Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/384

374 ties of Man, yet among the arts, beliefs, and customs, found among their tribes, there are comparatively few that cannot be matched elsewhere. They raise scars on their bodies like African tribes; they circumcise like the Jews and Arabs; they bar marriage in the female line like the Iroquois; they drop out of their language the names of plants and animals which have been used as the personal names of dead men, and make new words to serve instead, like the Abipones of South America; they bewitch their enemies with locks of hair, and pretend to cure the sick by sucking out stones through their skin, as is done in so many other regions. It is true that among their weapons they have one of very marked, perhaps even specific peculiarity, boomerang, but the rest of their armoury, the spear, the spear-thrower, the club, the throwing-cudgel, are but varieties of instruments common elsewhere, and the same is true of their fire-drill, their stone hatchet, their nets and baskets, their bark canoes and rafts. And while among the Australians there are only a very few exceptions to modify the general rule that whatever is found in one place in the world may be matched more or less closely elsewhere, piecemeal or as a whole, the proportion of such exceptions is smaller, and consequently the uniformity of development more strikingly marked, among most of the other races of the world who have not risen above the lower levels of culture.

In the next place, the collections of facts relating to various useful arts seem to justify the opinion that, in such practical matters at least, the history of mankind has been on the whole a history of progress. Over almost the whole world are found traces of the former use of stone implements, now superseded by metal; rude and laborious means of making fire have been supplanted by easier and better processes; over large regions of the earth the art of boiling in earthen or metal pots over the fire has succeeded the ruder art of stone-boiling; in three distant countries the art of writing sounds is found developing itself out of mere picture-writing, and this phonetic writing has superseded in several districts the use of quipus, or knotted cords, as a means of record and communication. In the chapter particularly devoted to evidence of progress, a number of facts are stated which seem to be records of a forward develop-