How the world lives

Front matter

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Contents

I How People First Lived Together 11

Why do people live together? Have men always lived together? Who was the leader? What is a tribe? Were there any laws in the tribe? What are taboos? How did taboos begin? What is a fetish? What was magic? What did the medicine¬ man do? What were the first gods? Were there any schools? How was the chief selected? Was the chiefs son always the next chief? Did people own things? Did they have wars? Were all people equal?

II How People Became Civilized 27

Chapter I

N OBODY wants to live all by himself— unless he is very queer. Anyway, how could he, unless he went off to some desert island? And he would probably be so unhappy there that he would soon want to come back. The worst thing that can be done to a person is to make him live all alone in a cell.

Even many animals live in flocks or herds or packs, helping one another in time of danger and finding pleasure in each other’s company.

From the very earliest days of his life on earth, man has been like that. We say that he is “a social creature.” By this, we mean that he has always lived with others of his kind. If this had not been so, he could not have escaped the terrible dangers he was always

Why do people live together?

Have men always lived together?

facing in the days before men had powerful weapons and safe homes. It was only by staying together with his fellow men that he could fight off the wild beasts—the mammoth, the bear, the wolf, and the saber-toothed tiger. And the men had to be always on guard so the women and children could be safe.

The women and children did their part, too, in the work of the little group. While the men were busy fighting savage beasts and hunting other animals for food, the women and children took care of the home, which might be in a large cave. They gathered wood to keep the fire burning, they cooked the meat, they carried off the waste matter, they brought water from the river, and they made the cave cozy and comfortable.

In those days people had a hard struggle to keep alive at all. If each one had been selfish, thinking only of himself, he soon would have died. It was only by each one helping the others at all times and in every possible way that the little group could hold its own against storm and drought and floods, against fierce animals, and against other people who tried to take their caves and hunting grounds.

So it was that the group in which the members helped each other the most became the strongest and enjoyed most of the good things of life. The children were able to get a better start in making their living. The group was usually made up of a few families, and in each family the father was the head.

The leader of the group was some wise old man. Everybody respected him a great deal. They also respected all the older people. And when these old folk died they were not forgotten. They could no longer be seen, of course, but everyone thought they were still living, in the land of spirits, and could help the group in different ways. So they still honored them. This respect for the dead in some tribes led to ancestor worship.

The family is the oldest human group the

Who was the leader?

What is a tribe?

world has ever known. There have been families as long as people have been on earth, and that is hundreds of thousands of years.

Even among animals and birds we may find groups that are much like human families. The father hunts for food and fights off ene¬ mies, while the mother stays at home and looks after the little ones until they have learned to get their own food and are big enough to take care of themselves.

The family in those days was larger than our families today. There would be many children, and also perhaps the old grandparents, as well as uncles and aunts. There were usually a few such families living near each other, each helping the others in time of danger, and the men joining in the hunt.

Finally, the group would be made up of quite a number of such families. It was then called a tribe. The families in the tribe were related to each other, but not so closely as before. A tribe sometimes was named after some totem . The totem was a certain animal, perhaps a turtle, a bear, a beaver, or a buffalo. This animal was supposed to protect the tribe, and everybody in the tribe thought a great deal of the tribe’s totem. Sometimes it was a plant. The tribe was called by the name of its totem.

Now the tribe did not have the kind of gov¬ ernment that we have in our country. Neither were there any written laws, or courts and po¬ licemen to make people obey them.

How could people manage to live together in peace without laws? Well, they had some¬ thing just as good for the sort of life they lived. They had customs, or folkways, just as we do and they had rules against doing certain things, these rules being called in one language taboos . Everybody followed the folkways in his daily life and carefully obeyed the taboos.

But if a person broke these customs and rules, he was not put in prison, for there were no prisons. But something worse was done to

Were there any laws in the tribe?

