MATERIAL CULTURE. Even under civilized conditions a great part of man's material culture is directly associated with his primary need, that of procuring food, and his progress in many other directions depends upon the measure of his success in this. The old classification of peoples or communities as hunters, herders or tillers of the soil, is therefore not without value, though it lays undue stress upon this aspect of human life, and more than one question is begged when it is assumed that the higher cultures must have passed through the lower stages to reach their present level. It is quite probable that the first men to begin the cultivation of plants were neither hunters nor herders in a specialized sense, but food-gatherers who, from depending upon such plant and animal produce as they could collect, were led to discover that roots and shoots and seeds could be made productive under control. Apart from those existing backward peoples who live by collecting, hunting and fishing alone, hunt ing may be a more or less essential activity in higher grades of culture, its importance decreasing with the extension of plant and animal cultivation, until in the higher civilizations it degen erates into a sport. The domestication of animals is, as is well known, often associated with agriculture, though in its intensive form it may have had its first big developments amongst nomadic peoples. The three categories may be regarded as specializations which arose out of the food-gathering that was in the beginning the compulsory occupation of the human stock, as it is of the existing apes. Specialization in, and dependence upon, hunting or the rearing of animal stock, involved a mode of life less likely to lead to and foster plant-growing than would a more settled exis tence in an area where vegetable food was plentiful, and where the phenomena of growth could be observed under similar condi tions year after year. As is generally recognized, a settled life would also provide favourable conditions and incentives for the initiation of other peaceful arts, such as basket- and pottery making, spinning and weaving; but it was only when plant culti vation established itself as cereal culture—the growing of grain such as barley and wheat, which could be stored for winter con sumption-that the first civilizations became possible.
If food is the primary need of man, clothing and shelter, how ever they first arose, assumed the form of needs partly under stress of climate. Means of travel and transportation, especially over water, were accessory to the more immediate material aims, since they played an important part in opening up new food-areas, and provided new natural products and new environmental stimuli.
Arts and close study of the means of pro curing food leads to the consideration of the innumerable weapons and devices for hunting and fishing; of methods and appliances used in plant cultivation and the tending of domesticated animals; and of the great variety of methods, implements and utensils for carrying, storing and preparing food. With clothing are as sociated skin-dressing, bark-cloth making, spinning and weaving, whilst in shelter and in travel and transport are involved the build ing of wind-screens and dwellings, and the construction of carry ing devices and water-craft. To the implements and appliances needed for the carrying out of operations connected with all these activities there must be added-with considerable overlap—the tools and mechanisms used in the treatment of materials, and in the construction of artefacts of all kinds.
Many artefacts have their main gignificance outside the limits of material culture, as, for example, in the case of personal orna ments, instruments for measuring time and weight, musical instru ments, religious buildings and images of gods; but as artefacts or inventions these claim consideration from the same point of view as others serving more material ends. Their nature is, indeed, de termined by the state of culture with which they are associated, and in their development they may react conspicuously upon the technique or constructional principles upon which they depend. It is clear that man, even savage man, has aspirations besides those of preserving his life and making himself comfortable, and these carry him far beyond the limits to which he is pushed by necessity.