330 THE HUMAN SPECIES 



Afterwards the vessels were allowed to dry and then burnt 

 either on the open fire, or, in later times, in clay ovens. In the 

 East (Asia and Egypt), brick ovens were used from the earliest 

 times. 



Clothes^ Plaiting and Weaving. Animals carry their clothes 

 on their bodies, as scales, feathers or hair. Man has to make 

 clothes for himself in order to cover his naked body, and to 

 protect himself from the cold. This is a characteristic difference 

 between man and beast. 



There are indeed many savage races in the tropics who go 

 about either entirely naked, or clothed only with a loin cloth. 

 Antediluvian man, however, had to protect himself against 

 considerable changes of temperature, and to see that his body 



FIG. 159. Neolithic pottery from South-west Germany. Vessel of the goblet type. 

 (Swabian Exploration Reports, VII.} 



was kept warm. Obviously it is impossible to say whether any 

 feelings of modesty, such as generally distinguish man from 

 animals, were experienced as early as this. 



In the drawings of the prehistoric reindeer hunters man 

 appears naked, but the large number of flint instruments for 

 skinning found in palaeolithic deposits show that he wore clothes, 

 and that these were made of the hides of the animals he hunted. 

 These hides must have undergone some kind of preparation to 

 make them soft and supple. A sort of tanning, by means of 

 rubbing and pounding the brains of a slaughtered animal on the 

 inner side of the hide is, according to Conservator Krause of 

 Berlin, of great antiquity, and produces a very soft leather. In the 

 Bronze Age tanning with alum was known, as Olshausen noted 

 in the leather found in the barrows of Amrum. O. Schrader, 



