II.--SOCIOLOGICAL CHARACTERS.
1. /Material Life/: _Alimentation_:
Geophagy--Anthropophagy--Preparation of
foods--Fire--Pottery--Grinding of corn--Stimulants
and narcotics--_Habitation_: Two primitive types of
dwellings--Permanent dwelling (hut)--Removable dwelling
(tent)--Difference of origin of the materials employed in the two
types--Villages--Furniture--Heating and lighting--_Clothing_:
Nakedness and modesty--Ornament precedes dress--Head-dress--Ethnic
mutilations--Tattooing--Girdle, necklace, and garland the
origin of all dress--Manufacture of garments--Spinning
and weaving--_Means of existence_: tools of primitive
industry--Hunting--Fishing--Agriculture--Domestication and rearing
of animals.
1. MATERIAL LIFE.
_Alimentation._--The first and most imperious preoccupation of man
at all times is the search for food. It is therefore natural that we
should begin our brief account of sociological characters with those
relating to this preoccupation.
In tropical countries man finds in nature without effort edible plants
in sufficient quantity for his support. It is said that in the island
of Ceram a single sago-tree will yield what will nourish a man for a
whole year.
In temperate countries there are also not wanting vegetable species
which, with only slight effort on man’s part, produce nutritive
substances. The animal world also supplies everywhere a great variety
of species suitable for food. These, for the most part, belong to the
division of vertebrates or molluscs; however, certain of the arthropods
(crustaceans, insects, etc.), echinoderms (sea-urchins), nay, even
worms (large earthworms of China, Tonkin, and Melanesia), also furnish
their contingent to human gluttony.
The mineral kingdom contributes only salt, which, however, is unknown
to certain tribes, as, for example, the Veddahs (Sarazin), the Somalis
(Lapicque), etc. Besides, according to Bunge,[169] peoples whose food
is almost exclusively animal (as is the case of the Veddahs, Eskimo,
etc.) never eat salt, while those whose chief food is of vegetable
origin experience an irresistible need for this condiment, probably
because of the insufficiency of mineral substances in plants.
Perhaps also to this need of supplying the deficiency of mineral
substances (calcareous or alkaline salts) is due the habit of eating
certain earthy substances--kaolin, clay, limestone. _Geophagy_ has,
in fact, been observed in all parts of the world: in Senegal (the
earth called “konak”), in Persia (argillaceous earth from Nichapur
and the saline steppes of Kirman, composed of carbonate of magnesia
and chalk),[170] and especially in the Asiatic archipelago, in India,
and South America. In the markets of Java are sold little squares or
figures in baked clay (“ampo” in Javanese) which are much valued,
especially by pregnant women.[171] In Calcutta are sold similar
products, and in several towns of Peru hawkers offer for sale little
figures in edible earth. The Indians of Bolivia eat a white clay, a
kind of kaolin called “pasa.”[172] The Whites settled in South America
are likewise addicted to geophagy. Women assert that the eating of
earth gives a delicate complexion to the face. The same custom has
also been pointed out among women in several countries of Europe, more
especially in Spain, where the sandy clay which is used for making the
“alcarrazas” is especially in vogue as an edible earth.[173]
We must now pass on to speak of another food--human flesh.
_Anthropophagy_ is much less general than is usually believed. Many
peoples have been wrongly accused of this crime against humanity by
travellers who have had neither the time nor the means necessary to
verify the fact, and by writers who here formed a hasty generalisation
from isolated facts.[174]
Cannibalism has also been too hastily inferred from the observation
of facts like “head-hunting,” or the practice of adorning houses with
human skulls and bones. As with human sacrifices, these are perhaps
survivals of ancient cannibalism, but not proofs of its existence at
the present time.
Besides, it must be noted that most of the statements of authors
have reference to bygone times, which would lead us to suppose that
anthropophagy is a custom tending to disappear among all peoples, even
among those who have not been converted to one of the religions whose
dogmas condemn this practice (Christianity, Buddhism, worship of Riamba
in Africa,[175] Islamism, etc.).
