But to this primitive apparatus important improvements are made among other populations, especially among the Redskins and the Eskimo. The hole in a horizontal board is hollowed out beforehand, then a communication is made between this hole and one of the vertical faces of the board by a channel through which escapes to the outside the woody powder produced by rubbing, in the form of little incandescent cylinders, which falls on the tinder. As to the upright stick, different contrivances are fitted to it to render its motion more rapid and more regular. Thus the Eskimo wind round it a cord which is drawn alternately in both directions;[182] in this case the upper end of the stick is held by an assistant or by the operator himself. They apply also to these apparatus a mouth-drill, etc.

The second method of obtaining fire, that of striking together two pieces of iron pyrites or two pieces of flint, or flint against pyrites, must, like the first, have been known from the most remote period. To-day it is only employed by some few backward tribes—Fuegians, Eskimo, Aleuts. With the knowledge of iron, which replaced pyrites, the true “flint and steel” was invented; it very quickly superseded in Europe and Asia the production of fire by friction, as, in its turn, it has been superseded by apparatus utilising the chemical affinity of different bodies (matches).

But the old processes survive in traditions, in religion. Thus the present Brahmins of India obtain fire for religious ceremonies by the friction of two sticks, in front of shops where English matches are sold; it is still by friction that the Indians of America, amply provided with matches, procure fire for the sacred festivals. Even in Europe, in Great Britain, and in Sweden, at the beginning of this century the fire intended for superstitious uses (to preserve animals and people against contagious diseases) was kindled by rubbing together two pieces of wood. This practice was forbidden by a decree, dating from the end of last century, in the same district of JÖnkÖping whence to-day are sent forth by millions the famous Swedish matches.[183]

The long and difficult processes of obtaining fire compel savage tribes to preserve it as one of the most precious things. Almost everywhere it is to women that the care is committed. Among the Australians, women who let the fire go out are punished almost as severely as were the Roman vestals of old. The Papuans of Astrolabe Bay (New Guinea) prefer to go several leagues in search of fire to a neighbouring tribe than to light another (Miklukho-Maclay). The preparation of “new fire” among a great number of tribes, especially in America and Oceania, is celebrated with festivals and religious ceremonies.[184]

Cooking.—Fire, once discovered, heat, light, and at the same time the means of rendering a great variety of foods more digestible, were artificially assured to man. But it is somewhat difficult to roast a piece of meat in the fire, especially when there is not a metal skewer at hand, as was the case with primitive man. So, at an early stage, he tried to find some method of cooking his food, especially fruits. He heated stones in the open fire, and with these stones he cooked his meat and vegetables. The process is still in use to-day among tribes unacquainted with pottery. Thus the Polynesians before their “civilisation” by Europeans proceeded in the following way to cook their food. Stones heated in the fire were put at the bottom of a hole dug in the ground; upon these stones was spread a layer of leaves, on which were placed the fruit of the bread-tree, then a fresh layer of leaves and other heated stones; care being taken to cover the whole with leaves and earth. In half-an-hour a delicious dish was drawn out of the hole.[185]

Among most savage Indonesians food is cooked in bamboo vessels filled with water, in which heated stones have been previously plunged. This method of cooking with stones is also in use at the two extreme points of America, among the Indians of Alaska and the Fuegians. It is even used in Europe among the Serbian and Albanian mountaineers.

Pottery.—But real cooking, even of the simplest sort, is only possible with the existence of pottery, the manufacture of which must have followed closely on the discovery of a method of obtaining fire, for no example is known of unbaked pottery.

There are still peoples unacquainted with this art, such as the Australians and the Fuegians, but the absence of it is not always the sign of an inferior degree of civilisation, as we may see in the Polynesians before the arrival of Europeans, and also the present Mongols, whose cooking utensils consist of iron, wooden, and leather vessels, for pottery which easily breaks would be an encumbrance in nomadic life.

Bark Vessel FIG. 37.—Bark vessel, used by Iroquois Indians. (After Cushing.)

Earthen Vessel FIG. 38.—Type of Iroquois earthen vessel, moulded on the bark vase of Fig. 37. (After Cushing.)

