Madeira (anthropology)
Original title: Madeira (Antropologia)
Short entry defining anthropology and noting that no systematic anthropological study of Madeira's population had yet been made. It points readers to scattered sources, notably 'Ilhas de Zargo' and 'Saudades da Terra', and to related articles in the Elucidário.
As is well known, ‘anthropology’, in its etymological meaning and in its most general sense, is the study of man or of humanity. Commonly, however, the term is used to designate the study of the physical characteristics of man and of the laws governing their principal variations. When this study is applied to a particular region, its essential factors include the races predominant in the original settlement and their origins, contact with other peoples over time, geographical situation, orographic and hydrographic features, landscape, climate, the productivity of the soil, social and economic conditions, local usages and customs, etc. etc. To these are added the various strictly environmental circumstances of a psychological, ethnological and religious character, which are also of valuable and indispensable help to such a study.
A work of this kind, which demands special preparation and a broad knowledge of the environment, remains entirely to be done for Madeira. There are, however, some scattered materials that could be put to good use for this purpose. The principal ones to mention are the first chapters of the second volume of the esteemed work ‘Zargo’s Islands’ (Ilhas de Zargo) and the information scattered through the pages of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) and its learned annotations.
Throughout this Elucidário, and especially in the article Madeira (island), there are various notes of some value for such a study. They are also found in the articles Colonia (Contract of), Old Customs, Popular Beliefs, Slaves, Foreigners, Dress, Ethnological Influences, Entails, Moors, Settlement, Rambles in Madeira, Pilgrimages and Peasant (Vilão).