Chapter VII.), several families may inhabit enormous houses in

which each has a special apartment adjoining the common space in which dwell the non-married people (Nagas, Mossos, Pueblo Indians). The “communal houses,” so general in all Oceania and among certain peoples of Indo-China, which serve at the same time as “bachelor’s dens,” as “clubs,” as temples, as inns, represent the common rooms of phalansteries as separated from the private parts.

With habitations are naturally connected _furniture_, methods of _heating_ and _lighting_. Among primitive peoples all the furniture consists of some skins and straw or dry grass for bed and seat. Mats are already a sign of a fairly advanced civilisation; carpets, seats, and beds come after (Figs. 44 and 120). The wooden pillow in the form of a bench is found from Japan and New Guinea to the country of the Niam-Niams and the Eastern Sudan, where it must probably have penetrated from Egypt. Chests for linen, plate, etc., are quite late inventions.

For heating purposes a fire in the middle of the hut was used in the first instance. The Fuegians burn enormous trees, which project from the hut and are brought forward into the fire as the end is consumed. The smoke issues by the open extremity of the hut. The Altaians, the Kamtchadales, the Tunguses, the Kalmuks, are content with a similar fire kept in the middle of the tent or wooden house (Figs. 44 and 45). Among the Russian peasants one may meet with houses, “koornaïa izba,” having a stove, but not a chimney; the smoke issues by the windows and by an orifice in the roof. In Corea the smoke of the stove is carried under the planks; in China under a sort of clay bed (Kang). The mantelpiece, raised above the hearth, appears to be a European invention which preceded that of the true chimney, which latter appeared in the eleventh century. Among the Eskimo the seal oil, which burns in great lamps of earth dried in the sun, serves to give warmth and light at the same time.

Very finely made lamps have been described as existing among the Indians of North America. The Polynesians burn coco-nut oil in a half of the shell of the coco-nut itself, using the fibres which cover the fruit by way of wick. In Egypt, in Babylon, in Europe, lamps have been known from the earliest times.[199] But most primitive peoples are still content to burn fat pine-knots or resinous torches for lighting purposes. The Moïs-Lays of French Indo-China obtain light by means of little pieces of fir-wood burning aloft on a chandelier formed of a double metal fork.[200] This description may be applied word for word to the “loocheena” of the Russian peasants, the use of which has not disappeared at the present time. Moreover, the torch was much used in the whole of Europe side by side with closed and open lamps before the invention of the candle, the light of which grows dim to-day before the petroleum lamp even in China and Turkestan, and before the electric light among us.

_Dress and Ornament._--To say that primitive man went about quite naked is almost a commonplace, but to say that nudity is not synonymous with savagery would appear a paradox to many. And yet nothing is more true. Among the peoples who know nothing of dress there are some quite savage, like the Fuegians, the Australians, the Botocudos, and others who have attained a certain degree of civilisation, like the Polynesians (before the arrival of Europeans) and the Niam-Niams. Let us remember, moreover, that the Greeks of classic antiquity only half covered their nakedness. It does not necessarily follow that the less clothes a people wears the more savage it is. It is a question of climate and social convention, entirely like the emotion of modesty, which is not at all something natural and innate in man. It is not met with among animals, and one could mention dozens of cases of peoples among whom the sentiment is entirely lacking. On the contrary, the fashion of covering the female genital organs, for example among different tribes of the Amazon,[201] and the male organs among the New Caledonians[202] or the New Hebrideans, is such as rather to attract attention to these parts than to hide them. The same thing may equally be said of the little ornamented aprons barely covering the genital organs which are worn by the Kafir women (Fig. 47), etc. Certain authors (Darwin, Westermarck) even think that ornament in general, that of the region of the abdomen in particular, was one of the most powerful means of sexual selection, by attracting attention to the genital organs. It is, rather, the garment which gives birth to the sentiment of modesty, and not modesty which gives birth to the garment. Among a people as civilised as the Japanese, men and women bathe together quite naked without any one being shocked. It was the same in Russia during the last century.

And yet, to prove how conventional all this sentiment of modesty is, it is only necessary to say that the Japanese are shocked to see the nude in works of art;[203] that it is as indecent for a Chinese woman to show her foot as for a European woman to expose the most intimate parts of her body; that a Mussulman woman surprised in the bath by indiscreet eyes hastens before anything else to hide her face, the rest of the body being exposed to view without any great shock to modesty; that a European woman could never uncover her breast in the street and does it in a ballroom, etc.