It appears from the very conscientious work of P. Bergemann,[176] that
actually the only regions of the world where anthropophagy has been
really proved to exist are Oceania (including the Asiatic Archipelago),
Central Africa, and Southern America.
The Battas of Sumatra, the natives of the Solomon Islands, of New
Britain, and of certain islands of the New Hebrides, as well as a large
number of Australian tribes, are known as incorrigible cannibals. We
can speak less confidently as to the other inhabitants of Oceania.
Dyaks, Fijians, New Caledonians, Karons of New Guinea, seem to
have abandoned cannibalism. In South America positive facts abound
concerning the anthropophagy of the Arovaques and certain Indians of
Columbia, the Botocudos and some other Brazilian tribes; but for the
rest of the continent they resolve themselves into the statements of
ancient travellers or to the report of survivals. On the other hand,
Central Africa appears to be the chief seat of anthropophagy. It is of
frequent occurrence among the Niam-Niams, the Monbuttus, the Bandziris,
and other tribes of the River Ubangi, as well as among the tribes of
the Congo basin, the Basangos, the Manyuema, the tribes of Kassai, etc.
We have likewise genuine proofs enough for the Fans of French Congo and
certain tribes of the Benguelas. In general, cannibalism appears to be
unknown in Africa beyond the tenth degree of latitude to the north and
south of the Equator.
Cannibalism is practised for three reasons: necessity, gluttony,
superstition.
_Necessary Anthropophagy_ may take place in consequence of the want
of animal food, as in Australia, or in consequence of accidental
circumstances (shipwreck, famine), as it may occur even among civilised
peoples; but this kind of cannibalism is as rare as that which is
attributable to _gluttony_. It is said, however, that the Melanesians
of the Solomon Islands, the New Hebrides, and New Britain hunt man
merely to satisfy their taste for human flesh. The Niam-Niams pursue
the same kind of sport not only for the flesh, but for the human
fat which they utilise for lighting purposes. Various tribes of the
Ubangi buy slaves or capture men separated from their fellows in order
to fatten them up and eat them afterwards; sometimes, to improve
the flavour of this kind of meat, the carcasses are left to soak in
water; similar facts have been observed among the Manyuema. However
that may be, the majority of cases of cannibalism may be explained
by _superstitious beliefs_. There is especially a belief in the
possibility of appropriating the virtues and the qualities of a man by
eating the whole or certain portions of his body--the heart, the eyes,
the liver. Sometimes drinking the blood of the victim is regarded as
sufficient.[177]
Of the three causes which I have just enumerated the first two are
probably the remains of downright anthropophagy--that is to say, of
the habit of eating one’s relatives and especially one’s offspring
just the same as any other flesh, as it exists among many animals. The
Australians, for example, are known to eat their children which they
have killed for other reasons (restriction of progeny).
R. S. Steinmetz[178] has thought it possible to bring together all
these cases of anthropophagy under the name of “endocannibalism,” or
the practice of eating parents and relatives. He mentions a great
number of tribes in which this practice exists alone or combined with
“exocannibalism,” that is to say the habit of eating the flesh of
strangers. This second sort of cannibalism, much more widely diffused,
however, than endocannibalism, is alone amenable to moral, religious,
or social ideas, while endocannibalism is but the remains of a natural
state of primitive man, the residue of instincts which still stirred
his soul at the period when he wandered solitary through the virgin
forests without realising the possibility of forming any social group
whatever.[179]
Ritual anthropophagy persists for a considerable length of time, and
may accord with a relatively developed civilisation. The Battas, the
Monbuttus, the Niam-Niams, are tribes almost half civilised; one
has a well-developed method of writing and a style of ornament, the
others have a fairly advanced social organisation. As a survival,
anthropophagy manifests itself not only in the practice of cutting
off the heads (Dyaks) in human sacrifices, but also in a multitude
of religious or superstitious practices among a great number of even
civilised peoples. The belief in the supposed curative properties of
human flesh, especially that of executed criminals, is still in full
force in China,[180] and was so in Europe in ancient times and in the
Middle Ages; the Salic law forbade the magical practices associated
with anthropophagy. To drink from the skull of an enemy was a very
widespread custom in Asia and Europe, and even until the beginning of
this century the remains of the skull of a hanged criminal figured
among the remedies in the pharmacopœias of Central Europe.
