Adolf Bastian

Adolf Bastian (born June 26, 1826, Bremen, Ger.—died Feb. 2, 1905, Port of Spain, Trinidad) was an ethnologist who theorized that there is a general psychic unity of humankind that is responsible for certain elementary ideas common to all peoples. Bastian proposed that cultural traits, folklore, myths, and beliefs of various ethnic groups originate within each group according to laws of cultural evolution and are essentially the same, merely differing in form because of geographic environment. His views are thought to have influenced a number of prominent anthropologists, including Bronisław Malinowski. The concept of the collective unconscious advanced by the psychoanalyst Carl Jung is believed to have been derived from Bastian’s theory of elementary ideas.

In 1851 Bastian went to sea as a ship’s surgeon on the first of many voyages he was to make in the course of his lifetime. His first venture took him to many parts of the world, including South America, the West Indies, Australia, China, India, and Africa. Der Mensch in der Geschichte, 3 vol. (1860; “Man in History”), is considered his major work. Five years in the Orient preceded publication of his Die Völker des östlichen Asien, 6 vol. (1866–71; “The People of Eastern Asia”). He then became professor of ethnology at Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin. He was the founder and curator of the Royal Museum of Ethnology, Berlin, which was for many years one of the most important institutions of its kind, and he enriched it with his own substantial collection.