Starting from the primordial nudity of mankind, we are led to inquire what was the motive which prompted men to clothe themselves. In countries with a rigorous climate it was the necessity of protecting themselves from cold and damp, but in the other parts of the world this has not been the case. The sentiment of vanity, the desire of being different from others, of pleasing, of inspiring with horror, begot ornaments which became transformed little by little into dress.

_Adornment of the Body._--Strange as it may appear at the outset, the fact that ornament preceded dress is well established in ethnography. It is, moreover, often difficult to draw the boundary-line between the two. Thus the _first_ and most primitive _mode of personal adornment_ is certainly that in which the body itself is adorned without the putting on of any extraneous objects whatsoever. And the most simple of these primitive adornments, the daubing of the body with colouring matter, may also be considered as one of the first garments. Almost all peoples who go naked practise this mode of adornment (Figs. 59 and 124), but it is held in special esteem on the American continent. The colours most used are red, yellow, white, and black, yielded by such substances as ochre, the juice of certain plants, chalk, lime, and charcoal. Certain tribes of the Amazon basin fix a covering of feathers on their body, daubed with a sticky substance. The painting of the face (Figs. 158 and 159) is colouring only of a modified form. Thibetan women coat their face over with a thick layer of paste or starch, which with a refinement of coquetry they inlay with certain seeds arranged so as to form designs more or less artistic, without interfering with the red spots on the cheeks made with the juice of certain berries. Chinese women only put a thin coating of rice-starch without seeds, and the Javanese women, like our ladies of fashion, are content with rice powder. The red spots on the cheeks of Mongolian and Thibetan women are the prototypes of the paint which spoils so unnecessarily the fresh complexion and the faces, naturally so beautiful, of the women of Southern Europe (Spain, Serbia, Roumania).

The custom of applying lac to the teeth, in vogue among the Malays, the Chinese, and the Annamese; the colouring of the lips so generally practised from Japan to Europe; the dyeing of the nails and the hair with “henna” (_Lawsonia inermis_) in Persia and Asia Minor; lastly, the painting of the eyebrows and eyelashes in the east, the dyeing of the hair in the west, are various manifestations of this same mode of primitive adornment.

Side by side with colouring must be placed tattooing, which leaves more indelible marks. There exists an infinite number of varieties of it, which, however, may be reduced to two principal categories: _tattooing by incision_, in which the design is produced by a series of scars or gashes, and _tattooing by puncture_, in which the design is formed by the introduction under the skin of a black powder by means of a needle. The first method is practised by dark-skinned peoples, Negroes, Melanesians, Australians (Figs. 14, 15, 149, and 150). In this case the incision having injured the non-pigmented dermic layer the scars are less coloured than the surrounding skin. Tattooing by puncture is only possible among clear-skinned peoples; among the latter may be instanced the New Zealanders, the Dyaks, and the Laotians, called “green-bellies.” In the case of a great number of peoples, tattooing is restricted to one sex only, chiefly to women (Ainus, Fig. 49, Chukchi), or else to certain categories of persons (postilions and drawers of carriages in Japan; sailors, criminals, and prostitutes in Europe).

Tattooing may be already considered as an _ethnic mutilation_; but there exist many others of a less anodyne character which are also connected with ornamentation. Chinese women deform their feet by means of tight bandages, and end by transforming them into horrible stumps (Figs. 50 and 51), which only allow them to walk by holding on to surrounding objects. European and other “civilised” women compress themselves in corsets to such an extent that they bring on digestive troubles, and even displacement of the kidneys.[204] The Australians draw out the teeth of young men on their reaching the age of puberty; Negroes of the western coast of Africa break the teeth and transform them into little points; the Malays file them into the form of a half-circle, a saw, etc. As to cranial deformations, a whole chapter would not suffice to describe them all. Topinard distinguishes four principal types of such, without counting the various special forms (trilobate skull of the islanders of Sacrificios, etc.). In general the skulls are lengthened by this practice into a sort of sugar-loaf, the top of which points more or less upward and backward. It is chiefly by compression, by means of bandages, boards, or various caps and head-dresses, that the desired form of the head is obtained.[205]

Intentional deformation is practised by the Chinooks and other Indian tribes of the Pacific slope of the United States; by the Aymaras of Bolivia; in the New Hebrides; among a great number of tribes of Asia Minor, where the deformed skulls recall those which Herodotus had described under the name of _macrocephali_. In Europe the custom of altering the shape of the head has spread a little everywhere; the best known deformation is that which Broca had described under the name of “Toulousaine,” and which is still practised both in the north and south of France (Fig. 52). What effect may deformation of the head have on intellectual development? Inquiries made in this direction afford no positive information; but it may be presumed that without being as harmful as some people believe, the deformation, by displacing the convolutions of the brain, may favour the outbreak of cerebral diseases in persons predisposed to them.[206]

