Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/420

400 works of Messrs. Fison, Howitt, Spencer, and Gillen, and many others, which, of course, must be consulted. My own provisional theory I give without compromising any allies.

I take it that very early man did not live in an undivided commune or "horde," of indefinite but considerable size, whose members without jealousy and without shame married "all through other." I think that difficulties of food supply made a big horde then impossible, and that sexual jealousy, in an age so animal, made promiscuity improbable in a high degree.

I conceive, with Mr. Darwin, that men then lived in small knots, probably under one polygamous male. He would drive away his sons as they approached puberty, and all the females, including his daughters, would be his harem. All such male heads of groups would resent poaching on their game, the area of their food-supply, and their female mates.

Here we have a rude exogamy. No young male may marry in the group or "hearth circle." But suppose that senescent or good-humoured patriarchs allowed, here and there, young males to bring in female mates captured from without, probably going shares in them at first. Groups in which this was done would extend their area, being stronger, through the young males in war. Such groups would increase in size and in area of food-supply, while the combined young males would confirm their several rights to their captured females.

Such groups would need names for all the other groups in their radius; these names would be given from without, and (by the analogy of blason populaire and of the names of American and Melanesian post-totemic groups) would probably be names of animals and plants.

Once accepted by each group, these sobriquets would give rise to speculation. "Why are we here Emus, Crows, Hawks, Frogs?" Myths would be invented, "Emu, Crow, Hawk, or Frog is our ancestor, or ancestral friend, or we