cultivate the ground
by digging the earth deep and rubbing it fine with their hands, and by
this means they get an excellent yield.[168] Women have everywhere
been the first potters; vessels were needed for use in cooking, to
carry and to hold water, and to store the supplies of food. For the
same reason baskets were woven. Women invented and exercised in common
multifarious household occupations and industries. Curing food,
tanning the hides of animals, spinning, weaving, dyeing--all are
carried on by women. The domestication of animals is usually in
women's hands. They are also the primitive architects; the hut, in
widely different parts of the world--among Kaffirs, Fuegians,
Polynesians, Kamtschatdals--is built by women. We have seen that the
communal houses of the American Indians are mainly erected by the
women. Women were frequently, though not always, the primitive
doctors. Among the Kurds, for instance, all the medical knowledge is
in the hands of the women, who are the hereditary _hakims_.[169] Women
seem to have prepared the first intoxicating liquors. The Quissama
women in Angola climb the gigantic palm trees to obtain
palm-beer.[170] In the ancient legends of the North, women are clearly
represented as the discoverers of ale.[171]

[166] Thomas, _Sex and Society_, p. 136.

[167] Mason, _op. cit._ p. 24.

[168] _Cont. North American Ethnology_, Vol. III, p. 167.

[169] Mrs. Bishop, _Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan_, cited
by H. Ellis, _op. cit._, p. 6.

[170] _Jour. Anthrop. Inst._, Vol. I, p. 190.

[171] "Magic Songs of the Finns," _Folk-lore_, Mar. 1892.

It would be easy to go on almost indefinitely multiplying examples of
the industries of primitive women. There can be no doubt at all that
their work is exacting and incessant; it is also inventive in its
variety and its ready application to the practical needs of life. If a
catalogue of the primitive forms of labour were made, each woman would
be found doing at least half-a-dozen things while a man did one. We
may accept the statement of Prof. Mason that in the early history of
mankind "women were the industrial, elaborative, conservative half of
society. All the peaceful arts of to-day were once women's peculiar
province. Along the lines of industrialism she was pioneer, inventor,
author, originator."[172]

[172] _American Antiquarian_, Jan. 1899.

There is another matter that must be noted. The primitive divi