_Preparation of Foods._--There is no people on earth which eats all its
food quite raw, without having subjected it to previous _preparation_.
Some few northern tribes, the Eskimo, the Chukchi, eat, it is true,
reindeer’s flesh and fish quite raw, but they cut these up, prepare
dried provisions from them, and moreover they cook their vegetable food.
Food is prepared by cutting it into pieces, subjecting it to a
fermentation, moistening it, triturating it, and especially by exposing
it to the action of fire.
No tribe exists, even at the bottom of the scale of civilisation,
which is not to-day acquainted with the _use of fire_, and as far back
as we can go into prehistoric times we find material traces of the
employment of fire (cinders, charcoal, pieces of worn-out pyrites,
cracked flint, etc.). However, the _preservation_ of fire produced by
the natural forces (conflagrations, lightning, volcanoes, etc.) must
have preceded the _production_ of fire (Broca, Von den Steinen). Most
of the forces of nature transformable into heat--light, electricity,
motion, and chemical affinity--have been turned to account by man in
the production of fire with more or less success. Kindling flame by
concentrating the solar light with bi-convex glasses and mirrors,
mentioned from the remotest antiquity, could never have become general.
It is the same with electricity. On the other hand, motion and chemical
affinity have been at all times, and still are, pre-eminently the two
productive forces of fire. Motion is utilised in three different ways:
by the friction of two pieces of wood, by the striking together of two
pieces of certain mineral substances, or by pneumatic compression. The
last method is little used; it has been observed among the Dyaks of
Borneo and in Burma. It is based on the principle of the _pneumatic
tinder-box_ of our scientific demonstration rooms. But the two other
modes of utilising motion are still in general use among all savage
peoples.[181]
[Illustration: /Fig./ 34.--Method of fire-making by rubbing.
(_After Hough._)]
A little red-hot ember capable of setting fire to certain substances
(tinder, down, dry grass, etc.) may be obtained either by rubbing
together two pieces of wood, or by sawing one across the other, or
by turning the end of one in a little hole made in the other. Hence,
three ways of making fire by friction, each having a well-defined
geographical area. The first way (simple rubbing), the most primitive
and the least easy, is employed especially in Oceania. It consists in
rubbing a little stick of hard wood, bending it downward, against a
log of soft wood held between the knees (Fig. 34). A little channel is
thus hollowed out of the log, and in the end the operator succeeds in
obtaining incandescent particles of pulverised wood, which gather at
the bottom of the channel. He has only to throw in a little dry grass
or tinder and to blow upon it to obtain the flame.
The _sawing_ method (Fig. 35) is employed by the Malays and by some
Australian tribes, as well as in Burma and India. A piece of bamboo
split longitudinally is sawn with the cutting edge of another piece of
bamboo until the sawdust becomes hot and sets fire to the tinder on
which it falls.
[Illustration: /Fig./ 35.--Method of fire-making by sawing.
(_After Hough._)]
The _twirling_ or _rotatory_ method (Fig. 36), which consists in
turning the end of a fragment of wood supported on the surface of
another fragment, is the most generally used. It is met with among
Negroes, the Indians of North and South America, the Chukchi, in
certain regions of India, etc. The most primitive apparatus consists
of a log or board of soft wood, held horizontally with the feet, on
which is placed the blunted point of a cylindrical stick of hard wood.
Twirling the stick rapidly between the hands in both directions, a
little hole is hollowed and the dust of the wood which gathers around
the point becomes incandescent. It is thus that some tribes of Zulus
and of Australians, the Ainus, etc., make fire.
[Illustration: /Fig./ 36.--Method of fire-making by twirling among the
Kafirs.
(_After Wood._)]
But to this primitive apparatus important improvements are made among
other populations, especially among the Redskins and the Eskimo.