What are taboos?

him—he was made an outlaw. People would refuse to have anything to do with him, and he was cast out of the tribe. He might even be killed. It was a terrible punishment to be put out of the tribe, because a person in those days just had to belong to some tribe. He couldn’t live all alone, because the dangers were so great. So nobody wanted to become an outlaw, and everybody took good care to respect the tribal customs and taboos.

These customs and taboos, as we have just said, were not written out for every member of the tribe to read them. Writing had not been invented in those early days. But they were handed down, by the older people telling the younger ones.

The taboos, or rules against doing certain acts or touching forbidden things, were very important, so let us look at them a little closer. We have all heard this word taboo . We say that something is taboo when we mean that it is forbidden, that people must not do it. Now tribes of people all over the world have had taboos. But the word itself comes from the South Sea Islands, and means marked off or forbidden . It was a warning that there was danger in touching or handling the thing marked off.

We have customs somewhat like taboos. For How did instance, we do not eat snakes or wolves. The taboos be & tn? notion of taboos also is something like what happens among us when a person gets a disease that is “catching,” such as diphtheria or scarlet fever. The Health Department puts a card on the front door to warn people away.

Poisonous plants also were taboo. In the same way, to protect the growing crops, the crops were put under a taboo until they were ripe, and the head man of the tribe—called the chief— tasted them. Sometimes the reason for the taboo, after a great many years had passed, was forgotten, and some taboos seem to us now very queer.

Taboo was a part of the religion of these

Taboos forbade people to do certain things

What is a fetish?

What was magic?

early people. They did not at first have gods, but some tribes thought there was a great power called mana, and that this mana might go to live in all sorts of things, such as a rock, a stick of wood, a tool, a pebble, a piece of bone, and so on. Other tribes had charms, called fetishes . People believed that the fetishes would help them, and bring them good luck.

Another part of the tribe’s religion was magic . By magic we mean certain acts that people thought would make things they wanted happen. We use the word magic today when a man takes a rabbit out of a hat that we were sure was empty, and we cannot tell where the rabbit came from. Of course we know that the man has just played a trick on us, that he has fooled us. But the people who lived in tribes really believed in magic.

The man who was most clever in doing the magical acts in those days was called in some tribes a medicine-man. When the tribe needed a good supply of game or fish, or rain to water the crops, or victory in warfare, the medicine¬ man would be often called in to do his magic, with other men helping him.

If the weather was very dry, the medicine¬ man would speak some strange words, called a spell, and perhaps shake a rattle. Or great fires might be built, from which black smoke would rise, which looked like rain clouds. If a good crop of melons was wanted, then stones shaped like melons would be scattered on the ground. If fish were scarce, then a number of men would go to the river bank, one of them would jump into the water and the others would catch him and pull him to shore, as if he were a fish.

All this sounds very strange, does it not? But that was the way those early men were trying to get food, so as to make life more comfortable. After many centuries people be¬ gan to see that trying to get things by magic was useless. They saw that nature was ruled by great laws, and that it was by knowing

What did the medicine-man do?

What were the first gods?

about these laws that they could get all sorts of good things. That was how science was born. Then, when people wanted the soil to grow a good crop, they put plant food, called fertilizer, of the right kind, into the ground, instead of trying to make magic do the job.

Then, too, after a while these early men gave up using fetishes. They began to wor¬ ship gods of different kinds, such as the sun god, the moon god, the sky god, the god of war, the god of the chase, the god of love, and the god of the home. They believed that these gods lived up in the clouds or on moun¬ tains. Some of them were supposed to be like men, and some like women. The people built temples in which these gods were wor¬ shiped. The gods were not all good; some of them were cruel and wicked. It was not until a long, long time later that people began to worship just one God.

But there were many other customs among the folk who lived in tribes that were very interesting. Let us look at some of them. When the time came for a young man to get married, he sometimes had to choose a wife from another tribe, and then the girl was taken into her husband’s tribe. There were all kinds of different marriage customs. For instance, a young man who wanted to marry a certain girl might kill a deer and lay it with a heap of firewood at the door of the hut where she lived with her parents. This would be just like saying that he was a good hunter and well able to get food for his family and make a fine, warm home. Then, if the girl and her parents liked the young man, there would be a grand celebration, with feasting and merry¬ making.