_Adornment with Objects attached to the Body._--The perforation of the ear, the nose, and the lips is made with the view of placing in the hole an ornament of some kind or other. Thus this species of mutilation may be considered as a natural step towards the _second manner of adornment_, which consists in placing or suspending gauds on the body. When people have few garments or none at all they are compelled to hook these objects to the body itself. The Botocudo perforates the lobes of the ears and the lower lip to insert into them heavy wooden plugs; other Indians of South America perforate the cheeks to stick feathers therein; the Papuans and the Australians the nasal septum, that it may hold a bone or stick (Figs. 53 and 149); the Caribs and the Negroes of the Ubangi the lower lip, for the insertion of crystal, bone, or metal rods, or simply pins. Similar customs persist, moreover, among peoples more amply clothed. The nose-rings among the Dravidians or among Tatar women; the ear-pendants of the American Indians (Figs. 158, 159, 160, and 161); the bone plugs placed in the cheeks among the Eskimo; the metal plates or precious stones inlaid in the teeth among the Malays of Sumatra, exist to prove this point. And the ear-rings of our civilised European women are the last vestige of a savage form of adornment which requires the mutilation of an organ.

The hair also is used to attach ornaments: flowers, jewels, ribbons, chips, feathers (Figs. 47, 117, 154, 158, 159, and frontispiece). As to the arrangement of the hair, it depends a great deal on its nature. The Negroes, with their short and woolly hair, are enabled to have a complicated head-dress (Figs. 47 and 141). Peoples with smooth hair are content to leave it floating behind (Americans, Fig. 160, Indonesians), or to gather it up into a chignon (Annamese, Coreans, Eskimo), in one or several plaits (Chinese), or in several rolls or bands, stuck together and disposed in various ways (Mongols, Japanese, Fig. 120, Chinese). But it is among peoples with frizzy and slightly woolly hair that the head-dress attains a high degree of perfection. We have but to mention the capillary structures of the Bejas (Fig. 138), the Fulbés (Fig. 139), the Papuans and some Melanesians, whose mops of hair with a six-toothed comb coquettishly planted at the top are so characteristic (Figs. 152 and 153).

The custom of shaving the hair of the head and the beard, as well as the habit of plucking out the hairs, are more general among peoples whose pilous system is little developed than among hairy peoples. All the Mongolians, all the Indians of America, and almost all the Oceanians shave or pluck out the hair. Amongst them the razor, sometimes a fragment of obsidian or glass, is used in conjunction with depilatory tweezers. The wearing of the beard or long hair is often a matter of fashion or social convention. From the time of the patriarchs the beard has been honoured in the East, while in the West the fluctuations of fashion or opinion have made of its presence or absence a sign of opposition (Protestant clergy before the eighteenth century in Germany, Republicans of the middle of this century in France), or a distinctive mark of certain classes (Catholic clergy, servants, actors, soldiers in many states). Several superstitious ideas are connected with human hair. From at least the ninth century to the end of the Middle Ages, the Slavs and the Germans shaved the crown of their children’s heads, believing that it facilitated teething.

It would take too long to enumerate all the peoples among whom the cutting of the hair is a stigma of slavery or degradation; certain peoples cut their hair as a sign of mourning (Dakota Indians, etc.), others, on the contrary, let it grow very long for the same reason. On the other hand, the habit of letting the nails grow to a length of several centimetres, so general among the wealthy classes in Indo-China and Malaysia, is inspired chiefly by vanity; the object being to show that they have no need to resort to manual labour in order to live.

