FREDERICK ENGELS ORIGIN OF FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY AND STATE 41 of man from the animal kingdom, the acceptance of this transitional tery. The bow and arrow was for savagery what the iron sword stage ras for barbarism and firearms for civilization, namely, the decisive vith the utilization of fish (under whic head we also include crabs, shellfish and other aquatic animals) for food and with the empl nt of fire. These two are complement 2, BARBARISM ower Stage. Dates from the introduction of pottery. This By following the rivers and coasts man was able, even in his savage latter had its origin, demonstrably in many cases and probably state, to spread over the greater part of the earths surface. The everywhere, in the coating of baskets or wooden vessels with cla in order to render them fireproof; whereby it was soon discover d paleoli thic hich belong wholly, or predom that moulded clay also served the purpose without the inner vessel antly, to this period and are scattered over all the continents p to this point we could regard the course of evolution as be- are evidence of these migrations. The new y-occupied terara ly valid for tive of locality. With the advent of barbarism, however, we reach their command of the art of producing fire by friction, made avail- a stage where the difference in natural endowment of the two great able new food stuffs, such as farinaceous roots and tubers, baked gins to assert itself. The characteristic feature of th in hot ashes or in baking pits (ground ovens), and game, eriod of barbarism is the domestication and breeding of animals hich was occasionally added to the diet after the invention of the nd the cultivation of plants. Now the Eastern Continent, the so first weapons-the club and the spear. Exclusi vely hunting people lled old World, contained almost all the animals suitable fc such as figure in books, that is, peop les subsisting solely by hunting, nestication and ail the cultivable cereals with one exception; whi have never existed, for the fruits of the chase are much too precari- e Western, America, contained only one domesticable mamma ous to make that possible. As a consequence of the continued uncer the llama, and this only in a part of the South; and only one cereal fit for cultivation, the best maize. The effec have arisen at this stage, and continued for a long time. The Aus different natural co was that from now on the asians are of each hemisphere own special way of savagery. on the border lines the various stages are diHere Upper Stage. Begin ith the invention of the bow and arrow, whereby wild game became a regular item of food, and hunting one 2. Middle Stage. Begins, in the East, with the of the normal occupations, Bow, string and arrow constitute a very of animals; in the West, with the cultivation of edible plants by nstrument, the invention of which presupposes long neans of irrigation, and with the use of adobes. bricks dried in the accumulated experience and sharpened mental powers, and, conse We shall commence with the West because there this stage was tions, If we compare the peoples which, although familiar with the here outgrown until the European Conquest. ow and arrow, are not yet acquainted with the art of pottery(from At the time of their discovery the Indians in the which Morgan dates the transition to barbarism), we find of barbarism (to which all those found east of the Mississi even at this early stage, beginnings of settlement in villages, a cer nged) already engaged to a certain extent in the garden cultiva- tain mastery of the production of means of subsistence: wooden ves- ion of maize an den produce, which supplied a very substantial part of their food of bast, baskets woven from bast or rushes, and polished (neolithic) They lived in wooden houses, in villages surrounded by stockades The tribes of the Northwest, particularly those living in the region have already provided the dugout canoe and, in places, = f the Columbia River still remained in of s planks for housebuilding. All these advances are to be and were familiar neither with pottery nor with any kind example, among the Indians of Northwestern- America ltivation. On the other hand. the so-ca blo indians though familiar with the bow and arrow,know nothing of pot Mexico, the Mexicans, Central america
FREDERICK ENGELS ORIGIN OF FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY AND STATE 43 the middle stage of barbarism at the time of the Conquest. They pment of these two races. In fact, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexi- lived in fort-like houses built of adobe or stone; they cultivated co, who are reduced an almost exclusively vegetarian diet, have in artificially irrigated gardens, maize and other edible plants, a smaller brain than the more meat and fish-eating Indians in the arying according to location and climate, which constituted their lower stage of barbarism. At any rate, cannibalism gradually disap chief source of food, and they had even domesticated a few pears at this stage, and survives only as a religious rite or, what animals-the Mexicans the turkey and other birds, and the Peruvi- is almost identical in this instance, sorcery. ans the llama. They were furthermore acquainted with the working 3. Upper Stage. Begins with the smelting of iron ore and passes up of metals-except iron, which was the reason why they could into civilization through the invention of alphabetic writing and its th the use of ste and stone implement utilization for literary records. At this stage which, as we have Spanish Conquest cut short all further independent development already noted, was traversed independently only in the eastern hemi- In the east, the middle stage of barbarism commenced with here, more progress was made in production than in the domestication of milk and meat-yielding animals, while tages put together To it belong the greeks of ant cultivation appears to have remained unknown until very Age, the Italian tribes shortly before the foundation of Rome, the late in this period. The domestication and breeding of ca ermans of Tacitus and the Normans of the days of the Vikings. he form eem to have been the cause of the differ- Above all, we here encounter for the first time the iron plough- of the Aryans and the Semites from the remaining me nare drawn by cattle, making possible land cultivation on a wide barbarians. Names of cattle are still common to the European scale-tillage-and, in the condi and the Asiatic Aryans, the names of cultivable plants hardly at all. ally unlimited increase in the means of subsistence; in connection In suitable places the formation of herds led to pastoral life; among the Semites, on the grassy plains of the Euphrates and the into arable and pasture land-which, again, would have been impos- the aryans, on those of India, of the Oxus and the sible on a wide scale without the iron axe and spade. But with this Jaxartes, i of the Don and the dnie there also came a rapid increase of the population and dense popula als must have been first accomplished on the borders of such pas circumstances could have brought together half a million people peoples originated in areas which, far from being the cradle of man- under one central leadership; in all probability this never happened In the poems of Homer, particularly the Hliad, we find the upper forebears and even for people in the lower stage of barbarism. Con age of barbarism at its zenith. Improved iron tools, the bellows, age had taken to p the handmill, the potter's wheel, the making of oil and wine, the toral life, it would never have occurred to them to leave the grassy working-up of metals developing into an art wagons and war char- watered plains of their own accord and return to the forest regions ots, shipbuilding with planks and beams, the be which had been the home of their ancestors. Even when the Aryans tecture as an art, walled towns with towers and barings of archi- ind Semites were driven further north and west, they found it im possible to settle in the forest regions of Western Asia and Euro ages carried over by the Greeks in their transition from barbarism ntil they had been enabled, by the cultivation of cereals, to feed to civilization If we eir cattle on this less favourable soil, and particularly to pass the descriptions of the germans, who were on the threshold of that winter there. It is more than probable that the cultivation of cereals age of culture from which the Homeric Greeks were preparing to was introduced here primarily because of the necessity of providing advance to a higher one, we will see how rich was the development of production in the upper stage of barbarism The picture of the evolution of mankind through savagery ar The plentify the Aryans and the barbarism to the beginnings lization that i have here sketched ly the beneficial effects of these foods on the after Morgan is already rich h in new and, what is more, in- levelopment of may, perhaps, explain the superior devel- contestable features, i testable because they ar e taken straight from production; nevertheless it will appear faint and meagre com- 1 Orus: Now Amu Darya; Jaxartes: now Syr Darya -Ed pared with the picture which will unfold itself at the end of our jo