“Toulousaine” DeformationFIG.52.—Native of the Department of Haute-Garonnewhose head has undergone the deformation called “Toulousaine.”(Phot. Delisle; engraving belonging to the Paris Anthro. Society.)
FIG.52.—Native of the Department of Haute-Garonnewhose head has undergone the deformation called “Toulousaine.”(Phot. Delisle; engraving belonging to the Paris Anthro. Society.)
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 thesecond 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 hookthese 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.53and149); 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, and161); 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, andfrontispiece). 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.47and141). 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.152and153).
Natives of Murray IslandsFIG.53.—Dancing costume of natives of Murray Islands (Torres Straits).Type of Papuan (in the centre), Melanesian (on the right), and mixed race (on the left).(Phot. Haddon.)
FIG.53.—Dancing costume of natives of Murray Islands (Torres Straits).Type of Papuan (in the centre), Melanesian (on the right), and mixed race (on the left).(Phot. Haddon.)
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 thanamong 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 (thesecond 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 berecognised: 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.53and151), seeds and gay-coloured insects, beads of bone and shell-fish (Figs.151,159, and160), claws of wild beasts, teeth and knuckle bones of animals and human beings (Figs.158and159), 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.126and146), 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.53and152) 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.112and158), brass wire rolled several times around the neck and the limbs, were substituted for thongs of skin, blades of grass, andshell 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 thefabrication of stuffsand themaking 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 tropicaltrees, 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 theplaitingof 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.
Making Stone Tools by PercussionFIG.54.—Method of making stone toolsbypercussion; the first blow.(After Holmes.)
FIG.54.—Method of making stone toolsbypercussion; the first blow.(After Holmes.)
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, attools of a general characterneeded 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). Itwas 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.56and73). The process of polishing takes longer and produces finer tools (Figs.71and112). 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 thancasting, 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).
Flaking Stone by PressureFIG.55.—Method of flaking stone bypressure;the splinter (c) is severed by outside pressure on the stonewith a pointed bone (a).(After Holmes.)
FIG.55.—Method of flaking stone bypressure;the splinter (c) is severed by outside pressure on the stonewith a pointed bone (a).(After Holmes.)
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 chieflybands(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).
Knife, Hupa IndiansFIG.56.—Knife of chipped flint of the Hupa Indians;it is mounted on a wood handle with pitch. Attached to a longer handle it becomes a spear.(After Ray, U.S. Nat. Museum.)
FIG.56.—Knife of chipped flint of the Hupa Indians;it is mounted on a wood handle with pitch. Attached to a longer handle it becomes a spear.(After Ray, U.S. Nat. Museum.)
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 (seeChap. VII.,Transports). The screw and the nutappear 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).
Kalmuk Turning LatheFIG.57.—Kalmuk turning lathe with alternating rotatory movementobtained by means of a strap (a);(c) block of wood to make a porringer;(d) bench for the workman.(After Reuleaux.)
FIG.57.—Kalmuk turning lathe with alternating rotatory movementobtained by means of a strap (a);(c) block of wood to make a porringer;(d) bench for the workman.(After Reuleaux.)
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.
Huntingis 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 inChapter 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 (seeDomestication).
Infishingthere 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, theFuegians, 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 theharpoon, the wood or bone head of which usually takes the form of a fork or pike with one or several barbs.
Eskimo TackleFIG.58.—Principle of tackle utilised by Eskimo, landing a walrus.Above, on left, detail of the arrangement of the rope round stakes.(After Elliot.)
FIG.58.—Principle of tackle utilised by Eskimo, landing a walrus.Above, on left, detail of the arrangement of the rope round stakes.(After Elliot.)
The Fuegians simply throw their harpoons like a javelin, theEskimo make use of instruments to hurl them (seeChap. 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. Forfishing-boats, seeChapter 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 marketgardening, 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 farback 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 singleoperation 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 (thetribulumof the Romans, themowrejof 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 thebreedingof cattle, man knew how todomesticatecertain 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 simplytamed.