_The Girdle, Necklace, and Garland._--Ornaments fixed to the body without mutilating it (the _second stage in the evolution of ornament_) are very varied. Originally strips of hide, sinews of animals, or herbaceous twigs, sometimes plaited, were fastened around the head or parts of the body where there was a depressed surface, above a bony projection or a muscular protuberance--the neck, the waist, the wrists, the ankles, as is still seen among the Fuegians (Fig. 174), Melanesians, Bushmen, and Australians. According to the parts of the body thus adorned, four classes of ornaments may be recognised: garlands, collars, belts (Fig. 47), and bracelets (on the arms and legs). To these simple bands men began at first to attach all sorts of secondary ornaments: bright shells (frontispiece and Figs. 53 and 151), seeds and gay-coloured insects, beads of bone and shell-fish (Figs. 151, 159, and 160), claws of wild beasts, teeth and knuckle bones of animals and human beings (Figs. 158 and 159), bristles and hoofs of the Suidæ, pieces of fur, feathers of birds, leaves and flowers. And it is to these superadded ornaments that we may trace the origin of the garment proper. The thong of the head, over and above its utilitarian purpose as a quiver (the Bushmen push their arrows into it), becomes transformed into the crown of feathers so well known among the American Indians and Melanesians (Fig. 53), into a wreath of flowers among the Polynesians, into all kinds of head-covering among other tribes (Figs. 22, 40, 107, 108, 109, 115, 134, 145, etc.).

To the thong of the neck or collar may be suspended a beast’s skin, and you have it then transformed into a mantle. Among the Fuegians this piece of skin is so scanty that they are obliged to turn it about according to the direction of the wind in order to protect the body effectually (Fig. 48). The thong of the waist, the girdle, was likewise laden with different appendages, and became transformed into a skirt. The leafy branches which the Veddahs push under their belt, the pieces of bark upheld by the belt among the Niam-Niams, the Indo-Malayan “sarong” (Figs. 126 and 146), which combines the functions of a skirt and a belt,--these are all merely the prototype of the skirt.

Space fails us to show in detail how the other ornaments and garments have sprung from these humble beginnings. How from the bracelet proceeded the ring; how the stone, the twisted tooth, the perforated shell (Figs. 53 and 152) replaced the thongs in this class of ornament; how, when once metals became known, gold and silver plates, hollow and solid rings in gold, silver, copper, or iron (Figs. 112 and 158), brass wire rolled several times around the neck and the limbs, were substituted for thongs of skin, blades of grass, and shell beads. The inlaying of precious stones has transformed ornament. The wearing of massive metal becomes uncomfortable even in the climate of the tropics; in certain countries of Africa, rich ladies of fashion have slaves specially employed in emptying pots of water over the spiral-shaped bracelets which coil around the whole arm or leg and become excessively hot in the sun (J. G. Wood).

It is necessary, however, to say a few words about the _fabrication of stuffs_ and the _making of garments_.

The skins of animals--ox, sheep, reindeer, horse, seal, dog, eland, etc.--were used at first just as they were. Then men began to strip off the hair when there was no necessity to protect themselves from cold, soaking the skin in water, to which they added sometimes cinders or other alkaline substances. This is still the method adopted by the Indians of the far west to obtain the very coarse and hard ox-hide for their tents. But if they wish to utilise it for garments, or if they have to deal with the skin of the deer, they scrape it afterwards with stone or metal scrapers, cut it into half the thickness and work it with bone polishers to render it more supple.[207] Tanning comes much later among half-civilised peoples (like the ancient Egyptians, etc.). Apart from the mammals, few animals have furnished materials for the dress of man;[208] the famous mantles and hats of birds’ feathers so artistically worked by the Hawaiians and the ancient Mexicans were only state garments, reserved for chiefs; clothes of salmon skin, prepared in a certain way, have not passed beyond the territory of a single tribe, the Goldes of Amoor; the fish-bladder waterproofs of the Chukchi are only fishing garments. On the other hand, the number of plants from which garments may be made is very great. Several sorts of wood supply the material of which boots are made (the sabot in France and Holland). The bark of the birch is utilised also for plaited boots (“lapti” of the Russians and Finns), the bark of several tropical trees, almost in its natural state or scarcely beaten, is employed as a garment by the Monbuttus, the Niam-Niams, the tribes of the Uganda, and is characteristic of Zandeh peoples in general; this kind of garment is also found in America (among the Warraus of Guiana and the Andesic tribes). In Oceania the preparation of stuffs from the beaten bark of paper mulberry (_Brusonnetia papyrifera_) has attained a high degree of perfection, and the “Tapa” of Tahiti with its coloured and printed patterns, the “Kapa” of Hawaii, might enter into competition with woven stuffs.[209]