The hole in a horizontal board is hollowed out beforehand, then a
communication is made between this hole and one of the vertical faces
of the board by a channel through which escapes to the outside the
woody powder produced by rubbing, in the form of little incandescent
cylinders, which falls on the tinder. As to the upright stick,
different contrivances are fitted to it to render its motion more rapid
and more regular. Thus the Eskimo wind round it a cord which is drawn
alternately in both directions;[182] in this case the upper end of the
stick is held by an assistant or by the operator himself. They apply
also to these apparatus a mouth-drill, etc.
The second method of obtaining fire, that of _striking together_
two pieces of iron pyrites or two pieces of flint, or flint against
pyrites, must, like the first, have been known from the most
remote period. To-day it is only employed by some few backward
tribes--Fuegians, Eskimo, Aleuts. With the knowledge of iron, which
replaced pyrites, the true “flint and steel” was invented; it very
quickly superseded in Europe and Asia the production of fire by
friction, as, in its turn, it has been superseded by apparatus
utilising the chemical affinity of different bodies (matches).
But the old processes survive in traditions, in religion. Thus the
present Brahmins of India obtain fire for religious ceremonies by
the friction of two sticks, in front of shops where English matches
are sold; it is still by friction that the Indians of America, amply
provided with matches, procure fire for the sacred festivals. Even
in Europe, in Great Britain, and in Sweden, at the beginning of this
century the fire intended for superstitious uses (to preserve animals
and people against contagious diseases) was kindled by rubbing together
two pieces of wood. This practice was forbidden by a decree, dating
from the end of last century, in the same district of Jönköping whence
to-day are sent forth by millions the famous Swedish matches.[183]
The long and difficult processes of obtaining fire compel savage tribes
to preserve it as one of the most precious things. Almost everywhere
it is to women that the care is committed. Among the Australians,
women who let the fire go out are punished almost as severely as were
the Roman vestals of old. The Papuans of Astrolabe Bay (New Guinea)
prefer to go several leagues in search of fire to a neighbouring tribe
than to light another (Miklukho-Maclay). The preparation of “new fire”
among a great number of tribes, especially in America and Oceania, is
celebrated with festivals and religious ceremonies.[184]
_Cooking._--Fire, once discovered, heat, light, and at the same time
the means of rendering a great variety of foods more digestible, were
artificially assured to man. But it is somewhat difficult to roast a
piece of meat in the fire, especially when there is not a metal skewer
at hand, as was the case with primitive man. So, at an early stage,
he tried to find some method of cooking his food, especially fruits.
He heated stones in the open fire, and with these stones he cooked
his meat and vegetables. The process is still in use to-day among
tribes unacquainted with pottery. Thus the Polynesians before their
“civilisation” by Europeans proceeded in the following way to cook
their food. Stones heated in the fire were put at the bottom of a hole
dug in the ground; upon these stones was spread a layer of leaves, on
which were placed the fruit of the bread-tree, then a fresh layer of
leaves and other heated stones; care being taken to cover the whole
with leaves and earth. In half-an-hour a delicious dish was drawn out
of the hole.[185]
Among most savage Indonesians food is cooked in bamboo vessels filled
with water, in which heated stones have been previously plunged. This
method of cooking with stones is also in use at the two extreme points
of America, among the Indians of Alaska and the Fuegians. It is even
used in Europe among the Serbian and Albanian mountaineers.
_Pottery._--But real cooking, even of the simplest sort, is only
possible with the existence of _pottery_, the manufacture of which must
have followed closely on the discovery of a method of obtaining fire,
for no example is known of unbaked pottery.
There are still peoples unacquainted with this art, such as the
Australians and the Fuegians, but the absence of it is not always
the sign of an inferior degree of civilisation, as we may see in the
Polynesians before the arrival of Europeans, and also the present
Mongols, whose cooking utensils consist of iron, wooden, and leather
vessels, for pottery which easily breaks would be an encumbrance in
nomadic life.
[Illustration: /Fig./ 37.--Bark vessel, used by Iroquois Indians.
(_After Cushing._)]
[Illustration: /Fig./ 38.--Type of Iroquois earthen vessel, moulded on
the bark vase of Fig. 37.
