The Dawn of History: An Introduction to Pre-Historic Study

by C. F. Keary

Commerce.

The commerce between different tribes or families seems to have been conducted at certain meeting-places agreed upon, and which were situated in the boundary-land or neutral territory between the different settlements. Very frequently at war with each other, or at best only preserving an armed and watchful quiet,—each side ready at a moment’s notice to seize on a favourable opportunity for the commencement of active hostilities,—continual friendly intercourse was impossible. So that when they wished for their mutual advantage to enter into amicable relations, it was necessary to establish some sort of special agreement for that purpose. It is probable, then, that when they found the advantages which could be derived from commercial exchanges, certain places were agreed upon as neutral territory where these exchanges might take place. Such places of exchange would naturally be fixed upon as would be equally convenient to both parties; and their mutual jealousy would prevent one tribe from permitting the free entrance within its own limits of members of other tribes. Places, too, would be chosen so as to be within reach of three or four different tribes; and thus the place of exchange, the market-place, would be fixed in that border-land to which no tribe laid any special claim. So we see that to commerce was due the first amicable relations of one tribe with another; and perhaps our market crosses may owe their origin to some remains of the old ideas associated with assemblies where men first learnt to look upon men of different tribes as brothers in a common humanity.

It took a long time, however, to mitigate that feeling of hostility which seems to have existed in early times between different communities. Even when they condescended to barter with each other they did not forget the difference between the friend and the foe. In the Senchus Mor, a book compiled by the old Irish or ‘Brehon’ lawyers, this difference between dealing with a friend and a stranger is rather curiously indicated in considering the rent of land. ‘The three rents,’ says the Great Book of the Law, as it is called, ‘are rack rent (or the extreme rent) from a person of a strange tribe, a fair rent from one of the tribe (that is one’s own tribe), and the stipulated rent, which is paid equally by the tribe and the strange tribe.’ Such a distinction is generally recognized in all early communities. In dealing with a man of his own tribe, the individual was held bound in honour not to take any unfair advantage, to take only such a price, to exact only such a value in exchange, as he was legitimately entitled to. It was quite otherwise, however, in dealings with members of other tribes. Then the highest value possible might justly be obtained for any article; so that dealings at markets which consisted of exchanges between different tribes, came to mean a particular sort of trading, where the highest price possible was obtained for anything sold. It is probable that this cast, to a certain extent, a slur upon those who habitually devoted themselves to this kind of trading. Though it was recognized as just to exact as high a price as possible from the stranger, still the person who did so was looked upon to a certain extent as guilty of a disreputable action; viewed, in fact, much in the same light as usurious money-lenders are viewed nowadays. They were people who did not offend against the laws of their times, but who sailed so near the wind as to be tainted, as it were, with fraud. Indeed, our word ‘monger,’ which simply means ‘dealer,’ comes from a root which, in Sanskrit, means ‘to deceive;’ so commerce and cheating seem to have been early united, and we must therefore not be surprised if they are not entirely divorced even in our own time.

Now ‘mark,’ which, as we know, means a boundary or border-land, comes from a root which means ‘the chase,’ or ‘wild animals.’ So ‘mark’ originally meant the place of the chase, or where wild animals lived. This gives us some sort of picture of these early settlements, whose in-dwellers carried on their commerce with each other in such primitive fashion. They were little spots of cleared or cultivated land, surrounded by a sort of jungle or primeval forest inhabited only by wild beasts. It was in such wild places as these that the first markets used to be held. Here, under the spreading branches of the trees, at some spot agreed upon beforehand,—some open glade, perhaps, which would be chosen because a neighbouring stream afforded means of refreshment,—the fierce distrustful men would meet to take a passing glimpse at the blessings of peace. These wild border-lands which intervened also explain to us how it was that so great an isolation continued to be maintained between the different settlements. If their pasture-lands had abutted immediately on each other, if the herds of one tribe had grazed by the herds of another, there must have been much more intercommunion and mutual trust than appears to have existed.

The value of cattle does not consist only in the food and skins which they provide. Oxen have from a very early time been employed for purposes of agriculture; and we find among the names derived from cattle many suggesting that they must have been put to this use at the time when those names arose. Thus the Greeks spoke of the evening as βουλυτός (boulutos), or the time for the unyoking of oxen; and the same idea is expressed in the old German word for evening, ‘àbant’ (Abend), or the unyoking. This, then, is the next stage in social progress: when agriculture becomes the usual employment of man. With the advance of this stage begins the decay of the patriarchal life, which, as we shall see in the next chapter, gradually disappears and gives place to fresh social combinations. Though we have hitherto spoken only of the patriarchal life of the Aryans, it was a life even more characteristic of the Semitic race. They were essentially pastoral and nomadic in their habits, and they seem to have continued to lead a purely pastoral life much longer than the Aryans did. In the Old Testament we learn how Abraham and Lot had to separate because their flocks were too extensive to feed together; and how Abraham wandered about with his flocks and herds, his family and servants, dwellers in tents, leading a simple patriarchal life, much as do the Arabs of the present day. Long after the neighbouring people had settled in towns, these Semitic tribes continued to wander over the intervening plains, depending for food and clothing only on their sheep and cattle and camels.

