Fire as an agent in human culture / by Walter Hough.

  • Walter Hough
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Fire as an agent in human culture / by Walter Hough. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/338 (page 1)
    FIRE AS AN AGENT IN HUMAN CULTURE By Walter Hough Head Curator of Anthropology, United States National Museum PREDILECTION FOR HEAT One of the characteristics which man shares with many animals is an appreciation of warmth. Humboldt remarks that in all climates people show the same predilection for heat.1 Fire was as necessary to the Indians of Guiana as to Arctic peoples, by day and night. Everyone has a fire under his hammock, kept up with great attention. In the huts the fire is built on a clay hearth laid on the floor.2 This feature is cared for by clothing, habitation, and other matter reflecting the natural adaptation to environment and antedating the use of artificial 'warming, which begins with fire. In all phases of man’s development is evinced a fondness for hot springs, which early were visited for the advantages of warmth, and to which later were attributed healing powers, and later still became resorts of luxury. “Long before European settlers saw New Zealand the thermal and mineral waters attracted the natives, who had discovered their cura¬ tive properties.”3 In this connection it is surmised that the use of hot water as a drink for the purpose of adding to the heat of the body became appreciated at an early time, followed by the general use of hot food and drink after the utilization of fire. It may be seen that much was learned as to the properties of heat from warm springs before the domestication of fires. Another primitive example to which attention has not heen called is the use of the warmth of animals. It has been observed that animal societies show innumerable adaptations in response to the reaction stimuli of cold. This reaction extends also through human¬ ity. The close association of man with domestic animals at an early period suggests a warmth utility which explains the surviving traces of such association into the present, giving rise to good- humored ridicule of people who lived somewhat primitively. i Travels and Researches, Edinburgh, 1832, ed. 4, p. 154. > Schomburgh. Hakluyt Society, London, 1848, p. 50. * Henry M. Cadell. New York Sun, November, 1900.