Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/698

678 Oceans, they were very much such, savages as the present inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, and lived after the same fashion. Like the Fuegians, they were probably divided into small clans, each of a few families, and these, from conflicting interests and other causes, would be constantly at war. The earlier palæolithic savages, living in caves and rock shelters, would be even more isolated and uncompromising in their treatment of strangers, for the game of any given district would only be sufficient to support a few. If in our day

 Lands intersected by a narrow frith Abhor each other, mountains interposed Make enemies of nations,"

in the time of palæolithic and early neolithic man every district the size of an English parish would be the hunting-ground of a clan, with fierce enemies on every side. In such a state of affairs a stranger (unless he were safely tied to a stake) would be a most undesirable person in proximity to the wigwam and the picaninnies.

If he paid a call it would very likely be—in the scarcity of other game—with the purpose of carrying off a tender foe for table use. Under such circumstances the child who ran to its mother, or fled into the dark recesses of the cave, upon first spying an intruder would be more likely to survive than another of a more confiding disposition. Often, during the absence of the men on a hunting expedition, a raid would be made, and all the women and children that could be caught carried away or killed. The returning warriors would find their homes desolate, and only those members of their families surviving who, by chance or their own action, had escaped the eyes of the spoilers. On the approach of an enemy—and "stranger" and "enemy" would be synonymous—the child which first ran or crawled to its mother, so that she could catch it up and dash out of the wigwam and seek the cover of the woods, might be the only one of all the family to survive and leave offspring. Naturally the instinct which caused the child to turn from the stranger to the mother would be perpetuated; and from the frequency of the habit at the present day it seems probable that many of our ancestors were so saved from destruction. We must remember that the state of society in which such occurrences would be frequent lasted many thousand years, and that probably scarcely a generation was exempt from this particular and unpleasant form of influence.

When we bear in mind that the play of young animals is almost always mimic war, it is well worthy of note how very early young children will take to the game of "hide and seek." I have seen a child of a year old who, with scarcely any teaching, would