In the course of time (the New Stone Age) a higher race appears. It has more skilfully-made implements, rudimentary agriculture, weaving, and pottery, and tamed cattle. In these more advanced groups there was certainly some measure of social organisation, and it would be interesting to know if the control of it was to any extent divided between the sexes. To learn something of this phase of human development we turn to study the life of the lower races. Far away from the centres of civilisation, in the dense forests of Africa, in the remote islands of the Pacific, in the grim wastes of the Arctic, or in the extreme tips of the continents, we find survivors of the earlier phases of human development. The Australian was cut off from the stimulating contact of higher races a hundred thousand years ago or more. The Fuegians and the Veddahs, the Bushmans and some of the Central Africans, linger at about the same level. The Esquimaux have, in their deserts of ice, stereotyped the next chapter (the New Stone Age) in the story of humanity. Round the frontiers of old civilisations, like India and China, and in remote islands, we find other remnants of the infancy of the race. What can we learn from these fragments of prehistoric humanity about the lot of woman before civilisation began? Is there any general and consistent practice from which we may gather the story of woman's evolution? It seems to me, after a careful survey of the voluminous details, that we may make this general statement: Wherever there is an approach to a social or political system, the control of it is in the hands of the men. They may in cases, where we may suspect special circumstances, consult their women on social issues (of trade, or migration, or war), but they are the rulers, and in most cases they take no account whatever of the women's views. The woman quite commonly rules in the hut, but she is rarely represented in the council, and very rarely attains tribal power. The man generally hunts and fights (sometimes tills the fields and makes the clothes): the woman generally does all the work in or about the home, which is the greater part of the family's work. In very many cases she is treated respectfully, and is quite equal to her husband in the home--it is not at all true that the lower races always, or nearly always, treat their women as cattle--but the fact remains that she is very rarely equal to him outside the home, in dealing with tribal issues.