History of Human Society. Frank Wilson Blackmar

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СКАЧАТЬ and clothing. The great supply of milk and meat from domesticated animals added tremendously to the food supply of the race, and made it possible for it to develop in other lines. Along with the food supply has been the use of these animals for increasing the clothing supply through hides, furs, skins, and wool. The domestication of animals laid the foundation for great economic advancement.

      The Beginnings of Agriculture Were Very Meagre. – Man had gathered seeds and fruit and berries for many years before he conceived the notion of planting seeds and cultivating crops. It appears to be a long time before he knew enough to gather seeds and plant them for a harvest. Having discovered this, it was only necessary to have the will and energy to prepare the soil, sow the seed, and harvest a crop in order to enter upon agriculture. But to learn this simple act must have required many crude experiments. In the migrations of mankind they adopted a little intermittent agriculture, planting the grains while the tribe paused for pasture of flocks and herds, and resting long enough for a crop to be harvested. They gradually began to supplement the work of the pastoral with temporary agriculture, which was used as a means of supplementing the food supply. It was not until people settled in permanent habitations and ceased their pastoral wanderings that real agriculture became established. Even then it was a crude process, and, like every other economic industry of ancient times, its development was excessively slow.

      The wandering tribes of North America at the time of the discovery had reached the state of raising an occasional crop of corn. Indeed, some tribes were quite constant in limited agriculture. The sedentary Indians of New Mexico, old Mexico, and Peru also cultivated corn and other plants, as did those of Central America. The first tillage of the soil was meagre, and the invention of agricultural implements proceeded slowly. At first wandering savages carried a pointed stick to dig up the roots and tubers used for food. The first agriculturists used sticks for stirring the soil, which finally became flattened in the form of a paddle or rude spade. The hoe was evolved from the stone pick or hatchet. It is said that the women of the North American tribes used a hoe made of an elk's shoulder-blade and a handle of wood. In Sweden the earliest records of tillage represent a huge hoe made from a stout limb of spruce with the sharpened root. This was finally made heavier, and men dragged it through the soil in the manner of ploughing. Subsequently the plough was made in two pieces, a handle having been added. Finally a pair of cows yoked together were compelled to drag the plough. Probably this is a fair illustration of the manner of the evolution of the plough in other countries. It is also typical of the evolution of all modern agricultural implements.

      We need only refer to our own day to see how changes take place. The writer has cut grain with the old-fashioned sickle, the scythe, the cradle, and the reaper, and has lived to see the harvester cut and thresh the grain in the field. The Egyptians use until this day wooden ploughs of an ancient type formed from limbs of trees, having a share pointed with metal. The old Spanish colonists used a similar plough in California and Mexico as late as the nineteenth century. From these ploughs, which merely stirred the soil imperfectly, there has been a slow evolution to the complete steel plough and disk of modern times. A glance at the collection of perfected farm machinery at any modern agricultural fair reveals what man has accomplished since the beginning of the agricultural art. In forest countries the beginning of agriculture was in the open places, or else the natives cut and burned the brush and timber, and frequently, after one or two crops, moved on to other places. The early settlers of new territories pursue the same method with their first fields, while the turning of the prairie sod of the Western plains was frequently preceded by the burning of the prairie grass and brush.

      The method of attachment to the soil determined economic progress. Man in his early wanderings had no notion of ownership of the land. All he wished was to have room to go wherever the food quest directed him, and apparently he had no reflections on the subject. The matters of fact regarding mountain, sea, river, ocean, and glacier which influenced his movements were practically no different from the fact of other tribes that barred his progress or interfered with his methods of life. In the hunter-fisher stage of existence, human contacts became frequent, and led to contention and warfare over customary hunting grounds. Even in the pastoral period the land was occupied by moving upon it, and held as long as the tribe could maintain itself against other tribes that wished the land for pasture. Gradually, however, even in temporary locations, a more permanent attachment to the soil came through clusters of dwellings and villages, and the habit of using territory from year to year for pastorage led to a claim of the tribe for that territory. So the idea of possession grew into the idea of permanent ownership and the idea of rights to certain parts of the territory became continually stronger. This method of settlement had much to do with not only the economic life of people, but in determining the nature of their social organizations and consequently the efficiency of their social activity. Evidently, the occupation of a certain territory as a dwelling-place was the source of the idea of ownership in land.

      Nearly all of Europe, at least, came into permanent cultivation through the village community.16 A tribe settled in a given valley and held the soil in common. There was at a central place an irregular collection of rude huts, called the village. Each head of the family owned and permanently occupied one of these. The fertile or tillable land was laid out in lots, each family being allowed the use of a lot for one or more years, but the whole land was the common property of the tribe, and was under the direction of the village elders. The regulation of the affairs of the agricultural community developed government, law, and social cohesion. The social advancement after the introduction of permanent agriculture was great in every way. The increased food supply was an untold blessing; the closer association necessary for the new kind of life, the building of distinct homes, and the necessity of a more general citizenship and a code of public law brought forth the social or community idea of progress. Side by side with the village community system there was a separate development of individual ownership and tillage, which developed into the manorial system. It is not necessary to discuss this method here except to say that this, together with the permanent occupation of the house-lot in the village, gave rise to the private ownership of property in land. As to how private ownership of personal property began, it is easy to suppose that, having made an implement or tool, the person claimed the right of perpetual possession or ownership; also, that in the chase the captured game belonged to the one who made the capture; the clothing to the maker. In some instances where game was captured by the group, each was given a share in proportion to his station in life, or again in proportion to the service each performed in the capture. Yet, in this early period possessory right was frequently determined on the basis that might makes right.

      The Manufacture of Clothing. – The motive of clothing has been that of ornament and protection from the pain of cold. The ornamentation of the body was earlier in its appearance in human progress than the making of clothing for the protection of the body; and after the latter came into use, ornamentation continued, thus making clothing more and more artistic. As to how man protected his body before he began to kill wild animals for food, is conjectural. Probably he dwelt in a warm climate, where very little clothing was needed, but, undoubtedly, the cave man and, in fact, all of the groups of the race occurring in Europe and Asia in the latter part of the Old Stone Age and during the New Stone Age used the skins of animals for clothing. Later, after weaving had begun, grasses and fibres taken from plants in a rude way were plaited for making clothing. Subsequently these fibres were prepared, twisted into thread, and woven regularly into garments. The main source of supply came from reeds, rushes, wild flax, cotton, fibres of the century plant, the inner bark of trees, and other sources according to the environment.

      Nothing can be more interesting than the progress made in clothing, combining as it does the objects of protection from cold, the adornment of the person, and the preservation of modesty. Indians of the forests of the tropical regions and on the Pacific coast, when first discovered, have been found entirely naked. These were usually without modesty. That is, they felt no need of clothing on account of the presence of others. There are many evidences to show that the first clothing was for ornament and for personal attraction rather than for protection. The painting of the body, the dressing of the hair, the wearing of rings in the nose, ears, and lips, the tattooing of the body, all are to be associated with the first СКАЧАТЬ