence).
33. M. Pradines, Traité de psychologie generale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1946), Vol. I, Part II, Sec. 2 (but this writer recognizes the fact that the claim to utilize the principles of magic as one would those of technique is based on nonsense [ibid., p. 142]).
34. Mauss, "Les Techniques et la technologie," )ournal de psychologie, January-March, 1948, p. 73.
35. Bulletin de la Societe Française de Philosophie, 23d Year, No. 2 (April, 1923), p. 37.
36. G. Davy, Sociologues d'hier et d'aujourd'hui (Paris: Alcan, 1931), pp. 292-94.
37. L. Lévy-Bruhl, Primitive Mentality, authorized trans. by Lillian A. Clare (New York: Macmillan, Co., 1923), p. 306.
38. B. Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1954), pp. 25-26.
39. Ibid., p. 31. See his "Culture," in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, IV, 636; Mœurs et coutumes des Melanesiens (Paris: Payot, 1933), p. 144; and Coral Gardens and Their Magic (London: Allen & Unwin, 1935), pp. 435-44.
40. E. Dupreel, Sociologie generale (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1948), p. 209.
41. Lévy-Bruhl, L'Expérience mystique et les symboles chez les primitifs (Paris: Alcan, 1938), p. 53.
42. B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London: Rouledge, 1922), pp. 420-21.
43. S. F. Nadel, "Malinowski on Magic and Religion," in Man and Culture, ed. R. Firth (London: Rouledge, 1957), p. 193.
44. O'Reilly, "Notes sur la théoric de la magie et de la religion chez Bergson et chez Malinowski," Journal de la Societe des Oceanistes, December, 1952, pp. 285-86. This writer compares Malinowski's position to the Bergsonian theory which defines magic as a means of insuring one's self against unforeseeablness and of fighting against discourage ment.
45. Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie, p. 69. Cf. also Hubert and Mauss, in Année sociologique, 1902-3, pp. 144-46.
46. Gurvitch, op. cit., p. 207.
47. This is Nadel's objection (op. cit., p. 194).
48. Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion, p. 34.
49. Ibid., p. 35.
50. Malinowski, A Scientific Theory of Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944), p. 196.
51. A. A. Goldenweiser, Early Civilization: An Introduction to Anthropology (New York: F. S. Crofts Co., 1932), p. 406.
52. Until publication of the author's book on the sociology of technical knowledge see Gurvitch, "Wissenssoziologie," in Die Lehre von der Gesellschaft, ed. Eisermann Stuttgart: Enke, 1958, pp. 433-34.
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