FIG. 56.—Knife of chipped flint of the Hupa Indians;
it is mounted on a wood handle with pitch. Attached to a longer handle it becomes a spear.
(After Ray, U.S. Nat. Museum.)
The invention of primitive “machines” followed that of tools. Alternate rotatory motion must have been utilised in the first instance as being the easiest to obtain. Example: the flint-pointed drill of the Indians of the north-west of America, the apparatus for making fire (see Fig. [36]), or the turning-lathe of the Kalmuks (Fig. [57]), the Egyptians and the Hindus, moved by the palms of the hand at first, with a cord afterwards, and later again with a bow.[213] The transformation of this alternating motion into a continuous circular one must probably have resulted from the use of the spindle furnished with its wheel. In this instrument, so simple in appearance, is found the first application of the important discovery that rotatory movement once produced may be maintained during a certain time by a heavy weight performing the function of a fly-wheel.
The potter’s wheel (p. [55]) is a second application of the same principle; rollers for the conveyance of heavy objects are a third (see [Chap. VII.], Transports). The screw and the nut appear to be a comparatively recent invention, presupposing a degree of superior development. Certain authors see in the use of twisted cords, and the cassava-squeezer of the Caribs of Guiana,[214] the first steps towards that invention. The principle of the single pulley is frequently applied by savages, and the compound pulley or tackle-block is known to the Eskimo, who make use of it to land huge cetaceans (Fig. [58]).
FIG. 57.—Kalmuk turning lathe with alternating rotatory movement
obtained by means of a strap (a);
(c) block of wood to make a porringer;
(d) bench for the workman.
(After Reuleaux.)
We may divide the activity displayed by uncivilised and even half-civilised peoples in procuring the necessaries of life into four great categories: hunting, fishing, agriculture with fruit-gathering, and cattle-breeding.
Hunting is almost the only resource of uncivilised peoples; it is still a powerful auxiliary means of livelihood with nomads and primitive tillers of the soil, and it is only among civilised peoples that it assumes the character of a sport. Originally, man was obliged to hunt without weapons, as certain tribes still sometimes do. On dark nights, when the cormorants are asleep, the Fuegian hunter, hanging by a thong of seal-skin, glides along the cliffs, holding on to jutting points of rock; when near a bird he seizes it with both hands and crushes its head between his teeth, without giving it time to utter a cry or make a movement. He then passes on to another, and so continues until some noise puts the cormorants to flight.
But more frequently the inventive faculty is brought into play to construct all kinds of weapons for facilitating the capture of prey. As most of these contrivances are at the same time weapons of war, we shall glance at them in [Chapter VII.] Moreover, the multiplicity of weapons has not prevented primitive man from using all sorts of stratagems for capturing animals. Any one who has dipped into the old books on venery, or even into catalogues of modern gunsmiths, is able to realise this, for most of the traps, snares, and pitfalls represented are also found among savages. Bow-traps are especially favoured, but the springe for birds and the pitfalls for large animals are not despised. To these we may add the use of bait, poisoning, the smoking of bees in order to take their honey, the imitation of the song of birds to allure them to the gin, disguise by means of the skin of a beast the better to approach it, and the artifices devised by man in his war with animals are not yet exhausted. There is still the most treacherous of all: having degraded certain animals by domestication (falcon, dog, cat, etc.), man makes them hunt their untamed kind (see Domestication).