Anthropology

by Edward B. Tylor

Fig. 65.—Ancient Egyptian hoe and plough.

By noticing how rude tribes till the soil, much is to be learnt as to the invention of agricultural implements. Wandering savages like the Australians carry a pointed stick to dig up eatable roots with, as in [Fig. 64] a. Considering how nearly planting a root is the same work as digging one up, it is likely that a tribe beginning to till the soil would use their root-digging sticks for the new purpose; indeed, a pointed stake has been found as the rude husbandman’s implement both in the Old and New World. It is an improvement on this to dig with a flat-bladed tool like a spear, sword, or paddle, and thus we have the civilized spade. A more important tool, the hoe, is derived from the pick or hatchet. The wooden picks of the New Caledonians serve both as weapons and for planting yams, while the African’s hatchet—an iron blade stuck in a club—only has to have the blade turned across to become his hoe. It is curious to find in Europe the rudest imaginable hoe, less artificial than the elk’s shoulder-blade fastened to a stick, with which the North American squaws hoed their Indian corn. This is the Swedish “hack,” [Fig. 64] b, a mere stout stake of spruce-fir with a bough sticking out at the lower end cut short and pointed. With this primitive implement in old times fields were tilled in Sweden, and it was to be seen in forest farmhouses within a generation or two. Swedish tradition records the steps by which agriculture improved. The wooden hack was made heavier and dragged by men through the ground, thus ploughing a furrow in the simplest way; then the implement was made in two pieces, with a handle for the ploughman and a pole for the men to drag by, the share was shod with an iron point, and at last a pair of cows or mares were yoked on instead of the men. This seems nearly the way in which, thousands of years earlier, the hoe first passed into the plough. [Fig. 65] is from a picture of agriculture in ancient Egypt. Here the labourer is seen following the plough to break up the clods with his peculiar hoe, with its long, curved, wooden blade roped to the handle. Now looking at the plough itself, it is seen to be such a hoe, rope and all, only heavier and provided with a pair of handles for the ploughman to guide and keep it down, while a yoke of oxen drag it through the ground. The valley of the Nile was one of the districts where high agriculture earliest arose, and in the picture here copied we may almost fancy ourselves seeing at its birth the great invention of the plough. To arm it with a heavy metal ploughshare, to shape this so that it shall turn the sod over in a continuous ridge, to fix a coulter or “knife” in front to give the first cut, and to mount the whole on wheels; all these were improvements known in Rome in the classical period. In modern times we have the self-acting plough no longer needing the ploughman to follow at the plough-tail, and the steam-plough has a more powerful draught than oxen or horses. Yet those who have looked at the earlier stages can still discern in the most perfect modern plough the original hoe dragged through the ground.

There survives even now in the world a barbaric mode of bringing land under cultivation, which seems to show us man much as he was when he began to subdue the primæval forest, where till then he had only wandered, gathering wild roots and nuts and berries. This primitive agriculture was noticed by Columbus, when landing in the West Indies he found the natives clearing patches of soil by cutting the brushwood and burning it on the spot. This simple plan, where the wood is not only got out of the way, but the ashes serve for dressing, may still be seen among the hill-tribes of India, who till these plots of land for a couple of years and then move on to a new spot. In Sweden this brand-tillage, as it may be called, is not only remembered as the old agriculture of the land, but in outlying districts it has lasted on into modern days, giving us an idea what the rough agriculture of the early tribes may have been like when they migrated into Europe. It is not to be supposed, on looking at an English farm of the present day, that its improvements were made all at once. The modern farming system has a long and changing history behind it. One interesting point in its growth is that in long-past ages much of Europe was brought under cultivation by village-communities. A clan of settlers would possess themselves of a wide tract of land, and near their huts they would lay out great common fields, which at first they perhaps tilled and reaped in common as one family. It became usual to parcel out this tillage land every few years into family lots, but the whole village-field was still cultivated by the whole community, working together in the time and way settled by the village elders. This early communistic system of husbandry may still be seen not much changed in the villages of such countries as Russia. Even in England its traces have out-lasted the feudal system, and remain in the present days of landlord and tenant. In several English counties there may still be noticed the boundaries of the great common-fields, divided lengthwise into three strips, which again were divided crosswise into lots, held by the villagers; the three divisions were managed on the old three-field system, one lying fallow while the other two bore two kinds of crops.