(_After Cushing._)]
The most primitive pottery is made without the potter’s wheel. In its
manufacture we may admit, with Otis Mason,[186] three special methods
of working. _Modelling_ by hand; _moulding_ to an exterior or interior
mould, usually a basket or other object of wicker-work, which burns
away afterwards in the baking (Figs. 37 and 38); and lastly, a method
of proceeding which may be called _coiling_ in clay. Long strings of
clay are taken and rolled so as to form a cone or a cylinder, or any
other form of the future pot, then the sides are made even.
The Zuñi Indians of New Mexico begin this work in a little basket-dish
(Fig. 39), which shows the connection of this method with that of
moulding, whilst the Wolofs, whom I have seen working in the same way,
as well as the Kafirs (Fig. 135, to the left), have only as a base to
work upon a clay disc or a wooden porringer, moulding being unknown
to them. But in both cases this mode of manufacture is already a step
towards pottery formed by the wheel, only instead of the clay it is the
hand of the workman which turns, naturally much more slowly. Besides,
the primitive wheel, that is to say, a disc or a board set in motion
by the hand, sometimes without a pivot, as still seen in China, does
not revolve with the dizzy speed of the true wheel, the construction of
which is an adaptation of the general processes of the transmission of
forces by means of levers and wheels.
[Illustration: /Fig./ 39.--Making of pottery without wheel by the Zuñi
Indians (coiling method).
(_After Cushing._)]
In regard to pottery it must be noted that its manufacture is left
almost exclusively to women among most of the tribes of America, while
it is entrusted without distinction to men and women in Africa.
[Illustration: /Fig./ 40.--Primitive harvest, the women (Shoshones)
gathering wild grain.
(_After Powell._)]
_Grinding of Corn._--We need not dwell on the means of preparing food
independently of the action of fire (milk and its products, pemmican,
etc.); they vary infinitely. Let us deal briefly, however, with the
method of preparing grain. Many peoples are unacquainted with flour:
they eat the grain either roasted or cooked, as we do still the most
anciently known perhaps of the graminaceæ, rice and millet. In the
primitive state of agriculture certain tribes of North America combined
in one single operation the threshing, winnowing, and roasting of
grain. After being triturated between the hands, the grain is thrown
into a basket-dish (Fig. 40) in which are red-hot stones; the straw
burns, the husk comes off and partly burns too, whilst the grain is
being roasted.
From the time when some intelligent man perceived when crushing a
grain of corn, perhaps by chance, between two stones, that flour might
supply a more delicate food than roasted grain, the art of the miller
was discovered. There are three ways of preparing flour: pounding in a
mortar, trituration on a flat surface, and true grinding by means of
a mill turned by the hand or other motor power--animals, water, wind,
steam.
The mortar, used by a great number of savage or half-civilised
tribes to crush not only grain but also the roots of starchy plants,
cassava, yam, etc., must have been known for a very long time. Its
most primitive form is met with among the Indians of North America--a
block of granite or sandstone in which a cavity has been made, with a
piece of porous rock, almost cylindrical, for the pestle. In Africa
and Oceania the mortar and pestle are of wood. Almost everywhere the
pounding is done by women. The rudest hand-mills, such as are met with
among the Arabs, the Kabyles, the Bushmen, are made of a round stone
pierced in the centre, turned on another stone by means of a handle
passing through the hole. Incisions on the triturating surface of the
millstone is not found as yet in these primitive machines.
_The preservation of food_ is known to a great number of savage and
half-civilised tribes. The Eskimo preserve their meat by means of
cold, many fisher peoples resort to salting, the art of preparing true
pemmican by enclosing the food in a mass of grease or honey is known to
the Veddahs of Ceylon, to Negroes, etc.
