t in the later part of the Neolithic--to
which much of this finer work also may belong--we find him building
huts, rearing large stone monuments, having tame dogs and pigs and oxen,
growing corn and barley, and weaving primitive fabrics. He lives in
large and strong villages, round which we must imagine his primitive
cornfields growing and his cattle grazing, and in which there must have
been some political organisation under chiefs.

When we wish to trace the beginning of these inventions we have the same
difficulty that we experienced in tracing the first stages of new animal
types. The beginning takes place in some restricted region, and our
casual scratching of the crust of the earth or the soil may not touch
it for ages, if it has survived at all. But for our literature and
illustrations a future generation would be equally puzzled to know how
we got the idea of the aeroplane or the electric light. In some cases we
can make a good guess at the origin of Neolithic man's institutions. Let
us take pottery. Palaeolithic man cooked his joint of horse or reindeer,
and, no doubt, scorched it. Suppose that some Palaeolithic Soyer had
conceived the idea of protecting the joint, and preserving its juices,
by daubing it with a coat of clay. He would accidentally make a clay
vessel. This is Mr. Clodd's ingenious theory of the origin of pottery.
The development of agriculture is not very puzzling. The seed of corn
would easily be discovered to have a food-value, and the discovery of
the growth of the plant from the seed would not require a very high
intelligence. Some ants, we may recall, have their fungus-beds. It would
be added by many that the ant gives us another parallel in its keeping
of droves of aphides, which it "milks." But it is now doubted if the ant
deliberately cultivates the aphides with this aim. Early weaving might
arise from the plaiting of grasses. If wild flax were used, it might be
noticed that part of it remained strong when the rest decayed, and so
the threads might be selected and woven.

The building of houses, after living for ages in stone caverns, would
not be a very profound invention. The early houses were--as may be
gathered from the many remains in Devonshire and Cornwall--mere rings of
heaped stones, over which, most probably, was put a roof of branches or
reeds, plastered with mud. They belong to the last part of the New Stone
Age. In other places, chiefly Switzerland, Neolithic man lived in wo