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Ralph Linton's last book presents his mature
views on the nature of society and cultural change, and
embodies the history of the development of human cultures
from the earliest beginnings to the onset of the modern
age. It is, as George Peter Murdock has said, "the
fruit of wide reading, a nearly photographic memory for
details, panoramic scope, and an unparalleled theoretical
imagination."
Taking its name from the banyan tree, which
starts from a single rooted trunk but spreads in all directions,
putting down new trunks that develop in distinctive ways,
The Tree of Culture describes the lines of human
culture which have produced the great civilizations of the
world. Civilization is seen as the product of steady growth
and enrichment, having drawn over the ages from the inventive
genius of many peoples, all of whom have contributed in
distinctive ways to the world we live in. This is history
with a new perspective, with the long-range, overall view
of the development of human societies which the anthropologist
can bring to it.
Rich in new ideas and insights, this monumental
book presents the panorama of man's development readably,
vividly, and with a breadth of treatment that is both comprehensive
and carefully integrated.
At the time of his death in 1953, Ralph
Linton, Sterling Professor of Anthropology at Yale University,
had an established reputation as one of the two or three
greatest anthropologists in the world. Born in Philadelphia
in 1893 of Quaker parentage, he attended Swarthmore College
and pursued graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania,
Columbia University, and Harvard (Ph.D., 1925). He devoted
sixteen years, beginning in his undergraduate days, to work
as a museum and field anthropologist, which took him to,
among other places, New Mexico, Colorado, Guatemala, the
Marquesas Islands, and Madagascar. He entered academic life
in 1928, teaching first at the University of Wisconsin,
then at Columbia (1937-46), and finally at Yale.
Linton was President of the American
Anthropological Association in 1946, Vice President of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1937,
and a member of the National Academy of Science. He received
the Viking Fund medal and award in general anthropology
in 1951, and in 1953 was honored by the American Medical
Association as giver of the Thomas William Salmon Lectures
for that year. In 1954 he was awarded posthumously the Huxley
Medal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
and Ireland. He was editor of the American
Anthropologist (1939-44) and of
the Viking Fund Publications in
Anthropology (1947-51). His writings
include The Cultural Background
of Personality, The
Study of Man, and The
Tanala.
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