Next, as to the history of domesticating animals for food. The taming of sociable creatures like parrots and monkeys is done by low forest tribes, who delight in such pets; and very rude tribes keep dogs for guard and hunting. But it marks a more artificial way of life when men come to keep and breed animals for food. The move upwards from the life of the hunter to that of the herdsman is well seen in the far north, the home of the reindeer. Among the Esquimaux the reindeer was only hunted. But Siberian tribes not only hunt them wild, but tame them. Thus the Tunguz live by these herds, which provide them not only with milk and meat, but with skins for clothing and tents, sinews for cord, bone and horn for implements, while as they move from place to place the deer even serve as beasts of draught and burden. Here is seen a specimen of pastoral life of a simple rude kind, and it is needless to go on describing at length the well-known life of higher nomade tribes, who shift their tents from place to place on the steppes of Central Asia or the deserts of Arabia, seeking pasture for their oxen and sheep, their camels and horses. There is a strong distinction between the life of the wandering hunter and the wandering herdsman. Both move from place to place, but their circumstances are widely different. The hunter leads a life of few appliances or comforts, and exposed at times to starvation; his place in civilization is below that of the settled tiller of the soil. But to the pastoral nomade, the hunting which is the subsistence of the ruder wanderer, has come to be only an extra means of life. His flocks and herds provide him for the morrow, he has valuable cattle to exchange with the dwellers in towns for their weapons and stuffs, there are smiths in his caravan, and the wool is spun and woven by the women. What best marks the place in civilization which the higher pastoral life attains to, is that the patriarchal herdsman may belong to one of the great religions of the world; thus the Kalmuks of the steppes are Buddhists, the Arabs are Moslems. A yet higher stage of prosperity and comfort is reached where the agricultural and pastoral life combine, as they already did among our forefathers in the village communities of old Europe just described. Here, while the fields were cultivated near the village, the cattle pastured in summer on the hills and in the woodlands belonging to the community, where also the hunter went for game, while nearer home there were common meadows for pasture and to provide the hay for the winter weather, when the cattle were brought under shelter in the stalls. In countries so thickly populated as ours is now, the last traces of the ancient nomade life disappear when the herds are no longer driven off to the hills in summer.

After the quest of food, man’s next great need is to defend himself. The savage has to drive off the wild beasts which attack him, and in turn he hunts and destroys them. But his most dangerous foes are those of his own species, and thus in the lowest known levels of civilization war has already begun, and is carried on against man with the same club, spear, and bow used against wild beasts. General Pitt-Rivers has shown how closely man follows in war the devices he learnt from the lower animals; how his weapons imitate their horns, claws, teeth, and stings, even to their venom; how man protects himself with armour imitated from animals’ hides and scales; and how his warlike stratagems are copied from those of the birds and beasts, such as setting ambushes and sentinels, attacking in bodies under a leader, and rushing on with war-cries to the fight.

We have already in the last chapter examined the principal offensive weapons. The daubing on of venom to make them more deadly is found among low tribes far over the world. Thus the Bushman mixes serpent’s poison with the euphorbia juice, and the South American native poison-maker, prepared by a long fast for the mysterious act, concocts the paralysing urari or curare in the secret depths of the forest, where no woman’s eye may fall on the fearful process. Poisoned arrows were known to the ancient world, as witness the lines which tell of Odysseus going to Ephyra for the man-slaying drug to smear his bronze-tipped arrows; but Ilos would not give it, for he feared the ever-living gods. Thus it seems that in early ages the moral sense of the higher nations had already condemned the poisoned weapons of the savage, with something of the horror Europeans now feel in examining the Italian bravo’s daggers of the middle ages, with their poison-grooves imitated from the serpent’s tooth.

How the warrior’s armour comes from the natural armour of animals is plainly to be seen. The beast’s own hide may be used, as where one sees in museums the armour of bear-skins from Borneo, or breast-plates of crocodile’s skin from Egypt. The name of the cuirass shows that it was at first of leather, like the buff jerkin. The Bugis of Sumatra would make a breastplate by sewing upon bark the cast-off scales of the ant-eater, overlapping as the animal wore them; and so the natural armour of animals was imitated by the Sarmatians, with their shoes of horses’ hoofs sewed together in overlapping scales like a fir-cone. Such devices, when metal came in, would lead to the scale armour of the Greeks, imitated from fish-scales and serpent-scales, while their chain-mail is a sort of netted garment made in metal. The armour of the middle ages continued the ancient kinds, now protecting the whole body with a suit from head to foot (cap-à-pée) of iron scales, or mail (that is, meshes) or of jointed plates of iron copied from the crab and lobster, such as the later suits of armour which decorate our manorial halls. With the introduction of gunpowder, armour began to be cast aside, and except the helmet, what remains of it in military equipment is more for show than use. The shield also, once so important a part of the soldier’s panoply, has been discarded since the days of musketry. Our modern notion of a shield is that of a large screen behind which the warrior can shelter himself, but this does not appear to have been the original intention. The primitive shield was probably the parrying-shield, used like the narrow Australian parrying-stick, which is only four inches across in the middle where it is grasped, but with which the natives ward off darts with wonderful dexterity. The small round Highland target, one of the varieties of shield which remained latest in civilized Europe, is made to be thus dexterously handled as a weapon of defence, to ward off javelins, or parry the thrust of spear or sword. It is easy to see that such parrying-shields belong to the early kind of warfare where the battle was a skirmish, and every warrior took care of himself. But when fighting in close ranks began, then the great screen-shields would come in, serving as a wall behind which the old Egyptian soldiers could ensconce themselves, or the Greek or Roman storming-party creep up to the foot of the wall in spite of stones and darts hurled down on them.

