a long and accumulated experience and increased mental ability; incidentally they are conditioned on the acquaintance with a number of other
In comparing the nations that are familiar with the use of bow and arrow, but not yet with the art of pottery (from which Morgan dates the transition to barbarism), we find among them the beginnings of village settlements, a control of food production, wooden vessels and utensils, weaving of bast fibre by hand (without a loom), baskets made of bast or reeds, and sharpened (neolithic) stone implements. Generally fire and the stone ax have also furnished the dugout and, here and there, timbers and boards for house-building. All these improvements are found, e. g., among the American Indians of the Northwest, who use bow and arrows, but know nothing as yet about pottery. Bow and arrows were for the stage of savagery what the iron sword was for barbarism and the fire-arm for civilization; the weapon of supremacy.
II. BARBARISM.
- Lower Stage. Dates from the introduction of the art of pottery. The latter is traceable in many cases, and probably attributable in all cases, to the custom of covering wooden or plaited vessels with clay in order to render them fire-proof. It did not take long to find out that moulded clay served the same purpose without a lining of other material.
Hitherto we could consider the course of evolution as being equally characteristic, in a general way, for all the nations of a certain period, without reference to locality. But with the beginning of barbarism, we reach a stage where the difference in the natural resources of the two great bodies of land makes itself felt. The salient features of this stage of barbarism is the taming and raising of animals and the cultivation of plants. Now the eastern body of land, the so-called old world, contained