The Dawn of History: An Introduction to Pre-Historic StudyKeary, C. F. (Charles Francis)
History
The Dawn of History: An Introduction to Pre-Historic Study
Keary, C. F. (Charles Francis)
Archaeology; History, Ancient; Mythology
account for the remains found in the lake-dwellings, some of which show
a considerable degree of social advance, but an entire ignorance of the
use of bronze, while in the later ones bronze weapons are also found. We
may, then, regard the domestication of animals, to the extent that it
was practised by the Aryans in their Asiatic home, as a new thing in
Europe, and as introduced by the Aryans. It was on their flocks and
herds that these races chiefly depended for subsistence, and the
importance of the chase as a means of livelihood was very much less with
them than it was with the old hunter-tribes that formed the earlier
population of Europe. This in itself was a great advance in
civilization. It implied a regular industry, and the possession of
cattle was not only a guarantee against want, but an inducement to a
more regular and orderly mode of living.
There are no lessons so important to uncivilized nations as those of
providence and industry, and the pastoral life required and encouraged
both these qualities. It was necessary to store up at one time of year
food to support the cattle during another period; to preserve a
sufficient number of animals to keep the stock replenished. The cows too
had to be milked at regular times, and every night the flocks and herds
had to be collected into pens to protect them from beasts of prey, and
every morning to be led out again to the pasture. All this shows the
existence of a more organized and methodical life than is possible to a
hunter-tribe. The pastoral life, moreover, seems to be one particularly
suited to the patriarchal type of society. Each little community is
capable of supplying its own wants, and is also compelled to maintain a
certain degree of isolation. The necessity of having a considerable
extent of country for their pasturage would prevent different families
from living very near each other. In its simplest state, too, the
pastoral life is a nomadic one; so that the only social connection which
can exist among such a people is one of kinship, for having no fixed
homes they can have no settled neighbours or fellow-countrymen. The
importance attached to cattle in this stage of civilization is evidenced
by the frequent use of words in their origin relating to cattle, in all
the Aryan languages, to express many of the ordinary incidents of life.
Not only do cattle occupy a prominent place in Aryan mythology, but
titles of honour, the names for divisions of the day, for the divisions
of land, for property, for money, and many other words, all attest by
their derivation how prominent a position cattle occupied with the early
Aryans. The patriarch is called in Sanskrit ‘lord of the cattle,’ the
morning is ‘the calling of the cattle,’ the evening ‘the milking time.’
The Latin word for money, _pecunia_, and our English word ‘fee’ both
come from the Aryan name for cattle. In Anglo-Saxon movable property is
called ‘cwicfeoh,’ or living cattle, while immovable property, such as
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