called his own method “geographical-statistical,” and combined with it a “biological” or “evolutionary” theory, which implies that an indigenous culture is conditioned by its environment, and when it is transplanted a remodelling or breaking up occurs. Two important papers on similar lines were published in 1905 by F. Graebner and B. Ankermann,[1] who also broke away from the sterilising influence of Bastian and followed the general method of Ratzel and Frobenius. Graebner later published a monograph on his hypothetical "“Bow-Culture,”[2] and in 1911 he published the Methode der Ethnologie, the first book on this subject. Here ethnology is treated as more allied to history than to the natural sciences. As an endeavour to methodise ethnology this book is of great value, though open to correction in many points. In a review of it, Father W. Schmidt[3] states that ethnological evolutionism will never recover from Graebner’s relentless criticism, and he subscribes to all that is said of M‘Lennan, Morgan, Tylor, Breysig, and other evolutionists, and concludes by asserting that the method formulated by Graebner is the most important during the past fifty years in the history of ethnology.
Dr. Rivers[4] rightly insists that the study of social organisation is of fundamental importance, not only for social ethnology, but for the analysis of culture complexes and of
- ↑ F. Graebner, “Kulturkreise und Kulturschichten in Ozeanien,” Zeits. für Ethnol xxxvii. 1905, p. 28. B. Ankermann, “Kulturkreise und Kulturschichten in Afrika,” ibid. p. 54 (see also G. Montandon, Arch. suisse d’Anth. générale, Geneva, i. 1914, p. 102, who gives a useful bibliography).
- ↑ “Die melanesische Bogenkultur und ihre Verwandten,” Anthropos, iv. 1909, pp. 726, 998.
- ↑ W. Schmidt, “Die Kulturhistorische Methode in der Ethnologie,” Anthropos, vi. 1911, p. 1010. Schmidt is a voluminous writer; the following may be noted: “L’Origine de l’Idée de Dieu,” Anthropos, iii.-v. 1908-10; Zeits. f. Ethnol. xli, 1909, p. 340; ibid. xlv. 1913, p. 1014.
- ↑ W. H. R. Rivers, Rep. Brit. Assoc. (Portsmouth), 1911, p. 490; The History of Melanesian Society, Cambridge, 1914.
