In fishing there is the same display of artifice. The simple gathering of shells, sea-urchins, and crustaceans at low tide, mostly left to the women, supplements but little the means of subsistence of fishing populations. The bulk of fish and animals of aquatic habits are taken by means of suitable weapons, and still more often by means of traps, weirs, poisoned waters, etc.
The weapons most used in fishing are pikes with one or several teeth (tridents, fish-spears), that the Melanesians, the Fuegians, the Indians of Brazil, and so many other savages handle with the utmost dexterity, never missing the fish for which they lie in wait sometimes for hours at a time. The bow is also sometimes employed to shoot the fish (Andamanese), but the special missile used in fishing is the harpoon, the wood or bone head of which usually takes the form of a fork or pike with one or several barbs.
FIG. 58.—Principle of tackle utilised by Eskimo, landing a walrus.
Above, on left, detail of the arrangement of the rope round stakes.
(After Elliot.)
The Fuegians simply throw their harpoons like a javelin, the Eskimo make use of instruments to hurl them (see [Chap. VII.]). In many harpoons the head is only fitted to the shaft and attached to it by a long cord; immediately the animal is wounded the shaft separates itself from the head and acts as a float, indicating the spot where the victim has plunged, for it will not be long before he comes again to the surface to breathe, and other wounds are then inflicted. The Eskimo of Asia and the Chukchi also attach bladders to the shaft as floats. But all these weapons are chiefly employed against marine mammals (seals, sea-lions, walruses, whales, etc.); for catching fish recourse is had to other means. Poisoning the water appears to be one of the most primitive. It is constantly practised by Australians, Indonesians, and Melanesians. We have next to refer to the various devices for catching fish, which, according to O. Mason, may be grouped into two categories—(1) those intended to bring the fish, quietly following its way, into a place or trap from which it cannot afterwards get out, and (2) those which consist in getting it to swallow a hook hidden under some form of bait.
Among the former of these devices, bow-nets and sweep-nets in bamboo and rattan are very widely used among the Dyaks, Micronesians, etc. Cast-nets are less common among uncivilised peoples; they are met with, however, in Polynesia. Fish-hooks other than those in metal are made of bone, the thorns of certain trees, of wood, and especially of mother-of-pearl. For fishing-boats, see [Chapter VII.] (Navigation).
Agriculture.—It is constantly stated that man has passed successively through three stages—that in the first he was a hunter, in the second a nomadic shepherd, and in the third a tiller of the soil. This is only true if we consider agriculture as it is understood at the present day in Europe, that is to say as closely connected with the existence of certain domestic animals (horses, oxen, etc.) which supply man with motive power and at the same time with manure. But there are numerous peoples, without these domestic animals, who nevertheless are acquainted with agriculture, only it is a special kind of agriculture which is related rather to our ornamental and market gardening, at least by the method of cultivation.[215] Hahn has proposed to call this species of cultivation after the principal, and almost the only, tool which is used—“Hoe-culture” (Hackbau in German); while cultivation by means of a plough drawn by animals might be called true agriculture (Ackerbau).
It is evident that in the development of mankind the most primitive hoe-culture, such as is practised by certain tribes of Africa and South America, may well have sprung from the gathering of plants and roots. The Australians, the Papuans (Fig. [152]), and the Indians of California even yet make use of pointed staves, hardened in the fire, to unearth natural roots; certain Negroes and Bushmen join to the staff a stone whorl which makes the work easier. These “digging sticks” are the first agricultural implements; they perhaps preceded the hoe. The habit that many Australian tribes have of returning periodically to the same places for the gathering of fruits and roots, giving these time to grow, is one of the first steps towards the cultivation of the ground; it proves a comprehension of the development of a plant from a sown seed. Hoe-culture prevails at the present time in vast regions of tropical Africa and in South America. The tubers, maniocs, yams, and sweet potatoes play a prominent part there, but the graminaceæ also are represented by the maize introduced from America and rice from Asia, and it is among the two peoples who have adopted these cereals as the staple of their food, the Incas of Peru and the Chinese, that hoe-culture has been improved by the introduction of manure. Carried to a still greater degree of perfection by the employment of artificial manure, it has been transformed by civilised peoples into “plantations” (sugar-cane, coffee, etc.) in tropical countries and into “horticulture” in all climates.
True agriculture could only have originated where the ox, the horse, the buffalo, and other animals used in ploughing were first domesticated—that is to say, in Eurasia, and perhaps more particularly in Mesopotamia, where the art of irrigation was known at a period when in other countries there was not even any agriculture at all. As far back as the historic Chaldean monuments can take us we find agriculture existing in this part of Asia. In Europe it has appeared since the neolithic age, after the quaternary period. Domestic animals having most probably been introduced into Egypt from Asia, it may be supposed that before their introduction the country of the Pharaohs was cultivated by the hoe, like the kingdom of the Incas of old, or that of the “sons of Heaven” of the present day. Besides, in Asia, as in Europe, hoe-culture existed thus early, and the favourite plant cultivated was millet (Panicum miliaceum, L.), consumed but little to-day, but universally known, which attests its importance in antiquity.[216]