The latter have been known since remote antiquity. Woven stuffs are found in the pile-dwellings of the bronze age in Europe and in the pyramids of Egypt. But it seems that the _plaiting_ of vegetable fibres and grasses, as it is still practised to-day with esparto grass, must have preceded true weaving. The Polynesians still manufactured, at the beginning of this century, robes plaited with the stems of certain grasses, and plaited straw hats are made by Malays, Indians of North-west America, etc. On the whole, weaving is only plaiting of a finer substance, yarn, which itself is only very thin cord or twine. The process of spinning cord or thread is always the same. In its most primitive form it consists simply in rolling between the palms of both hands, or with one hand on the thigh, the fibres of some textile substance. This is how the Australian proceeds to make a line with his wife’s hair, or the New Zealander when he transforms a handful of native flax, inch by inch, into a perfect cord. The Australian had only to transform into a spindle the little staff with two cross-pieces, on which he rolls up his precious line, to effect a great improvement in his art.[210] In fact, the spindle is a device so well adapted for its purpose that it has come down from the most remote Egyptian antiquity into our steam spinning factories almost without alteration in form. Primitive weaving must have been done at first with the needle, like tapestry or modern embroidery, but soon this wearisome process was replaced by the following arrangement: two series of threads stretched between two staffs which may be alternately raised and lowered half (_warp_) by means of vertical head-threads attached to wooden sleys; between the gaps of the threads passes the shuttle carrying the woof, which is thus laid successively above and below each thread of the warp. This is the simplest weaving-loom.

The dyeing of thread and stuffs by an application of mordants (kaolin especially) is known to all peoples acquainted with weaving. Nature supplies colours such as indigo, turmeric, litmus, purple, madder, etc., which are subjected to transformations by being left to steep with certain herbs. The Polynesians were acquainted even with printing on textures by means of fern-fronds or Hibiscus flowers, which they steeped in colour and applied to their “tapa.”

The primitive “tailors” cut their hides or stuffs with flint knives, sewing the pieces together in shoemaker fashion; they made holes with a bone or horn awl and passed through them a thread made of the sinews of some animal, or of woven grass, etc. Sewing with needles is less common among uncultured peoples, but it has been found in Europe from the neolithic period.

_Means of Existence._--To procure food and the necessary raw materials for the construction of a shelter and the making of clothes, man had to resort at an early stage to various tools, arms, and instruments, which rendered his hunting, fishing, and fruit-gathering expeditions more productive.[211]

We will glance rapidly, in the first place, at _tools of a general character_ needed for all kinds of work. Among most uncultured peoples the raw materials used for making tools were, and are, stone, wood, bone, shell, horn. The metals--copper, bronze, iron, steel--only came later on. This does not mean that the knowledge of the use of metals is necessarily connected with a superior stage of civilisation. Thus most Negroes of Central Africa are excellent blacksmiths (Fig. 135), though otherwise less advanced than certain peoples unacquainted with metals, like the New Zealanders or the Incas of Peru, for example (before the arrival of the Europeans).

We cannot dwell on the methods of working each of the materials from which tools may be made. It is enough to say that there are two principal methods of working stone--cutting and polishing. The chips are removed from a stone either by percussion with another stone (Fig. 54), or by pressure with the end of a bone or piece of pointed wood (Fig. 55). It was thus that the Europeans of the post-tertiary period obtained their flint tools (Fig. 84), and to-day the same process may still be seen in operation, less and less frequently it is true, among the Eskimo when they are making their knives, and among the Fuegians and Californians when they are preparing their spear-heads or arrows, etc. (Figs. 56 and 73). The process of polishing takes longer and produces finer tools (Figs. 71 and 112). In Europe it succeeded that of stone-cutting, and it flourished among the peoples of Oceania and America before the arrival of Europeans. Polished tools are obtained by rubbing for a long time a chipped or unchipped stone against another stone with the addition of water and sand, or the dust of the same rock from which the tool is made.

As to metals, of the two methods of working them, _forging_, which can be adopted in the case of native metals, is more general amongst uncultured peoples than _casting_, which implies a knowledge of treating the ore. The Indians of America could forge copper, gold, and silver before the arrival of Columbus, but the casting of bronze or iron-ore was unknown to them. On the other hand, Negroes know how to obtain iron by smelting the ore, and from the very earliest times the peoples of Europe, Anterior Asia, China, and Indo-China were acquainted with the treatment of copper ore,[212] and obtained bronze by the amalgamation of copper with tin, and sometimes with lead or antimony (in Egypt, Armenia, the Caucasus, Transylvania).

