Henry Balfour facts for kids

Portrait of Balfour published in Popular Science Monthly, 1904

Henry Balfour (born April 11, 1863 – died February 9, 1939) was an important British archaeologist. He was the very first person to be in charge of the famous Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, England.

Balfour was also the leader of several important groups, like the Royal Anthropological Institute and the Royal Geographical Society. He was even a Fellow of the Royal Society, which is a big honor for scientists.

Henry Balfour's Life Story

Henry Balfour was born in 1863. He was the only son of Lewis Balfour and Sarah Walker Comber. He had two older sisters, Edith and Marian.

In 1887, Henry married Edith Marie Louise Wilkins. They had one son named Lewis. The Balfour family lived in Oxford for many years. Henry Balfour passed away in 1939 at his home in Headington, Oxford, just a few months after his wife died.

His Education and Early Career

Henry Balfour went to Charterhouse School and then to Trinity College, Oxford. He studied animal morphology, which is the study of the shapes and forms of living things.

In 1884, the University of Oxford received a huge collection of ancient and cultural objects from General Augustus Pitt Rivers. Professor H. N. Moseley was put in charge of this new Pitt Rivers Museum. He asked Henry Balfour, who was one of his students, to help set up the collection in the museum. Professor Moseley saw that Balfour was very smart and loved animals. He was also a skilled artist.

Balfour continued to work with Moseley. When Moseley died in 1891, Balfour took over. In 1893, he officially became the Curator (the person in charge) of the museum. He stayed in this role until he died. Thanks to Balfour's hard work and knowledge, the Pitt Rivers Museum grew into a large and special place.

How the Pitt Rivers Museum Started

For a long time, museums collected objects from different cultures, but they were often just seen as interesting curiosities. However, General Augustus Pitt Rivers (who was originally named Augustus Lane Fox) changed this idea.

In 1851, he started collecting old firearms. He noticed that weapons didn't just appear perfectly formed. Instead, they slowly improved over time through many tiny changes. He believed this idea of slow, step-by-step improvement, called "evolution," could apply to all human-made objects and ideas.

So, he began building a collection of objects from different cultures. Unlike other collectors, Pitt Rivers always had a scientific reason for collecting each item. He wanted to show how human tools and crafts developed over time. His collection was first shown in 1874 and amazed many students. It was the first time someone applied the idea of evolution to things made by people.

Connecting the Past and Present

Just as palaeontology (the study of fossils) helps us understand ancient animals, archaeology (the study of human history through digging up old things) helps us understand ancient cultures. Pitt Rivers wanted to bring archaeological finds and objects from living cultures together. He believed they could help explain each other.

Archaeology could show a timeline of how things changed, but often with missing pieces. Pitt Rivers thought that studying modern "primitive" peoples could help fill these gaps. He believed that the culture of people still living in a "stone age" way could be similar to how ancient people lived. This way, things that were unclear about prehistoric times could be understood by looking at modern cultures.

In 1919, Henry Balfour explained this idea in a speech. He said:

• By looking at how early cultures survive today, we can better understand the lives of prehistoric people.
• By combining old and new information, we can create timelines that show how complex tools slowly developed from simpler ones.
• These timelines also help us see where certain crafts and tools were found around the world. This gives us clues about how different groups of people moved and how cultures shared ideas.

Balfour also pointed out that progress in human arts wasn't always a simple, straight line. It was often more complex.

Henry Balfour's Writings

Even though Henry Balfour wrote only one book, called The Evolution of Decorative Art (published in 1893), he wrote many important articles. In these articles, he would often pick a specific type of object, like musical bows or tools for making fire. Then, he would explore how that object "evolved" and changed throughout history and in different cultures around the world.