Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

Architecture, as well as many other things, was credited by the ancient Greeks to Minerva. This was a poetical way of stating the fact—now generally accepted by men of science—that women were the first homemakers. But the first home was a very simple and a very humble structure. When not a cave, it was a simple shelter made of bark or skins, sufficient to afford protection to the mother and her child. Subsequently it was a lodge made of earth, of stone or wattle work or adobe.

Women were, in the light of anthropology, as well as in that of mythology and tradition, the first to discover the nutritive and medicinal values of fruits, seeds, nuts, roots and vegetables. They were consequently the first gardeners and agriculturists and the first to build up a materia medica. While men were engaged in the chase or in warfare, women were gradually perfecting those divers domestic arts which, in the course of time, became their recognized specialties. They soon found that it was better to cultivate certain food plants and trees than to depend on them for nourishment in the wild state. This was particularly true in the case of such useful and widely distributed species as wheat, rice, maize, the yam, potato, banana and cassava.

At first most of these food products were used in the raw state, but woman's quick inventive genius was not long in making one of the most important and far-reaching discoveries—a method for producing fire. In a certain sense this was the greatest discovery ever made, and the Greeks showed their appreciation of the value of it by asserting that fire was stolen from heaven. Considering its multifarious uses in heating and cooking, thereby immensely adding to the comfort and well-being of primitive man, we are not surprised that in certain parts of the world fire has always been considered something sacred, and that the old Romans instituted Vestal Virgins, and the ancient Peruvians Virgins of the Sun, to preserve this precious element and have it ever ready when required for sacrifice or for any of their various liturgical functions. If any one ever deserved a "monument more durable than bronze," it was the woman who, "on the edge of time," first drew the Promethean spark from a piece of pyrites by striking it with flint or produced it by the friction of two pieces of wood.

After building a home and establishing in it a fireplace for the preparation of food, woman's next concern was to secure more raiment than was afforded by the traditional fig leaf. This she found in the bark of certain trees, in the fiber of hemp and cotton and in the wool of sheep and goats. With these and her distaff she spun thread, and from the thread thus obtained she was by means of her primitive loom—likewise her invention—able to provide all kinds of textile fabrics for clothing for herself and family.

But there was much more to invent before the home of primitive man, or rather primitive woman, could be considered as fairly equipped. Furniture and culinary utensils were required, and these, too, were provided by the deft and cunning fingers of woman. She was the first potter and the first basketmaker; and anyone who has lived among the savages of any land, especially among the aborigines in the interior of South America, knows what an important part is played in domestic economy by native basketry and ceramic ware. Both of these articles were at first of the simplest character, but woman's innate esthetic sense soon enabled her to produce those highly ornate specimens of pottery and basketry that are so highly prized in the public and private collections of this country and Europe.

The first device for converting grain into flour was, like the many other articles already named, the invention of woman. Whether the simple mortar and pestle of the North American Indian, or the Mexican metate and muller, or the Irish quern, it was, in every case, the product of woman's brain and handiwork, as it was also the basal prototype of our most improved types of flouring mills. And so was the soapstone pot—the predecessor of the iron or brass kettle—a woman's invention, as well as many similar contrivances for preparing food.

But what is probably the most remarkable culinary invention of woman in the state of savagery is her unique contrivance for converting the poisonous root of the manihot utilissima—the staple food of tropical America—into a wholesome and nutritious aliment. It is a bag, called matapi, which serves both as a press and as a sieve. For the inhabitants of the vast basins of the Amazon and the Orinoco, where the chief articles of diet are derived from the manihot and the plantain, this invention of woman is the most important ever made and ranks in importance with the discovery by the same skilled food purveyor of the dietetic value of manihot itself.

The first knife was a woman's invention, as the arrow-head and the spear point were the inventions of her hunter husband. It was in the beginning a most primitive implement; but, whether in the form of a simple flake of flint of obsidian, or in that of an Eskimo ulu—the woman's knife—it was the archetype of all the forms of cutlery now in use. With this rude knife the primitive housewife skinned and carved the game brought to her by her male companion. With it she scraped the interior of the hide and cut it up into articles of clothing. She was thus the first furrier and tailor. With it she made the first sandals and moccasins, and, in doing so, became the first shoemaker and the original St. Crispin.

To woman, the originator of the first home, is due also the invention of the oven and the chimney. She was also the first maker of salt—that all-important condiment and sanitary agent—and the first to obtain nitre from wood ashes. She was the first engineer, as is evinced in her invention of the parbuckle and in the bamboo conduit, which was the predecessor of the great canals of Babylonia[229] and the imposing aqueducts of ancient Rome.

Important, however, as are all the foregoing inventions, we must not forget what was an equally important contribution by woman to the welfare and progress of our race—the domestication of animals. No discovery after that of artificially producing fire has contributed more toward the development of our race than the taming of milk- and fleece-bearing animals, like the cow, the sheep, the goat and the llama, or of burden-bearing animals, like the horse, the ass, the camel and the reindeer, or of hunting and watching animals like the faithful, ubiquitous dog. For, in the first place, the domestication of these supremely useful animals diminished man's labor as burden bearers. It likewise supplemented the fecundity of women and facilitated the multiplication of the race, because it supplied to the child a nourishment that previously could be obtained only from the mother, who had been obliged to suckle her young several years longer than was necessary after the friendly goat and cow came to her aid. Still another consequence of the domestication of animals was that it immensely diminished the amount of woman's care and labor, afforded her the necessary leisure to develop the arts of refinement, and stimulated intellectual growth in a way that otherwise would have been impossible.