Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776Reilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Women usually stayed at home caring for children, preparing
meals, and making baskets. They also made wool felt and spun and wove
wool into a coarse cloth. Flax was grown and woven into a coarse linen
cloth. Spinning the strands into one continuous thread was done on a
stick, which the woman could carry about and spin at anytime when her
hands were free. The weaving was done on an upright or warp-weighted
loom. People of means draped the cloth around their bodies and fastened
it with a metal brooch inlayed with gold, gems, and shell, which were
glued on with glue that was obtained from melting animal hooves. People
drank from hollowed- out animal horns, which they could carry from
belts. They could tie things with rawhide strips or rope braids they
made. Kings drank from animal horns decorated with gold or from cups of
amber, shale, or pure gold. Men and women wore pendants and necklaces
of colorful stones, shells, amber beads, bones, and deer teeth. They
skinned and cut animals with hand-axes and knives made of flint dug up
from pits and formed by hitting flakes off. The speared fish with
barbed bone prongs or wrapped bait around a flint, bone, or shell fish
hook. On the coast, they made bone harpoons for deep-sea fish. The
flint ax was used to shape wood and bone and was just strong enough to
fell a tree, although the process was very slow.
The king, who was tall and strong, led his men in hunting
groups to kill deer and other wild animals in the forests and to fish
in the streams. Some men brought their hunting dogs on leashes to
follow scent trails to the animal. The men threw stones and spears with
flint points at the animals. They used wood clubs to beat them, at the
same time using wood shields to protect their bodies. They watched the
phases of the moon and learned to predict when it would be full and
give the most light for night hunting. This began the concept of a
month. Circles of stone like Stonehenge were built with alignments to
paths of the moon.
If hunting groups from two clans tried to follow the same deer,
there might be a fight between the clans or a blood feud. After the
battle, the clan would bring back its dead and wounded. A priest
officiated over a funeral for a dead man. His wife would often also go
on the funeral pyre with him.
The priest also officiated over sacrifices of humans, who were
usually offenders found guilty of transgressions. Sacrifices were
usually made in time of war or pestilence, and usually before the
winter made food scarce.
The clan ate deer that had been cooked on a spit over a fire,
and fruits and vegetables which had been gathered by the women. They
drank water from springs. In the spring, food was plentiful. There were
eggs of different colors in nests and many hare to eat. The goddess
Easter was celebrated at this time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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