The most primitive pottery is made without the potter’s wheel. In its manufacture we may admit, with Otis Mason,[186] three special methods of working. Modelling by hand; moulding to an exterior or interior mould, usually a basket or other object of wicker-work, which burns away afterwards in the baking (Figs. 37 and 38); and lastly, a method of proceeding which may be called coiling in clay. Long strings of clay are taken and rolled so as to form a cone or a cylinder, or any other form of the future pot, then the sides are made even.

The ZuÑi Indians of New Mexico begin this work in a little basket-dish (Fig. 39), which shows the connection of this method with that of moulding, whilst the Wolofs, whom I have seen working in the same way, as well as the Kafirs (Fig. 135, to the left), have only as a base to work upon a clay disc or a wooden porringer, moulding being unknown to them. But in both cases this mode of manufacture is already a step towards pottery formed by the wheel, only instead of the clay it is the hand of the workman which turns, naturally much more slowly. Besides, the primitive wheel, that is to say, a disc or a board set in motion by the hand, sometimes without a pivot, as still seen in China, does not revolve with the dizzy speed of the true wheel, the construction of which is an adaptation of the general processes of the transmission of forces by means of levers and wheels.

In regard to pottery it must be noted that its manufacture is left almost exclusively to women among most of the tribes of America, while it is entrusted without distinction to men and women in Africa.

Grinding of Corn.—We need not dwell on the means of preparing food independently of the action of fire (milk and its products, pemmican, etc.); they vary infinitely. Let us deal briefly, however, with the method of preparing grain. Many peoples are unacquainted with flour: they eat the grain either roasted or cooked, as we do still the most anciently known perhaps of the graminaceÆ, rice and millet. In the primitive state of agriculture certain tribes of North America combined in one single operation the threshing, winnowing, and roasting of grain. After being triturated between the hands, the grain is thrown into a basket-dish (Fig. 40) in which are red-hot stones; the straw burns, the husk comes off and partly burns too, whilst the grain is being roasted.

From the time when some intelligent man perceived when crushing a grain of corn, perhaps by chance, between two stones, that flour might supply a more delicate food than roasted grain, the art of the miller was discovered. There are three ways of preparing flour: pounding in a mortar, trituration on a flat surface, and true grinding by means of a mill turned by the hand or other motor power—animals, water, wind, steam.

The mortar, used by a great number of savage or half-civilised tribes to crush not only grain but also the roots of starchy plants, cassava, yam, etc., must have been known for a very long time. Its most primitive form is met with among the Indians of North America—a block of granite or sandstone in which a cavity has been made, with a piece of porous rock, almost cylindrical, for the pestle. In Africa and Oceania the mortar and pestle are of wood. Almost everywhere the pounding is done by women. The rudest hand-mills, such as are met with among the Arabs, the Kabyles, the Bushmen, are made of a round stone pierced in the centre, turned on another stone by means of a handle passing through the hole. Incisions on the triturating surface of the millstone is not found as yet in these primitive machines.

The preservation of food is known to a great number of savage and half-civilised tribes. The Eskimo preserve their meat by means of cold, many fisher peoples resort to salting, the art of preparing true pemmican by enclosing the food in a mass of grease or honey is known to the Veddahs of Ceylon, to Negroes, etc.

Stimulants.—Among most savage peoples special fermented beverages are found: “koumiss,” or fermented mare’s milk, among the Turco-Mongols; bamboo beer among the MoÏs of French Indo-China; millet or eleusine beer among the Negroes; sago-juice wine among the populations of the coast of the Indian Ocean—Dravidians (Fig. 81), Indonesians, Malays; “pulque,” derived from the juice of the agave, among the Mexicans of the high table-lands. I must lastly mention “kava,” the national beverage of the Polynesians, concocted from the juice of the leaves of a pepper-plant (Piper methysticum), which is made to ferment by means of the ptyalin of the saliva, these leaves being previously chewed in company, each spitting out his “quid” into the common dish.

The distillation of fermented liquids for the purpose of obtaining alcohol is known to most semi-civilised peoples. We need but instance the “arka” of the Turco-Mongols derived from “koumiss,” the arrack of the Chinese and Japanese, etc.

