338 



THE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF BIOLOGY 



a.lly admitted that the eoliths were not 

 fashioned as tools but produced by natural 

 agencies and then utilized as tools. Their 

 finer fractures, usually confined to one 

 edge, are interpreted as the results of wear 

 during such use, and not as deliberate 

 attempts to produce an edge. 



In the light of ape behavior we can 

 venture one tentative step farther. Our 

 ancestors, like chimpanzees and children 

 and human adults, probably took pleasure 

 in demolishing. Learning among other 

 things to smash boulders, and especially 

 nodules of flint which long resisted and 

 then shattered cleanly, they may have 

 found themselves provided with attrac- 

 tively sharp and shining flakes, affording 

 a new toy. Manipulation of these may 

 have led to the discovery that the flakes 

 furnished the possibility of a new satis- 

 faction in hacking or scraping other ob- 

 jects. From such play in turn might 

 have grown increasing habits of tool use; 

 leading finally, when the mechanism of 

 culture fixation and transmission became 

 sufficiently developed, to the manufacture 

 of tools as tools. 



THE ORIGIN OF CLOTHING 



We have a few observations that bear 

 on aesthetics and religion. The apes are 

 indifferent about being clothed or dislike 

 it, although they appreciate a blanket in 

 which to wrap themselves at night. On 

 the other hand, they voluntarily drape 

 themselves with strings and rags, wearing 

 these for hours or days. The satisfac- 

 tion is clearly in the wearing as distinct 

 from the act of putting on. As Koehler 

 aptly says, the heightening of bodily 

 consciousness appears to be what gives 

 the pleasure. Chains or strings which 

 swish and sway with the motion of the 

 body are favored; a girdle would prob- 

 ably be meaningless, or its presence be 

 resented. The suggestion is that human 



dress for protection and human adornment j 

 spring from separate sources. This hasli 

 long been good anthropological doctrine. \ 

 However, in the history of man, protec- j 

 tive clothing and adornment intergrade 

 so extensively that a large class of phenom- | 

 ena can only be described as ornamental 

 dress. Even basically utilitarian clothing 

 is invariably affected by the fashion impulse 

 in man. One may conjecture that there 

 have been two developments little re-- 

 lated in origin which secondarily came to 

 overlap; and that dress and adornment, 

 as we know them in the history of human 

 culture, are largely hybrid. 



RUDIMENTS OP AESTHETICS 



Koehler's chimpanzees, in digging, dis- 

 covered some white earth. Tasting it 

 and finding it inedible, they spat it out. 

 Wiping their lips, they saw the wall 

 whitened. This soon became a game. 

 First with their lips and then with their 

 hands they painted with white earth 

 whatever walls and surfaces were avail- 

 able; but rarely their own bodies. There 

 was no attempt at design or figure. The 

 stuff was smeared on, and the more the 

 appearance of a surface changed, the 

 greater the satisfaction. The pleasure 

 apparently lay in using the muscles to 

 produce a visibly effective external ac- 

 complishment. The act of creation gave 

 satisfaction. 



These observations accord with the 

 behavior of small children, whose first 

 attempts at what we are wont to call 

 drawing or painting, even when an at- 

 tempt is made to guide them, normally 

 result in nothing more than smearing. 

 It is rather evident that the small child, 

 left to himself, does not attempt to draw 

 a house or a dog or a man. He converts 

 a white paper into a red or black one, a 

 monotonous into a variegated surface. 

 He defaces as much as he makes. It is 





