In the moderate allowance of 250,000 years [he says], there is time for stories to have wandered all around the world, as the Aggry beads of Ashanti have probably crossed the continent from Egypt, as the Asiatic jade has arrived in Swiss lake dwellings, as an African trade cowry is said to have been found in a Cornish barrow, as an Indian Ocean shell has been discovered in a prehistoric bone cave in Poland. This slow filtration of tales is not absolutely out of question. Two causes would especially help to transmit myths. The first is slavery and slave-stealing; the second is the habit of capturing brides from alien stocks, and the law which forbids marriage with a woman of a man's own totem. Slaves and captured brides would bring their native legends among alien people.

In prehistoric time there must have been much transmission of myth. And with myth went custom. Primitive man travelled, as is indicated by the similarity of axes and arrowheads discovered on both the old and new continents, and with him he carried his local traditions and customs.

It frequently happened that conquerors patterned them, selves after the conquered, borrowing their customs, habits, traditions-even their language. The Franks in Gaul, for instance, became Latinized. The Romans who conquered Athens were governed by their new environment. The Hyksos conquerors of Egypt were subjugated by its customs, its civilization. Somehow the old feeling always prevails.

But coming down to our own day-what, precisely, is custom as it concerns us? Custom is mob thought, is it not? Custom is made up of many customs. We submit to the tyrant for custom is a tyrant, you know!-through a vague desire to "hunt with the pack," to be one of the crowd. We do not wish to appear strange or conspicuous or queer. We are half afraid to give offence, to cause confusion. We dare not break down a belief. We do the thing that everyone else does because we are afraid to do otherwise.

That is custom. A funny thing-yet it holds the fabric of social life together. It makes it easier for us to mingle with one another, to understand one another. It keeps

the thin veneer of civilization above the layers of savagery that slumber in our souls.

"The iron age of the world belongs to the past, its golden one to the future," says James A. Farrar. Perhaps by studying the past we can glimpse the future-and see a bit of the gold that is promised.

We wish to make one fact absolutely clear before leaving this Introductory Chapter. We have not attempted to give the complete story of man from the dawn of life to the present day. Man passed through many stages of development-all interesting and all important. But this is not a history of man and how he has developed or what he has accomplished. It is a book of origins-a history of the manners, customs, traditions, and superstitions of man. Therefore, only that part of the history of man has been sketched which has direct bearing upon his manners and customs. For a more detailed account of man in his primitive state and of his evolution through the ages we recommend "The Golden Bough," by Sir James G. Frazer, "Origin and Evolution of Life," by H. F. Osborn, and Sir John Lubbock's "Origin of Civilization."

CHAPTER II

SEARCHING THE SOURCES

Trample out Minoan culture, it shoots up again in thousandfold splendour in the glory of Greece; crush out Greece, the whole world is fertilized; give the Roman world up to the fury of barbarian hordes, and the outcome is Modern Europe. We see one race stepping into another's place in the van of the march, but nothing of the continuous inheritance is lost. Every treading down of the seed results in a harvest richer than the last. Chaldean, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, European, bear the torch in turn; but the lampadophoria of human progress is continuous. In the progress of evolution races and nations count for no more than do individuals. Like individuals, races, empires, civilizations pass away,— but humanity proceeds onward. -ROBERT BRIFFAULT.

H

THE EARLY CIVILIZATIONS

OW would you like to take a rocking-chair journey around the world? How would you like to visit, in their native lands, the people from whose myths, legends, customs, and traditions we have so generously borrowed?

Here is a brief geographical survey that will carry you into lands strange and distant, among races civilized and uncivilized. You will learn to know who the Fijians are, and the Hottentots, and the Bushmen, so that when we speak of these people you will know and recognize them.

Our journey starts with the very birthplace of civilization, Egypt-the "gift of the Nile." It was in Egypt, shut in by the Red Sea and the desert, by the Mediterranean and the mountains, that the first precious seeds of culture and civilization were planted. Here one finds a highly advanced form of picture writing on papyrus— from which our word "paper" is derived-and a method of ploughing the fertile grounds very similar to that used by many peoples to-day. There is in the Necropolis of

Memphis a scene showing two ancient Egyptians ploughing with oxen yoked to a clumsy wooden plough.

No one knows when the Nile cut its way across the desert, dividing the fertile land and forming what is now Egypt-the country that forms the northeast extremity of Egypt. McCabe places the time in the Neolithic (New Stone) Age, possibly 10,000 years ago. The monumental history, a rich source of information concerning early civilization, begins with Menes, the first Pharaoh.

Parallel with the ancient beginnings of civilization in Egypt is a similar beginning in Sumeria. The Sumerians, who are of doubtful and mysterious origin, shaved their heads, wore woollen garments and wrote on clay. They

Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

fertilized their fields; they built tower-like temples; they were, in a word, a highly advanced and civilized people. Among the first civilizations we must include that of the Phoenicians, a seafaring Semitic people of antiquity. Their colony of Carthage, which at one time had a population of a million, was founded before 800 B.C. But even before 1500 B.C. the Phoenicians had two great settlements-Sidon and Tyre-on the African coast. They were great traders and had a large trade in slaves, metals, precious stones, and woven goods with all the Mediterranean peoples. The Phoenicians were advanced in many arts, and they had an alphabet and system of picture-writing of their own.

Another of the oldest civilizations is the Chaldean. The Chaldeans dwelt in what is now a desolate valley on the western frontier of Persia. The capital of the Chal