Among the stimulants, tonics, narcotics, drugs, etc., other than fermented beverages, and tea, coffee, and chocolate of international fame, must be mentioned the kola nut used as a stimulant on a large scale in the whole of Western Africa; the “matÉ” (Ilex paraguayensis) taking the place of tea in a large portion of South America; different roots and certain fish (like the Fistularia serrata of Java)[187] used by way of aphrodisiacs; lastly, the “coca” of the Peruvians and Bolivians (Erithroxylon coca), the leaves of which taken as an infusion plunge you, says Mantegazza, in the most delicious dreams, while pulverised and chewed with lime they only act as a stimulant. It is possible that the chewing of betel or siri, that is to say, areca palm nut mixed with shell lime and wrapped in a leaf of betel (Chavica betle), produce the same effect; but this habit appears to be induced by hygienic considerations in regard to the mouth. However that may be, the chewing of betel nut, inseparable from Malaysian civilisation, always has a tendency to blacken the teeth of peoples addicted to it.[188]

The practice of tobacco smoking, universal at the present day, only spread into Europe in the sixteenth century. In the primitive home of this plant, America, the Indians smoke moderately, although the pipe with them plays a ceremonial part (“the calumet of peace,” etc.). The pipe, which in Europe is yielding place to the cigar, is still held in great honour throughout the whole of Asia, where ethnographers point out more than 150 ethnic varieties of this object, without counting the numerous forms of “narghile.” The cigarette appears to be of Malay origin.[189] The habit of smoking opium, which so speedily becomes an invincible passion, tends at the present day to spread wherever Chinese influence penetrates: in Corea, Indo-China, etc.

The practice of smoking haschish, a product of Indian hemp (Cannabis Indica), is localised in Persia and Asia Minor; but it is found also among the Baluba Negroes of the Congo basin, who attach to it a great importance from the politico-religious point of view.

Not satisfied with eating, drinking, inhaling by the mouth, and chewing stimulants, man absorbs them too by the nose. The habit of taking a pinch of snuff, formerly the fashion in the best society of Europe, seems now to be relegated to the lower classes. But among several of the Bantu Negroes of Uganda, of the Cameroons, and the east coast of Africa, snuff-taking (introduced by Europeans?) is still in great honour, and Kafirs in high positions carry coquettishly very small snuffboxes in the lobe of their ears. Instead of snuff, the Mura Indians of the Lower Amazon take “parica,” a very stimulating powder, which is derived from the dry seeds of a vegetable called “Inga.” The stuff is taken by two persons together, during the festival of the ripening of the Inga. One of these Indian braves puts the parica into a tube and puffs it into the nose of his companion.[190]

As Letourneau[191] judiciously observes, the chief motive for the use of various drugs and stimulants all over the earth is the desire experienced by every human being to emancipate himself, if even for a moment, from the ordinary conditions of existence. He is only too happy to be able to find at pleasure, in the midst of the fatigues, the annoyances, and the miseries of daily life, a moment of forgetfulness, the semblance of refuge.

Habitation.—The natural shelters—caverns, overhanging rocks, holes in the ground, thick foliage, hollow trunks of trees, etc.—must have been utilised by primitive man as places of abode. But which of these shelters served as a model for the first artificial dwellings? Not the cavern, for even now it is made use of just as it is by civilised populations in China, Tunisia, Afghanistan, and even France, in the valley of the Cher. Besides, with the exception, perhaps, of the huts of the Eskimo, half underground and covered with a dome of ice blocks, constructions in mineral substances are scarcely found among savage peoples.[192] Substances of vegetable origin were those first utilised for fixed habitations (hut, etc.), and substances derived from animals for dwellings which could be carried.[193]