The savage or barbarian is apt to fall on his enemy unawares, seeking to kill him like a wild beast, especially where there is bitter personal hatred or blood-vengeance. But even among low tribes we find a strong distinction drawn between such manslaughter and regular war, which is waged not so much for mutual destruction as for a victory to settle a quarrel between two parties. For instance, the natives of Australia have come far beyond mere murder when one tribe sends another a bunch of emu-feathers tied to the end of a spear, as a challenge to fight next day. Then the two sides meet in battle array, their naked bodies terrific with painted patterns, brandishing their spears and clubs, and clamouring with taunts and yells. Each warrior is paired with an opponent, so that the fight is really a set of duels, where spear after spear is hurled and dodged or parried with wonderful dexterity, till at last perhaps a man is killed, which generally brings the fray to an end. Among the rude Botocudos of Brazil, a quarrel arising from one tribe hunting hogs on another’s ground might be settled by a solemn cudgelling-match, where pairs of warriors belaboured one another with heavy stakes, while the women fought by scratching faces and tearing hair, till one side gave in. But if in such an encounter the beaten party take to their bows and arrows, the scene may change into a real battle. When it comes to regular war, the Botocudos will draw up their men fronting the enemy, pouring in arrows, and then rushing together with war-whoops to fight it out tooth and nail, killing man, woman, and child. They make expeditions to plunder the villages of their settled neighbours, and when enemies are near in the forest they will stick splinters in the ground as caltrops to lame them, and shoot from ambush behind fallen trunks or shelters of boughs. The slain in battle they will carry off to cook and devour at the feast, where with wild drunken dancing their warlike zeal is inflamed to frenzied rage. Thus to excite courage is the purpose of the frantic war-songs and war-dances, which are common to mankind, among savages and even far more cultured nations. Low tribes also keep up the fierce hatred and pride of battle by trophies of the enemy—his head dried and hung as an ornament of the hut, or his skull fashioned into a drinking-cup. The wars of the North American Indians have picturesque incidents often described in our books, the braves smoking in solemn council of war, the declaration of war by the bundle of arrows wrapped in a rattlesnake’s skin, or the blood-red war-hatchet struck into the war-post, the recruiting-feast where the dog was eaten as emblem of fidelity, the war-party creeping through the woods in single line (which we thence call “Indian file”) the stealthy attack on the enemy’s camp or village, the wild scalp-dance of the returning victors, the torturing of the captives at the stake, where the very children were set to shoot arrows at the helpless foe, who bore his torments without a groan, boasting of his own fierce deeds and taunting his conquerors in his death-agony. Indian war was “to creep like a fox, attack like a panther, and fly like a bird.” Yet at times the warriors of two tribes would meet in fair battle, standing to watch duels between pairs of champions, or all rushing together in a general mêlée.

In the warfare of rude races, it is to be noticed how fighting for quarrel or vengeance begins to pass into fighting for gain. Among some tribes the captives, instead of being slain, are brought back for slaves, and especially set to till the ground. By this agriculture is much increased, and also a new division of society takes place, to be seen still arising among such warlike tribes as the Caribs, where the captives with their children come to form a hereditary lower class. Thus we see how in old times the original equality of men broke up, a nation dividing into an aristocracy of warlike freemen, and an inferior labouring caste. Also forays are made for the warriors to bring home wives, who are the slaves and property of their captors. With this wife-capture is connected the law widely prevailing among the ruder peoples of the world, and lasting on even among the more civilized, that a man may not take a wife from his own clan or tribe, but from some other. As property increases, there appears with it warfare carried on as a business, by tribes living more or less by plunder, glorying in their murderous profession, and despising the mean-spirited farming villagers whose labour provides them with corn and cattle. A perfect example of such a robber-tribe were the Mbayas of South America, whose simple religion it was that their deity, the Great Eagle, had bidden them live by making war on all other tribes, slaying the men, taking the women for wives, and carrying off the goods.