One of the first animals tamed, then domesticated, by man was probablythe dog. The most uncultured tribes—Fuegians and Australians—possess domesticated dogs, trained for hunting. Europeans of neolithic times bred several species of them: theCanis 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, theCanis 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 SouthernAsia, of Oceania, and Africa would be derived from a different type, represented to-day by theDingoof 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 onlyfour: 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, andMacropus viridiauratus, Lacep., chiefly bred for amusement by the Chinese.
II. SOCIOLOGICAL CHARACTERS—continued.
2. PSYCHICLIFE:Games and Recreations—Their importance—Games of children and adults—Sports and public spectacles—Masks—Fine Arts—Graphic arts—Ornamentation—Drawing—Sculpture—Dancing—Its importance among uncultured peoples—Pantomime and dramatic art—Vocal and instrumental music—Instruments of music—Poetry—Religion—Animism—Its two elements: belief in the soul, and belief in spirits—Fetichism—Polytheism—Rites and ceremonies—Priesthood—International religions—Myths—Science—Art of counting—Geometry—Calculation of time—Clocks and calendars—Geography and cartography—Medicine and surgery.
Games and Recreations.—In two works based on carefully observed facts, Groos has shown that animals do not expend all their muscular and psychic energy in procuring the means of material existence, but, further, expend this energy in games, which are really a process of training, of education. In a greater degree is this the case with man, that animal whose psychical life has expanded so enormously.[218]In fact, games are the first manifestations of the psychical life not only of man individually but of mankind as a whole.
It is necessary to distinguish between thegames of childrenand those of adults. The former are above all imitation, while the latter aim at either gaining an advantage or demonstrating muscular or mental strength and skill.
The boys of “savages” handle tiny bows and lassoes made by themselves, and hunt toy guancos, birds, and turtles made of clay and wood, in imitation of their fathers; while the littlegirls treat their rag dolls as actual children, repeating the gestures and words of their mothers. It is the imitative game of the young.
But if the object of the game is to exercise the strength and skill, it becomes common to children and adults. It is such with the game of hand-ball, known to all peoples with the exception perhaps of the Negroes; and stilts, which are met with in Europe, China, Eastern Africa, and Polynesia. Side by side with these games in which muscular skill plays the principal part, there are others in which attention and quickness of the senses are put to the test. To guess in which hand some object is hidden is a recreation among the Tlinkits, as among Europeans. Among the Hottentots this game is complicated, inasmuch as it is necessary to point out by a special position of the fingers the hand of the partner which is supposed to conceal the object, thus recalling the very ancient game known to the Egyptians, and called by the Romansmirare digitis, which survives at the present time under the name of “Morra” in Italy.
This is how it is played:—Simultaneously each partner, putting out his hand, shows whatever number of fingers he may think fit, bending the others, and at the same moment mentioning a number; he whose figure equals the sum of the fingers stretched out by the two partners wins the game. It is evident that this game, known in absolutely the same form in China, is already a game of chance. It is the same with most games played with dice, whether the latter be represented by true dice (China, prehistoric Europe), or by otter’s teeth, seeds, etc., variously marked or coloured (Indians of North America), or by sheep’s astragali (Central Asia, Persia, etc.).Lottois known to the Chinese, the Siamese, etc., and it was the Celestials who introduced roulette or the thirty-four animal games into Indo-China.[219]
The chief intellectual game is chess, invented in India; varieties of chess are the game of draughts, known wherever European civilisation penetrates, and the game ofUriorMugole, spread by the Arabs throughout the whole of Africa from Madagascar to Senegal. The object used in this latter game is a block of wood with 16, 24, or 32 little cups disposed in two or four rows, in which the aim is to place in a certain way a certain number of little stones or seeds. A third variety of the game of chess, backgammon, holds a middle place betweenUriand the game of dice, and in consequence is half a game of chance. It is known under the name ofTobin Egypt and Palestine, ofPachisiin India, and ofPatolitzliin ancient Mexico.[220]