CHAPTER VII.
THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY.

The agricultural
life.

So long as people continued to lead a wandering shepherd life, the institution of the patriarchal family afforded a sufficient and satisfactory basis for such cordial union as was possible. It was a condition of society in which the relations of the different members to each other were extremely simple and confined within very narrow boundaries; but these habits of life prevented the existence of any very complicated social order, and at the same time gave a peculiar force and endurance to those customs and ties which did exist. For while the different tribes had no settled dwelling-places, the only cohesion possible was that produced by the personal relations of the different members one to another. Those beyond the limits of the tribe or household could have no permanent connection with it. They were simply ‘strangers,’ friends or enemies, as circumstances might determine, but having no common interests, connected by no abiding link, with those who were not members of the same community. When a family became so numerous that it was necessary for its members to separate, the new family, formed under the influence of this pressure, would at first remember the parent stock with reverence, and perhaps regard the patriarch of the elder branch as entitled to some sort of obedience from, and possessing some indefinite kind of power over, it after separation. It would, however, soon wander away and lose all connection with its relatives, forgetting perhaps in the course of time whence it had sprung, or inventing a pedigree more pleasing to the vanity of its members. But when men began to learn to till the soil, by degrees they had to abandon their nomadic life, and to have for a time fixed dwelling-places, in order that they might guard their crops, and gather, in the time of harvest, the fruits of their labour. Cattle were no longer the only means of subsistence, nor sufficiency of pasture the only limit to migration. A part of their wealth was, for a time, bound up in the land which they had tilled and sowed, and to obtain that wealth they must remain in the neighbourhood of the cultivated soil. Thus a new relationship arose between different families. They began to have neighbours—dwellers on and cultivators of the land bordering their own,—so that common interests sprang up between those who hitherto had nothing in common, new ties began to connect together those who had formerly no fixed relationship.

The adoption of agriculture changed likewise the relation of men to the land on which they dwelt. Hitherto the tracts of pasture over which the herdsman had driven his flocks and cattle had been as unappropriated as the open sea, as free as the air which he breathed. He neither claimed any property in the land himself, nor acknowledged any title thereto in another. He had spent no labour on it, had done nothing to improve its fertility; and his only right as against others to any locality was that of his temporary sojourn there. But when agriculture began to require the expenditure of labour on the land, and its enclosure, so as to protect the crops which had been sown, a new distinct idea of the possession of these enclosed pieces of land began to arise, so that a man was no longer simply the member of a particular family. He had acquired new rights and attributes, for which the patriarchal economy had made no provision. He was the inhabitant of a particular locality, the owner and cultivator of a particular piece of land. The effect of this change was necessarily to weaken the household tie which bound men together, by introducing new relations between them. The great strength of that early bond had consisted in its being the only one which the state of society rendered possible; and its force was greatly augmented by the isolation in which the different nomadic groups habitually lived. The adoption of a more permanent settlement thus tended in two ways to facilitate the introduction of a new social organization. By increasing the intercourse, and rendering more permanent the connection between different families, it destroyed their isolation, and therefore weakened the autocratic power of their chiefs; and at the same time, by introducing new interests into the life of the members of a family, and new relations between different families, it compelled sometimes the adoption of regulations necessarily opposed to the principles of patriarchal rule. We must remember, however, that the change from a nomadic to a settled state took place very gradually, some peoples being influenced by it much more slowly than others. Agriculture may be practised to a certain extent by those who lead a more or less wandering life, as is the case with the Tartar tribes, who grow buckwheat, which only takes two or three months for its production; so that at the end of that time they are able to gather their harvest and once more wander in search of new pastures. And it is from its use by them that this grain has received in French the name of blé sarrasin (Saracen corn) or simply sarrasin. We may suppose that the earliest agriculture practised was something of this rude description; and even when tribes learnt the advantage of cultivating more slowly germinating crops, they would not readily abandon their nomadic habits, which long continuance had rendered dear to them; but would only become agriculturists under the pressure of circumstances. The hunter tribes of North American Indians, and the Gipsies of Europe, serve to show us how deeply rooted in a people may become the love of wandering and the dislike to settled industry.

The village
community.