Let us consider rapidly the multitude of technical problems that early men had to solve if they wished to survive, and, later, to improve their condition and to lighten the burden of life. They had to invent the making of fire and experiment with it in various ways. Not only the husbandman but also the nomad needed many tools, for cutting and carving, flaying, abrading, smoothing, crushing, for the making of holes, for grasping and joining. Each tool was a separate invention, or rather the opening up of a new series of inventions, for each was susceptible of improvements which would be introduced one by one. In early times there was already room for key inventions, which might be applied to an endless group of separate problems and which ushered in unlimited possibilities. For example, there was the general problem of how to devise a handle and how to attach it firmly to a given tool. Many different solutions were found for that problem, one of the most ingenious being that of the Eskimos and Northern Indians, namely, the use of babiche (strings or thongs of rawhide) by means of which the tool and handle are bound together; as the hide dries it shrinks almost to half its length and the two objects are inseparable. A tighter fit could hardly be obtained otherwise.

The husbandman had to discover the useful plants one by one — plants to use as food, or as drugs, or for other domestic purposes — and this implied innumerable experiments. It was not enough for him to discover a plant; he had to select among infinite variations the best modalities of its use. He had to capture animals and to domesticate the very few that were domesticable,⁵ to build houses and granaries, to make receptacles of various kinds. There must have been somewhere a first potter, but the potter’s art involved the conscious or unconscious cooperation of thousands of people. Heavy loads had to be lifted and transported, sometimes to great distances. How could that be done? Well, it had to be done and it was done. Ingenious people invented the lever, the simple pulley, the use of rollers, and later, much later, that of wheels.⁶ A potter of genius applied the wheel to his own art. How could a man cover his body to protect it from the cold or the rain or the burning sun? The use of hides was one solution, the use of leaves or bark another, but nothing equaled the materials obtained by the weaving of certain fibres. When this idea occurred to a great inventor, the textile industry was born.⁷ The earliest tools were made of stone or bones; when the practical value of metals was finally realized it became worth while to dig for their ores and to smelt them, to combine them in various ways; this was the beginning of mining and metallurgy. Each of the sentences of this paragraph could easily be expanded into a treatise.

In order to illustrate the almost uncanny ingenuity of “primitive” people, it may suffice to display the three following examples, taken in three parts of the world very distant from each other. The Australian boomerang is so well known that it hardly requires discussion; it is a missile weapon the curved shape of which is so cunningly devised that the weapon when thrown describes extraordinary curves and may even return to the sender. The South American⁸ tipiti is an elastic plaited cylinder of jacitara-palm bark which is used to express the juice of the cassava (or manioc); as the cylinder is lengthened, by the weight of a stone or otherwise, the internal pressure increases and the juice flows out. This invention is admirable in its simplicity and effectiveness, but what is more astonishing is that the Indians were able to discover the great nutritive value of cassava. The juice contains a deadly substance (hydrocyanic acid) which must be removed by cooking; otherwise, the consumer would be killed instead of nourished. How did the Indians find the treasure which could be enjoyed only after the poison spoiling it had been removed? My third example is the li

, a tripod used in China in prehistoric times.⁹ It is a three-legged cooking pot, the legs of which are shaped like cows’ udders; various foods may be cooked in each leg with a single fire burning in the middle.

These examples might easily be multiplied. Selected as they have been in three corners of the world as remote from one another as could be, they illustrate the wide distribution of genius. We well know that whatever amount of civilization we enjoy today is the gift of many nations; we do not know so well that the same was already true thousands of years ago. Prehistorians have proved beyond doubt the existence of sophisticated cultures at very early times in many places. This does not disprove the monogenesis of mankind. It is highly probable that the new species Homo sapiens originated in a single place, but so long ago that by the time at which the earliest observable cultures flourished man had already invaded a good part of the world.

Travel was much slower and more difficult in the past than it is now, and one might be tempted to conclude that primitive man moved very little and did not rove far away from his hiding place. That conclusion would be wrong. To begin with, we may observe that the speed of communication did not increase materially until the steam age, a century ago. Primitive people could move as fast as Napoleon’s soldiers; sometimes they moved much faster. It is now generally agreed that there was considerable travel, individual and tribal (migrations), in the earliest days that scientific research can reach. For example, the Americas were discovered and colonized thousands of years ago by people coming over from Siberia and crossing the Bering Strait region; every American Indian is ultimately of Asiatic origin. The migrations were probably more frequent and more abundant in the oldest prehistoric periods before the invention of the agricultural arts, for as soon as people mastered those arts they became naturally more sedentary and more timid.

The passage from nomadic to settled life was perhaps the most pregnant step up in the whole history of mankind. That passage was far more important than the ones from stone to bronze or from bronze to iron; it might be called the passage from food gathering to food producing. Man could not settle down for life in any one place until he was secure from enemies, and this implied association with other men and some kind of government, nor until he was secure from want, and this implied the possibility of obtaining in the neighborhood enough food for himself, his family, and his beasts; it implied the arts and the folklore of agriculture. It has been remarked above that the development of mankind does not synchronize everywhere. Some people are more advanced than others, nor do they all pass through the same stages. The passage from nomadic to settled life occurred many millennia ago in some places, yet it has not been completed today by the Arab Bedouins. Man always was the child of circumstances, and since his environment varied enormously from place to place, he was bound to develop differently in different regions.

Men who had learned to cultivate the land were gradually blessed (and cursed) with the ownership of more and more things and bound to the soil by more and more ties. As to their nomadic brethren, roving in search of better h...