RESPONSIVE LIFE OF ORGANISMS 495 



primitive types of culture are relegated to the out-of-the- 

 way places of the earth. Comparative ethnology, therefore, 

 has had the same kind of opportunities as comparative 

 anatomy, and has made use of them with similar results; 

 i. e., cultural types have been described and classified. 

 Similarly, also, the different systems of classification have 

 not always been in agreement. A simple grouping based 

 on the main features of man's methods of getting a living 

 from the earth, will answer our present purpose. It recog- 

 nizes four principal stages in human progress: i) the 

 hunter stage; 2) the shepherd stage; 3) the artisan stage, 

 and 4) the inventor stage. 



The earliest of these is the hunter stage. It comprises 

 that long period during which primitive man lived 

 upon the products of nature, lived as a freebooter, picking 

 from the wild, cultivating nothing for food. He was less 

 provident than the squirrel or the ant, and far less indus- 

 trious. He was satisfied when present needs were met, and 

 accumulated nothing. He built only the rudest shelter, at 

 the first wore no clothing, and had no society. His food was 

 doubtless not very different from that of the cave bear, with 

 which he was a competitor; the flesh of animals and the 

 fruits and roots of plants; perhaps, also, with an occasional 

 feast of wild honey. His early home was by the waterside, 

 and fish were a most dependable part of his living. Fish he 

 could catch by hand, or, better, with a bone hook, or with a 



spear. It was easier to spear 

 ^ s ^ fr m a floating log, and a 

 ' W ... hollowed log with a pole for 



- - 



propulsion was probably his 

 FIG. 276. Co-operation. earliest conveyance. Larger 



canoes demanded more hands to propel them: and in 

 the propelling of these, and in the driving of the fish upon 

 the shoals may have begun cooperative labor. Cereal grains, 



