File:The history of mankind (1896) (14760530081).jpg

Identifier: historyofmankind01ratz (find matches)
Title: The history of mankind
Year: 1896 (1890s)
Authors: Ratzel, Friedrich, 1844-1904 Butler, Arthur John, 1844-1910
Subjects: Ethnology Anthropology
Publisher: London, Macmillan and co., ltd. New York, The Macmillan co.
Contributing Library: Wellesley College Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Wellesley College Library

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r dateand from other sources than the cosmogonic legends, the myths of gods, and the 1 (Dragons also live in mountain-countries, especially on mountain-tops. Compare Salimbenes account ofthe ascent of the Canigou by Peter III. of Aragon. ) 2 Supra, p. 41. 6o THE HISTORY OF MANKIND portraitures of the next world ; and the former were certainly much earlier thanthe latter. Both show the most striking similarities in the remotest regions ; butin every region they are two independent worlds of ideas, which come into intimatecontact at a few points only, while even then there intervenes a peculiarity whichwe may call free invention, or at least free variation. We do not share theview that every custom, every usage, of these races with no traditions must bedeeply rooted in some historical association. Much comes into existence in sport;the Nyambe worship of the Balubas is not the only case in which the suggestionof a whim has had consequences. Beside the great similarities, finally, we find
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Cemetery and sacred tree in Mbinda. (After Stanley. the smaller ones. These help to explain the others, of which they are oftensurvivals, roots, or offshoots. As we find in all parts of the earth, where Europeans have built houses andploughed the soil, the same plants growing in rubbish or springing from seed ; soisolated superstitious usages, of little importance in themselves, sprout up assurvivals and traces of thoughts which are universally diffused. The belief notonly in the evil eye, but in hands and horseshoes as counter-charms to it, is foundin India, Arabia, North Africa, and Europe. In Morocco the women, when inmourning or after illnesses, hang little balls made of their hair on certain trees, acustom which, as the hair-offering, we meet with in the most various forms in allparts of the earth. It is only one portion of a complex mass of usages the aim ofwhich is respect towards, concealment or offering up of, whatever is taken fromthe bod\-. Here also belongs circumcision, a

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