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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



Then, too, lisli ini>ilit <ir;i(hially be- 

 come more abundant, or s^ome of these 

 tribes might move to a place where 

 there always were ])k'nty of fish, so that 

 they would be living in an environ- 

 ment which differed from that in which 

 their customs were formed; and yet 

 we find that often even then they 

 adhere to their old customs in contra- 

 diction to the new or altered environ- 

 ment. 



We have just such a case in the Jews. 

 It is often said that the Jew's prohibi- 

 tion against eating pork and oysters 

 and lobsters originated in hygienic con- 

 siderations; that these were climati- 

 cally unsafe foods for him in Palestine. 

 It is likely that this explanation is more 

 picturesque than true. Ancient Pales- 

 tine was not a country in which hogs 

 could l^e raised with economic profit, 

 and so they were not raised; and the 

 Philistine and Phrenieian kept the Jew 

 from the coast where alone he might 

 have obtained shellfish. Eating neither 

 food, he acquired an aversion for them ; 

 and having the aversion, he said to 

 himself that it was dangerous and irre- 

 ligious to run counter to the aversion- 

 just like our Pueblo Indian ; and ended 

 up by announcing that the Lord had 

 issued the prohil)ition. Surely this is 

 taking us a long way from the starting 

 point of natural environment. This 

 environment may indeed be said to 

 have furnished the first occasion ; but 

 the determining causes are of an en- 

 tirely <lifferent kind— psychic or cul- 

 tural, however we may want to call 

 them. If any doubt remains, we need 

 unlv look at the orthodox Jew of today 

 in our country, where environment 

 til rusts some of his t;d)ooed foods at 

 him as economically and hygienically 

 satisfactory, and he still shudders at 

 the thought of tasting them. 



If this has happened among a civi- 

 liz(Ml and intelligent peo]ile, the like 

 must have occurred innumerable times 

 among uncivilized tribes. 



The invention of agriculture has 



often been associated with climatic fac- 

 tors. The first theory was that farm- 

 ing took its rise in the tropics, where 

 agriculture came naturally. Only after 

 people had acquired the habit and 

 moved into other countries did they 

 take their agriculture seriously on 

 bringing it with them into these less 

 favorable habitats. But it is just as 

 easy to believe that the reverse hap- 

 pened. The attempt has actually been 

 made to prove from the Southwest that 

 it was the people of arid countri(>s who 

 invented agriculture, necessity (h-i\iiig 

 them to it through shortage of natural 

 sui)plies. McGee^ has argued elabo- 

 rately for this view on the Ijasis of con- 

 ditions among the Papago of Arizona 

 and the Seri of Sonora. 



Xow it is plain that mere guessing is 

 distinctly an unscientific procedure. In 

 this particular case we can be reason- 

 ably sure that 1)oth guesses are wrong. 

 Agriculture did not come to the In- 

 dians of the Southwest either because 

 nature was favorable or because it was 

 unfavorable. It came because, for rea- 

 sons which we do not now need to ex- 

 amine, some people in southern ^Mexico 

 or Guatemala or the northern part of 

 South America turned agriculturists ; 

 and from them the art was gradually 

 carried, through nation after nation, to 

 our Southwestern tribes, and finally 

 even to the Eastern Indians. The rea- 

 sons for acceptance of this explanation 

 are numerous. First, is the distribu- 

 tion of native agriculture. The farm- 

 ing region is about equally divided 

 between the two continents, with its 

 middle somewhere about Central Amer- 

 ica. Then there is the fact that in Cen- 

 tral America and ^lexico there was the 

 greatest concentration of population, 

 which normally accompanies agricul- 

 ture. Then, pottery has evidently 

 spread out from the same center, and 

 the two arts seem to go hand in hand. 



1 W .7 McGee, The Beginning of Agrifulture. 

 Ami-rican Anthropoloi/ist, Vol. VIII, 1895, pp. 

 3.50-37.5. 