In the early stages of material progress the objects manufactured were not differentiated; the weapon of to-day became the tool of to-morrow, the agricultural implement of the day after. However, there are savages who have sometimes special instruments for cutting or chopping (axes, knives, saws of stone or shell), saws for scraping or planing (scrapers and raspers of stone, bone, shell, etc.), for piercing (awls of bone or horn, stone bits), for hammering and driving in (stone hammers), etc. As to the fastenings which keep together the different parts of the tools, these are chiefly _bands_ (sinews, strips of hide or bark, plaited or spun cords) and the sticky preparations of various gums and resins. An axe or a knife is fixed to its handle by means of cords of plaited coco-nut fibres in Polynesia (Fig. 71) and very rarely among Negroes (Fig. 74), by resin in Australia and among the Hupa Indians of the Oregon (Fig. 56), and by sinews or strips of sealskin among the Chukchi and the Indians of California (Fig. 73).

The invention of primitive “machines” followed that of tools. Alternate rotatory motion must have been utilised in the first instance as being the easiest to obtain. Example: the flint-pointed drill of the Indians of the north-west of America, the apparatus for making fire (see Fig. 36), or the turning-lathe of the Kalmuks (Fig. 57), the Egyptians and the Hindus, moved by the palms of the hand at first, with a cord afterwards, and later again with a bow.[213] The transformation of this alternating motion into a continuous circular one must probably have resulted from the use of the spindle furnished with its wheel. In this instrument, so simple in appearance, is found the first application of the important discovery that rotatory movement once produced may be maintained during a certain time by a heavy weight performing the function of a fly-wheel.

The potter’s wheel (p. 55) is a second application of the same principle; rollers for the conveyance of heavy objects are a third (see Chap. VII., _Transports_). The screw and the nut appear to be a comparatively recent invention, presupposing a degree of superior development. Certain authors see in the use of twisted cords, and the cassava-squeezer of the Caribs of Guiana,[214] the first steps towards that invention. The principle of the single pulley is frequently applied by savages, and the compound pulley or tackle-block is known to the Eskimo, who make use of it to land huge cetaceans (Fig. 58).

We may divide the activity displayed by uncivilised and even half-civilised peoples in procuring the necessaries of life into four great categories: hunting, fishing, agriculture with fruit-gathering, and cattle-breeding.

_Hunting_ is almost the only resource of uncivilised peoples; it is still a powerful auxiliary means of livelihood with nomads and primitive tillers of the soil, and it is only among civilised peoples that it assumes the character of a sport. Originally, man was obliged to hunt without weapons, as certain tribes still sometimes do. On dark nights, when the cormorants are asleep, the Fuegian hunter, hanging by a thong of seal-skin, glides along the cliffs, holding on to jutting points of rock; when near a bird he seizes it with both hands and crushes its head between his teeth, without giving it time to utter a cry or make a movement. He then passes on to another, and so continues until some noise puts the cormorants to flight.

But more frequently the inventive faculty is brought into play to construct all kinds of weapons for facilitating the capture of prey. As most of these contrivances are at the same time weapons of war, we shall glance at them in Chapter VII. Moreover, the multiplicity of weapons has not prevented primitive man from using all sorts of stratagems for capturing animals. Any one who has dipped into the old books on venery, or even into catalogues of modern gunsmiths, is able to realise this, for most of the traps, snares, and pitfalls represented are also found among savages. Bow-traps are especially favoured, but the springe for birds and the pitfalls for large animals are not despised. To these we may add the use of bait, poisoning, the smoking of bees in order to take their honey, the imitation of the song of birds to allure them to the gin, disguise by means of the skin of a beast the better to approach it, and the artifices devised by man in his war with animals are not yet exhausted. There is still the most treacherous of all: having degraded certain animals by domestication (falcon, dog, cat, etc.), man makes them hunt their untamed kind (see _Domestication_).

In _fishing_ there is the same display of artifice. The simple gathering of shells, sea-urchins, and crustaceans at low tide, mostly left to the women, supplements but little the means of subsistence of fishing populations. The bulk of fish and animals of aquatic habits are taken by means of suitable weapons, and still more often by means of traps, weirs, poisoned waters, etc.

The weapons most used in fishing are pikes with one or several teeth (tridents, fish-spears), that the Melanesians, the Fuegians, the Indians of Brazil, and so many other savages handle with the utmost dexterity, never missing the fish for which they lie in wait sometimes for hours at a time. The bow is also sometimes employed to shoot the fish (Andamanese), but the special missile used in fishing is the _harpoon_, the wood or bone head of which usually takes the form of a fork or pike with one or several barbs.