Of course, there were no schools such as Were there children go to nowadays. But the children of an y schools? the tribe were carefully taught all the customs and taboos. Every boy had to learn a great many things, so that when he grew up he could be a leader of the tribe. The world was

How was the chief selected?

full of dangers in those days, and a hunter had to have sharp eyes and ears, be able to run fast, and know how to kill animals.

When a boy reached a certain age, he was taught all these things, and then he had to go through a testing time. He was made to do all sorts of things to show that he was strong and brave and had quick wits. He often had to stand terrible pain without making any sound. If he passed through all these tests, then he became one of the men of the tribe. If he failed, he was disgraced, and had to go and live with the women.

As we have seen, the head man of the tribe was called the chief . The chief was usually some wise, strong man, the man best able to lead the tribe at all times. Such a man would generally have many sons. When the chief began to get old and feeble he would train his oldest son to take his place. So the son, as time went on, would take his father’s place more and more. Then, when the old chief died, the son would have his father’s place.

But it might sometimes happen that the chief’s oldest son was weak or stupid. Then the men of the tribe would not want him to be chief. They might give the place to an¬ other of the chief’s sons, or to somebody else who seemed to them to be the right man to lead the tribe. Some of the Indian tribes, when a new chief was needed, would pick out the man who could lift the biggest tree on his shoulders and carry it the farthest. And some¬ times when war broke out another man would be picked out, as a war chief, to lead the tribe in battle.

The chief ruled the tribe, but there was generally a council made up of the strong and wise men of the group. This council would meet around the camp-fire from time to time and talk over the affairs of the tribe with the chief, deciding what was best to do.

The tribe held in common most of the things that were needed in life. That is to

The strongest or bravest man in the tribe became chief

Was the chiefs son always the next chief?

Did people own things'?

say, each person did not own a lot of things all by himself. The land used for hunting and fishing was free to all. Everybody had the same right to use it. But when a hunter shot a deer or some other animal with his bow and arrow, then the meat belonged to him for the use of his family.

On the whole, these people who lived in tribes got along together very peacefully. There were many festivals at which the people used to dance and sing together. The children, too, had their games. Like children in all times, they spent a lot of time in play. The boys played at hunting and war, and the girls played with dolls and keeping house. In this way they learned to do the things they would have to do when they grew up.

Sometimes a number of tribes would join together. When there were more men, they could defend themselves better and win vic¬ tories in war more easily. This was a very important step, because in that way a group of tribes would begin to think of themselves as belonging together. So it was that we began to have nations .

It is believed that some of the rich tribes came to want men to work in their fields and tried to force the men of the poor, weak tribes to work for them. When they could not get enough workers they made war and captured men and women and forced them to work.

From this custom came slavery, which lasted for thousands of years. Finally, men captured in war were no longer made slaves. But Negroes were taken from their homes in Africa and made to work in America, during the early days, as slaves. That was how there was slavery even in America for a long time. But everybody now sees that slavery was wrong, that people should not make others work for nothing.

Slavery changed greatly the lives of the people in the old days. At first, all the mem¬ bers of the tribe were free and equal. But

Did they have wars?

Were all people equal?

when slaves were taken into the tribe, then there were different classes of people. As time went on, there came to be three great classes of people in each country. There were noble¬ men, freemen, and slaves. Also, things were not owned by the whole group quite so much as before.

The noblemen were the leaders in war. They owned many slaves. They put the slaves to work raising crops and working in other ways for their masters. So the noblemen did not have to work much—they had a great deal of free time. And by having many slaves working for them, they became rich.

From very early times ordinary people did not have to work all the time raising food. Some of them did special kinds of work. One would become a carpenter, another a metal¬ worker, another a stone-cutter, and so on. This is called the division of labor. It changed greatly the way people live together.

