. The history of mankind . of nomadic building. The granite ofSyene, the black limestone of Persepolis,which have retained even to our daysthe most delicate sculpture and the smoothest polish, are of high historicalsignificance as trustworthy props and bearers of tradition. They witness to thetruth of a remark of Herders : No work of art has died in the history ofmankind. How great an influence has been produced on us by the fact thatthose remains, so far removed both in place and time from the modern civilizationof the Nile valley, have been handed down to us uninjured ? But how muchgreater w
. The history of mankind . of nomadic building. The granite ofSyene, the black limestone of Persepolis,which have retained even to our daysthe most delicate sculpture and the smoothest polish, are of high historicalsignificance as trustworthy props and bearers of tradition. They witness to thetruth of a remark of Herders : No work of art has died in the history ofmankind. How great an influence has been produced on us by the fact thatthose remains, so far removed both in place and time from the modern civilizationof the Nile valley, have been handed down to us uninjured ? But how muchgreater was the value of these stony witnesses of the greatness, the deeds, thereligion, the knowledge of their nation, for the people who walked beneath them ?This hard stone gave as it were a skeleton to tradition, to guard it frompremature collapse. In any case the fact of settlement in stone houses, vying infirmness with the solid earth, had a significance very different from that of settle-ment in huts of bamboo and Tree-dwellings in South India. (After Jagor.) HABITA TIONS 109 In any classification of races according to their method of building, the lowestgrade will be held by nomadic hunting and fishing peoples of the type of theFuegians, the Bushmen, the Tasmanians, and many Australians, who inhabit nohuts built on a fixed plan or placed regularly together in villages, but put uptemporary shelters of brushwood and reeds. The tent-dwelling nomads, whethertheir tents be of leather like those of the Arabs, or of felt, the Mongol or Sifanyaourts, so far as plan goes, are not much superior to those above-mentioned ;but the necessity of guarding their herds has made it a characteristic of them all
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectethnology, bookyear18
