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.
FIG. 34.—Method of fire-making by rubbing.
(After Hough.)
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]
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.