Chapter II

E ARLY men got most of their food by hunting and fishing. But they did not want to eat only meat and fish all the time. They went through the woods and fields look¬ ing for berries, grains, and nuts. Sometimes they were scarce. Then they found out that they could grow their own wheat plants. Per¬ haps they saw that plants grew more plentifully near deserted camp grounds. Or perhaps at some time their supply of stored seeds had be¬ come wet and sprouted, and when they had thrown them out they saw that each seed be¬ came a tiny plant which later gave them more seeds. After many such accidental plantings and harvests they came to realize that they could raise these plants where they wanted to and did not need to depend on wild seeds.

How did early people ma\e a living?

Did they raise animals for food?

Some tribes, too, especially in the Old World, when wild game became scarce, learned how to raise cattle and sheep so that there would always be a good supply of meat. But they had to keep moving from place to place in order to find good pastures.

Of course, when people lived chiefly by hunting or keeping flocks and herds, the tribes were rather small in numbers, because it took a whole lot of land to give even one family hunting grounds and pastures large enough for its needs.

And other men settled down in one place, planting large crops, so that more people could live together comfortably on much less land. So it was that more and more people took to farming.

The first kind of farming was done with a hoe. The hoe is a little tool worked by one man. It lightly scrapes the surface of the ground, so that seeds can be planted and crops raised. The tribes which, like the American

Indians and the South Sea Islanders, lived partly by hunting and fishing and partly by farming used the hoe. Some tribes in Africa lived partly by raising cattle and partly by farming with the hoe.

Another way of farming, on very fertile land, is with the tool known as a spade, a sharp flat tool with a handle, used for digging. The spade is very useful for raising vegetables in little gardens. It has been used a great deal in China, where hundreds of millions of peo¬ ple are crowded together in one country.

The next step in farming came when some¬ body invented a plow. The plow is an iron or wooden tool guided by a man and drawn by a horse or an ox, or even a man. It turns up the soil more easily than does the hoe, so that large fields can be made ready for sowing.

Man continued inventing other things that helped make life more comfortable. He made tools for shaping stone, carving wood, and working metals such as gold and silver,

The first \ind of farming was done with a hoe

What other things did they ma\e?

copper and iron. He learned how to make pottery, boats, baskets, and cloth. The dis¬ covery of how to make cloth enabled people to have real clothes instead of having to wear skins. In making cloth they first had to spin thread from fibers of wool or flax. Then the thread had to be woven. The women did this work in some tribes, the men in others. It was very slow and took a long time.

Another great discovery that made a great difference in the way people lived was writing. Nowadays writing seems very easy, but when man was first learning how to do it, he had all kinds of trouble. You see he had nobody to teach him! He had to begin first by making pictures. But after he could write enough to make his meaning clear, it helped him in many ways. He could send messages to people far away by writing them a letter. And people could write down things that they needed to remember. Books could be written, and so people could learn more things.

Long before, people had learned to make themselves better homes. At first, as we have seen, they huddled together in dark caves. Then they began to build huts of logs, covered with earth to keep them warm. Those who lived on the open plains, tending flocks and herds, built tents by setting up a wooden framework and covering it with skins or felt. You can see how easy it would be to take down these houses when the tribe moved on in order to find new pastures for the animals.

Those American Indians who hunted buffalo on the plains used curious tents called wig¬ wams. These wigwams could be taken apart, carried off to another place, and set up again. They were made by taking long poles and standing them in a circle, drawing the ends together at the top. Then they stretched over these poles the bark of trees or buffalo skins. Other tribes, in Europe, built their houses on wooden platforms out on the water of lakes, some distance from the shore. This served as

What were homes li\e?

Were there any cities or towns?

a protection from their enemies. The wooden platforms rested on stout logs driven into the mud under the water.

When people began to be more civilized, they built real houses of brick or wood and stone. These houses might have a number of rooms and last as long as our houses do.