The hut, which is the prototype of the fixed habitation, is derived probably from the screen formed of a series of branches stuck in the ground, as one sees it still among the Australians. Sometimes this screen is constructed of large palm-leaves resting against crossed branches, as for example among the Veddahs of Ceylon, Andamanese, the Botocudos, and other Indians of Brazil. The leafy branches of these screens had but to be arranged in the form of a circle or in two parallel rows, their tops joined together, the interstices stopped up with grasses, moss, and bark, in order that the frail shelter might be transformed into a stronger dwelling, a better protection against the inclemencies of the weather. The form which this primitive dwelling was thus obliged to take depended then, before everything else, on the arrangement of the branches of the screen: if put in the form of a circle the hut became conical provided the branches used in its construction were rigid and but little spread out (Fuegians); hemispherical, cupola-shaped, if they were flexible and leafy (Australians); if they were placed in two parallel rows the hut took the form of a two-sided roof, flat (Indians of the Amazon), or convex (Todas), according to the materials.

Trying to secure themselves still better from the rain, the wind, and the sun, the first architects must have dug out the soil beneath the hut, as the Ainus, the Chukchi, the Kamtchadales still do at the present time, and this may have suggested the idea, as Tylor says,[194] of extending the vertical walls above the ground. The rushes, the little twigs, and the clods of potter’s clay or grass which were used at first to stop up the holes, eventually formed the walls, and the ancient hut thus raised was transformed into a dwelling a little more comfortable, having roof and walls. This was probably the origin of the hive-shaped huts of the Zulu Kafirs (Fig. 41), and the cylindrical, conical-roofed huts of the Ovampos (Fig. 42), and the Gauls of the time of CÆsar. Straw entering into the composition of the roof, and sometimes even the body of these dwellings, they may be styled straw huts or thatched huts. As to the quadrangular huts, they are transformed in the same manner into those little houses so characteristic of the Muchikongos, of French Congo and the coast of Guinea.[195] Among the peoples inhabiting the shores of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, from the Kamtchadales and the Indians of the north-west of America to the Maoris and the natives of Madagascar, the quadrangular houses are erected on poles even when they are far from water. The materials of which they are constructed are bamboos, reeds, and palm-leaves.[196]

In order to give solidity to the straw and reed-built walls, it must have been necessary at an early period to plaster them over with potter’s earth (Senegal, palafittes of the bronze age in Europe). In very dry countries it was seen that lumps of clay were able of themselves to form sufficiently solid walls, and this observation has led naturally enough to the making of sun-dried bricks, which were known to the Babylonians, to the Egyptians, and are still used to-day in the Sudan, in Turkestan, and Mexico.

Movable Habitations.—From the moment when the tired hunter of primitive times fell asleep beneath the skin of a wild beast spread out on two or three poles, and folded it up on the morrow to carry it away with him in his wanderings, the tent was invented. Skins continued to be the best material for its construction until the invention of felt and stuffs, plaited or woven of a sufficient breadth. Bark has only been used exceptionally, in Siberia for example, and for summer tents only (Fig. 43). Like the hut, the tent may be circular, conical (Indians of North America), cupola-shaped (Kafirs), or quadrangular in the form of a prismatic roof (Thibetans, Gypsies). The last-mentioned of these forms has not been improved on, and the Arab tent of the present day, which is derived from it, differs from its prototype only in its dimensions and the awning set up at the entrance. On the other hand, the two circular forms have been improved on by the use of pieces of wattling instead of poles, and felt instead of skins. The tent has thus become a comfortable dwelling, the best suited to the life of half-civilised nomads, a real house with a roof, conical in the “Gher” of the Mongols (Fig. 44), almost hemispherical in the “Yourte” of the Kirghiz.[197] This dwelling of the nomads has even served as a model for the permanent wooden habitations of the tribes of the Yenisei or Altai. Their wooden house has a ground-plan of hexagonal or octagonal form, imitating the circular yourte or felt tent (Fig. 45), and it is only little by little, under Russian influence, that it is transformed into a four-sided house.[198] The “mazankis” of the Teleuts of Siberia and the Little Russians with their walls of fascines plastered with clay and lime, are only imitations of wattled tents.

