Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/94

 82 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

A uniform increase of numbers throughout society, while it does not directly disturb the relations of the parts, changes the relation of population to land, and thus intensifies the exertions needed to procure subsistence. This incites to new ways of exploiting the environment, which in turn bring individuals into new relations, and so cause a revolution of social structure. The advance from the hunting to the pastoral stage does not seem to have followed promptly the domestication of animals, but to have often awaited the pressure of population. Man seems first to have tamed animals for amusement. In Africa we find the Ovambo "very rich in cattle and fond of animal diet, yet their beasts would seem to be kept for show rather than for food." Says Biicher : " Generally speaking, the possession of cattle is for the negro peoples merely 'a representation of wealth and the object of an almost extravagant veneration' merely a matter of fancy." An Indian village in the interior of Brazil " resembles a great menagerie . . . . ; but none of the many animals are raised because of the meat or for other economic purpose." " On the whole, then, no importance can be attached to cattle-raising in the production of the food supplies of primitive peoples." The motor, then, that urges a primitive people on into the pastoral state is either the growing scarcity of game (a "cumulative effect "), or the increase of numbers.

The same driving force caused man to pass from herdmanship to tillage. Of the Navajos we read : " Indian corn .... was known to them apparently from the earliest times, but while they remained a mere hunting tribe, they detested the labor of planting. But as their numbers increased, the game, more regularly hunted, became scarce, and to maintain themselves in food, necessity forced them to a more general cultivation of corn, and the regu- lar practice of planting became established among them." Says Baden-Powell : " Necessity has forced Rajputs and others to take to agriculture." Wallace writes : " The prospect of starva- tion is, in fact, the cause of the transition [to agriculture] probably in all cases, and certainly in the case of the Bashkirs." Middendorf says : " Only the poorest Kirghises, driven by want, engage in tillage." An ancient chronicle, alluding to the passage