448 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



raony Avliich marks it ; and, with the continued militancy that com- 

 pounds and recompounds social groups, there goes at once the devel- 

 opment of political distinctions and the development of ceremonies 

 marking them. And, as we before saw that growing industrialism 

 diminishes the rigor of ceremonial rule, so here we see that it tends to 

 destroy those class-divisions which militancy originates, and to estab- 

 lish others which indicate differences of position consequent on differ- 

 ences of aptitude for the various functions which an industrial society 

 needs. 







OKIGIN OF THE PLOW AND WHEEL-CARKIAGE. 



Br E. B. TYLOR, F. R. S. 



THOUGH much has been written on that great engine of civiliza- 

 tion, the plow, yet the whole line of evidence as to its develop- 

 ment froni the simplest and earliest agricultural implements seems 

 never to have been put together, so that I venture to lay before the 

 Anthropological Institute the present notes. 



Not only the beginning of agriculture, but the invention of the 

 plow itself, is prehistoric. The plow was known to the ancient Egyp- 

 tians and Babylonians, and the very existence of these nations points 

 to previous thousands of years of agricultural life, which alone could 

 have produced such dense, settled, and civilized populations. It was 

 with a sense of what the plow had done for them that the old Egyp- 

 tians ascribed its invention to Osiris, and the Vedic bards said the 

 Ayvins taught its use to Manu, the first man. Many nations have 

 glorified the plow in legend and religion, perhaps never more poetically 

 than where the Hindoos celebrate Sitd, the spouse of Rama, rising 

 brown and beauteous, crowned with corn-ears, from the plowed field ; 

 she is herself the furrow {sitd) personified. Between man's first rude 

 husbandry and this advanced state of tillage lies the long interval 

 which must be filled in by other than historical evidence. What has 

 first to be looked for is hardly the actual invention of planting, which 

 might seem obvious even to rude tribes who never practice it. Every 

 savage is a practical botanist, skilled in the localities and seasons of all 

 useful plants, so that he can scarcely be ignorant that seeds or roots, if 

 put into proper places in the ground, will grow. When low tribes are 

 found not tilling the soil, but living on wild food, as apparently all 

 mankind once did, the reason of the absence of agriculture would seem 

 to be not mere ignorance, but insecurity, roving life, unsuitable climate, 

 want of proper plants, and, in regions where wild fruits are plentiful, 

 sheer idleness and carelessness. On looking into the condition of any 

 known savage tribes, Australians, Andamaners, Botocudos, Fuegians, 

 Esquimaux, there is always one or more of these reasons to account for 



