HUMAN HISTORY 133 



a degree of skill and achievement is not otherwise comprehensible. 

 The achievements of late Palaeolithic man indicate the presence 

 of a considerable body of tradition, and the presence of tradition 

 in any considerable amount indicates social organization. It is 

 difficult to come to any conclusion with regard to early and 

 Middle Palaeolithic times. The mode of life of Neanderthal man 

 is perhaps apt to be considered as more primitive than was in 

 fact the case, owing to the somewhat brutal form attributed to 

 his bodily features. It has to be remembered that he practised 

 ceremonial burial, and was acquainted with the use of fire — very 

 significant facts which render it on the whole probable that social 

 organization of a kind existed. Possibly we may have to suppose 

 that social organization existed among lower Palaeolithic men. 

 They too employed fire, and it may well be that their mode of 

 life was not very different from that of the Tasmanians. 



Among all primitive races we find a form of social organization, 

 and unless it has been achieved more than once they are all 

 * relicts ' of the periods succeeding that in which men wandered 

 in family groups. In the first place, therefore, primitive races 

 are only comparable with prehistoric races which have achieved 

 this great step forward. They throw httle or no light upon the 

 conditions anterior to the taking of this step. Further, when we 

 look into the life of these races, we find that the form of social 

 organization is rigid. Men are bound hand and foot by custom.^ 

 It has been suggested that the peculiarly rigid nature of the 

 social organization among these races — the fact that they are 

 soaked in tradition — is due to their having been left out of the 

 main stream of progress. It has been suggested in fact that, 

 while other races have gone forward, they have more or less 

 stagnated, and that — this is what is important — the relative 

 stagnation has been the cause of the rigidness of the organization. 

 It follows that, to the extent to which this is so, primitive races 

 are not properly comparable with prehistoric races. But it may be 

 doubted if the facts are altogether as sometimes alleged. Doubt- 

 less the earhest social organization was far less rigid than it 

 afterwards became, and we must beware of attributing to those 

 early races, which first became socially organized, the features 

 characteristic of primitive races, at least in many aspects. But 

 we must date back the origin of social organization in all pro- 



» See J. J. Atkinson, Primal Law (in Social Origins, by Lang and Atkinson). 