The Fuegians simply throw their harpoons like a javelin, the Eskimo make use of instruments to hurl them (see Chap. VII.). In many harpoons the head is only fitted to the shaft and attached to it by a long cord; immediately the animal is wounded the shaft separates itself from the head and acts as a float, indicating the spot where the victim has plunged, for it will not be long before he comes again to the surface to breathe, and other wounds are then inflicted. The Eskimo of Asia and the Chukchi also attach bladders to the shaft as floats. But all these weapons are chiefly employed against marine mammals (seals, sea-lions, walruses, whales, etc.); for catching fish recourse is had to other means. Poisoning the water appears to be one of the most primitive. It is constantly practised by Australians, Indonesians, and Melanesians. We have next to refer to the various devices for catching fish, which, according to O. Mason, may be grouped into two categories--(1) those intended to bring the fish, quietly following its way, into a place or trap from which it cannot afterwards get out, and (2) those which consist in getting it to swallow a hook hidden under some form of bait.

Among the former of these devices, bow-nets and sweep-nets in bamboo and rattan are very widely used among the Dyaks, Micronesians, etc. Cast-nets are less common among uncivilised peoples; they are met with, however, in Polynesia. Fish-hooks other than those in metal are made of bone, the thorns of certain trees, of wood, and especially of mother-of-pearl. For _fishing-boats_, see Chapter VII. (_Navigation_).

_Agriculture._--It is constantly stated that man has passed successively through three stages--that in the first he was a hunter, in the second a nomadic shepherd, and in the third a tiller of the soil. This is only true if we consider agriculture as it is understood at the present day in Europe, that is to say as closely connected with the existence of certain domestic animals (horses, oxen, etc.) which supply man with motive power and at the same time with manure. But there are numerous peoples, without these domestic animals, who nevertheless are acquainted with agriculture, only it is a special kind of agriculture which is related rather to our ornamental and market gardening, at least by the method of cultivation.[215] Hahn has proposed to call this species of cultivation after the principal, and almost the only, tool which is used--“Hoe-culture” (Hackbau in German); while cultivation by means of a plough drawn by animals might be called true agriculture (Ackerbau).

It is evident that in the development of mankind the most primitive hoe-culture, such as is practised by certain tribes of Africa and South America, may well have sprung from the gathering of plants and roots. The Australians, the Papuans (Fig. 152), and the Indians of California even yet make use of pointed staves, hardened in the fire, to unearth natural roots; certain Negroes and Bushmen join to the staff a stone whorl which makes the work easier. These “digging sticks” are the first agricultural implements; they perhaps preceded the hoe. The habit that many Australian tribes have of returning periodically to the same places for the gathering of fruits and roots, giving these time to grow, is one of the first steps towards the cultivation of the ground; it proves a comprehension of the development of a plant from a sown seed. Hoe-culture prevails at the present time in vast regions of tropical Africa and in South America. The tubers, maniocs, yams, and sweet potatoes play a prominent part there, but the graminaceæ also are represented by the maize introduced from America and rice from Asia, and it is among the two peoples who have adopted these cereals as the staple of their food, the Incas of Peru and the Chinese, that hoe-culture has been improved by the introduction of manure. Carried to a still greater degree of perfection by the employment of artificial manure, it has been transformed by civilised peoples into “plantations” (sugar-cane, coffee, etc.) in tropical countries and into “horticulture” in all climates.

True agriculture could only have originated where the ox, the horse, the buffalo, and other animals used in ploughing were first domesticated--that is to say, in Eurasia, and perhaps more particularly in Mesopotamia, where the art of irrigation was known at a period when in other countries there was not even any agriculture at all. As far back as the historic Chaldean monuments can take us we find agriculture existing in this part of Asia. In Europe it has appeared since the neolithic age, after the quaternary period. Domestic animals having most probably been introduced into Egypt from Asia, it may be supposed that before their introduction the country of the Pharaohs was cultivated by the hoe, like the kingdom of the Incas of old, or that of the “sons of Heaven” of the present day. Besides, in Asia, as in Europe, hoe-culture existed thus early, and the favourite plant cultivated was millet (_Panicum miliaceum_, L.), consumed but little to-day, but universally known, which attests its importance in antiquity.[216]

The system of laying lands fallow and raising crops in rotation could only have been established with the development of agriculture. Hoe-culture was satisfied with the total exhaustion of the soil, even if it had to seek out new ground cleared by a conflagration of the forests, the ashes of which were the first and only manure.

The plough, that implement so characteristic of true agriculture, has evolved, as regards its form, from the double-handled hoe of Portuguese Africa (Livingstone), which bears so close a resemblance to that of the Egyptian monuments, to the “sokha” of the Russian peasants, and even to the steam plough of the modern farmer, not to mention the heavy ploughs, all of wood except the share and the coulter, still in use in many rural districts of Central Europe. Reaping in both systems of cultivation is accomplished with knives or special implements, bill-hooks, examples of which, almost as perfect as those of to-day, are found as far back as the days of ancient Egypt and the bronze age in Europe; the scythe, known to the ancient Greeks, appears to be a later improvement.

