Introduction
In his seminal work 'Primitive Culture' (1871), British anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor introduced the concept of 'survivals'. He defined survivals as processes, customs, and opinions that have been carried on by force of habit into a new state of society different from that in which they originally evolved, thereby remaining as living proofs of earlier cultural stages.
Conceptual Underpinnings of 'Survivals'
Tylor conceptualized survivals by drawing a direct analogy with fossils in geology and vestigial organs in comparative anatomy. Just as paleontological strata preserve extinct organisms to trace biological evolution, cultural survivals provide tangible evidence of past stages of human mental and cultural life.
- Distinction from Functional Cultural Traits: Crucially, an active, fully functional tool or ritual in a simpler society is not a survival. A survival refers strictly to a practice retained in an advanced society that has lost its original utilitarian or religious rationale, persisting purely through customary inertia.
- Irrationality in Contemporary Context: Survivals appear anomalous or irrational within modern cultural contexts because the belief system that generated them has dissipated. An example is the ritual utterance of 'bless you' following a sneeze, which originated in animistic anxieties concerning soul departure.
Methodological Utility in Reconstructing Cultural History
During the 19th century, in the absence of extensive archaeological records and direct historical documentation for pre-literate societies, Tylor leveraged survivals as a primary analytical tool:
- Reconstructing Unilineal Evolution: Survivals served as indexical markers enabling evolutionists to arrange cultures along a single developmental trajectory spanning Savagery, Barbarism, and Civilization.
- Tracing the Evolution of Religion: Tylor systematically tracked the evolutionary arc of religion—from primitive Animism and Fetishism to Polytheism and Monotheism. Retained rituals in modern world religions (such as folk magic, sacrificial symbolism, and omens) were examined as survivals demonstrating an animistic foundation.
- The Comparative Method: By documenting identical survivals across disparate geographic zones, evolutionists applied the comparative method to infer that the human mind functions uniformly across societies (the doctrine of the 'psychic unity of mankind') and passes through similar stages.
Anthropological Critiques
Subsequent anthropological traditions criticized both the empirical validity and theoretical assumptions underlying Tylor's doctrine:
- Functionalist Critique (Bronislaw Malinowski): Malinowski rejected the idea of 'dead survivals', arguing that no cultural trait endures indefinitely through mere inertia. If a custom persists, it survives because it fulfills active, latent biological, social, or psychological needs in the present social structure.
- Historical Particularism (Franz Boas): Boas disputed the unilineal evolutionary sequences that survivals were meant to corroborate. He demonstrated that cultural elements often disperse through diffusion, trade, and unique historical trajectories rather than through fixed, universal stages.
Conclusion
Although 20th-century anthropology moved away from unilineal evolutionism, Tylor's concept of survivals marked an important methodological shift. It introduced a systematic comparative framework that helped separate anthropology from armchair speculation and laid early groundwork for treating customs as empirical historical data.