EESEARCHES 



INTO THE 



EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 



CHAPTEK I, 



INTEODIJCTION. 



In studying the phenomena of knowledge and art, religion and 

 mythology^ law and custom, and the rest of the complex whole 

 which we call Civilization, it is not enough to have in view the 

 more advanced races, and to know their history so far as direct 

 records have preserved it for us. The explanation of the state 

 of things in which we hve has often to be sought in the con- 

 dition of rude and early tribes ; and without a knowledge of 

 this to guide us, we may miss the meaning even of famihar 

 thoughts and practices. To take a trivial instance, the state- 

 ment is true enough as it stands, that the women of modern 

 Europe mutilate their ears to hang jewels in them, but the 

 reason of their doing so is not to be fully found in the circum- 

 stances among which we are living now. The student who 

 takes a wider view thinks of the rings and bones and feathers 

 thrust through the cartilage of the nose ; the weights that pull 

 the slit ears in long nooses to the shoulder ; the ivory studs let 

 in at the corners of the mouth ; the wooden plugs as big as 

 table-spoons put through slits in the under lipj the teeth of 

 animals stuck point outwards through holes in the cheeks ; all 

 familiar things among the lower races up and down in the 

 world. The modern earring of the higher nations stands not 



B 