The threshing of wheat, which often constitutes but a single operation with winnowing and the preparation of food (see p. 156) in hoe-culture, is accomplished in true agriculture with the aid of domestic animals, either by making them tread on the threshing-floor, or draw over the cut corn a heavy plank strewn with fragments of flint (the _tribulum_ of the Romans, the _mowrej_ of the Arabs and the Berbers, in Syria, Tunisia, and Egypt). For grinding, see p. 156.

The use of granaries for storing the crop is known to most semi-civilised peoples (see p. 168); almost always the granaries are arranged on poles (example: Ainus), or on clay stands (example: Negroes). “Silos,” or holes in the ground for hiding the crop in, exist among the Kabyles of Algeria, the Laotians (Neïs), the Mongols of Zaidam (Prjevalsky), etc.

_Domestic Animals._--The breeding of domestic animals should be considered, as I have already said, an occupation denoting a social state superior to that in which hoe-culture is prevalent. But before concerning himself specially with the _breeding_ of cattle, man knew how to _domesticate_ certain animals. I emphasise this term, for domestication presupposes a radical change, by means of selection, in the habits of the animal, which becomes capable of reproducing its species in captivity; this is not the case with animals simply _tamed_.

One of the first animals tamed, then domesticated, by man was probably _the dog_. The most uncultured tribes--Fuegians and Australians--possess domesticated dogs, trained for hunting. Europeans of neolithic times bred several species of them: the _Canis familiaris palustris_, of small size; a large dog (_C. f. Inostrantzewi_), the remains of which have been found in the prehistoric settlements of Lake Ladoga and Lake Neuchâtel, and which would be nearly allied to the Siberian sledge-dogs; lastly, the _Canis familiaris Lesneri_, of very slender form, with skull somewhat resembling that of the Scotch greyhound (deerhound), which gave birth in the bronze age to two races: the shepherd dog (_Canis familiaris matris optimæ_) and the hunting dog (_Canis familiaris intermedius_). It is from these three species of Arctic origin that most of the canine races of Europe and Central and Northern Asia are descended; those of Southern Asia, of Oceania, and Africa would be derived from a different type, represented to-day by the _Dingo_ of Australia.[217] We may lay stress on these differences of canine races because often the races of domestic animals vary according to the human races which breed them. Thus, it has been observed in the Tyrol that the geographical distribution of races of oxen corresponds with that of varieties of the human race.

After dogs, several other carnivorous animals have been tamed with a view to the chase: tiger, ferret, civet cat, wild cat, leopard, and falcon; but man has only been able to domesticate two: the ferret and the cat. The Chinese have succeeded in domesticating the cormorant and utilising it for fishing, placing, however, a ring on its neck, so that it cannot give way to its wild instinct to swallow the fish which it catches.

Many animals have been domesticated by peoples acquainted only with hoe-culture; such as the pig and the hen in Africa and Oceania; the she-goat in Africa; the turkey, the duck (_Anas moschata_), the guinea-pig, and the llama in America. But true agriculture begins only with the domestication of the bovine races, the she-goat, and the ass; and true breeding of cattle with the domestication of the camel and the sheep among nomads. The horse and the mule do not appear until a little later among nomads, as among sedentary peoples.

Among the domesticated bovidæ other than the ox must be mentioned the yak in Thibet and around Thibet; the gayal of Assam and Upper Burma; the banteng (_Bos sondaicus_) of Malaysia; and the buffalo, which is found everywhere where rice is planted. In mentioning, besides the animals just referred to, the reindeer of hyperborean peoples (Laplanders, Samoyeds, Tunguses, Chukchi), we shall have exhausted the list of nineteen domesticated mammals actually known to the different peoples, according to Hahn. As to birds, out of thirteen, we have named only four: cormorant, duck, hen, and turkey; to these must be added the goose, the swan, the Guinea-fowl, the peacock, the pheasant, the canary, the parrot, the ostrich, and, lastly, the pigeon, which perhaps of all the winged race is the easiest to tame. The other classes of animals have furnished few useful helpers of man. Among insects there are the bee and the silkworm; among fishes we can mention only three: carp, goldfish, and _Macropus viridiauratus_, Lacep., chiefly bred for amusement by the Chinese.