From very early times, huts and houses were usually built close together. One reason was that, as we know, people like to be near each other. Then, too, when a number of huts or houses were not far apart, the people living in them could easily and quickly get together to defend themselves. When they became civil¬ ized they often built a high, thick wall around the group of houses. Besides this, they might dig a ditch around the wall and fill it with water. Then their enemies would have a very hard time attacking them.

These groups of dwellings came to be known as towns. They were just a group of huts or houses built near each other. Towns made another great change in the way people lived together. Of course, there could not be towns until men had learned how to raise crops on the land and did not have to move about.

After a great many towns had grown up in a country where the people all spoke the same language and belonged to the same race, and where they had other things in common, they would often join together and make a nation, sometimes ruled by a king. There were king¬ doms among people who were still a long way from being really civilized. Some nations held a great many people and their towns were very large.

The coming of nations, however, was an important step in human progress. But some peoples lagged behind others. There were great nations, like Egypt, with splendid civiliza¬ tions thousands of years ago. On the other hand, at the present time there are large groups of tribes in different parts of the earth that have never gone on and become nations.

Were there whole nations of people?

Did all men do the same things?

Of course, when so many thousands of peo¬ ple were living together in one town, they had to be doing many different kinds of work. In other words, there was division of labor.

This is how it happened: Suppose there were 10,000 people living together in a town. Instead of each family making its own shoes, it would be much better to have a number of men in the town do nothing but make shoes. By giving all their time and attention to that job, they would become more skillful and could make better shoes than could be made by peo¬ ple who had to do other things, too. But of course these men who did nothing but make shoes would soon have more than they could use for their own families. So they would exchange some of the shoes for other things which they needed, such as food and clothing, which were raised or made by other people.

This was trade. At first it went on in a small way. Each man simply exchanged the things that he made for things that other men made. A man would do the work that he knew best how to do, and so became more and more skillful in doing that work.

Then trade began to spread out. The peo¬ ple in one place would start exchanging things that were made in their town for things that were made in some other town but not in theirs. Perhaps there was a silver mine near one town, so that the people there could get lots of silver and make beautiful things out of it. The people in other towns, far away, where there was no silver, would want some of these pretty silver ornaments, and so they would offer to give other things for them. It was by this trading between different places that the people of one town would begin to get well acquainted with those of another town.

This exchange of goods, called barter, went on for a long time. But barter, after all, was a troublesome way of doing business. For if a man had only shoes to sell, and a pair of shoes was worth twenty times as much as a

Barter was an exchange of goods

How did they trade?

Did people use money?

loaf of bread, how in the world could he buy a loaf of bread when he needed it? He could not very well cut off one-twentieth part of a pair of shoes.

But very early there arose the idea of money. At first, let us say, shells were used, because a heap of shells could easily be divided up into any amount, large or small. Then the man who sold shoes would take a certain number of shells in exchange, and when he wanted a loaf of bread he would go to the baker and buy it with a few shells.

Even in our own times, shells are used as money by the people of islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Many other objects were used as money, but the best money is metal, such as gold and silver and copper. Little round pieces of these metals were made, and everybody was glad to get them. They were stamped so as to show that they were good metal and of the right weight. They were called coins.

These coins were much more valuable than shells, and they were smaller and easier to carry around. Besides, one couldn’t break them the way one could shells. Then, too, coins could be counted out into any sum wanted. Gold was worth more than silver, and silver more than copper. A little gold was worth much copper. Thus big sums would be paid in gold, and small sums in copper. Ten dollars in gold would be one small coin, easy to carry, but in copper it would be hun¬ dreds of coins, very heavy and hard to carry. Five cents in gold would be so tiny an amount that you could scarcely see it, but five cents in copper would be an amount large enough not to get lost easily. That was why the most valuable coins were of gold and the least valuable of copper, with silver in between.

Now the man who wanted to buy a pair of shoes would take some coin, probably of silver, to the shoemaker and get his pair of shoes. And the shoemaker, when he wanted a loaf of