As social life becomes more complicated, there appear, side by side with the dwelling properly so called, other structures: granaries and storehouses, ordinarily built on wooden pillars (among the Malays and the Ainus), or on a clay stand (among the Negroes of the Sudan) or a wooden support (Fig. 42), to protect them against the attacks of wild beasts. Access to them, as to the houses on poles, is gained by primitive ladders, a series of notches in a tree-trunk. Other structures, light straw huts on trees, serve as refuges in case of attack and as posts of observation to watch the movements of enemies. The idea of defence was also the first motive for the grouping of houses into villages. In non-civilised countries almost always the villages and urban agglomerations are surrounded with palisades (Kraal of the Kafirs, Fig. 46), ditches, sometimes filled with traps and prickles (Laos), lastly, with walls. Watch-towers replace the airy posts of observation on trees (example: Lesghi village of the Caucasus). According to the forms of propriety (see Chapter VII.), several families may inhabit enormous houses in which each has a special apartment adjoining the common space in which dwell the non-married people (Nagas, Mossos, Pueblo Indians). The “communal houses,” so general in all Oceania and among certain peoples of Indo-China, which serve at the same time as “bachelor’s dens,” as “clubs,” as temples, as inns, represent the common rooms of phalansteries as separated from the private parts.

With habitations are naturally connected furniture, methods of heating and lighting. Among primitive peoples all the furniture consists of some skins and straw or dry grass for bed and seat. Mats are already a sign of a fairly advanced civilisation; carpets, seats, and beds come after (Figs. 44 and 120). The wooden pillow in the form of a bench is found from Japan and New Guinea to the country of the Niam-Niams and the Eastern Sudan, where it must probably have penetrated from Egypt. Chests for linen, plate, etc., are quite late inventions.

For heating purposes a fire in the middle of the hut was used in the first instance. The Fuegians burn enormous trees, which project from the hut and are brought forward into the fire as the end is consumed. The smoke issues by the open extremity of the hut. The Altaians, the Kamtchadales, the Tunguses, the Kalmuks, are content with a similar fire kept in the middle of the tent or wooden house (Figs. 44 and 45). Among the Russian peasants one may meet with houses, “koornaÏa izba,” having a stove, but not a chimney; the smoke issues by the windows and by an orifice in the roof. In Corea the smoke of the stove is carried under the planks; in China under a sort of clay bed (Kang). The mantelpiece, raised above the hearth, appears to be a European invention which preceded that of the true chimney, which latter appeared in the eleventh century. Among the Eskimo the seal oil, which burns in great lamps of earth dried in the sun, serves to give warmth and light at the same time.

Very finely made lamps have been described as existing among the Indians of North America. The Polynesians burn coco-nut oil in a half of the shell of the coco-nut itself, using the fibres which cover the fruit by way of wick. In Egypt, in Babylon, in Europe, lamps have been known from the earliest times.[199] But most primitive peoples are still content to burn fat pine-knots or resinous torches for lighting purposes. The MoÏs-Lays of French Indo-China obtain light by means of little pieces of fir-wood burning aloft on a chandelier formed of a double metal fork.[200] This description may be applied word for word to the “loocheena” of the Russian peasants, the use of which has not disappeared at the present time. Moreover, the torch was much used in the whole of Europe side by side with closed and open lamps before the invention of the candle, the light of which grows dim to-day before the petroleum lamp even in China and Turkestan, and before the electric light among us.

Dress and Ornament.—To say that primitive man went about quite naked is almost a commonplace, but to say that nudity is not synonymous with savagery would appear a paradox to many. And yet nothing is more true. Among the peoples who know nothing of dress there are some quite savage, like the Fuegians, the Australians, the Botocudos, and others who have attained a certain degree of civilisation, like the Polynesians (before the arrival of Europeans) and the Niam-Niams. Let us remember, moreover, that the Greeks of classic antiquity only half covered their nakedness. It does not necessarily follow that the less clothes a people wears the more savage it is. It is a question of climate and social convention, entirely like the emotion of modesty, which is not at all something natural and innate in man. It is not met with among animals, and one could mention dozens of cases of peoples among whom the sentiment is entirely lacking. On the contrary, the fashion of covering the female genital organs, for example among different tribes of the Amazon,[201] and the male organs among the New Caledonians[202] or the New Hebrideans, is such as rather to attract attention to these parts than to hide them. The same thing may equally be said of the little ornamented aprons barely covering the genital organs which are worn by the Kafir women (Fig. 47), etc. Certain authors (Darwin, Westermarck) even think that ornament in general, that of the region of the abdomen in particular, was one of the most powerful means of sexual selection, by attracting attention to the genital organs. It is, rather, the garment which gives birth to the sentiment of modesty, and not modesty which gives birth to the garment. Among a people as civilised as the Japanese, men and women bathe together quite naked without any one being shocked. It was the same in Russia during the last century.

