Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/401

Rh meant that there was a jealous old sire, who kept the women to himself, as in Mr. Atkinson's theory. As we can scarcely expect to reach certainty on this essential point, anthropology becomes (like history in the opinion of a character in Silas Marner), "a process of ingenious guessing." But, embarking on conjecture, I venture to suggest that the problem of the commissariat must have kept the pristine groups very small. They "lived on the country," and the country was untilled. They subsisted on the natural supplies, and the more backward their material culture, the sooner would they eat the country bare as far as its resources were within their means of attainment. One can hardly conceive that such human beings herded in large hordes, rather they would wander in small "family" groups. These would be mutually hostile, or at least jealous; they could scarcely have established a modus vivendi, and coalesced into the friendly aggregate of a local tribe, such as Arunta, Dieri, Urabunna, and so on. Such tribes have now their common councils and mysteries, lasting for months among the Arunta. We cannot predicate such friendly union of groups in a tribe, for the small and jealous knots of really early men, watchfully resenting intrusion on their favourite bays, pools, and hunting or browsing grounds. As to marriage relations, it is not improbable that "sexual solidarity," (as Mr. Crawley calls it), the separation of the sexes—the little boys accompanying the men, the little girls accompanying the women—and perhaps also "sexual tabu," coupled with the jealousy of male heads of groups, may already have led to raids for women upon hostile groups. The smaller the group, the more easily would sexual jealousy prohibit the lads from dealings with the lasses of their own group.

There might thus, in different degrees, arise a tendency towards exogamy, and specially against son-and-mother, and brother-and-sister marriage. The thing would not yet