THE EVOLUTION OF AGRICULTURE

IT seems a little strange that the works of Professor Hahn, extending as they do over a period of fourteen years or more (his book on Domestic Animals-Die HaustUre und ihre Besiekung sur Wirtschaft des Menschen-was published in 1896), should not have attracted greater attention in this country than, apparently, they have done, even among specialists.If readers find it impossible (as some, no doubt, will) to subscribe to all bis conclusions, yet there can be no question as to the interest and value of bis researches into primitive culture and the history of economics.The two little books before us, 1 whose significance is out of all proportion to the modesty of their appearance, continue a course of inquiry initiated in Demeter und Baubo, Vetsuek einer Theorie der Entstehung unseres Ackerbaus (Liibeck, 1896).Various considerations had led the author to doubt the validity of the old-established theory that the human race in their evolution towards civilisation passed through three stages, everywhere in the same order: they were first hunters, then pastoral nomads, and then tillers of the soil-after which the transition to an ordered state and the development of the arts followed of themselves.It was therefore assumed that those tribes whom we now find living as hunters or nomads were examples of arrested development.The progress of research in various quarters of the globe made the hypothesis less and less tenable.Most, if not all, nomad pastoral tribes find vegetable food of some sort a necessity, and usually obtain it by barter from settled agricultural peoples, as the Masai do from the Akamba and other Bantu tribes with whom they come in contact.' Di* Bnttttkmtg itr wirtirh^tKrkm 4rltit, TOO Ednird H«hn.109 pp.8TO.1908.ZHt SmMtitmg dtr/yhtg*mOttr {ums*rtj Adttriaut).