The following is my translation of an article called: Primitive Gedanken über die Abstammung und Entwicklung des Menschen von Dr Ludwig Hopf. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1909, Heft 10, Seiten 321-323. The beautiful illustrations of the original are well worth seeing, but tough.
I'm not aware of any previous translations.
Trevor Dykes.

Primitive thoughts on the origin and development of people by Dr Ludwig Hopf
When we look in the literature on the intellectual development of human peoples (Völkerpsychologie), then we come across the surprising fact that some very well known realisations of recent times have only stated what was already felt by simple, natural peoples of the earliest times. We only need turn to the explanations and ideas about the origin of humanity. The same idea, that a personal God had created people, is not only found in the prevailing monotheistic religions of the present day, but also in the beliefs of the lowest savages, and a form of prototype for the epoch making evolutionary theories of Lamarck and Darwin lies within the considerations of lower peoples here and there, who had thought about the origin and development of humans, and still think so.

The least interest is shown by some groups in East Asia, who state that the first person made themself appear, or that they walked out from a cave. However, most natural peoples believe in a simple origin of humans, search for something to account for the matter, and soon find some suitable material which the person was made from. The Oneida call themselves the descendants of stone because they believe, similarly to the Iroquois and inhabitants of Rotuma in Polynesia, that the first person arose from a stone. These peoples have nothing to be ashamed of with this belief, as there are many Central and South American peoples who think the first humans were made from earth, and they share this view with such illustrious peoples as the Egyptians and also the enlightening philosophers Diogenes, Anaximander, Parmenides and Democrates who, in a naive parallel of the modern assumption on the origin of the organic from the inorganic, thought that all animals, including the human, once arose from primeval mud under the influence of the warmth of the sun.

A step further brings us to the next thought of an origin and subsequent development of the organic from organic sources which were already present. If people could emerge from simple stone or mud, then there would be nothing particularly surprising if they might be descendants from plants. Peoples from Brazil and Northeast Asia allow the first humans to arise from reeds or tree fruits, while others in South Africa believe they grew from holy trees. Very remarkable is the saga of the Samoans. Their god, Tangaroa, sent his daughter out, who then flew as a snipe and landed on a cliff, the only available resting place. On this cliff grew a large, creeping plant which opened and, as the bloom withered away, worms and then people came out.

If this last myth contains an indirect emergence of humans from animals, we also find sagas coming from places spread all over the world, according to which people arose directly from animals. In order to understand the origin of such myths, we must try to explain them psychologically, and to differentiate between the myths of natural and cultured peoples. The latter initially created gods in human forms as personifications of various natural appearances and natural forces, and then added the heroes as a middle stage between gods and people. Natural peoples, in contrast, are less concerned with thoughts of God and the world about than in the question of the origin of people. Should we want to understand how natural peoples come to conclude that the origin and development lie with animals, then we must occupy ourselves with the usual valid methods of spiritual thinking (Animalism). Natural peoples, who do not see themselves as occupying a position as superior rulers over the animals, but rather think of themselves as only being older brothers, can also not lie far from the thought that the souls of their ancestors once travelled into a particular animal, and are now embodied within it. An easily comprehensible extension of this produces a further idea, that the animals themselves are the founding ancestors of the humans and, as such, are seen as gods that are ever willing to help and thus have a right to their own cult. Wherever we happen upon natural peoples with animal cults, the belief is prevalent that the relevant tribe can trace their beginnings back to a particular animal, which has been termed a totem in accordance with a North American Indian word. We can also find traces of animal cultures with cultural peoples such as Babylonians and Egyptians, with the Arabs and Israelis and not less so with Indians, Greeks, Romans and Germans; however, the main representatives of totemism are found among the inhabitants of Samoa and other Oceanian islands, the native Australians and also namely in North and South America.

The most common animals to appear as totems are those which are credited with the quality of soul animals, and temporarily or permanently serve as accommodation for departed human souls, so as well as the snake we find there is the mouse, the lizard, the crocodile, various nocturnal birds of prey and the bat. There is also a second rank with utilised and hunted animals, and finally all the small animals which sometimes emerge as plagues such as locusts, worms, caterpillars and other insects. Because of their protective role for the tribe, totem animals may either never be killed or killed only after the performance of rituals and apologies, as is still the practice today for the Aino of Korea if they kill their tribal animal, the bear. After all, the totem animals are the ancestors (fathers) of the people. This can be best seen should one examine the totem poles carved from wood as are erected by the North American Indians, which are symbols in honour of their totem animals. -That natural peoples are serious in their belief of their descent from a totem animal, can be shown by the beautifully carved and painted totem poles of the Haida Indians, which are displayed at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. Here we see a real and credible display of a family tree in reversed order, with the totem bird at the top of the pole and, below it, a whole series of head and breast portraits of early ancestors. In the light of such convincing evidence, we can even accept the view of the cautious Birchow, who saw a shadowy form of Darwinism in totemism, ie. connections of relationship with the animals. "While the human constructs their relationship with God or gods from an anthropomorphic perspective, so they came naturally to their relationship with animals and the living nature from an animalmorphic one."

In this totemnism can be found a close connection between the myth of animal descent for humans with ancestral cults. But also, unattached to any cult, we find sagas of animal ancestors spread widely around the world, and it is astonishing the leaps that human fantasy has allowed. The Fiji Islanders have the first people, a boy and a girl, hatch from an egg of a hawk; the Santal of Brahmaputra, who belong to the Kolinus, also have such a young pair of people, the ancestors of the human race, who hatched from the eggs of a pair of ducks, and on an island that had recently emerged from the depths of the sea; in New Zealand, in contrast, the animal origin of people is again a single egg which a giant bird had laid on the water. Indeed, even relatively highly developed peoples in Peru have a myth in which 3 eggs, one golden, a silver one and a copper one, fell from heaven, and these had contained the rulers, the nobility and the common farmers.

In those legends, humans hatched ready made for existence after developing in the egg. What are of particular interest from the perspective of evolutionary theory are myths relating of a gradual development of humans from animal origins. According to the natives of the Aleutian Islands, all humans are descendants of a dog bitch from the island of Umiak, who had two human-like young, a male and a female, but they had still been born with dogs's paws. From these came, over the course of time, ever more complete people. A widely spread myth from Asia is similar but it has people descending from apes. Savage tribes from the Malaysian peninsular, who are regarded as wild animals by civilised Malaysians, trace their ancestry to a pair of white Mountain apes, which had once sent their grown children to where they developed further, until their descendants were human. This legend reflects a Buddhist myth about the origin of flat-nosed tribes in Tibet from two miraculous apes, which were remoulded so as to populate the snowy kingdom. And, in the same way, the Dschachtwas of Rajasthan claim descent from the ape god Hanuman, and they support this legend in that the rulers carry a tail-like extension of the spine as a sign of their origin.

What more do we want? When modern zoology and anthropology wish to claim great achievements for themselves, in that they have been able to produce, with close to certainty in the light of present scientific knowledge, the tree of life with humans at the top with lower animal stages below, then it would certainly be unjust if we were to withhold recognition from natural peoples, that have also at least come up with an approximation of this conclusion about the development of humans from animal ancestors.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.