FIG. 46.—Kraal, or Kafir village, with defensive enclosure.
(Partly after Wood.)
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.
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.)