no SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



self-contained, with external exchanges as a subordinate matter, however 

 important. 



Whatever may be found hereafter concerning the phases through which 

 the early cultivating societies developed in their primary homes, there is 

 little doubt that the spread of their scheme of life occurred in most direc- 

 tions in two stages. The first went with the hoe, used chiefly by women, 

 and with domestic animals for food or milk, but not for work, and the 

 second with the plough drawn by domestic animals under male control, 

 as well as with the increasing use of domestic animals as carriers and 

 workers in other ways such as the turning of a water-wheel. At a later 

 stage comes the relief given to women from the work of crushing grain. 



VI. The Spread of the Idea of Cultivation, and its Primary 



Modifications. 



The first of these two rather artificially contrasted stages is the one 

 that spread into intertropical Africa. There were special difficulties here. 

 Firstly the climate made steady prolonged efficient exertion difficult in many 

 areas. Then the fundamental crops, wheat and barley, would not thrive 

 in most parts and inferior grains and other plants became the important 

 crops. Further, there were practically no wild plants in intertropical 

 Africa that the native cultivator contrived to domesticate ; so progress 

 depended largely on plants deliberately introduced, as for example via 

 Egypt or by Arabs, Portuguese, etc., in later times. The introduction of 

 maize, manioc, etc., from America has made a huge difference to Africa. 

 Fly belts in several regions, also lack of salt and phosphorus deficiency, 

 and no doubt climatic factors, limited the value of domestic animals in 

 Africa between the Tropics. The plough reached the Niger in due course, 

 and Abyssinia also presents a special case, but, these apart, it is the 

 lowlier stage of agriculture, supplemented by survivals of hunting and 

 collecting, that is characteristic of the region. Nevertheless, the social 

 life of African cultivators generally has at its base some feeling towards 

 the idea of a trust handed along the generations. Systems of land tenures 

 and utilisation vary greatly but usually gather around an idea of the land 

 as the basis of the group's life, and that land, however utilised by families 

 or individuals, is basically the property of the group or of the chief or king 

 as a sort of personification of the group. It is something either given by 

 nature or acquired or lost through war rather than something bought or 

 sold, and leases are nearly always subject to customary limitations and not 

 intended to lead to alienation in permanency. 



Archaeologists think agriculture spread into central Europe at first 

 with the hoe and the non-permanent village that is a feature of parts of 

 intertropical Africa ; and there are indications of the same scheme in 

 forested and therefore backward parts of central India and elsewhere in 

 south-east Asia as well as in north Korea. It is a useful hypothesis, not 

 as yet proved, that this was the first stage of agriculture in most regions, 

 save where irrigation offered the simple method of flooding with water 

 containing fertilising silt. 



Agriculture with the plough has now ousted this scheme from Europe 

 and most of Asia and, in this superior stage, the village becomes more 



