ART. 14 FIRE-MAKING APPARATUS HOUGH Jj 



in one place like other animal groups. With the use of tools, the 

 ownership of fire, organization based primarily on instinct and more 

 importantly on ideas, man presents himself as a candidate for the 

 conquest of the earth. We know that a very long time ago men in 

 the fire-preserving stage spread over large areas in Europe, lived there 

 for millenniums, and passed on. Other areas in western Asia and 

 northern Africa were also found to show evidence of the presence of 

 early man. The continuing thread that runs through this mass of 

 material culture of man is progress. The sum is progress, irrespec- 

 tive of the involved and doubtful questions concerning the time and 

 the man himself. It is not known whether some groups of early man 

 migrated without fire or whether at times fire was lost and became 

 forgotten. Our theories that fire is indispensable to all humankind 

 under all conditions are subject to modification. It is curious that 

 very many fire myths recount a stage of firelessness and a wresting 

 of fire from those having it. Myths are regarded by scientific men 

 as having a substantial basis of fact and it must be concluded that 

 the fire myths indicate that some groups of men were fireless. No 

 such condition of things has ever been observed among the tribes of 

 modern or historical man. The myths, therefore, may be considered 

 as portraying conditions of considerable antiquity. 



It may be assumed, therefore, that for a very long period man, pos- 

 sessed of fire and tending it with skill and care, did not know any method 

 of making it at will. How the making of fire artificially came to be 

 developed, for it was a development and not a discovery, can never 

 be known. Which of the methods takes precedence over the others 

 is also uncertain, but from the facts presented it would be argued 

 that wood methods occurred prior to mineral methods. 



The first makers of fire may have been confined to a single social 

 group, clan, or tribe. Among observed tribes instances are many 

 where the art of generating fire by wood friction was jealously 

 intrusted to one or a few individuals. Even among the cultured 

 nations of antiquity there is evidence that fire making w^as never gen- 

 erally practiced by the common people. Tribal possessions of land, 

 minerals, animals, and plants, as well as tribal secrets, form a phase of 

 observed aboriginal life. They are in the class of village industries or 

 the arts and industries of smaller social units possessing workers of 

 skill. Many of these special arts arise on the coalescence of human 

 units into larger social aggregations rather than by derivation by the 

 methods of acculturation as usually understood. In this sense fire 

 making artificially would originate in larger groups where the contact 

 of minds is more stimulating to invention. Such things were at first 

 kept secret under clan custom, dominance of the priesthood, or for 

 other causes, but in the course of time the technical process became 



