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PART III

SOCIAL PROCESSES

THE

man.

CHAPTER VIII

PRELIMINARY SOCIALIZATION

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The

CHAP.
VIII

Women

dren the Nucleus

Primitive

Social

Group

HE primordial social grouping arose out of urgent needs and seems to have been a band of mothers with their children. Owing to his restlessness, the male was probably no such and Chilstable member of the earlier human group as the woman. woman was the social nucleus, the point to which he returned of the from his wanderings. In this primitive stage of society, however, the bond between woman and child was altogether more immediate and constraining than the bond between woman and The maternal instinct is reinforced by necessary and constant association with the child. We can hardly find a parallel for the intimacy of association between mother and child during the period of lactation; and, in the absence of domestic animals or suitable foods, and also, apparently, from simple neglect formally to wean the child, this connection is greatly prolonged. The child is frequently suckled from four to five years, and occasionally from ten to twelve. In consequence we find society literally growing up about the woman. The mother and her children, and her children's children, and so on indefinitely in the female line, form a group. But the men were not so completely incorporated in this group as the women, not only because parentage was uncertain and naming of children consequently on the female side, but because the man was neither by necessity nor disposition so much a home-keeper as the women and their children." 1

Owing to this fact that the primitive group formed about the women, the maternal system of kinship is found in all parts of the world where social advance stands at a certain level and the evidence indicates that every group which has attained a state of culture has passed thru this stage.

It is probable that for a period of some tens of thousands of years there was never a human social aggregate larger than the 1 Thomas, "Sex and Society," p. 57.

Small Size

of Early

Groups

CHAP.
VIII

Why Man
Emerged
from His
Original
Habitat

group which could regularly find sufficient food without dispersing. So long as he depended only on such food as Nature provided, man would rarely be able to live in groups including a hundred individuals. An enduring cluster of half a thousand members could hardly appear until considerable progress had been made in developing an artificial basis of food supply. During the immense period in which the species lingered in this embryonic social state occurred its dispersal over the habitable globe and the subsequent development of racial differences in the stocks long subject to diverse geographic conditions.

DIFFUSION

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- man was

Multiplying like any other animal, primitive man tended to expand up to the limits of his opportunities for gaining a living. As the horde grew, hunger would oblige it to break into two or more hordes, which would scatter in quest of food. In time such areas as were fitted to become the home of the species would be filled with small simple human groups. But, thanks to his gradual gain in brain power—which is very clearly recorded in the skulls of the successive races of the Stone Age not confined, as were his pre-human ancestors, to warm and bountiful regions. He had the ingenuity to provide himself clothing and shelter and to devise ways of destroying enemy species and increasing his food supply. Thereby, in the words of Ward, he was able to break over the faunal boundaries that limit the distribution of other species and to overflow into other regions to which he was not originally adapted. All other species are restricted to special districts and unable to quit them. Every attempt to do so proves fatal to the individuals that make it."

Any species that could successfully overstep its faunal barriers would, according to the now well-understood laws of multiplication, soon overspread the globe." "Man alone acquired this power and this was the result of his superior resourcefulness, due in turn to his inventive faculty."

"Thus emancipated from the slavery of the environment this favored species commenced that career of universal expansion which ultimately encompassed the entire globe. Although his memory was sufficient to establish the kinship group, this faculty was not sufficient to maintain a connection between the daughterhordes and the ancestral hordes from which they had descended

VIII

and a few removes were sufficient to obliterate all traces of CHAP. relationship."

and Differentiation

"Those groups that had wandered farthest from the original Dispersion center of dispersion were utter strangers to the mother group. As they moved out along special and extremely irregular lines, there were soon produced many such terminal groups and these were usually remote from each other, often separated by seas or mountain chains."

"The period during which this process was going on, however long it may have been, may be called the period of social differentiation. In it languages were formed, but, owing to gradual isolation, each group acquired a language of its own. At least the variation that would naturally take place in the language of any group would soon render it practically a different language from that of any of the remoter groups from which it had descended." 2

"A fortiori would the languages of all the terminal groups be different from one another. It would be the same with customs. The differences of environment would alone accomplish this, but customs naturally tend to vary, and unless there be intercommunication, they rapidly differentiate. The customs as well as the languages of all the different radiating lines would be utterly unlike except in certain fundamentals. When customs and ceremonials at length took the form of cults and religions, these, too, were different, and all the scattered groups ultimately presented the utmost heterogeneity in all their social characteristics. Between them the only points of agreement were biological. They still all belonged to the same genus and the same species, and were all equally men." Ward here exaggerates a little the heterogeneity of non-communicating groups. Their identity of nature causes such groups to move upward along parallel paths, so that at corresponding stages in their development they have some capacity to under

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2" A striking illustration of the low state of these people (natives of Celebes) till quite recently is to be found in the great diversity of their languages. Villages three or four miles apart have separate dialects and each group of three or four such villages has a distinct language unintelligible to all the rest; so that, till the recent introduction of Malay by the missionaries, there must have been a bar to all free communication." Wallace, "The Malay Archipelago," Vol. I, p. 411.

3 The above quotations are from Social Differentiation and Social Integration," Am. Journal of Sociology, Vol. VIII, p. 721.

Parallelvelopment Communi

ism of De

in Non

cating Groups

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