The Origin of Man and His Culture

The book is meant to give a concise yet full introduction to the physical origin of man and the early history of his culture. In it Anthropology is treated as a historical discipline, since the course of cultural development is to a large extent subject to man’s will and creativity. But the functional, sociological and psychological methods of dealing with the whole range of Anthropological data are thereby not rejected or ignored. The book tries to show how primitive peoples, arrested at various stages of cultural development since prehistoric times, give us a more or less adequate picture of the ways and phases of human development and cultural progress. A further merit of this book is that it tries, wherever possible, to furnish illustrations from Indian sources for its general theories. Thus Indian students of Anthropology have the opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of the general principles of the discipline and at the same time a sound knowledge of the peoples and cultures of India; whereas foreign text-books so far largely in use on Indian universities tend to ignore the Indian evidence. The exposition has been kept as lucid as possible without unnecessary resort to technical jargon so that both students of the subject as well as the general reader may derive the maximum benefit from reading about the origin of man and the development of his culture.