_Stimulants._--Among most savage peoples special _fermented
beverages_ are found: “koumiss,” or fermented mare’s milk, among
the Turco-Mongols; bamboo beer among the Moïs of French Indo-China;
millet or eleusine beer among the Negroes; sago-juice wine among the
populations of the coast of the Indian Ocean--Dravidians (Fig. 81),
Indonesians, Malays; “pulque,” derived from the juice of the agave,
among the Mexicans of the high table-lands. I must lastly mention
“kava,” the national beverage of the Polynesians, concocted from the
juice of the leaves of a pepper-plant (_Piper methysticum_), which is
made to ferment by means of the ptyalin of the saliva, these leaves
being previously chewed in company, each spitting out his “quid” into
the common dish.
The distillation of fermented liquids for the purpose of obtaining
alcohol is known to most semi-civilised peoples. We need but instance
the “arka” of the Turco-Mongols derived from “koumiss,” the arrack of
the Chinese and Japanese, etc.
Among the stimulants, tonics, narcotics, drugs, etc., other than
fermented beverages, and tea, coffee, and chocolate of international
fame, must be mentioned the kola nut used as a stimulant on a large
scale in the whole of Western Africa; the “maté” (_Ilex paraguayensis_)
taking the place of tea in a large portion of South America; different
roots and certain fish (like the _Fistularia serrata_ of Java)[187]
used by way of aphrodisiacs; lastly, the “coca” of the Peruvians and
Bolivians (_Erithroxylon coca_), the leaves of which taken as an
infusion plunge you, says Mantegazza, in the most delicious dreams,
while pulverised and chewed with lime they only act as a stimulant.
It is possible that the chewing of _betel_ or _siri_, that is to say,
areca palm nut mixed with shell lime and wrapped in a leaf of betel
(_Chavica betle_), produce the same effect; but this habit appears to
be induced by hygienic considerations in regard to the mouth. However
that may be, the chewing of betel nut, inseparable from Malaysian
civilisation, always has a tendency to blacken the teeth of peoples
addicted to it.[188]
The practice of tobacco smoking, universal at the present day, only
spread into Europe in the sixteenth century. In the primitive home of
this plant, America, the Indians smoke moderately, although the pipe
with them plays a ceremonial part (“the calumet of peace,” etc.). The
pipe, which in Europe is yielding place to the cigar, is still held in
great honour throughout the whole of Asia, where ethnographers point
out more than 150 ethnic varieties of this object, without counting
the numerous forms of “narghile.” The cigarette appears to be of Malay
origin.[189] The habit of smoking opium, which so speedily becomes an
invincible passion, tends at the present day to spread wherever Chinese
influence penetrates: in Corea, Indo-China, etc.
The practice of smoking haschish, a product of Indian hemp (_Cannabis
Indica_), is localised in Persia and Asia Minor; but it is found also
among the Baluba Negroes of the Congo basin, who attach to it a great
importance from the politico-religious point of view.
Not satisfied with eating, drinking, inhaling by the mouth, and chewing
stimulants, man absorbs them too by the nose. The habit of taking a
pinch of snuff, formerly the fashion in the best society of Europe,
seems now to be relegated to the lower classes. But among several of
the Bantu Negroes of Uganda, of the Cameroons, and the east coast of
Africa, snuff-taking (introduced by Europeans?) is still in great
honour, and Kafirs in high positions carry coquettishly very small
snuffboxes in the lobe of their ears. Instead of snuff, the Mura
Indians of the Lower Amazon take “parica,” a very stimulating powder,
which is derived from the dry seeds of a vegetable called “Inga.” The
stuff is taken by two persons together, during the festival of the
ripening of the Inga. One of these Indian braves puts the parica into a
tube and puffs it into the nose of his companion.[190]
As Letourneau[191] judiciously observes, the chief motive for the
use of various drugs and stimulants all over the earth is the desire
experienced by every human being to emancipate himself, if even for
a moment, from the ordinary conditions of existence. He is only too
happy to be able to find at pleasure, in the midst of the fatigues, the
annoyances, and the miseries of daily life, a moment of forgetfulness,
the semblance of refuge.