And yet, to prove how conventional all this sentiment of modesty is, it is only necessary to say that the Japanese are shocked to see the nude in works of art;[203] that it is as indecent for a Chinese woman to show her foot as for a European woman to expose the most intimate parts of her body; that a Mussulman woman surprised in the bath by indiscreet eyes hastens before anything else to hide her face, the rest of the body being exposed to view without any great shock to modesty; that a European woman could never uncover her breast in the street and does it in a ballroom, etc.

Starting from the primordial nudity of mankind, we are led to inquire what was the motive which prompted men to clothe themselves. In countries with a rigorous climate it was the necessity of protecting themselves from cold and damp, but in the other parts of the world this has not been the case. The sentiment of vanity, the desire of being different from others, of pleasing, of inspiring with horror, begot ornaments which became transformed little by little into dress.

Adornment of the Body.—Strange as it may appear at the outset, the fact that ornament preceded dress is well established in ethnography. It is, moreover, often difficult to draw the boundary-line between the two. Thus the first and most primitive mode of personal adornment is certainly that in which the body itself is adorned without the putting on of any extraneous objects whatsoever. And the most simple of these primitive adornments, the daubing of the body with colouring matter, may also be considered as one of the first garments. Almost all peoples who go naked practise this mode of adornment (Figs. 59 and 124), but it is held in special esteem on the American continent. The colours most used are red, yellow, white, and black, yielded by such substances as ochre, the juice of certain plants, chalk, lime, and charcoal. Certain tribes of the Amazon basin fix a covering of feathers on their body, daubed with a sticky substance. The painting of the face (Figs. 158 and 159) is colouring only of a modified form. Thibetan women coat their face over with a thick layer of paste or starch, which with a refinement of coquetry they inlay with certain seeds arranged so as to form designs more or less artistic, without interfering with the red spots on the cheeks made with the juice of certain berries. Chinese women only put a thin coating of rice-starch without seeds, and the Javanese women, like our ladies of fashion, are content with rice powder. The red spots on the cheeks of Mongolian and Thibetan women are the prototypes of the paint which spoils so unnecessarily the fresh complexion and the faces, naturally so beautiful, of the women of Southern Europe (Spain, Serbia, Roumania).

The custom of applying lac to the teeth, in vogue among the Malays, the Chinese, and the Annamese; the colouring of the lips so generally practised from Japan to Europe; the dyeing of the nails and the hair with “henna” (Lawsonia inermis) in Persia and Asia Minor; lastly, the painting of the eyebrows and eyelashes in the east, the dyeing of the hair in the west, are various manifestations of this same mode of primitive adornment.

Side by side with colouring must be placed tattooing, which leaves more indelible marks. There exists an infinite number of varieties of it, which, however, may be reduced to two principal categories: tattooing by incision, in which the design is produced by a series of scars or gashes, and tattooing by puncture, in which the design is formed by the introduction under the skin of a black powder by means of a needle. The first method is practised by dark-skinned peoples, Negroes, Melanesians, Australians (Figs. 14, 15, 149, and 150). In this case the incision having injured the non-pigmented dermic layer the scars are less coloured than the surrounding skin. Tattooing by puncture is only possible among clear-skinned peoples; among the latter may be instanced the New Zealanders, the Dyaks, and the Laotians, called “green-bellies.” In the case of a great number of peoples, tattooing is restricted to one sex only, chiefly to women (Ainus, Fig. 49, Chukchi), or else to certain categories of persons (postilions and drawers of carriages in Japan; sailors, criminals, and prostitutes in Europe).

