Claude LÉVI-STRAUSS, 1952: Race and History. Translated and Published by UNESCO.
In the Greater Antilles, a few years after the discovery of America, while the Spaniards were sending out Commissions of investigation to discover whether or not the natives had a soul, the latter spent their time drowning white prisoners in order to ascertain ... whether or not their bodies would decompose. This strange and tragic anecdote is a good illustration of the paradox inherent in cultural relativism. [Chapter 3, 3rd and 4th paragraphs.] [Ichii p. 183-184.]
The progress [in specific fields] which humanity has made since its earliest days is so clear and so striking .... And yet, it is not as easy a it seems to arrange mankind's achievements in a regular and continuous series. About 50 years ago, scholars had a delightfully simple scheme to represent man's advance: the old stone age, the new stone age, the copper, bronze and iron ages. But in this, everything was over-simplified. .... [For example] the Levallois culture ... which reached its peak between the 250th and 70th millenary B.C. attained to a perfection in the art of chipping stone which was scarcely equalled until the end of the neolithic period, 245,000 to 65,000 years later, and which we would find it extremely difficult to copy today. [Chapter 5, 2nd and 3rd paragraphs.] [Ichii p. 203-204.]
[At least] in Europe, Neanderthal Man [Old Man] was not anterior to the oldest known form of Homo sapiens [New Man]; the latter was his contemporaries and maybe even his predecessors. ... As our prehistoric and archeological knowledge grows, we tend to make increasing use of a spatial scheme of distribution instead of a time scale scheme [the latter, conventional view implying `forward' and `backward']. The implications are two: firstly, the `progress' is neither continuous nor inevitable. ... [Secondly,] advancing humanity can hardly be likened to a person climbing stairs and, with each movement, adding a new step to all those he has already mounted; a more accurate metaphor [for the evolution of human history] would be that of a gambler who has staked his money on several dice and, at each throw, sees them scatter over cloth, giving a different score each tie. What he wins on one, he is always liable to lose on another, and it is only occasionary that history is `cumulative', that is to say, that the scores [of the gambler] add up to a lucky combination. [Chapter 5, 4th and 5th paragraphs.] [Ichii p. 205]
Western civilization seeks continually to increase the per capita supply of energy; secondly, it seeks to protect and prolong human life. ... the great slaughters of world warfare and the inequalities in the consumption of available energy between individuals and classes. [Chapter 7, 3rd paragraph from the bottom.] [Ichii p. 184.]
Very early an primitive societies, which we should be inclined to compare with the `barbarian' peoples of today, made the most decisive advances in this respect. ... We are still dependent upon the tremendous discoveries which marked the phase we describe, without the slightest exaggeration, as the neolithic revolution: agriculture, stock-rearing, pottery, weaving. In the last eight or ten thousand years, all we have done is to improve all these `art of civilization'. [Chapter 7, penultimate paragraph.] [Ichii p. 185.]
So far as technical inventions are concerned, it is quite certain that no period and no culture is absolutely stationary. All peoples have a grasp of techniques, which are sufficiently elaborate to enable them to control their environment and adapt, improve or abandon these techniques as they proceed. If it were not so, they would have disappeared long since. There is thus never a clear dividing line between `cumulative' and `noncumulative' history; all history is cumulative and the difference is simply of degree. [Chapter 8, 13th paragraph.] [Ichii p. 185-186.]