_Habitation._--The natural shelters--caverns, overhanging rocks, holes
in the ground, thick foliage, hollow trunks of trees, etc.--must have
been utilised by primitive man as places of abode. But which of these
shelters served as a model for the first artificial dwellings? Not
the cavern, for even now it is made use of just as it is by civilised
populations in China, Tunisia, Afghanistan, and even France, in the
valley of the Cher. Besides, with the exception, perhaps, of the huts
of the Eskimo, half underground and covered with a dome of ice blocks,
constructions in mineral substances are scarcely found among savage
peoples.[192] Substances of vegetable origin were those first utilised
for fixed habitations (hut, etc.), and substances derived from animals
for dwellings which could be carried.[193]
The _hut_, which is the prototype of the _fixed habitation_, is derived
probably from the _screen_ formed of a series of branches stuck in the
ground, as one sees it still among the Australians. Sometimes this
screen is constructed of large palm-leaves resting against crossed
branches, as for example among the Veddahs of Ceylon, Andamanese, the
Botocudos, and other Indians of Brazil. The leafy branches of these
screens had but to be arranged in the form of a circle or in two
parallel rows, their tops joined together, the interstices stopped
up with grasses, moss, and bark, in order that the frail shelter
might be transformed into a stronger dwelling, a better protection
against the inclemencies of the weather. The form which this primitive
dwelling was thus obliged to take depended then, before everything
else, on the arrangement of the branches of the screen: if put in the
form of a circle the hut became conical provided the branches used
in its construction were rigid and but little spread out (Fuegians);
hemispherical, cupola-shaped, if they were flexible and leafy
(Australians); if they were placed in two parallel rows the hut took
the form of a two-sided roof, flat (Indians of the Amazon), or convex
(Todas), according to the materials.
[Illustration: /Fig./ 41.--Hemispherical hut in straw of Zulu Kafirs.
(_After Wood and other sources._)]
[Illustration: /Fig./ 42.--Hut and granary of the Ovampos (South
Africa).
(_After Wood._)]
Trying to secure themselves still better from the rain, the wind,
and the sun, the first architects must have dug out the soil beneath
the hut, as the Ainus, the Chukchi, the Kamtchadales still do at the
present time, and this may have suggested the idea, as Tylor says,[194]
of extending the vertical walls above the ground. The rushes, the
little twigs, and the clods of potter’s clay or grass which were
used at first to stop up the holes, eventually formed the walls, and
the ancient hut thus raised was transformed into a dwelling a little
more comfortable, having _roof_ and _walls_. This was probably the
origin of the hive-shaped huts of the Zulu Kafirs (Fig. 41), and the
cylindrical, conical-roofed huts of the Ovampos (Fig. 42), and the
Gauls of the time of Cæsar. Straw entering into the composition of
the roof, and sometimes even the body of these dwellings, they may be
styled _straw huts_ or _thatched huts_. As to the quadrangular huts,
they are transformed in the same manner into those little houses so
characteristic of the Muchikongos, of French Congo and the coast of
Guinea.[195] Among the peoples inhabiting the shores of the Pacific
and Indian Oceans, from the Kamtchadales and the Indians of the
north-west of America to the Maoris and the natives of Madagascar, the
quadrangular houses are erected on poles even when they are far from
water. The materials of which they are constructed are bamboos, reeds,
and palm-leaves.[196]
In order to give solidity to the straw and reed-built walls, it must
have been necessary at an early period to plaster them over with
potter’s earth (Senegal, palafittes of the bronze age in Europe).
In very dry countries it was seen that lumps of clay were able of
themselves to form sufficiently solid walls, and this observation has
led naturally enough to the making of sun-dried bricks, which were
known to the Babylonians, to the Egyptians, and are still used to-day
in the Sudan, in Turkestan, and Mexico.
[Illustration: /Fig./ 43.--Summer tent of Tunguz-Manegres, of
birch-tree bark (exceptional type).]
