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RESEARCHES INTO THE EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION, Edward B. Tylor, hardcover, 1878. BOOK CONDITION: good. The text block and illustrations are in very good condition, with tears along the upper edge of just a few pages, penciled notes on just a few pages, and no dog ears. No bookplate, but the stamp of the Duluth Library is embossed on the title page, which indicates this was once a library holding, but there is no number written on the spine. The first pastedown has evidently had a library form detached, leaving worn spots and tears. There is a crack in the gutter of the Contents page. The brick red boards are in fairly good condition (bumping of spine top and bottom, bumped corners, rubbed covers). 9 x 6, 388 pages, 29 ounces XX [From the Encyclopedia Britannica] Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (born Oct. 2, 1832, London, died Jan. 2, 1917, Wellington, Somerset, Eng.) English anthropologist regarded as the founder of cultural anthropology. His most important work, Primitive Culture (1871), influenced in part by Darwin's theory of biological evolution, developed the theory of an evolutionary, progressive relationship from primitive to modern cultures. He is best known today for providing, in this book, one of the earliest and clearest definitions of culture, one that is widely accepted and used by contemporary anthropologists. Culture, he said, is "That complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society." He made his way in 1856 to Cuba, where, in Havana, he entered into conversation with a fellow Quaker who turned out to be the archaeologist and ethnologist Henry Christy. Christy was on his way to Mexico to study remnants of the ancient Toltec culture in the Valley of Mexico. The two became friends, and Christy persuaded Tylor to accompany him on his expedition. Traveling in arduous and sometimes dangerous circumstances, they searched for the Toltec remains, Tylor under Christy's experienced direction gaining practical knowledge of archaeological and anthropological fieldwork. After Anahuac, Tylor published three major works. Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization (1865), which immediately established his reputation as a leading anthropologist, elaborated the thesis that cultures past and present, civilized and primitive, must be studied as parts of a single history of human thought. "The past," he wrote, "is continually needed to explain the present, and the whole to explain the part." Tylor's fame, however, is based chiefly upon the publication of Primitive Culture. In it he again traced a progressive development from a savage to a civilized state and pictured primitive man as an early philosopher applying his reason to explain events in the human and natural world that were beyond his control, even though his scientific ignorance produced erroneous explanations. Seller Inventory # 002743
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