Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/104

 84 A Short History of The World A CONTEMPORARY LAKE VILLAGE These Borneo dwellings are practically counterparts of the homes of European Neolithic communities 6000 B.C. pasture to summer pasture, was also growing up. The nomadic peoples were on the whole hardier than the agrieulturalists ; they were less prolific and numerous, they had no permanent temples and no highly organized priesthood ; they had less gear ; but the reader must not suppose that theirs was necessarily a less highly developed way of living on that account. In many ways this free life was a fuller life than that of the tillers of the soil. The individual was more self-reliant ; less of a unit in a crowd. The leader was more important ; the medicine man perhaps less so. Moving over large stretches of country the nomad took a wider view of life. He touched on the confines of this settled land and that.