Tattooing may be already considered as an ethnic mutilation; but there exist many others of a less anodyne character which are also connected with ornamentation. Chinese women deform their feet by means of tight bandages, and end by transforming them into horrible stumps (Figs. 50 and 51), which only allow them to walk by holding on to surrounding objects. European and other “civilised” women compress themselves in corsets to such an extent that they bring on digestive troubles, and even displacement of the kidneys.[204] The Australians draw out the teeth of young men on their reaching the age of puberty; Negroes of the western coast of Africa break the teeth and transform them into little points; the Malays file them into the form of a half-circle, a saw, etc. As to cranial deformations, a whole chapter would not suffice to describe them all. Topinard distinguishes four principal types of such, without counting the various special forms (trilobate skull of the islanders of Sacrificios, etc.). In general the skulls are lengthened by this practice into a sort of sugar-loaf, the top of which points more or less upward and backward. It is chiefly by compression, by means of bandages, boards, or various caps and head-dresses, that the desired form of the head is obtained.[205]

Intentional deformation is practised by the Chinooks and other Indian tribes of the Pacific slope of the United States; by the Aymaras of Bolivia; in the New Hebrides; among a great number of tribes of Asia Minor, where the deformed skulls recall those which Herodotus had described under the name of macrocephali. In Europe the custom of altering the shape of the head has spread a little everywhere; the best known deformation is that which Broca had described under the name of “Toulousaine,” and which is still practised both in the north and south of France (Fig. 52). What effect may deformation of the head have on intellectual development? Inquiries made in this direction afford no positive information; but it may be presumed that without being as harmful as some people believe, the deformation, by displacing the convolutions of the brain, may favour the outbreak of cerebral diseases in persons predisposed to them.[206]

Adornment with Objects attached to the Body.—The perforation of the ear, the nose, and the lips is made with the view of placing in the hole an ornament of some kind or other. Thus this species of mutilation may be considered as a natural step towards the second manner of adornment, which consists in placing or suspending gauds on the body. When people have few garments or none at all they are compelled to hook these objects to the body itself. The Botocudo perforates the lobes of the ears and the lower lip to insert into them heavy wooden plugs; other Indians of South America perforate the cheeks to stick feathers therein; the Papuans and the Australians the nasal septum, that it may hold a bone or stick (Figs. 53 and 149); the Caribs and the Negroes of the Ubangi the lower lip, for the insertion of crystal, bone, or metal rods, or simply pins. Similar customs persist, moreover, among peoples more amply clothed. The nose-rings among the Dravidians or among Tatar women; the ear-pendants of the American Indians (Figs. 158, 159, 160, and 161); the bone plugs placed in the cheeks among the Eskimo; the metal plates or precious stones inlaid in the teeth among the Malays of Sumatra, exist to prove this point. And the ear-rings of our civilised European women are the last vestige of a savage form of adornment which requires the mutilation of an organ.

The hair also is used to attach ornaments: flowers, jewels, ribbons, chips, feathers (Figs. 47, 117, 154, 158, 159, and frontispiece). As to the arrangement of the hair, it depends a great deal on its nature. The Negroes, with their short and woolly hair, are enabled to have a complicated head-dress (Figs. 47 and 141). Peoples with smooth hair are content to leave it floating behind (Americans, Fig. 160, Indonesians), or to gather it up into a chignon (Annamese, Coreans, Eskimo), in one or several plaits (Chinese), or in several rolls or bands, stuck together and disposed in various ways (Mongols, Japanese, Fig. 120, Chinese). But it is among peoples with frizzy and slightly woolly hair that the head-dress attains a high degree of perfection. We have but to mention the capillary structures of the Bejas (Fig. 138), the FulbÉs (Fig. 139), the Papuans and some Melanesians, whose mops of hair with a six-toothed comb coquettishly planted at the top are so characteristic (Figs. 152 and 153).

FIG. 53.—Dancing costume of natives of Murray Islands (Torres Straits).
Type of Papuan (in the centre), Melanesian (on the right), and mixed race (on the left).
(Phot. Haddon.)