2. That where significant differences arise between substages of the same [stage], they are (at least sometimes) linked with peculiarities of climate and/or natural resources which the [people] have seized upon and exploited to the improvement of their economic situation.
3. That many details within these broad types of economic, social and spiritual features appear to vary unpredictably within the range of available possibilities.
The [stage] and criterion for each were proposed in an earlier issue (No. 6) of this series, Man’s Venture In [Culture], (Deuel 1950, pp. 5-12) as:
1. Natural Man ([Protocultural]), when “man” presumably employed sticks and stones as implements and weapons.
2. [Self-Domestication], following the discovery of the principle of the conchoidal fracturing of [flint] and its control, and the invention of tool and weapon types.
3. Farming or Food-Raising, due to the discovery that grains (grasses) and food-draft animals could be bred and raised in captivity.
4. Inanimate Power Machine (Machine Age), after the discovery of the availability of water and wind as sources for energy and the adaptation of animal-driven machines to utilize them.
Man in the wild or [Protocultural] [stage] is thought not to have reached the Americas. The oxlike mammals were not domesticated in America for drawing ploughs and vehicles, turning grain mills or to serve as a continuous food supply source. Consequently, we are concerned in the following discussion only with peoples in the [Self-Domestication] stage and the [Plant-Raising] [substage] of Farming.
In ordinary language, the word “[culture]” is used in a diversity of senses. In these pages it is used in one of two ways, the one employed being readily understood from the context. In a general sense, culture means the significant beliefs, customary activities and social prohibitions that are peculiar to man (together with the man-made tools, weapons and other material objects that he finds or has found necessary) that modify, limit or enhance in some manner, most of his discernible natural activities due to and arising from his physical animal inheritance and organization. Culture in a specific sense refers to the significant cultural features of a group or [period] under consideration.
For convenience, any cultural activity according to its dominant purpose may be spoken of as belonging to one of three aspects of [culture], (a) economic (technological and intellectual); (b) social (and political); and (c) spiritual (religious, artistic and recreational). To lesser degrees, most cultural activities have relationships with the two aspects other than the dominant.