_Movable Habitations._--From the moment when the tired hunter of
primitive times fell asleep beneath the skin of a wild beast spread out
on two or three poles, and folded it up on the morrow to carry it away
with him in his wanderings, the _tent_ was invented. Skins continued
to be the best material for its construction until the invention of
felt and stuffs, plaited or woven of a sufficient breadth. Bark has
only been used exceptionally, in Siberia for example, and for summer
tents only (Fig. 43). Like the hut, the tent may be circular, conical
(Indians of North America), cupola-shaped (Kafirs), or quadrangular in
the form of a prismatic roof (Thibetans, Gypsies). The last-mentioned
of these forms has not been improved on, and the Arab tent of the
present day, which is derived from it, differs from its prototype only
in its dimensions and the awning set up at the entrance. On the other
hand, the two circular forms have been improved on by the use of pieces
of wattling instead of poles, and felt instead of skins. The tent has
thus become a comfortable dwelling, the best suited to the life of
half-civilised nomads, a real house with a roof, conical in the “Gher”
of the Mongols (Fig. 44), almost hemispherical in the “Yourte” of the
Kirghiz.[197] This dwelling of the nomads has even served as a model
for the permanent wooden habitations of the tribes of the Yenisei or
Altai. Their wooden house has a ground-plan of hexagonal or octagonal
form, imitating the circular yourte or felt tent (Fig. 45), and it is
only little by little, under Russian influence, that it is transformed
into a four-sided house.[198] The “mazankis” of the Teleuts of Siberia
and the Little Russians with their walls of fascines plastered with
clay and lime, are only imitations of wattled tents.
[Illustration: /Fig./ 44.--“Gher” or tent of the Kalmuks of Astrakan,
part being raised in order to show framework and interior.
(_Photo. S. Sommier._)]
[Illustration: /Fig./ 45.--Hexagonal house of non-roving Altaians,
constructed in imitation of the felt tent of the nomads.
(_After Yadrintsev._)]
[Illustration: /Fig./ 46.--Kraal, or Kafir village, with defensive
enclosure.
(_Partly after Wood._)]
As social life becomes more complicated, there appear, side by side
with the dwelling properly so called, other structures: granaries
and storehouses, ordinarily built on wooden pillars (among the
Malays and the Ainus), or on a clay stand (among the Negroes of the
Sudan) or a wooden support (Fig. 42), to protect them against the
attacks of wild beasts. Access to them, as to the houses on poles,
is gained by primitive ladders, a series of notches in a tree-trunk.
Other structures, light straw huts on trees, serve as refuges in
case of attack and as posts of observation to watch the movements
of enemies. The idea of defence was also the first motive for the
grouping of houses into villages. In non-civilised countries almost
always the villages and urban agglomerations are surrounded with
palisades (Kraal of the Kafirs, Fig. 46), ditches, sometimes filled
with traps and prickles (Laos), lastly, with walls. Watch-towers
replace the airy posts of observation on trees (example: Lesghi
village of the Caucasus). According to the forms of propriety (see
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.
[Illustration: /Fig./ 47.--Zulu girl with the three types of ornament:
head-dress, necklace, and belt; also leather chastity apron decorated
with pearls.
(_Phot. lent by Miss Werner._)]
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.
[Illustration: /Fig./ 48.--Ufhtaradeka, typical Fuegian with primitive
mantle of seal-skin; height, 1 m. 56; ceph. ind., 79.1.
(_Phot. of the Scientific Miss. of Cape Horn, Coll. Mus. Nat. Hist.,
Paris._)]
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.
[Illustration: /Fig./ 49.--Ainu woman tattooed round the lips.]
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).
[Illustration: /Fig./ 50.--Foot of Chinese woman artificially deformed.
(_After photograph._)]
[Illustration: /Fig./ 51.--Skeleton of the foot represented in Fig. 50,
with outline of shoe.]
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]
[Illustration: /Fig./ 52.--Native of the Department of Haute-Garonne
whose 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 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).
[Illustration: /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 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).
[Illustration: /Fig./ 54.--Method of making stone tools by
_percussion_; the first blow.
(_After Holmes._)]
[Illustration: /Fig./ 55.--Method of flaking stone by _pressure_; the
splinter (_c_) is severed by outside pressure on the stone with a
pointed bone (_a_).
(_After Holmes._)]
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.
[Illustration: /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._)]
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).
[Illustration: /Fig./ 57.--Kalmuk turning lathe with alternating
rotatory movement obtained 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.
_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.
[Illustration: /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, 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.